Battar Going Forward?

[wormotif]

15 minutes ago, Subvisual Haze said:

I was kind of surprised by the absolute lack of care Honor put into vetting the Heralds in the first place.  He basically just choose 10 people who were available and willing!  It's not surprising if one or two bad apples snuck in who just enjoyed the prospect of being immortal (what if Battar was just an equivalent of Gavilar?).  Clearing up the trauma via Kaladin-brand therapy in such a case wouldn't necessary result in a good person.  At best therapy process the trauma and help self-actualize, but that doesn't necessarily result in a "good person". 

The Sopranos rather cleverly covered this limitation of therapy as a mechanism for betterment.  Take a mob boss suffering from panic attacks, apply therapy, yield a more efficient mob boss?  I guess maybe if you apply Clockwork Orange therapeutic techniques you could change a "bad person" into a "good person", but you shatter free will in the process.

This is an excellent point, but I think that it's worth remembering the Heralds are really, really old. Each of them ending up proving to be someone exceptional during the millennia of fighting desolations, and they all demonstrated some substantial measure of selflessness in holding on as long as they did (2500 years) until Aharietiam. 

Then they've been around for another 4500 years, largely broken and experiencing supernaturally afflicted madness. 

So all that to say, I suspect Battar could be a good person, and that Battar's done a lot of good things (and evil things as well - Tanavast specifically mentions her cruelty in one of his flashbacks). But Battar might well side with Retribution, and I agree with everyone who's said this will be a significant plot point in the second half

[Cocoa he/him]

On 12/12/2024 at 8:47 PM, coolsnow7 said:

I feel pretty comfortable believing that Battar is the one who fully disconnected from the Oathpact by betraying it. At an absolute minimum, she knew her work on the Diagram was contrary to the purpose of the Oathpact; more likely she also knew that the Diagram was going to bring Taravangian to power, and made a conscious decision to fully break the Oathpact.

Broken link is Jezrien, as this is after he got stabbed with the Raysium knife, breaking the Oathpact (which up to that point had still been technically functional). Taln is the vibrant link since he's the one who never broke his oaths or chose to stop being a Herald. The other eight links are the other Heralds (Battar included) who were still alive but had walked away from their oaths and from Taln.

Bear in mind, the Diagram existed with at least the nominal purpose of resisting Odium. Meanwhile, by the point in time during RoW that Dalinar was seeing these Connections, Nale had actually joined forces with the voidbringers. Of the two, Battar was doing a far better job of adhering to the original intent of the Oathpact, so it doesn't make much sense that she'd be the only broken link.