What is the connection between all the red and gold?

[Bort he/him]

Red and gold, as a colour combination appears everywhere in the Cosmere, and I've been driving myself nuts trying to work out a connection. Does anyone have any ideas? Also, if you find any more red and gold sightings, please share them here.

Warbreaker

- Lightsong's colours are red and gold.

W&W Mistborn

- From Miles: "The men of red and gold will come for you..." (or something along those lines, just before his last scene in Alloy of Law.

- Miles' cigar packet.

Stormlight Archives

- Highprince Hatham's colours are red and gold.

-Sadeas owns red and gold Shardplate (or at least, it used to be gold and is now red).

These are all I can remember for now, but it keeps appearing.

 

[Weltall]

Well, they're two colors that combine really well when you want to look all regal and such, so it's not a huge surprise to see various nobles and/or gods using them. As for the more specific reference that Miles makes that really draws your attention to the colors... well, there's a couple of options. One thing that's come out in WoB is that red in the Cosmere represents co-opted or corrupted Investiture so it's something to keep an eye out for and it's eye-raising. And then in Oathbringer we learn that

Spoiler

Odium's favorite color seems to be gold. He wears it, his true form is described as a terrible golden light and what is likely his godmetal is described as pale gold

So there's that to consider as well. But like I said, I strongly suspect that many (though not all) instances of these two colors appearing together are just a coincidence.

Edited April 5, 2018 by Weltall

[Bort he/him]

Actually, I think I may have been thinking about this the wrong way. I had considered that it could be Odium corruption on other worlds, since we know he has a thing about killing other Shards, but red and gold would be corrupted Odium, not Odium corrupting others. Corrupted Odium makes more sense, possibly plans he had set in motion that had failed when another Shard co-opted his troops, essence, Investiture...

With Miles, and his line, I seem to remember a WoB about Autonomy influencing Scadrial, or maybe it was just speculation on here. It made me wonder if the 'men of red and gold' were some kind of allied force between Odium and Autonomy.

[Weltall]

There's been a lot of theorizing to the effect that 'Trell' is one of Bavadin's many personas but it's not been confirmed yet. The possibility of Autonomy and Odium working together to move against Scadrial has also been proposed and we have WoB that Odium would be willing to work with another Shard to accomplish a mutual goal, as long as he got to be in charge. So yeah, Miles could (knowingly or not) be pointing us in that direction. Of course, there's also an indirect association between just plain Autonomy and the color gold, as it's the color of a Mastrell's sash and the Sand Masters are the primary manipulators of Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain.