Theory: Bavadin is/was a Lightweaver [AU Spoilers]

[Zalocx]

So we recently found out that the essay prefacing the White Sand sections in AU referred to Autonomy as "she" and thanks to some intrepid sharders like emailanimal we recently got this WoB on Reddit:

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Bavadin has several male personas, and has often appeared as male for one purpose or another, so it's not that much of an issue. She has more female personas, but some of the male ones are quite popular.

This won't be relevant for a long while, but as a service to the community, let me say this: try not to get too hung up on gender, race, or even human appearance where Bavadin is concerned. There are some peoples who worship entire pantheons where every member is actually her

 

This has lead to discussion in a few threads that she might be a Dragon or another non-human shapeshifter since she has so many male and female personas spread across the Cosmere. I would like to argue that instead her MO can be explained by her being or having been a Yolish Lightweaver. This doesn't preclude her from being a Dragon or a member of the third sentient race on Yolen of course, since we don't know what the requirements for initiation into investiture was back there. But she could also be a human.

 Consider what the two Lightweavers we know best actually do, not in the specifics of their magic but what they use it for: Shallan has used it to both make her self look more impressive and to create and use the persona of Veil. Hoid has shown up as a beggar, a smuggler, an informant, a storyteller, and two different flavors of court jester. Both have used only human personas so far, and always the same gender ones but I don't necessarily think this is limit of the power as opposed to how the two have thus been seen using it. And this bent towards using their powers of illusion and disguise in a way to become someone/something they are not may refer to an innate mindset that Hoid referred to in WoR as "the nature of lies" and Pattern's very nature as "liespren" supports.This is why even the times we have seen Hoid use more mundane methods for disguise I believe underpinning them is still this mindset that seems to come from being a Lightweaver.

The WoB says Bavadin has a gamut of personas to the point where multiple pantheons are just her in different guises. To me this seems like the Lightweaver penchant for being able to become someone else, even multiple someone elses!, taken up to deific levels. Her still having/using lightweaving is irrelevant since from Ruin becoming Reen in HoA we know Shards can change how they appear to mortals even if the Vessal is not a natural shapeshifter. What matters is that her being/having been a Lightweaver means she understands the nuts and bolts of running all these various personas of her across the Cosmere (again the whole Nature of Lies thing).

This also may explain the animosity Hoid has towards her, he explained why he's against Rayse: he finds him to be an evil man given a power that makes him even more evil and destructive. But never really touches on Bavadin in the letter to Frost besides mentioning her. But if she was another Yolish Lightweaver who used her powers in a way Hoid found to be at odds with his belief on how they should be acting. Well, that's one of the few things in the Cosmere that might really upset him: one of his own turned bad.

[emailanimal]

As you correctly point out, we can indeed observe two things:

* Yolish-style Lightweaving is a plausible mechanism for someone who wants to present multiple personas.

 

* it is not all that clear that a Vessel needs Yolish-style Lightweaving for the purpose of presenting multiple personas, because they have Investiture! Oodles of it!  to do what they wish with it.

But... she could have been a Yolish-style Lightweaver on Yolen prior to the Shattering, and he propensity for the use of Lightweaving to advance her goals (before she became a Vessel) could have affected her MO as a Vessel.

 

[Zalocx]

2 hours ago, emailanimal said:

As you correctly point out, we can indeed observe two things:

* Yolish-style Lightweaving is a plausible mechanism for someone who wants to present multiple personas.

 

* it is not all that clear that a Vessel needs Yolish-style Lightweaving for the purpose of presenting multiple personas, because they have Investiture! Oodles of it!  to do what they wish with it.

But... she could have been a Yolish-style Lightweaver on Yolen prior to the Shattering, and he propensity for the use of Lightweaving to advance her goals (before she became a Vessel) could have affected her MO as a Vessel.

 

Yup, in fact thinking about it I think the mindset is more important than the ability. We see that having access to a magic-system often changes parts of personality and psychology. Whether that's the "special skills" Surgebinders and Twinborn develop like Shallan's memory or Jasnah's innate direction sense or simply how Vin and Wax try to be as hyper-aware of all anchors near them as possible at all times in their POV. Either supernaturally or through rote experience using certain types of magic predispose people to behaving certain ways. So Bavadin doesn't actually need to be able to lightweave as Autonomy, if her time as a mortal built up a habit of making up personas because that's how she used that power back when she did actually use it. This assumes her Intent doesn't override her old personality quirks, but from what little we know "Autonomy" should not conflict with "manipulate people by using constructed personas".

That makes me think that if this theory is true the reason Hoid is antagonistic towards her is because she used Lightweaving for those manipulative purposes for her own ends. Where Hoid seems to take pride in using it to tell stories and be a lorekeeper (though he too manipulates people when he has to).