Do Shards all shards match to the Orders of Knight Radiant?

[Aluminum_Twinborn1335 he/him]

I am thinking about how Honor matches up with Windrunners, and Cultivation with Edgedancers. I am wondering if all Shards match up with the Orders. Like Ruin and dustbringers. That would make sense. What I wonder is, if that is true then are there more Orders? 

[Frustration he/him]

No, the shards(with the exception of Cultivation and Honor) do not match with Orders.

And Honor would be closest to the Bondsmiths, and I'm going to break from the norm and say Cultivation's closest Order would only appear in Lifebinding

[HSuperLee he/him]

I believe the assumption that Honor and Cultivation map to one order is somewhat flawed. Yes, Windrunner's spren call themselves honorspren, but as Frustration said,

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

Honor would be closest to the Bondsmiths

meaning the idea is at least disputed. Frankly, I'd be more willing to make the case that Windrunners, Skybreakers, and Bondsmiths all come very very close to the Shard of Honor, and in fact represent different facets or perspectives of the complete Shard.

I'd be even more inclined, though many would disagree with me, to say that it is impossible to say that any of the orders are "closest" to Honor or Cultivation, with them all being equally diffused with the two. The nature of the oaths are themselves mixtures of the two, with Honor being responsible for the oathy nature of them, and Cultivation being responsible for the fact that the oaths are designed to develop over time. In the case of Windrunners (arguably the least Cultivationy of the orders) we see this in the oaths going from "I will protect..." to "I will protect even those I hate..." and on and on.

I think it might be most realmatically accurate if we didn't think of the orders as each different magic systems corresponding more and less to Honor or Cultivation, but instead if we viewed them as different aspects of the single magic system of Surgebinding. Much like how we see Feruchemy as one system made of a complete mix of Preservation and Ruin. We don't argue, "but is feruchemical gold closer to Preservation and feruchemical aluminum closer to Ruin?" and I kind of think we should treat Surgebinding the same way.

 

But that's my opinion.

Edited October 6, 2021 by HSuperLee

[Elegy he/him]

The answer is no:

Quote

Questioner

It was mentioned that there are 16 gods in your Cosmere.

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on your definition of god.

Questioner

Shards. Are the ten orders of the Knight Radiants related to specific gods? Because Honor, child of Honor-Kaladin

Brandon Sanderson

So all the magic on Roshar, all the surgebinding on Roshar, is going to have its roots in Honor and Cultivation. Um... There is some Odium influence too, but that’s mostly voidbinding, which is the map in the back of the first book.

Questioner

I was wondering how much-

Brandon Sanderson

But, but even the powers, it’s, it’s really this sort of thing. What’s going in Stormlight is that people are accessing fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe. They’re accessing them through the filter of Cultivation and Honor. So, that’s not to say, on another world you couldn’t have someone influence gravity. Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual, and some of the magics lean more Honor and some them lean more Cultivation, as you can obviously see, in the way that they take place.

Questioner

The question kind of rooted because, Wyndle in the short story is always saying that he’s a cultivationspren, he doesn’t like [...]. I kind of got the idea that each order had a different Shard.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good thing to think, but that is not how it is. Some of them self-identify more in certain ways. Syl is an honorspren, that’s what they call a honorspren, they self-identify as the closest to Honor. Is that true? Well, I don’t know. For instance, you might talk to different spren, who are like, no, highspren are like “We’re the ones most like Honor. We are the ones that keep oaths the best. Those honorspren will let their people break their oaths if they think it’s for a good cause. That’s not Honor-like.” There would be disagreement.

Questioner

Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017)