Is it possible Shallan's mother was a Herald?

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

okay, shallan's mother couldn't have been trapped permanently in a gemstone if she was a herald. This was attemptd with Jezrien and he faded away after a while. It says this at the beginning of the chapters in RoW

[teknopathetic]

Also it isn’t confirmed that Nale is the only one to bond a spren. Instead he said he was the only one to bond a spren of the same order. 

[Could Be Fire]

On 12/13/2020 at 3:06 PM, Dannex said:

Hmmmm. I can’t think of anything that explicitly disproves this...but it does seem a little unlikely. 

It does make me want to theorize about who Chanaranach is though, that’s a really interesting quote. 

We might be able to figure out who she was by figuring out how her Madness would manifest. We know that the Heralds Insaneness is not normal crazy, it’s magic crazy, and it’s influenced by the divine attribute they are associated with. WOB:

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Questioner

The Heralds seem to be insane in the ways of their Divine Attributes, at least somewhat. Is this because they're Heralds? As Cognitive Shadows, they're subject to people's perception, like how spren are?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a very astute question, and yes, that is influencing them quite a bit. I'm doing something here with the Heralds. Like, I want the Heralds "madnesses," as we call them, to be magical diseases. And the contrast of something like Kaladin's depression, which I'm trying to treat very real-world. I'm trying to treat them as these things that couldn't exist in our world. They're fantastical mental diseases, like we have fantastic physical diseases in Elantris. So I did make them thematic, and I would say part of the reason for that is people's perception of them and their mental state reacting against that. And that should be a theme among all of the Heralds.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

Chanaranach’s divine attribute is “Brave/Obedient”
Any way that could fit with Shallan’s mother? Maybe she was obedient to a fault and tried to kill her daughter when told to?

Just a comment but it seems the madness is more of an inversion of their attributes rather than too much of them. Also sort of a twisting of their 'role'

Smarter ppl than me have fully explained but in summary:
Jezerin (protecting/leading) --> drunkard how can't protect or lead anyone. King --> Beggar
Nale (just/confident) --> his entire crusade is actively unjust (the murder of the food thief, searching for excused to kill baby radients) one could argue his confidence has been affected as well, look at his interaction with Lift in ED, his reliance on Ishar, and how he hints to Szeth to not follow him in OB. Good cop --> Bad cop.
Shalash (creative/honest) --> has to destroy images of her own face, obviously against creativity but also an inability to literally 'face herself' which implies issues with self-reflection. Artist --> Vandal
Kalak (resolute/builder) --> man's an anxious wreck who makes every decision by committee and is trying to flee from his problems rather than stand and build something new Builder/Maker (of both of literal cities and societies) --> High Judge (essentially useless, he's not actually helping the Honorspren be a better nation at all)
Taln (dependable/resourceful) --> comatose, can't be depended on to do anything (Taln's an interesting case because his issue may be entirely 4500+ years of torture and not the twisted magic madness the rest have, he certainly seems thoughtful and dependable in his moment of clarity during OB)

If it was overuse of their attributes we'd for example Kalak to be overconfident and stubborn and Ash to be lost in creating art. Nale's the only one who seems like he's overdoing his attribute but that's because he's putting on a facade of Justice, he's clearly not and knows it. 

So Chana (brave/obedient) should be cowardly and/or disloyal or rebellious. That was the crux of the Lyss argument (the twisted version of a guard would be an assassin) but Shallan's mother is a good idea as well especially with the new redhead art. Her whole relationship with the mystery man both the infidelity and trying to murder her family with them does speak to twisted obedience. 

On 12/17/2020 at 9:26 PM, teknopathetic said:

It would explain why Name never came to kill Shallan (he wouldn't kill a herald's child)

 

I mean someone did. Shallan's mother had a strange boyfriend. I think the theory he was a Skybreaker (which is how Helearan got hooked up with them) and that's why they tried to kill Shallan. I think it's more likely that they realized that Shallan broke her bond with Testament and never checked back in assuming that no sane spren would bond someone how'd already made one Deadeye. They thought that had accomplished their mission (get rid of a KR).