[OB] Dalinar and Evi Relationship

[Philomath she/her]

So at one point during WoR I believe, Navani makes a comment to Dalinar about how he and Evi were really good together or a good match. Something like that. (I don't have an ebook and my hard copies are still in a box from a recent move. If anyone could help find the quote that would be great.) My problem with that statement is everything we saw in the Dalinar flashbacks says differently. Now I really loved Dalinar's arc and story in Oathbringer but this seems like a huge discrepancy to me. I know we really only got a few small glances at their relationship, but I just don't see how anything about it especially from someone as close to them as Navani could have been seen as "good for each other." I feel like the man Dalinar is now is the man Evi deserved and wished for him to be. And someone mentioned in a recent shardcast how it would have been an even harder flashback if they had been a better match. And I think it would have been a beautiful tragedy if that was the case. I don't know. Am I missing something? Or does anyone else find this odd?

[Calderis he/him]

You have to take into account that she's been dead for years and memory is alterable. Dalinar addresses this himself as his memories resurface. 

Quote

Most, Navani included, seemed to remember him as more noble than he deserved. Yet he didn’t ascribe any magic to this. It was simply the way of human beings, subtly changing the past in their minds to match their current beliefs.

I don't think there is a descrepancy. People just tend to remember things they way the want them to have been rather than how they were. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Calderis

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

I believe a couple of things. One, I think Evi was able to curb some of Young Dalinar's savagery due to both her natural attitudes and by giving him children. Although the Thrill still ruled him in battle, he channeled it better under her influence. With her influence Dalinar became more General than Thug. Two, seeing the mellowing effect from an outsider perspective, one would think that the 2 were a good match.

To me, Dalinar seems like an unreliable narrator when it comes to his reclaimed memories of Evi. He indicates that he was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming to civility, yet he makes efforts to be less brutal up until the betrayal at the Rift. Not to mention, her loss wouldn't have hit him so hard had he not cared deeply for her.

[Calderis he/him]

I agree with @Bigmikey357 in addition to my own point. He definitely cared for her and it shows in both the shift in his actions, and the impact of her death.

Add in the nature of memory and I definitely don't think there's any real discrepancy, story wise, between what actually happened and what Navani believes. She's saying it as she remembers it, even if it's not quite realistic. 

And just for the record, here's the conversation between Navani and Dalinar. From tWoK, Spoilered for length. 

Spoiler

“Containing myself,” Dalinar said. “I had made my decision.”

“Well, it looked a lot like hatred,” Navani said. “Though I did wonder several times what you were hiding behind those stony eyes of yours. Of course, then Shshshsh came along.”

As always, when the name of his wife was spoken, it came to him as the sound of softly rushing air, then slipped from his mind immediately. He could not hear, or remember, the name.

“She changed everything,” Navani said. “You truly seemed to love her.”

“I did,” Dalinar said. Surely he had loved her. Hadn’t he? He could remember nothing. “What was she like?” He quickly added, “I mean, in your opinion. How did you see her?”

“Everyone loved Shshshsh,” Navani said. “I tried hard to hate her, but in the end, I could only be mildly jealous.”“You? Jealous of her? Whatever for?”

“Because,” Navani said. “She fit you so well, never making inappropriate comments, never bullying those around her, always so calm.” Navani smiled. “Thinking back, I really should have been able to hate her. But she was just so nice. Though she wasn’t very… well…”

“What?” Dalinar asked.

“Clever,” Navani said. She blushed, which was rare for her. “I’m sorry, Dalinar, but she just wasn’t. She wasn’t a fool, but… well… not everyone can be cunning. Perhaps that was part of her charm.”

She seemed to think that Dalinar would be offended. “It’s all right,” he said. “Were you surprised that I married her?”

“Who could be surprised? As I said, she was perfect for you.”“Because we were matched intellectually?” Dalinar said dryly.

“Hardly. But you were matched in temperament. For a time, after I got over trying to hate her, I thought that the four of us could be quite close. But you were so stiff toward me.”

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Calderis

[Subvisual Haze]

I think the flashbacks we saw in the books were designed to illustrate the darkest points of Dalinar's past. It was a barebones tragic arc of a man trying to escape a life of violence but then getting pulled back in.  Most of the gentler day-to-day scenes would have been cut out for narrative focus.

My impression was that Dalinar was actually a pretty good and upstanding man between the birth of Adolin and Evi's death, which was a great contrast to the sociopathic avatar of violence he was before meeting Evi.  Evi didn't hate Dalinar or live in fear of him, but rather she was unhappy with the life of war he lead and that the demands of his position limited his time spent with his family.  She still deeply believed that he was a good person though.

I think it's important that almost everyone close to Dalinar has a very positive opinion of him, and none of them note an enormous personality change after Gavilar's death and the visit to the Nightwatcher.  This implies to me that the Dalinar before and after the Nightwatcher visit weren't that different in day-to-day life.  Navani, Adolin, Renarin, and even Jasnah all have overwhelmingly positive views of him.  

So going back to your original point, I think Dalinar and Evi were good for one another.  Dalinar seemed like the only character who treated Evi with any amount of respect and kindness while most Alethi seemed to just mock her as dumb foreigner.  Evi had an overwhelming calming and mellowing influence on Dalinar.  If not for the  events of the Rift Dalinar seemed well on his way to finally being free of his past of violence.

[animalia]

There’s a saying, we are all our own worst critics.

[thorongil he/him]

I would say that Evi was extremely important for Dalinar. Without her the whole arc in Oathbringer will not happen. To me this relates to real life relationships a lot in that it shows that the experience of a relationship can greatly alter people after it is over, although it is often near-impossible to make this change happen in the relationship. Because people need time to reflect, to look at their actions and thoughts from the outside and this is a perspective that is extremely hard to get into while you are emotionally attached to a situation. So in this sense: Evi (and through her Dalinar's kids) was the most important impetus for Dalinar to change in the long run, although - tragically - I don't think he could have achieved that change with her being alive and his wife.

I would argue that for Evi, on the other hand, Dalinar and the whole Alethi culture are not good and nice. She gets emotionally abused by her husband, she is belittled and not taken seriously by Navani (who in this regard probably reflects the behavior of many other Alethi royalty) and the only solace she finds is in her kinds and in the futile attempts of changing her husband (who then ultimately kills her).

[garlick]

I dont think all of this can be attributed to Evi. Dalinar was a good man even then. I see him as a beserker. In the battlefield he was a monster theres no doubt about that. But even in his first flashback when he was shot by the assassin he quickly came up with the idea well spare your town from looting and the other nasty things that came with conquering his town to recruit the assassin. Like he just needed a reason to stop it. Also i think it said he didn't take part in those activities. He was already a good man....just don't get on gis bad side. Evi more cultivated his good side and tried to repress the monster. Taking away his memories took away his guilt and self hatred to allow him to become who he is today.

Edited October 11, 2018 by garlick
Spelling

[thorongil he/him]

4 hours ago, garlick said:

I dont think all of this can be attributed to Evi. Dalinar was a good man even then. I see him as a beserker. In the battlefield he was a monster theres no doubt about that. But even in his first flashback when he was shot by the assassin he quickly came up with the idea well spare your town from looting and the other nasty things that came with conquering his town to recruit the assassin. Like he just needed a reason to stop it. Also i think it said he didn't take part in those activities. He was already a good man....just don't get on gis bad side. Evi more cultivated his good side and tried to repress the monster. Taking away his memories took away his guilt and self hatred to allow him to become who he is today.

I agree that he wasn't a monster in a universal sense. Especially within the context of Alethi society he embodied many ideals and met lofty expectations of how a great warrior should perform and behave.

He didn't have any semblance of a normal civilian life going on and he didn't seem to be able to reconcile his battlefield heroics with a different peacetime personality. So he resorted to alcohol (a quite common occurance for soldiers in the real world who have - in their view - lost their purpose after a war is over too). Evi in a sense represented a chance, but I think he wasn't able to embrace that chance at that point in his life.

 

[Alderant she/her]

I think one thing that is forgotten about Dalinar and Evi, vs Navani's recollection, is that Alethi society is socially reserved. Evi could easily have acted like everything was okay in public, especially since most of the abuse we see from Dalinar's perspective is in a private setting. We also know that Dalinar was frequently at war, away from his brother (and therefore Navani), as well as the fact that we know that Evi painted Dalinar in a much nobler light than he really was to even his sons--and if she did that there, it's not a stretch to say she kept their marital problems pretty close to the vest. Add the rose colored lenses of the past, and yeah, not a discrepancy at all.

(Not a wallpost. Just my 2 cents)