Theory: Shallan kills Adolin

[Lord Spirit he/him]

This might be a bit extreme, but here me out:

1. Shallan killed both of her parents and testament.
2. At least one of her truths is related to their deaths.
3. She currently only has two confirmed oaths, and one book left to resolve her story.
4. Radiant was created to help Shallans relation with Adolin.
5. Adolin isn't a radiant and is one of the more expendable characters (In my opinion) for Brandon to kill in book 5, probably after he finishes his arc with Mya.
6. Shallan is one of the more likely characters (again, in my opinion) to end up worldhopping and becoming part of the greater Cosmere. killing Adolin would give her a reason to leave Roshar.

This is purely speculative, but I thought it might be fun to see how people tear it apart. I'm not sure why she would kill Adolin, she might go full formless (unlikely), it might be accidental, it might be for the greater good, or, like what happened for her parents, it might just be in the heat of the moment.

Thoughts?

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Lord Spirit said:

• She currently only has two confirmed oaths, and one book left to resolve her story.

Three confirmed Ideals - the First Ideal still counts. Two Truths are confirmed. We don't know if "I killed my spren" counts as the 4th Ideal:

Spoiler

enceladus_47

Does Shallan's "I killed my spren" count as a truth?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna leave up to theorizing, figuring out the timeline that's going on with Shallan. What we can say is that Shallan is reconstructing, in many cases, oaths she has said before. And it is working slightly differently than someone who is saying new oaths. And indeed, saying she killed her spren is one of those steps. I'll leave it to you to try and parse through that. It's actually pretty complicated. We have a nice big page explaining all of this stuff internally, to make sure that we're keeping it all straight. Because she has violated oaths and reconstructed them, is basically what's happening. And she is regressing, and she's doing a... 1.1 steps forward, 1 step back, sort of thing, kind of frequently.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 (Dec. 17, 2020)

 

1 hour ago, Lord Spirit said:

• Radiant was created to help Shallans relation with Adolin.

Well, she was manifested to help her cope with touching her Shardblade, with memories that she killed her parents. She spent the first few chapters trying to escape from the truth that she killed both of her parents, then Adolin came and forced her to confront this - so she hid. But just like Veil who already was with her in her childhood, Radiant was also already there. Radiant is related to some other holes in her memory that still remain after Veil was integrated. OB ch 15:

Quote

But … thinking of what she’d done pained her. Holding the weapon would be worse. So much worse.
She wanted to hide. But she couldn’t. This truth refused to budge from her mind. Could she explain? “So, you’re right, but—” [...]
Shallan scrambled through the room to the small mirror she’d hung from the wall. She stared at herself, eyes wide, hair an utter mess. She’d started breathing in sharp, quick gasps. “I can’t—” she said. “I can’t be this person, Pattern. I can’t just wield the sword. Some brilliant knight on a tower, pretending she should be followed.” [...]

RoW ch 115:

Quote

She still had questions. Things about her past didn’t completely align yet, though her memory was no longer full of holes. There was much they didn’t understand. For example, she was certain that, during the years between killing Testament and finding Pattern, her powers had still functioned in some small ways.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Spirit said:

Adolin isn't a radiant and is one of the more expendable characters (In my opinion) for Brandon to kill in book 5, probably after he finishes his arc with Mya.

Do not say those words! I highly value his PoV because he is the only non-Radiant main character now and his story with Maya is great. 

1 hour ago, Lord Spirit said:

Shallan is one of the more likely characters (again, in my opinion) to end up worldhopping and becoming part of the greater Cosmere. killing Adolin would give her a reason to leave Roshar.

She already has a reason to Worldhop, RoW ch 115:

Quote

Shallan reached forward and flipped to the next page in her notebook, where she’d done a drawing using Kelek’s descriptions. It showed a pattern of stars in the sky, and listed the many worlds among them.
Shallan had kept her head down too long. It was time to soar.

Killing Adolin would reduce her entire character arc to ashes and bring her back to the very beginning of WoK. It would nullify 5 books worth of progress.

[Lord Spirit he/him]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Three confirmed Ideals - the First Ideal still counts. Two Truths are confirmed. We don't know if "I killed my spren" counts as the 4th Ideal:

Still one more to go then.

 

9 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Well, she was manifested to help her cope with touching her Shardblade, with memories that she killed her parents. She spent the first few chapters trying to escape from the truth that she killed both of her parents, then Adolin came and forced her to confront this - so she hid. But just like Veil who already was with her in her childhood, Radiant was also already there. Radiant is related to some other holes in her memory that still remain after Veil was integrated. OB ch 15:

Yeah, this the biggest issue with this theory. the only thing I can say is that we already have the reason why she doesn't like shardblades; because she killed her mother with one. but it still doesn't explain why she's scared after she admits to doing so.

25 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Do not say those words! I highly value his PoV because he is the only non-Radiant main character now and his story with Maya is great. 

Yeah, but that didn't save Teft or Elokhar. I don't want him to die, but Brandon likes to crush our hopes and dreams

29 minutes ago, alder24 said:

She already has a reason to Worldhop, RoW ch 115:

She's been introduced to the Cosmere, but she has several ties to roshar that might keep her from leaving.

32 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Killing Adolin would reduce her entire character arc to ashes and bring her back to the very beginning of WoK. It would nullify 5 books worth of progress.

It would depend on why she did. I feel there are situations where it could make sense (for the greater good, accidently.)

[cosmeredoug_30]

2 hours ago, Lord Spirit said:

Adolin isn't a radiant and is one of the more expendable characters (In my opinion) for Brandon to kill in book 5, probably after he finishes his arc with Mya.

I really hope he isn't expendable, he's one of the most interesting characters right now, especially with where his arc is going. If Brandon does kill him, I can't see it happening until late in the back half of the books, when his death would hurt more for us and the characters. I don't think Maya is his only arc. The only characters I can see as leaders are Dalinar, Kaladin, Jasnah, Navani and Adolin.

We know that for both Dalinar and Kal, they will either lose or move on to bigger stuff. Either one of them could die or become Honor. Dalinar could become a fused, Kal could become a Herald therapist. All I know is that their roles will change greatly. 

Navani is a scholar and engineer, I can see her taking over when she is needed but she seems to know that her place is not as the primary ruler. She takes issue with people assuming she is the true power behind Gavilar and then with Dalinar, so she would be a very reluctant ruler.

Jasnah is already Queen of Alethkar and we know that she means serious business with the shards and the wider cosmere. This leaves Adolin, who didn't feel ready to be king in Oathbringer. Now, however, he has led a diplomatic mission to the spren and succeeded. He and Shallan are the only people on the edge of reviving spren and it would be weird if Adolin did it, died and then Shallan did it, told people how to do it, and took the credit. When he revives Maya, I can't see him being fully radiant, but sort of midway between radiant and non-radiant. 

All of this kind of makes him the perfect king to rule over humans and radiants and liaise with the spren, his aunt Navani helping him along. I feel like he is too important to the backhalf to be expendable.

This is just me desperately coming up with reasons for Adolin to not die but you get my point

[alder24]

41 minutes ago, Lord Spirit said:

Yeah, this the biggest issue with this theory. the only thing I can say is that we already have the reason why she doesn't like shardblades; because she killed her mother with one. but it still doesn't explain why she's scared after she admits to doing so.

Trauma. Admitting it doesn't mean accepting responsibility and being strong enough to withstand emotional pressure those truths put on her. She said those Truths, but she wasn't emotionally strong enough so she kept suppressing them. 

43 minutes ago, Lord Spirit said:

Yeah, but that didn't save Teft or Elokhar. I don't want him to die, but Brandon likes to crush our hopes and dreams

Actually Brandon doesn't kill his characters that often. He delivers phenomenal character arcs.

44 minutes ago, Lord Spirit said:

She's been introduced to the Cosmere, but she has several ties to roshar that might keep her from leaving.

She has two ties - Pattern and Testament. And she literally said wants to go out there. 

45 minutes ago, Lord Spirit said:

It would depend on why she did. I feel there are situations where it could make sense (for the greater good, accidently.)

I don't see any circumstances that would put her in position to kill Adolin for "the greater good." Adolin isn't evil, Adolin isn't working for Odium and is highly unlikely to do that. They are married, they support each other. Now Adolin is there for Shallan in her struggles with Ghostbloods. 

No matter the reason, the emotional impact it would have on Shallan would break her down back to as she was at the beginning of WoK - nullifying her entire character arc. 

They can always worldhop together.

[Dofurion]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

Do not say those words! I highly value his PoV because he is the only non-Radiant main character now and his story with Maya is great.

I think I've mentioned it before but I don't see the problem with Adolin becoming Radiant. If you look at his character arc and how he acts it just seems like he is having full Edgedancer development.

I know that many do not like this scenario because it is the non-radiant POV that we have left and in the first instance "I would agree with Dalinar", but I want you to keep a couple of things in mind:

• The first thing is that we are about to finish the first arc, so whatever happens with Adolin we will most likely get new non-radiant POVs starting in Archive 6.
• The second thing is that the problem between Adolin and Dalinar is not that Dalinar wants him to be a radiant, it is that Dalinar specifically wants him to be a Windrunner, if we go by the opinions he has we see that he values this order above the others (another problem for Dalinar to solve) since they were more like what he thought the radiants were. On the other hand, Adolin does not fit in with them, he does more with the Edgedancers, in addition to the fact that Adolin has the peculiarity that he has not left Maya, remember that the Spren usually stay away from the bearers of dead Shards and even if he were not, he can Let something like Rlain's situation with the Sibling happen where if Maya is conscious enough to want to have a bond with Adolin, the other Spren will stay away out of respect for her.

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Dofurion said:

The first thing is that we are about to finish the first arc, so whatever happens with Adolin we will most likely get new non-radiant POVs starting in Archive 6.

Well, not really:

Spoiler

momanie

Question about the second half of the 10 books what did you mean by having the primary characters shuffle and are the 2 arcs separate in time line or something else?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are two arcs. Small separation in time. Not as much as Mistborn. Many same characters will appear, but some will be less prominent.

momanie

Will there be different main character PoV's or no?

Brandon Sanderson

There will be a completely new set of characters with flashback sequences, but some of the characters from the first five will appear quite a lot, and will provide a "through line" of people with arcs that cross ten books--making it one series, not two.

Stormlight Three Update #2 (Jan. 20, 2016)

 

6 minutes ago, Dofurion said:

I think I've mentioned it before but I don't see the problem with Adolin becoming Radiant. If you look at his character arc and how he acts it just seems like he is having full Edgedancer development.

I know that many do not like this scenario because it is the non-radiant POV that we have left and in the first instance "I would agree with Dalinar", but I want you to keep a couple of things in mind:

• The first thing is that we are about to finish the first arc, so whatever happens with Adolin we will most likely get new non-radiant POVs starting in Archive 6.
• The second thing is that the problem between Adolin and Dalinar is not that Dalinar wants him to be a radiant, it is that Dalinar specifically wants him to be a Windrunner, if we go by the opinions he has we see that he values this order above the others (another problem for Dalinar to solve) since they were more like what he thought the radiants were. On the other hand, Adolin does not fit in with them, he does more with the Edgedancers, in addition to the fact that Adolin has the peculiarity that he has not left Maya, remember that the Spren usually stay away from the bearers of dead Shards and even if he were not, he can Let something like Rlain's situation with the Sibling happen where if Maya is conscious enough to want to have a bond with Adolin, the other Spren will stay away out of respect for her.

I'm not saying I don't want him to be a Radiant, I say he's valuable because he isn't Radiant. His story with Maya is aiming to end with some kind of bond - it may be a traditional Nahel Bond or a new, reverse Nahel Bond. I believe they are forming a reverse Nahel Bond - It's Maya who's a knight with a broken spirit and it's Adolin who fills those holes in her spirit with his soul, giving her strength and cognition. He already gave her strength and breath during the trial. This will be a new form of bond that may give them different abilities rather than standard Radiant powers. 

Adolin fits as a Windrunner, but he fits as a Edgedancer better, that's true. He doesn't want to be any Radiant because that means abandoning Maya. He doesn't want to do that no matter the order offered.

[TheOtherDave]

On 3/4/2024 at 4:54 AM, Lord Spirit said:

This might be a bit extreme, but here me out:

1. Shallan killed both of her parents and testament.
2. At least one of her truths is related to their deaths.
3. She currently only has two confirmed oaths, and one book left to resolve her story.
4. Radiant was created to help Shallans relation with Adolin.
5. Adolin isn't a radiant and is one of the more expendable characters (In my opinion) for Brandon to kill in book 5, probably after he finishes his arc with Mya.
6. Shallan is one of the more likely characters (again, in my opinion) to end up worldhopping and becoming part of the greater Cosmere. killing Adolin would give her a reason to leave Roshar.

This is purely speculative, but I thought it might be fun to see how people tear it apart. I'm not sure why she would kill Adolin, she might go full formless (unlikely), it might be accidental, it might be for the greater good, or, like what happened for her parents, it might just be in the heat of the moment.

Thoughts?

“Ah, yes, I think it’s time to go on a walk. Welp, guess I gotta kill my husband now.”

 

Is that really the logic here?

[Duxredux he/him]

Well... if you want Shallan to go world hopping and you feel like you need Adolin out of the way, I don't think there's much reason that she would have to be the one to bump him off. He could be a random wartime casualty, a former Sadeas troop knifes him a back alley, or maybe a Ghostblood offs him and Shallan's brothers as a warning shot. There's dozens of ways to set up her leaving Roshar without her having to burn her bridges and her mental health in the process.

I've listened to Brandon talk about how he doesn't really like how DID and mental health is often portrayed in media when he and Dan talked about Moon Knight on Intentionally Blank (I think they enjoyed it). Mental illness has historically been demonized with media portraying them as villains and murderers at a far, far greater frequency than is representative in life.  He's already been skating around some shaky stereotypes when Radiant killed Ialai, but I think the distinction there is that Shallan herself had committed to kill Ialai, it wasn't an alter going off as a serial killer. It's also been revealed that her parents were really messed up, and she really was operating in self-preservation and what she did messed her up for most of life. If Brandon has arguably one of his least stable characters with a poorly represented mental health condition kill her really supportive husband who is trying to help her with her mental health challenges and is one of the more popular Stormlight characters... well that would just be the nail in the coffin for giving the DID community a representation that they would feel good about, doubly so if an alter does the deed. I don't think Brandon would do that.