Kaladin killed ....

[Stitof]

Kaladin killed Shallan's brother. I think this is the biggest unresolved plot thread in the series. These are the two characters with more pages devoted to them than any other characters in the Stormlight Archive. Shallan briefly finds out about it in Oathbringer and then it immediately gets swept under the rug. Knowing Brandon, this will surely have a massive effect on the story. Shallan killed her mom in self defense and her dad was a murderous lunatic who she eventually also killed. Her other brothers had serious issues and brushed her off. But Heleran was kind to her. Heleran was the most stable and loving presence in Shallan's childhood. And Kaladin killed him. Shallan is very good at suppressing things... until she suddenly doesn't. 

My question is, how do you guys predict this will play out?

Edited March 7, 2023 by Stitof

[S. Stormy she/her]

37 minutes ago, Stitof said:

Kaladin killed Shallan's brother. I think this is the biggest unresolved plot thread in the series. These are the two characters with more pages devoted to them than any other characters in the Stormlight Archive. Shallan briefly finds out about it in Oathbringer and then it immediately gets swept under the rug. Knowing Brandon, this will surely have a massive effect on the story. Shallan killed her mom in self defense and her dad was a murderous lunatic who she eventually also killed. Her other brothers had serious issues and brushed her off. But Heleran was kind to her. Heleran was the most stable and loving presence in Shallan's childhood. And Kaladin killed him. Shallan is very good at suppressing things... until she suddenly doesn't. 

My question is, how do you guys predict this will play out?

I'm going to assume you've read the whole series. Well, I'll put my thoughts in a spoiler tag in case you haven't.

Spoiler

I think that she's probably aware of it in the back of her mind, and she knows that it was necessary for him to survive. She knows he was just doing his soldier's duty, and I think that while she's not thrilled about it, she's dealt with it, mostly.

Oh, and you might want to edit the title? It's not required, but it pops up on the front page of the Shard, and could potentially spoil people who haven't read to that part.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Shallan Stormblessed

[Stitof]

 

42 minutes ago, Shallan Stormblessed said:

I'm going to assume you've read the whole series. Well, I'll put my thoughts in a spoiler tag in case you haven't.

  Hide contents

I think that she's probably aware of it in the back of her mind, and she knows that it was necessary for him to survive. She knows he was just doing his soldier's duty, and I think that while she's not thrilled about it, she's dealt with it, mostly.

Oh, and you might want to edit the title? It's not required, but it pops up on the front page of the Shard, and could potentially spoil people who haven't read to that part.

Interesting thoughts.

Ah, sorry. How do I edit the title? I didn't think about it being a spoiler.

[alder24]

I don't think it will ever come up. At best some short conversation between them, where Shallan will forgive Kaladin, but seeing how things are with Shallan, and where they are heading in SA5 it's unlikely that something serious will come out of this.

9 minutes ago, Stitof said:

Ah, sorry. How do I edit the title? I didn't think about it being a spoiler.

Click "edit" at the bottom of your first post and you can change title there.

[Szeth's Facepalm]

i hadn't really thought about this before. (spoilers)

Spoiler

here's what i can picture: if odium ever attempts to take her pain (which i can see happening in a couple situations) he could maybe capitalize on that.

also, maybe she could use it as a weapon against kaladin to try to convince him that he needs to kill oroden because he is odium's champion? (which is something heavily forshadowed in the death rattles.) it would be pretty awful and i'm not sure how it would even work, but it could be something.

anyway, yeah, this is an interesting thing to think about.

 

[CosmicSieve]

This is one of things I want resolved in SA5.

It seems like an odd thing to have the Shardbearer Kaladin killed turn out to be Helaran if it isn't going to have much of an impact. Right now we only have Shallan having stuffed into a box in the back of her mind, and occasionally saying nasty things to Kaladin in Oathbringer (he notes in Kholinar that she swings back and forth on her treatment of him). So if that was Helaran, it needs to be resolved in some way. Maybe Kaladin will do something spectacular for Shallan out of guilt, or maybe Shallan will get some character growth and come to terms with it.

There is still a slight chance it wasn't Helaran, though it is very slight. Lin Davar sent someone to kill Helaran with the instructions to bring back the Shard Blade. The guy might have succeeded, kept the Blade and lied about how and where he died. Also, that Ghostblood women (Iyatil? Can't remember her name offhand) wanted to kill Amaram personally, and that has never been explained. So there is a slight possibility that the Shardbearer was actually a Ghostblood who had gotten ahold of Helaran's Blade.

[alder24]

13 minutes ago, CosmicSieve said:

he notes in Kholinar that she swings back and forth on her treatment of him

That was because Vail was in "love" with him, and wanted to flirt with him, Radiant was not at all, and fully committed to Adolin, Shallan admired Kaladin as an art, and was conflicted about her feelings. Kaladin, who doesn't know there are 3 persons in one body, would see it as what you described. But that was purely because her conflicted personalities had different opinions on him, and acted differently.

But it is possible that one of them holds that memory repressed in her, thus manifesting as a different treatment. Radiant most likely if that's the case.

[crème de la crèmling]

It does seem like the narrative impact of this kind of stopped mid-way through OB. To be totally honest, even in RoW, it didn't seem to me like Kaladin and Shallan (Shallan, not Radiant or Veil) are even friends. Veil is the one who stands up for him, and Radiant is the one who counsels him in the scene in the bar. Shallan is "resting." She doesn't even show. When she does think about him, it's to reflect on how he's the kind of Radiant who would never do the things she has done. (Which is baffling to me, he goes down the exact same paths and apparently even Adolin knows about it?) Furthermore, Kaladin himself put those pieces together from the beginning and totally dodged the conversation entirely. It seems like water under the bridge between them, informed friendship or not.

But prior to finding out that it was Kaladin, she was pretty free with her feelings of hatred and anger towards Amaram (she called him all sorts of names) and once she discovered the truth, it went right into the truth vault with all the other things she has stuffed in there. I agree with the reading that Shallan took out her anger on Kaladin in petty ways throughout OB, while Veil took on the part that was attracted to him despite that. 

To me, it seems like Shallan has compartmentalized this hard. I don't know what the outcome or reveal would be, except we finally find out what Helaran was really doing the entire time or something, or maybe that he's not dead dead, kind of in a manner like @CosmicSieve suggests. I also tend to think that Shallan is pretty angry at Helaran. He was loving and kind, but also extremely absent! He left Shallan, a traumatized child, to "take care of the family" while he did "more important things." I have a couple of passages noted down where it seems to me that she is deeply jealous of what Helaran got to do--leave home, basically--and very angry at him for essentially abandoning his family for his mission/revenge quest--but she seals that up, too. Shallan tends to think of Helaran in the same terms that she thinks of Kaladin as well, extremely idealized and distorted by her perceptions.

If it comes back up, I wonder if Kaladin himself will even be involved; it seems like another thing that Shallan, who is recently a bit more capable of handling these complex and unpleasant feelings, will handle on her own, or in her own storyline, since she has relatively little to do with Kaladin at all anymore. I think it would be more about Shallan discovering what Helaran was doing and grappling with her feelings about his actions and true personality, which may not stand up to her childhood idealization. The direction for Shallan seems to be heading in her taking on the big picture behind what was happening in her home and with her family.

Edited March 8, 2023 by crème de la crèmling
Grammar edit.