Connecting Personal and Political in Stormlight

[rhythm_of_blues_brothers]

[Spoilers included]

Intro: This post is mostly about Stormlight, but there's enough non-Stormlight stuff to discuss that I'm putting it in the Cosmere Forum. 

In the cosmere, there's god-level and great power level stories: the Roshar/Scadrial cold war, the conflicts between shards, the distinction between vessels and powers. He's gone into these things enough that I'm interested in how they resolve: i.e is it actually possible/sustainable for regular-old-people 'with no special qualifications except that they killed the last god' [or whatever that exact Khriss quote was] to be good at being god? Will one party have to 'win' in Roshar vs Scadrial or can they reach some kind of peace? 

There's also personal-level stories - y'know all the personal stuff that Kaladin/Shallan/Adolin and all of the other Roshar POVs (& probably ones on other planets) are dealing with. Sanderson spent plenty of time talking about all of that and making good characters, so of course I care about their individual stories. 

Then there's sometimes a level in-between those things, or approximately the "planet-to-nation-level" politics of the various places. Yumi didn't have much politics and I didn't care, because it was a standalone and that's not what it was about. Emberdark had quite a bit of politics, and in my opinion handled it well and thus set my expectations for how Sanderson will finish telling the political stories in his 'main' series. The Roshar material has a good deal of storytelling at this level, so it makes me really want to stick the landing well in Roshar's political story in the back half of Stormlight. 

So this thread is about -- talking about what we think of how the Roshar-level conflicts might get resolved, and how the individual stories fit (or don't fit, so far) into all of that. 

Given the amount of Roshar-level politics that have already been set up, to me a satisfying end of the back half would need to include resolution to/or significant progress with, at a minimum: Humans vs Singers vs Listeners (obviously), Alethi caste system, Singers&Listeners relationship with 'Honor'.  

First, the encouraging stuff: 

• One thing that makes me a Venli 'fan' is how her character connects personal and political, and how she expresses some of the problems with how that relates to the Shards (I believe there's a speech to would-be Singer defectors about the 'supposedly honorable' god who doesn't like them).
• Jasnah trying to reform the rust out of Alethi society. Hopefully we'll get to see her eventually recover from losing a (revealed to be ultimately less-consequential-than-she-thought) debate with a shitposter who knew her search history and see her continue to play a role in ruling the human portion of Roshar?
• With Renarin and Rlain freeing BAM, it seems like her being around (& being freed by both a human and a Listener) is going to matter in the back half
• I do prefer happy endings and am not ashamed of that, but clearly it would be very wrong if the humans and 'honor' just "won" (again) at the end of WAT. 

The not-as-encouraging stuff:

• I think Sanderson said something somewhere about one motivation for swapping out the Odium vessels being that Rayse didn't seem like much of a threat after getting defeated in book 3. That's nice, but Taravangian? Really? To me, this guy is basically main-character-syndrome-the-character. And does he have any particularly compelling relationship between his personal life and Roshar's defining political problems? I would say, NO. And wtf is "Retribution"? That would make sense if Moash was wearing Odium. What the hell is Taravangian's claim to that title, what the hell justification would he and his privileged life have for wanting revenge so badly? Or did he just pull that one out of his ass because he thought it sounded cool? Yes, I'm happy that Moash isn't Odium and Stormlight didn't hand us a(nother?) "revolution that went too far" story, but...Taravangian? Doesn't work for me, at least not yet. 

 

Anyhow, there's my 'topic', if it's coherent enough to count as one....Discuss?

 

 

[Treamayne]

35 minutes ago, rhythm_of_blues_brothers said:

I think Sanderson said something somewhere about one motivation for swapping out the Odium vessels being that Rayse didn't seem like much of a threat after getting defeated in book 3.

Just one clarification - it was not just "Odium lost to Dalinar" in OB - it was "Rayse lost twice because he has the same friction that caused Tanavast problems" by the end of RoW. WoBs:

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

Ian Weiry Writer

You killed Rayse this book. Could you talk about why you decided to kill him off, and have Taravangian be Odium instead. Was that always part of the plan?

Brandon Sanderson

I always work in a way where I have different options and opportunities. Was it always the thing that I was absolutely going to do? No, I keep myself open on some of these things. 

The reason Rayse needed to go: he had been essentially defeated at the end of Oathbringer, when Dalinar does not go over to him. All of his rage, and everything he's trying to do cannot make that happen. He's defeated, at least in a philosophical sense. Now you can bring a defeated enemy back to be a threat again. You can find a new way to make them a threat, but I knew - in this book - Kaladin was not going to fall to him either. But once you've had two books in a row with the characters machinations not - things stymied by the heroes. I needed a different villain at that point.

 

<edited for length and relevance>

Shardcast Interview (Jan. 23, 2021)

 

 

Quote

Windrunner

Kind of keeping in a similar theme with branching paths and decision making, one of my favorite things is when you talk about kind of your processes, when you hit those big decision points where you're like "okay, I could go down this path or I could go down this path." And one of those that you've talked about is whether you wanted Taravangian to become Odium or whether you wanted Rayse to stick around as the villain. And we know that Rayse always had this kind of prohibition in his mind against picking up a second Shard, because he did not want to risk kind of adulterating himself; he wanted to be just of Odium. And we see now that kind of the way that this book resolved kind of required Retribution to form. If Rayse had remained Odium, would Retribution have been the direction you had gone or would he have done something else?

Brandon Sanderson

He would have done something else.

Windrunner

Okay. Can you elaborate at all?

Brandon Sanderson

You guys theorize on that, what would have happened. Let's just say Rayse remaining Odium was always--how should I say this, it wasn't always--it very quickly became the underdog of what I would do as I wrote Taravangian more and more. Be aware that Taravangian in The Way of Kings Prime, the character I wrote, didn't work as well as new Taravangian. I felt like the old Taravangian was too gimmick--I can't remember what I called him--was too gimmick, too little actual character. And the option to keep Rayse around was really there in case Taravangian didn't develop the way I wanted him to. But he did. And the other thing that I was checking for was a mood check of "has Odium lost his bite, now that he tried to convert Dalinar and he tried to convert Kaladin?" And the answer that I came up with was yes. Dalinar effectively defeated Rayse in Oathbringer and then in Rhythm of War Kaladin put the nail in that coffin. His ideology, his way of being had been summarily rejected by the heroes, to the point that he was just not a threat. When someone who wasn't willing to take the other Shards could not be a threat on the level that I needed him to be and so that option disappeared quickly, shall we say, by the time Oathbringer was happening. But it was an option, it was an option as I was writing Rhythm of War that I could have gone with.

Shardcast Interview (May 25, 2025)

 

Hope that helps