Intentional Magical Insanity

[KnightsOfHonor]

Just had a crazy thought that I am 73.6% sure is wrong, but it’s just so crazy it might work. We know that there is some sort of “magical” something affecting the Heralds mental state. And we think it has something to do with the capture of BAM (and that somehow the Recurrence was all tied up in there as well) Ok. So what if it was intentional? What I mean by that is maybe Melishi was more aware of what would happen then we give him credit. We see from the interactions between Dalinar and Odium that Oaths must be intentional. The letter of the law vs the spirit of the law, and that it would not really work for Odium to get Dalinar to say something if he did not mean it. Well maybe Melishi knew that by making the Heralds go insane they would be incapable of having the correct intent to release Odium. Like if someone were to club Dalinar over the head, turning his brain to mush and then getting him to say something it would have no effect because Intent is very important in the Cosmear. So once Taln lost his mind it was impossible for him to release Odium (not that he would have anyway). And maybe the spren were aware of the “side effects” but thought it was worth it to permanently (or so they thought) lock Odium away. ( I actually have a completely different theory about the Recurrence and why the Knights and Spren did what they did, but that is for another time). What do you guys think?

[Quantus]

Melishi did the thing during the False Desolation, and I've been under the impression that their madness has been a more cumulative thing over the cycles that led to them abandoning the Oathpact and all that, as opposed to something that came afterward through Radiant interference.  

[KnightsOfHonor]

They seemed pretty sane in the Way of Kings prelude. 

[Weltall]

Functional perhaps, but badly broken. Kalak himself has a breakdown at the thought of returning to Braize and he can see from looking at Jezrien that he's the same. They were clearly not bastions of mental health when they made that decision even if we don't see the same symptoms out of those two that we're familiar with in the present day, and presumably the others would be the same. It's certainly possible that the binding affected the Heralds in some way that it had unexpected consequences for all spren, but I don't think we can blame everything that we see with the Heralds on that event.

Also, Maya says that the spren and their Radiant partners had no idea that they'd be affected by the binding in that way, so I have a hard time crediting Melishi with deliberately engineering a result like that, or thousands of spren being willing to go along with it. They were expecting the pain of broken bonds and maybe death for some (based on what we know of the Fifth Ideal-level bond) but not being made into zombie spren.

[KnightsOfHonor]

All very good points, maybe I will bump it up to 74% certain the theory is wrong haha However, I am curious about everyones thoughts on whether a person whose mind is broken past a certain point or who is mentally "gone" could in fact make / break oaths? Like in theory, if the Heralds were all completely crazy and back on Braize like the plan was with the oath pack, would them "giving in" or whatever it is they needed to do to release Odium even count? I personaly don't think so. I think intent is such a big part of the Cosmere that a person who is, in effect (affect?), brain dead, can not make or break oaths.