Speculation: Taravangian's curse still applies

[The Kings Raven]

This is just a bit of musing I've seen, we don't have direct evidence for it. But it seems to me that Taravangian's curse would be a perfect restraining bolt to place on Odium's shard holder, if Cultivation could make it stick even through ascension. The more Taravangian resists is shard's intent he better he is at planning ahead-and we've seen from Rayse's reaction to the Diagram that smart Taravangian is impressive on a shardic scale. But if the intent ever starts to dominate Taravangian he'll become stupid and less of a threat. Alternatively the rule that he can't have both intelligence and emotion at once might serve to put a wall between Taravangian and his power, which protects him from becoming consumed by his intent while weakening Odium. The result is a more reliable ally whose less of a threat.

I admit there's little evidence of this so far. Post ascension Taravangian doesn't mention his curse. But it feels fitting. I don't like the theory that Cultivation screwed up here, creating Taravangian is the very centre of her power, so if she created him to take Odium I imagine she got exactly what she wanted out of a new Shardholder. And it's probably not Taravangian at his most megalomaniacal since she's allied to Honour.

[+HoidIsAwesome]

In the past, Mr T has always seen the curse/boon as an annoyance and mistake; this is especially apparent in this book. The line "He was finally free of the frailties of body and position that had always controlled and defined him. He finally had the freedom to do what he’d desired." from ROW 114 suggests to me that he doesn't feel constrained anymore which to me implies the curse is no longer a thing.

A more relmatic angle is that I don't think what Culti did to T could "stick" Investiture wise after T ascended. We've seen in the past that investiture of different types don't like mixing with each other (esp in this book) and I can't see any way which the relatively low amount of magic Culti would have used on Todd could have stuck post ascension. 

My angle on the what is Culti's plan: Culti definitely planned for this to happen but she thinks she can control (or at least guide) Todd but I think she's just underestimating Todd quite a bit. Every one of Culti's plans has succeeded so far (Todd, Lift, Dalinar) and it would be too convenient if actually even her controlling *the ascension of a Vessel* went without a hitch.

[sentinel]

Honestly I'm just surprised that all this theorizing I've seen on here, all this guessing, and a literal Shard still managed to pull something like this. Like it seems like a lot of people wrote of Cultivation as sort of in the background, but this is a literal shard.

[SpeakoftheDeval]

9 hours ago, HoidIsAwesome said:

A more relmatic angle is that I don't think what Culti did to T could "stick" Investiture wise after T ascended. We've seen in the past that investiture of different types don't like mixing with each other (esp in this book) and I can't see any way which the relatively low amount of magic Culti would have used on Todd could have stuck post ascension. 

Id hesitate to agree here. It seems to me that cultivations tweaks to people are changes to their spiritweb that require investiture to do, but not to maintain as that's just what their spiritweb is now. It's not like voidlight powered forms, needing a constant supply. 

 

If im right then the change to Taravangians spiritweb wouldn't have automatically disappeared, but I'm not sure why he wouldn't now have the capacity to actively undo it himself. For that matter why didn't any of the shards alter the spiritwebs of their own vessels to enhance their ability to wield the shard. 

[DracostarA]

I don't think the curse applies simply because he appeared incredibly stupid and Passionate on the day he Ascended, but immediately after Ascension he seemed competent if not even smart. I think as a Shard he overrides any previous changes and perhaps this TaravOdium has the true intelligence and Passion of the original, and Cultivation's curse just amplified his Passion enough that he could gain connection to the Shard only.