WoR reread - just lost my respect for Kal

[Isilel]

Here is a recent WoB pertinent to this discussion:

 

Quote

 

Questioner

We've heard a lot about the lighteyes' ranking system, but less so about the darkeyes. I would like to ask you about what would happen to, like, tenth nahn, the lowest of the lowest.

Brandon Sanderson

So, tenth nahn is easy, because that's the slaves. So, it's the middle ones that get really interesting. And actually, in some ways, the top ones are interesting because the nahns, the top of the Alethi darkeyes, would be analogous to how in the early 1800s, you saw a rise of a merchant class - that actually started back in the 17, maybe 1600s - but the rise of a merchant class that were not noble, but more powerful or richer than the nobility in almost every situation except for some legal situations. And that's what you're seeing there. That's really interesting.

The middle nahns are also really interesting because they have the right of movement, which is an Alethi right that you can leave a city and move to another city. You basically can't be a <share cropper>, you can't be required... you can't be a serf. And that power can be wielded over the lighteyes, by - if the lighteyes is terrible, they can call upon the right to move, leave to whatever city and that lighteyes is demoted, right? Because your lighteyes rank can be influenced by how important the people... your civic rank, you could actually become a lower dahn because of that, or at least lose a lot of prestige because of that.

And then the lowest of them are basically serfs, they don't have the right of movement, and the right of movement is a big dividing line. There is a nahn that doesn't have the right of movement that isn't a slave, also, and these people have pretty dismal lives.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

 

 

So, the situation is somewhat more complicated than Kaladin was aware of/anknowledged before his stint in Kholinar in OB. Though, of course iRL it was also possible to straight out buy into nobility or be rewarded with a title for service, which the eye-color system doesn't allow. And anyway, it seems like the military is where the caste herarchy is most rigidly maintained. Not that there aren't plenty of common soldiers who are light-eyed, or that the darkeyes don't serve in elite mixed companies like the Cobalt Guard or the Palace Guard, at least after the Kholin unification, but the darkeyes can never be in command over lighteyes. All of this is about to change, of course, and Renarin serving under Kaladin in Bridge 4 already made a precedent.

 

[agrabes]

7 hours ago, Isilel said:

Here is a recent WoB pertinent to this discussion:

 

 

So, the situation is somewhat more complicated than Kaladin was aware of/anknowledged before his stint in Kholinar in OB. Though, of course iRL it was also possible to straight out buy into nobility or be rewarded with a title for service, which the eye-color system doesn't allow. And anyway, it seems like the military is where the caste herarchy is most rigidly maintained. Not that there aren't plenty of common soldiers who are light-eyed, or that the darkeyes don't serve in elite mixed companies like the Cobalt Guard or the Palace Guard, at least after the Kholin unification, but the darkeyes can never be in command over lighteyes. All of this is about to change, of course, and Renarin serving under Kaladin in Bridge 4 already made a precedent.

 

This was the point I was trying to get out, thanks for finding the WoB on it.  Kaladin thinks things are worse than they are because he's had one of the worst experiences of anyone in terms of betrayal and losing things he has earned because of class/eye color prejudice.  There's definitely systematic problems out there, but I take Alethkar as something like Europe during the early phases of the enlightenment.  We have absolute rulers with way too much power over people and they are just now starting to realize that peasants and people like serfs in particular are being impacted way more than they think.  Now that they are understanding more about philosophy they are realizing that the serfs aren't just going to be happy to be locked down to the land.  So, over time things are changing (slowly) for the positive for the lower classes and darkeyes can and do have independent power similar to the bourgeouise of 1600/1700 Europe.  However, just like the Europe of that time, in the military old habits die hard and you've got a lot of the nobility who perceive themselves as having a god given right to command troops even when they are terrible at it when in the rest of society the lower classes are being rewarded for their skill and starting to get ahead.

Anyway, good discussion on this topic.  These kinds of things are interesting to me - the society, rights and laws, and the economy.  I think Sanderson puts a lot into this stuff, more than we know.