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Actually, I think she's in an order that considers assassinating the guilty a legitimate thing to do, but the First Ideal would forbid assassinating innocent people. The Windrunners apparently do not consider assassination a legitimate tactic, and I expect that would also be true of the Bondsmiths. It's a moot point, though, because Dalinar didn't have deniable assets that could plausibly kill Saedas even if the First Ideal would permit it. Order of operations. The journey is the thing that results in the destination. Dalinar wished to bring Saedas to judgement, but possessed no acceptable means of accomplishing that.

Let me guess: it's 50 minutes. E: no, just checked on calculator, apparently it's 57.816 minutes.

The civil war was guaranteed to happen if Dalinar opted to bring Saedas to justice immediately, because bringing Saedas to justice would be a civil war. There was no method that would even progress towards doing that aside from a civil war. As such, the civil war would be the journey towards the destination of bringing Saedas to justice. The First Ideal therefore forbids Dalinar from attempting to bring Saedas to justice by killing thousands of innocents and shattering the kingdom.

I'm a bit dubious that (most) transgender people properly count as having a self-image of the opposite gender as far as Feruchemical gold and the like are concerned. I think having a cognitive self-image of your actual (as opposed to desired) physical body with a mismatch like that would manifest as something like phantom/alien limb syndrome. Returned are another matter because they specifically look like how they want to look as opposed to what they would expect to see in a mirror.

His rambling sounds like he's following their standard script for arriving in preparation for a Desolation. During the prologue, the non-Radiants had stone and bronze, with the bronze presumably being a Herald-granted uplift. Also, it's worth pointing out that his only known break from the script is giving his name and title when asked who he is. Plus, while indoors in a room kept dark, he manages to catch darts. That's pretty superhuman, and unless he can hold Stormlight for months there's no way he was infused. I guess it's possible Moelach has bonded to someone and driven them totally nuts, but that seems pretty unlikely and I doubt he'd sit out the Everstorm entirely.

I'm pretty sure it's backlash from Kaladin's contact with the Blade. If Relis had his own spren, the Blade should have been screaming the entire time, or it should have been a live blade with no screaming and he probably wouldn't have been up for attempting a four on one fight in the first place. His bond with the dead blade would provide a link through which he could hear the screaming, while Adolin wouldn't have a link.

Personally, I think the stormform Parshendi are Voidbringers, and the red spren is a Voidspren. But really, I wouldn't attach too much importance to the precise semantics. Even if there was an original definition, the modern era uses Voidbringer pretty loosely. Dalinar calls the stormform Parshendi Voidbringers, so our modern Radiants will use the term to refer to them and similar forms. On the Ten Fools: I think they're either creations of folklore or so distorted they might as well be. They symbolize ways of being incompetent and stupid, as opposed to active malevolence. The Unmade seem more likely to be the Heralds' opposite numbers. As for Elhokar and Adolin, they might not be following Radiant ideals very well but they're hardly bad enough to get Voidspren.

I took it as being a Vorin term; The Almighty created everything but he didn't create the Unmade.

I'm of the opinion that Yelig-nar might have the portfolio of plague, since Blightwind seems an appropriate name for that role and Jasnah remarks that the Unmade seemed to be regarded as personifications of certain types of destruction. Plus there's been a plague outbreak in the Purelake that Dalinar heard of after the Everstorm began, and I for one am not inclined to attribute that to coincidence. I'm also not entirely sure Nergaoul and Moelach are distinct Unmade, since they lack the dashes. Specifically, I think Moelach might be another name for Yelig-nar, because the Death Rattles seem to fit the bill for the wails of those he's consumed.

I think Soulcasting could hypothetically do it, but you'd be more likely to wind up scattering them all over the wall instead of having it work if the strawberries incident is anything to go by. Doing it with Forging would be a very lengthy endeavor, I think, because even if they perceive themselves as the other gender, the stamp would still need to create a history where they were born the other gender, and account for how being born the other gender would mean they don't feel like they were born the wrong gender. But it would probably be possible.

I stand by my Ironstance and Windstance position. In #2, the sword hilt is in front, while in #4, it is beside the head. Our descriptions of entering the starting position of both specifically mention hand position, so I'm strongly inclined to pick images that match the hand position. As for Adolin being in it, while he prefers Windstance in general, his singular use of Ironstance attracted quite a lot of attention, so Shallan might have had him pose for Ironstance because he's clearly pretty good at it. The scroll looks like #4 to me, since it's got the sword next to the head. I feel pretty confident asserting the left-hand warrior is in Ironstance, since he goes for a straightforward stab that seems in keeping with Ironstance's tendency towards simple, fast, and powerful. As for blade orientation, I think both sides of a Shardblade are sharp.

I figured all the Ideals are artificial. They're the Ideals of the Knights Radiant, and as Jasnah points out the KR are an organization. My theory is and has been that Nohandon imposed the entire structure in order to rein in the Surgebinders and stop them from getting into brutal and massive wars that left humanity nearly too weak to fight off the Desolations and got the Stormfather and other godspren, or possibly Honor and Cultivation themselves, to change the nature of Surgebinding so that only people who followed the Ideals could use the power. Though, also, the First Ideal is not a complete moral philosophy. It says you should place journey before destination but does not specify how you should pick one journey over another. Pattern doesn't see lying as ethically wrong, while Syl gets upset when Kaladin lies (though I don't think "I will always tell the truth, even when doing so is really stupid" is one of the Windrunner Ideals, it does get to her). All the First Ideal means in itself is that wrong actions don't become right because of their outcomes.

So, you think launching an assault at the head of a badly outnumbered army, battling against people following their sworn lord, qualifies as an action that seems "right at the time"? Make no mistake, that is exactly what you are saying the First Ideal should have Dalinar do, because it comes with the result that if he somehow were to succeed he would then kill a man who has not, to Dalinar's knowledge, violated any actual laws. To me, that sounds exactly like "ends justify the means" minus a requirement that your means have to actually achieve the ends in order for the ends to justify them. Also, maybe Dalinar is working in an ethical framework where killing a man illegally is not a morally justified action, and therefore he wouldn't do it regardless of how he prioritized methods vs. results.

In what possible way does prioritizing methods over results forbid alternate opinions about what methods are acceptable or demand pursuing a specific goal? You do realize that"bring Saedas to justice" is a goal and not a method?

I think there was a context-related breakdown in communication, and Brandon means you can't nahel-bond an honorblade because it's not a spren.

Ayup. Socially and legally, abandoning an ally on the field of battle was considered an acceptable tactic. Dalinar has been making an effort to change that, but it didn't exactly take.

Or you could convert to the cult of the E-reader and never have to worry about such problems or hauling around 1088 pages of hardcover book again. Unfortunately, it's pretty harsh on the images.

Bringing Saedas to justice would be the destination, and if Dalinar opted to start a civil war in order to do so, that would be the journey. He instead picked the journey of having Adolin kill him in a legal duel, thus accomplishing the same goal without doing so via civil war. The civil war would in fact be the method and not the result, because under Alethi law Saedas hadn't actually committed any crimes, which is why he got away with it even though everyone knew perfectly well exactly what happened.

He could, for instance, do this:

I don't think prison was really an appropriate response in a more general sense, but it was a genuinely pretty stupid thing to do. Plus, he did slander high nobility (his allegations were true, but I don't think he could convince an impartial court with his lack-of-evidence) in front of hundreds if not thousands of people in a legal system where that does potentially carry the death penalty. As for letting Amaram go free, Dalinar didn't really have the legal authority or physical capacity to detain him properly. He was stripped of his rank and status and his crimes announced in front of numerous witnesses, which would be towards the high end of what Dalinar would be able to do to one of his vassals, and I don't think Amaram actually became one of his own vassals. You could easily argue that is a bad law, but by what right does Dalinar replace it? Also, he opted to lead an army against a force attempting to bring about the end of the world instead of pursuing a murderer, at a point in time where he could pick one or the other.

If Dalinar supplanted Elhokar by force, it would destroy everything he and Gavilar worked for. Oh, he could hold Alethkar together by force of will and military skill, but there would be no legitimacy to it. He would be in charge purely by virtue of force, and there would be no reason for anyone in the kingdom to support the king over someone else who had a larger army. One of Saedas's criticisms that actually has merit is Dalinar's trouble with giving up power and having it stay given up; while there's a good reason for it, every time he sets up a system that takes power away from him and then works against it he undermines his grounds for insisting other people respect the system. Overthrowing Elhokar would be the same thing on a grand scale. If Alethkar survived that, it would be because Dalinar personally is capable of inspiring the loyalty of enough military strength to force everyone to heel. So what will happen when he dies and someone else takes power? If his successor is more like Elhokar than Dalinar, Alethkar would crumble. He wouldn't even be able to count on another Highprince like Dalinar to back him up, because Dalinar's actions would scream to everyone that kings rule by personal strength and for no other reason. If someone isn't strong enough to rule by their own merits, there would be no reason for anyone to support them instead of overthrowing them. Now, sure Gavilar took control by force, but that's why it's so critical Dalinar doesn't. The legitimacy of the crown is on fairly shaky ground because it was recently established by force, and overthrowing Elhokar would permanently ruin its chances to gain more.

I really, really like the setting itself. Stormlight, Highstorms, Shardplate, the crustacean ecosystem, spren, and so on. Lots of people complain about Generic Medieval European Fantasy, but very few decisively break out of the box like this. I also have a strong fondness for Dalinar, and really like Jasnah as a well-written atheist. Also, high concentrations of Hoid.

Dalinar's Plate glows, which is one reason I don't think that it's fundamentally changed.

The vibes are telling me Dalinar dies in book 5, setting up the second arc. Renarin feels pretty safe, as does Elhokar. Adolin and Navani are less safe, but for Brandon I think they're liable to make it out. Jasnah appears to be exempt from such concerns.

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