Truthwatchers on The Double Eye of the Almighty

[luluzulu she/her]

I was processing books for the library at my school, and I decided to take a look at the beautiful endpaper maps and diagrams for the copy of The Way of Kings that had just come in. I noticed that on the "Double Eye" diagram of the radiant orders, the two orders in the center were the Bondsmiths and the Truthwatchers. This interested me, and got me to start wondering why the Truthwatchers are in the center with the Bondsmiths, who we know were the leaders and generals of the Knights Radiant. Here are a few of my theories:

• Truthwatchers are close to Cultivation like Bondsmiths are close to Honor - Some problems with this one: We don't really know if the Bondsmiths are specifically closer to Honor than other orders like the Windrunners. All we know is that Dalinar is bonded to the Stormfather, the godspren of Honor, and I think the prevailing theory is that there are three Bondsmiths, each bonded to a different godspren. We also know that Truthwatchers aren't bonded to a godspren - Renarin is bonded with a spren named Glys, not the Nightwatcher. A different direction with this theory would be that the surges, not the orders, are what's important on this chart. This would mean that some surges are more associated with Cultivation, and others with Honor, i.e. Feruchemy with Preservation and Hemalurgy with Ruin. This would just mean that Illumination and Progression just happened to be the most closely associated with Cultivation, and Adhesion and Tension with Honor. This still brings up some interesting thoughts about what this could mean for Truthwatchers.
• Like Bondsmiths, Truthwatchers are a key support Order - So far, what we know of the Bondsmiths' abilities seem to be providing support for other Radiants
  Spoiler

  Dalinar's amplifying of Shallan's abilities in Oathbringer being the only, but probably a typical example.

  Following this idea, it would also seem to fit with the few details that we know about the Bondsmiths from Words of Radiance. According to their epigraph, they were the generals of the Radiants - leadership, but also support. From this, we can infer that by their placement on the chart, Truthwatchers are also a powerful support Order (although, the "powerful" part may just be wishful thinking about Renarin  - wouldn't it be awesome if the character that everyone thought was weak turned out to be one of the most powerful?). Another thing that may hint at this is 
  Spoiler

  when Renarin touches Adolin in Oathbringer - Adolin has a vision of himself as he hopes he could be. It's unclear what exactly this is, but it's most likely an effect of Progression, Illumination, or both - the Truthwatchers' Resonance.

  The key here is that it's not something that directly relates to Renarin - more so to Adolin. Therefore, it could be reasoned that this is a kind of "support" ability.

• It doesn't really mean anything and it's just how the diagram happened to be laid out - This is unlikely, considering it's Brandon we're dealing with here. Everything means something. E V E R Y T H I N G. As Kelsier would say, there's always another secret.

 

 

 

Please tell me what you guys think, and if you have any theories about why the Truthwatchers are in the center of the Double Eye - I would love to read them!

[Yata he/him]

There are a couple of Surges that are more related than the rest to Honor and Cultivation. They are Adhesion and Progression, of course there are two Orders that can access to every one of those.

in the Adhesion's case the Bondsmith and the Windrunner could use the Surge most associable to Honor and much more the Bondsmith have their Order's theme completelly aligned with Honor's mandate.

In Progression's case the Edgedancer and the Truthwatcher could use the Surge most associable to Cultivation but here we don't know yet the Trutuwatcher's theme, we could only speculate that their theme alignes with Cultivation's Mandate (by the way, we mostly know the Edgedancer's one and it's not too related with Cultivation).

So probably the Double Eye expose this kind of duality between the Orders most near to the Shards.