Honorable Heavenly Ones - True Character or Salespitch

[Michael Portz]

I can't imagine this is not already discussed somewhere. So please point me to any ongoing discussions.

But ...

We all are wondering, why the Heavenly/Ancient Ones are behaving so honorable. Kaladin and Leshwi are already discussed in the shipping sections.

Could it be that they just behave with honor, because they want to get the attention of the Honorsprens and thus to dispute the humans on Roshar one of their biggest resources in their fight against Odiums forces? Apparently the Honorspren are already having second thoughts of supporting the humans.

Don't get me wrong: I don't claim, that they FAKE being honorable, as I don't think that Honorspren would fall for a ruse. Just that they started being honorable because of this very reason.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Michael Portz

[Karger]

I think it could be both.  Their honor is probably important to them(a point of pride as well as a good touch stone for their own sanity).  Additionally warfare often does involve negotiations with the enemy.  It is beneficial for Team Radiant to be able to trust Team Odium during a parley so Odium allows them to keep their sense of honor such that it is.

[Gilphon]

I have a theory that the Fused Orders might also be bound by a series of oaths and they need to access their powers- there was a line somewhere in OB about them learning to access Surges at some point after the Oathpact was established; it's not a thing they could always do. I don't think they're exactly the same ones- the Heavenly Ones appear to be the Windrunner equivalents, but I don't think they're focused on protection- but something that gives each Order a shared 'personality' in much the same way the Radiants do. 

For the Heavenly Ones in particular, I think it would be about respecting fair competition. So they always accept one on one duels, and will generally agree follow any rules that their enemy suggests (as long as the enemy in question doesn't cheat), and don't like going after people who can't fight back. 

But in any case, I highly doubt this is new development; they're ancient beings who are almost certainly very stuck in their ways, and the discord between the Honorspren and humans is brand new from their perspective. So I doubt it's anything to do with that. 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Gilphon

[garlick]

 I think this comes from the singer's originating on honors planet. It's their nature. Even the parishendi fighting bridge 4 at the end of the way of kings. Kaladin mentions how they avoided the the lopen and the wounded Bridgemen and sought out the most skilled like moash. I think this is how they were before humans came into the picture.

[GudThymes]

12 minutes ago, garlick said:

I think this comes from the singer's originating on honors planet. It's their nature.

While Honor may have an influence here the Singers actually pre-date his and Cultivations arrival, by a significant amount of time. They were created by Adolnasium himself and have been on Roshar pre-splintering.

[Gilphon]

Ooh, I have a WoB on this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/222-words-of-radiance-houston-signing/#e5636

Quote

PadraicSeebrr (paraphrased)

Are the Parshendi of Honor?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No

Which should be understood to mean that they are honorless, but that they are not associated with the Shard Honor in any real way; he didn't create them or anything.

[spaidapig]

Honor and Cultivation didn't create the Singers, that's right.

But both were worshipped as gods before they turned to Odium because of their conquest with the humans that arrived on Roshar.

So they could have been influenced by Honor to an honorful behavior.

Sadly, we do not know much about the First Desolation and the time before. I hope, that the back 5 will partly deal with this topic, at least in the flashback sequences of the Heralds.

[FollowYourMuse]

I agree that Leshwi and the Heavenly Ones may have some form of honor, the same way that a corrupted spren does not change its core nature just a twisted version of it. I also think she is playing Kaladin, like Odium she is playing the long game, remember how far Odium could see the future and possibilities.  He is being set up, and while Leshwi may be turned (Kaladin has that effect on others) it could go either way knowing Sanderson's twists and turns. 

Even if the Parshendi pre-date Honor and cultivation, Adonalism would have contained those same forces. 

Edited August 13, 2020 by FollowYourMuse

[+Child of Hodor]

The Singers were on Roshar with Honor and Cultivation before the humans and Odium showed up.

The Fused would have experienced some of that before everyone switched sides. 

I think this behavior is due to fighting Windrunners over the millennia as much as anything. The Windrunners have rubbed off on them. 

[Michael Portz]

I stick to my "salespitch" theory, because:

• I don't think the act of torturing (anybody, but here: Heralds on Braize) for 90+% of your lifetime is honorable at all.
• So honor is not something coming natural to them.
• So "Lets be honorable from now on and try to enthrall some Honorspren" is a stratagem.

Voila, qed ... 

edt: "behave honorable" => "be honorable"

 

Edited August 14, 2020 by Michael Portz

[Michael Portz]

7 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

The Singers were on Roshar with Honor and Cultivation before the humans and Odium showed up.

The Fused would have experienced some of that before everyone switched sides. 

I think this behavior is due to fighting Windrunners over the millennia as much as anything. The Windrunners have rubbed off on them. 

But how many years of the millennia which passed on Roshar did they actually spent in the presence of (aka trying to kill) Windrunners? Only during the desolations. This is imho not enough to rub anything off.

[garlick]

The thing about honor, its doesn't mean good. You can do bad things and still be honorable. Example. Honor among thieves. You could still have honor on a battle field not killing the wounded, but kill the strongest in the most violent of ways. You could torture a person if it means getting your planet back but still care about the innocent. Take a fused point of view. Pretend they are the good guys. Humans took our planet, took our ancestors mind's (I know that's only happened since the last desolation. You make a deal to live forever so you can fight for your planet just to have people imprison you. They only way you get to return and fight for what's yours is to torture them. What would we humans do. Honor takes many forms. Many can stick to a code and at the same time commit some of the worst crimes.

[Rorzikel]

3 hours ago, garlick said:

The thing about honor, its doesn't mean good. You can do bad things and still be honorable. Example. Honor among thieves. You could still have honor on a battle field not killing the wounded, but kill the strongest in the most violent of ways. You could torture a person if it means getting your planet back but still care about the innocent. Take a fused point of view. Pretend they are the good guys. Humans took our planet, took our ancestors mind's (I know that's only happened since the last desolation. You make a deal to live forever so you can fight for your planet just to have people imprison you. They only way you get to return and fight for what's yours is to torture them. What would we humans do. Honor takes many forms. Many can stick to a code and at the same time commit some of the worst crimes.

For example, “honor cultures” tend to be extremely oppressive in their traditionalism, especially to women, and have greater rates of violence. Honor can be a very nasty thing, especially when people are speaking of it in regards to character- “I must defend my honor!” over a mild insult that escalates into maiming or murder. Think of cultures like medieval Japan or the Romans where one could remove shame from their families by committing suicide. Doing so was seen as the right thing to do. Women don’t appear that frequently in Roman histories and legends, but there is story of Lucretia that was celebrated and honored by the Romans. She was raped by Tarquin the son of one of the seven kings of Rome, and in response demanded that her husband and father take vengeance before stabbing herself in the heart. Lucretia isn’t seen as a madwoman by the Romans, she’s seen as someone brave. Honor can be, again, quite nasty in it’s execution.

3 hours ago, garlick said:

Take a fused point of view. Pretend they are the good guys.

That’s not that hard, tbh. They’re essentially “What if the Native Americans made a pact with Satan.” If you look at it as the heralds are locking us up here so that their people have more time to finish the genocide of my people and every moment they haven’t broken more of our lands are stolen at knifepoint, well... [removed by moderator]

Edited August 14, 2020 by Greywatch
Edited by moderator

[Karger]

I may have gotten the reasoning.  I think this practice generally favors both sides minimizing casualties.  This causes combats to be drawn out with the deaths only happening one at a time.  In purely military terms as Kaladin noted killing each other does not do much.  We have seen no indication that crazy fursed are incapable fighters and training new Windrunners does not take that long.  It also insures that the most skilled fighters last longer indicating that the fighting in the air will be done by professional soldiers.  A fun thought experiment is to wonder what happens when out of the blue this practice is initiated from an evolutionary perspective.  Less dedicated fused and Windrunners tend to die more often thus reducing the number of casual members.  The same is true for the fused.  This protects civilian populations on both sides during the war something the fused do probably care about for both practical and personal reasons.  The same is true for the Windrunners.  Even in warfare things are not always zero sum.

[Gilphon]

So, I mean, I don't want to go as far as to imply that the Heavenly Ones didn't torture the Heralds. But there are hundreds of fused and only ten heralds; it's physical impossible for more than a fraction of them to be doing that at any given time. And for the past four thousands years, with only Taln? I mean, it's hard to imagine more than dozen Fused actually being involved at once. 

I don't think, therefore, that it's unreasonable to assume that that task was eventually left up to the very sadistic and stubborn among the Fused. And certainly there seem to be plenty of Fused that are worse than the Heavenly Ones. So I feel like there's room for argument about them having with fairly minimal involvement with the whole Herald torturing thing? Like, they were probably at least complicit, so I'm not letting them off scot free. But you shouldn't necessarily take that as a statement on their true character either.

[Requiem17]

There are quotes back in WoK where Kaladin sees the Listeners fighting with more honor than the Alethi. The first example I remember is when Bridge Four holds the bridge at the end; Kaladin realizes the Listeners didn't attack his wounded men, and came at them one at a time.

My two cents is this is the Singer's original culture, and other Fused have just moved away from it. I don't think it always has to go back to the Shards. Sigzil mentions a people that are more about posturing. And we know the Reshi do something similar. I guess we could say Honor told them to do that too, but it feels like a cop-out to me. A people can't be good enough to decide to minimize death without a Shard instigating that thought?