Recreance

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

There's a WoB out there that states that the recreance happened hundreds of years after the heralds betrayal. Maybe I'll pull it up when I'm not on my phone.

And the heralds betrayal signalled the "last desolation"

So what exactly were the knights radiant doing all that time that there wasn't a desolation going on? I kind of got the feeling that the knights radiant only really apppeared during desolations, although maybe that is wrong. Maybe they were normally around at all times, and only disappeared after the recreance, only to reappear once the true desolation approached.

Point is, the knights radiant weren't fighting a desolation at the time of recreance. In fact, probably the desolations were already seeming like legends by the time of the recreance.

So what on earth caused the recreance? And, come to think of it, what battle were those knights in Dalinars vision returning from? Not much can really pose any sort of threat to an army of radiants, to justify assembling an army of radiants. If not voidbrigers... I am inclined to conclude that the radiants were fighting each other.

Thoughts? I know there have been plenty of threads on the recreance, but I'd like to bring up the fact that the recreance doesn't appear to be a result of the desolations in any way.

[Jondesu he/him]

Originally, the Radiants (or rather, Surgebinders in addition to the Heralds) seemed to just be a response by the spren to the Heralds and the Desolations, but I do get the impression that they began to persist between Desolations, probably in small numbers since many would have been killed, but after the "Last Desolation", the organization seems to have grown larger and more of a "one world government" type thing.  Obviously not completely, but what we've seen points to them basically being above and apart from all the governments on Roshar, and perhaps even feeling free to dictate to those governments.  At the time of the Recreance, they were fighting something or someone, but it's not really clear who or what. This is what is described:

Quote

“But why?” the darkeyed officer demanded. “Why are Radiants coming here? They should be fighting the devils on the front lines!”

That could be anything from Midnight Essence, Thunderclasts, Voidbringers, etc, to the Aimians (perhaps there was a connection to the scouring of Aimia?) to just another nation of "savages" or "devils" from the perspective of these soldiers.

Whatever it was, though, it wasn't part of a Desolation, as you said, and it doesn't seem to have destroyed Alethela, nor Roshar's civilizations as a whole, though the fact that so much about it was lost could point to a period of significant chaos afterwards (in addition, of course, to the Vorin church destroying every record they could find about the Radiants).

Tanavast also tells Dalinar during that vision that the ones he sees were the first, and they were also the last.  I'm not sure if that means they were the first to abandon their Shards, and that the other orders were doing the same in other places, so it all happened exactly simultaneously, or if he was speaking more metaphorically, as in they were the last of the Radiants, not just the last to abandon their Shards.  There's definitely some ambiguity in that phrase.

I do agree that they could have been fighting other Radiants, but it seems like that would be odd considering what the officer said.  He wouldn't have considered other Radiants to be "devils", unless there were some that had basically gone dark, perhaps one of the Orders that could have allowed for their Knights to attack others.  I find that fairly unlikely, though.  The Aimians actually seem like a good bet to me, since (Edgedancer spoilers):

Spoiler

we know one Dysian Aimian can take on two Skybreakers that at least have access to Shardblades, without much difficulty at all).

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I know it's not much in the way of an actual answer, but I'm still backing my "2,200-2,500 years before the books" Recreance time-frame idea. It gives a sense of how long they had without a Desolation, so I absolutely agree that those would've become legends by then.

A lot can happen in 2 millennia.. 2000 years of relative peace combined with Jezrien's "We'll tell them we won. Maybe it will turn out to be true." comment could erode the sense of cooperation between nations struggling to survive Desolations and set up something more like fuedal Alethkar, but on a world-wide scale. Somebody will step out of line, KR will impose order, rinse-repeat, etc.. until the KR get jaded about mankind being good people, thus leading to some of the "corruption" that Jasnah reads about in her studies