Dreamstorm

I’d argue that the vast majority of Brandon’s romances play a bit on the theme, and some of his friendships too. Even Dalinar starts out “prickly” with Navani, and she had her own barbed moments with him. I haven’t read Elantris, so cannot comment on that. Mistborn Era 1 and 2 and Warbreaker spoilers: In SA from a non-romantic perspective, Adolin and Kaladin are classic braided rose. In general, Brandon seems to write relationships with conflict - either personality conflict between the two (S/T, W/S) or an external situation which throws the two into conflict (B/A, S/B, S/S). The fact Adolin and Shallan seem fairly conflict free (personalities fit from the first meeting (of course Shallan tries very hard to make this the case), on the same side of the external conflict, and even the Kaladin attraction didn’t have any repercussions on the relationship) is something which some people see as a reason to like Shadolin (because it is refreshingly without conflict and all cute compatability) and some people see as boring. I’d argue it’s not very Brandon to have a relationship so devoid of conflict, but the rebuttal will be that Kaladin’s purpose in the triangle was to provide that conflict, even though that “conflict” was primarily internal to Shallan (and she mostly pushed it aside rather than actually having it cause any issues in the relationship.) All a matter of perspective!

That chapter is from Shallan’s PoV too, and she’s not our most reliable narrator so who knows. I could see the relationship going all sorts of ways - it should provide more fun interactions in the future regardless as neither of them know how to leave their opinions unsaid. I’m also really into an idea of Lashing around a Soulcaster, especially one like Jasnah who doesn’t need to touch to Soulcast...

@The Night Watcher @MistbornEdgedancer Chapter 39, Notes is the Jasnah/Kaladin arguing (/arguably flirting depending on one’s desire for Jasnadin) chapter.

I'm actually not reading too much into things like that chapter title yet - it just happened to fit perfectly with how I feel about the couple, so I decided to use it, haha. (If I am correct that Shadolin will fail, then it would be a clever double meaning title, but like you point out it works just fine even if they don't.) I completely agree with you about non-wasted words/pages in general, so we should consider why any one scene was seen as important to include. This is part of the reason why in reading the preview chapters, I actually thought we were going to get a strong Shallan/Adolin ending based on all the relationship building. I was surprised by how much Kaladin came into the picture later in the book; I wasn't thinking it would build to much beyond Kaladin reluctantly pining for her. In retrospect, one of the strongest signs to me in part 1 of Kaladin's later involvement is that the dinner/sword fighting scene was split into two chapters with a small Kaladin chapter in between. The two Shallan chapters were a cohensive whole and there was no split needed from a cliffhanger perspective. (Brandon seems to not split scenes unless it's a cliffhanger, and even then he often puts the resolution of the cliffhanger in the subsequent chapter.) So why physically (in terms of the book) put Kaladin in the middle of one of the most relationship-bonding scenes we see of Shallan and Adolin? The Kaladin scene (his capture by the parshmen) could have gone after the complete Shallan/Adolin scene or even right before his next chapter (like what happens with the Roshone punch - cliffhanger then immediate resolution.) That stuck out to me. This!!! If we're correct, there's so much nuance here that is fascinating. I'm currently obsessing right now over that thought from Shallan in Middlefest - "His own daughter was too precious to be wasted on something fickle, like her own powers of decision" - which just hammers it home Shallan's expected complete lack of agency in her marriage choice, and really sheds a negative light on the fact that she ended up going through with an arranged marriage. Even though there was theoretically a way she could have terminated the betrothal, when you're raised with the idea that your "own powers of decision" is "something fickle", of course you're going to look for others to make your choices for you (even to the extent of someone else choosing your dominant personality...) I don't care so much about the romantic choice as much as letting the writing have the depth I so badly want it to have!

Go back and read just Adolin’s PoV’s throughout OB (ie skipping Shallan’s which is where we get the strong sense Adolin is so thoughtful.) Adolin doesn’t, well, think about Shallan much, so he’s not portrayed (by the author) as being particularly thoughtful with regards to her. On the first point, I don’t think we can take any scene from Adolin’s PoV as an oddity; we aren’t given many data points, and don’t forget every data point is intentional (placed there by the author.) If no regard was given to how this decision would appear, that’s sloppy (and I’ve personally decided to disregard the idea that Brandon is a sloppy writer in my analysis of the book - see below - though you may disagree in that regard) and if Brandon wanted to portray Adolin as having a thoughtfulness behind the decision then he could have easily done so - we are in Adolin’s head after all, so it’s easy to show his thought process (it would take a couple of words!) I totally agree Adolin not thinking much about Shallan feels really strange because Shallan is always telling us the opposite. I think Shadolin as written is Set Up to Fail (chapter title with those two ), but I didn’t doubt the force of Adolin’s affectations until reading just his PoV’s all in a row. It was a real surprise to me as well! Just a general comment on the whole romantic arc, once I dug into it (which I first did in an attempt to get behind the ending as my original thoughts upon reading were dissatisfaction, not in terms of the choice but how the choice was depicted) I kept feeling like I (not a writer at all and certainly not one of Brandon’s caliber even if I was) could have tweaked things here and there to strengthen Shadolin - how Shallan made her choice, the wording and imagery used, the pre-wedding scenes, the characters literal positioning, etc. - and since it appears this romantic arc was one of the things Brandon focused on the most in terms of getting the right point across (see his reddit post about it), I decided it had to be intentional. If I could make it stronger he reallyyyyy could have. Once I stopped trying to accept the ending as “final”, everything fell into place (and every new thing I discover keeps falling into place - like this Adolin thing.) So I get the inclination to insert or discard things here and there, but it just made me upset with how bad I saw the writing until I stopped doing so.

It’s in how you define an arranged marriage. I would define it as a marriage which was conceived by a third party based on factors other than the emotional connection of the two marriage participants. I think the “pattern” we see in Brandon’s books is that two characters are put together for non-emotional reasons (family connections, money, protection, political alliances) and then through the course of the story, the two characters always fall in love and live happily ever after. Within that construct, there is a wide variety of how much agency either party (and most crucially the woman) has in actually having to go through with the marriage. For Suri and Sesebron, Suri had zero agency as she was for all extents and purposes forced to enter into the marriage. (I think that was the metric you were considering, one of zero agency.) For Wax and Steris, they were set up for political/monetary reasons and Steris could have bailed on the marriage. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t arranged; it just means it was less coercive. When looking at coercion you have to look at the society in which the woman is operating in; is rejecting the marriage really a choice or is that a false choice? Steris probably had a decent bit of power as her family had the money in the circumstance, but considering her “undesirability” and her father’s ambitions, she was highly motivated to make the marriage work regardless of her emotional feelings. Now obviously she fell in love. Because that’s what Brandon always has happen. (Which is why it bugs people.) Relating this to Jasnah and Navani... We don’t know enough about the circumstances of Navani’s marriage to Gavilar to know if it was arranged. Navani seems to have had some agency in making her choice, though without knowing more of her circumstances, it’s hard to know how much agency she actually had (or even if anyone besides Navani herself set up the marriage.) For Jasnah, she was in a position of power being the king’s daughter - she didn’t need to marry for monetary or political reasons - but she is and was targeted by various members of society for not conforming to society’s rules, and one of those rules she didn’t conform to was her choice to remain unmarried. So she suffered consequences for her choice to not marry, and even if she was willing to embrace, and even exploit, those consequences, the very fact she faced consequences for her decision in how she was perceived by Alethi society emphasizes the coercion women face in that society to conform and marry. Regarding Shallan, she was raised to expect she would be a pawn in her father’s political games; she never expected to have agency in her choice. (See quotes below where this is made explicit in a flashback and where she notes the same to Jasnah after being setup with Adolin.) So of course she’s happy the choice selected for her is a young handsome prince. The Brandon trope which is being fulfilled here is not that she was dragged to the alter kicking and screaming, but that someone else set her up in a marriage for reasons other than her emotional connection to other party, in a society where women were generally used as pawns by men (and their marriages being part of that appropriation), and even with that coercive setup, she ended up in love with her prescribed “match”. (We can obviously debate how “in love” she really is, but this is taking what Shallan says at face value.) So the issue people have with this is not that we have forced marriages, but that Brandon seems to present (for our MCs at least) this rosey portrait of marriages which do not involve an emotional conception and involve varying levels of coercion. (The bright spot in all this is Mistborn 1 where we see all sorts of marriages which resulted from the characters forming emotional connections before a marriage is even considered.) Btw, the article you linked to on divorce above touches on some of these issues of female agency, and I have thoughts on that but haven’t had much time to post. Will try and do so tomorrow!

@GoddessIMHO boarding a flight so about to go dark (won't survive... ), but loaded these links! Thanks!

Can you post links? I'm interested in what they say!

Intrigue. Mystery. A non-head of twisting lines. What else would a spren want?!?

Flirting?!? #sylpattern (I now have so many ships I don't know what to do with myself!)

@Brightlord Brooding Eyes I don't know if I'm behind Syladin, but I would loveeeeee a novella of our daring Princess Syl escaping her tower and overlords to find freedom in the physical realm. I love a princess escaping society's bonds story. I can't help it. I kinda ship her with Pattern though, if only because of her adorable "he's weird because he's nice" moment. And Cryptic's ARE famous. Famous scholar and a princess?!? Who doesn't want that??

So in WoK the Veil is literally the place where Shallan goes to find truth... @Rainier agreed! Despite the condescension (which does get to me at times!) this whole exercise has brought so much depth to these characters and made me appreciate even more Brandon's brilliance as a writer. As much as I can't wait for SA4, I hope he takes his time so we get another book we can pull apart at the seams to find this level of detail.

Not related to the above, but I finally finished by WoR reread last night, and I found these observations by Mraize to be interesting in light of the "which alter is the most dominant" discussion. (Sorry if this has been pointed out before!)

Stop crushing hopes and dreams At least the fact both will be fully outlined has to mean the wait will be a little less, right?!?

Good point - I didn't mean it in a condescending way but just a frustrated way, and I edited the post to make that line less inflammatory, including changing "facts" to "evidence" (which I do think better fits what we're dealing with here in literary analysis.) I also think you have a good point that Shadolin supporters don't have as much motivation to engage since they feel the ship is on solid ground. (I only went down the rabbit hole with this myself because I love a good romance, and I wasn't happy with the plot from a romance perspective; I didn't care previously who ended up with who, I just wanted a romance I could get behind!) Thanks for the pointers

I'm not implying there's objective proof Shalladin is going to happen no matter what; I'm directly saying that But I could be wrong. This is the thing, you're not being put down for your opinions, your opinions are just being challenged. This is how you debate issues - you present an opinion with evidence to back it up, the other side presents a counter-opinion with evidence to back it up and to negate your evidence, you then support your opinion with evidence and counterarguments to their evidence, and so on. Sometimes a consensus is reached, but a lot of the time it isn't! I mean for forever people thought dinosaurs had lizard-like skin and then some evidence came out they had feathers, and it was a big debate, and at the height of that debate some paleontologists were convinced of one or the other side based on how they interpreted the evidence. It's not any different here. (Though I doubt anyone told those paleontologists they shouldn't be debating... ) There is evidence on both sides, we can debate it and counter it, and at the moment we don't know the right answer (with the answer being where Brandon is headed with this; I know between you and I we agree he knows.) I think part of the frustration among Shalladin supporters is that Shadolin supporters tend to be unwilling to engage on the issue. (If you don't want to engage, btw, that's totally fine, but like I said above, you can't say someone is putting down your opinion just because they are engaging to state they disagree and explain why.) I want to walk through an example of how a debate could go on one of the issues: Shadolin: Shallan chose Adolin at the end; she made her choice and it is over. Shalladin: It was "Shallan" who chose Adolin, and in doing so, she had to forcibly "stuff" Radiant and Veil to the back of her pain. Repression of thoughts and memories is unhealthy for Shallan so therefore this was not a mentally healthy choice. Shadolin: Even if "Shallan" reintegrates with Veil and Radiant, the wholeShallan would still choose Adolin. Radiant is fairly asexual and focused on the practical benefits of relationships, which Adolin offers as he is highprince, well connected, good fighter, etc. She would be happy with the Adolin choice. Veil has had lustful feelings for Kaladin, but her feelings are fairly superficial and focused on physical attraction. Veil also is motivated by adventure and investigations, so she will not prioritize her romantic desires. "Shallan" on the other side has always fantasized about romance and the perfect match; look how giddy she's always been about the romance with Adolin. Even after integration, the "Shallan" alter's current opinion would prevail for romantic feelings as she is the one who cares about them the most. Shalladin: Though though it is far from conclusive, we can make an argument that Veil is actually closer to wholeShallan than "Shallan" is, based on evidence such the "frenzied child" in the Re-Shephir fight and Brandon's WoK annotation about Shallan's hidden "passion", so in a fully integrated wholeShallan, Veil's desires are likely to prevail. Shadolin: I don't think you have sufficient evidence to support the assertion that Veil is dominant, as the Shallan we've seen throughout the books (even when healthy) is much closer to "Shallan" than Veil. Regardless, even if Veil is more prominent than it currently appears, "Shallan" is still the alter who we see has the most romantic feelings, so her romantic feelings would trumpVeil's lustful feelings. These are obviously my counterarguments to my own arguments, so I bet you could do better, but I would love to actually debate the issues, and I am actually dying for someone to point out Shadolin evidence I haven't found or considered. PS: I believe it's pretty much consensus that dinosaurs had feathers, just to put that one to rest. PPS: @MonsterMetroid I'm a Laraladin shipper too. There's a lot of strong objection to that one, but I'm not giving up yet!

I’d argue this is a quite happy Shallan in the quote below. The exact word she uses is “satisfied” which is a synonym for “happy”, so it’s a matter of semantics to say it’s a drastically different feeling. I’d argue that this Shallan here - immersed in her scholarship, studying beside her idol and discovering the secrets of her fantastic new spren bond - sounds a lot more truly happy than the stilted personaShallan “happy” we see at the end of OB. (Her refusal to accept her third truth - killing her mother - is hard on her and seems to be the catalyst for the backslide we see throughout OB.) Of course it all goes to Damnation immediately after this moment if we want to look for patterns of what happens to Shallan after her moments of happiness.... On another note, there is a strong theme throughout the series that in order to have true happiness/peace with yourself you have to confront and accept your pain. We see this most dramatically (and beautifully) with Dalinar and his rejection of Odium outside Thaylen City, but we see little moments of this from Dalinar at the Tower where he drops his shame at what he has become and finds peace and again when he’s fighting Szeth in WoR and accepts he could not have saved Gavilar. Kaladin not accepting his pain (and instead wallowing in it) seems to be part of why he can’t say the 4th ideal, though this is of course yet to be seen. Shallan on the other hand, while she may say she is happy, hasn’t actually accepted her pain; it’s still shunted to alters that she refuses to acknowledge are part of her. (There’s a WoB that Shallan and her alters are one in the spiritual realm is you doubt her alters are part of her.) As such, it is a false happiness and does not epitomize the illusion Wit showed her - Shallan gritting her teeth, accepting her painful memories, forgiving herself and still being the woman who is standing up.

My prior posts were responding to the posters who said there was no point in debating Shalladin vs Shadolin since there was no objective answer (objective answer = Brandon knows the plan for the resolution.) You said you agreed with those posters so I assumed you also thought Brandon doesn’t know where he is headed with the resolution, but I didn’t mean to catch you up in that opinion if you don’t actually agree with it (at least with respect to Shalladin/Shadolin.) As far as the more general point, do I think very minute detail from the very start is planned out for interpersonal relationships (romantic and otherwise)? No. Do I think major relationships (especially for our main characters) are plotted in advance and developed with a specific objective in mind? Absolutely, though I agree the objective can morph based on how the story develops up to a certain point of no return. (Search Marasi in Arcanum for WoB’s on potential morphing; it didn’t happen and Brandon stuck to his original outline, but it could have prior to SoS. After SoS it seems clear he felt the point of no return was passed, and I felt that way as a reader.) Do I think we as readers can determine that objective by reading between the lines? Most absolutely. And piecing that stuff together is one of my favorite part of the books. We can of course agree to disagree about where it’s all headed, but I don’t look at it from a perspective of what I want (I want Kadolin please and thank you very much if my desires are being taken into account), but in terms of where the author is heading. And just to retie this to the above, since I am certain Brandon knows where he’s heading here, we can parse out his objective by a close read at the text - which is how I form my Shalladin opinion.

While I don't contend that characters can evolve as they are written, as some point an author has to settle on how they are plotting the book, and that means your interpersonal relationships must also become settled because how those relationships fit into the plot is integral to a good book. Perhaps this is actually the root of the Shalladin v. Shadolin debate (which I didn't realize); I didn't think it would ever be in contention that Brandon himself doesn't know the outcome! Perhaps when Shadolin fans ignore the (IMO blatant) foreshadowing, they just believe that it doesn't matter because Brandon himself has no idea where the storyline is leading. For me, it's very poor craftsmanship to not know where your story is going to the extent you can't properly insert or are forced to ignore earlier foreshadowing, and I have seen just the opposite level of craftsmanship from Brandon in other books. But the perspective that there is no objective answer to Shalladin/Shadolin (because Brandon himself has no clue what's going to happen) is very enlightening as to why this question gets so heated.

This isn't really accurate.... here's the thing. These aren't real people, so we're not sitting around debating whether our friend Shallan should date Adolin or Kaladin with the resolution of this issue having an unknown future. The future of this issue is known by the author, so there is an objective answer to who Shallan will end up with. (Just like there is an objective answer to some magic system question - let's say how skybreakers use division.) Some posters (myself included) like to debate where the relationship is headed from an objective evidentiary perspective - analyzing the primary sources to see what the author is showing us and telling us and hinting to us and theorizing on why he's doing that and what it means. There is a correct answer which like any other Brandon "mystery" we can quite likely get to through this method; he admits many times that if you closely track his foreshadowing you can figure out a lot of his "twists" (and that he won't retwist the plot to escape fans figuring things out!) This is no different than posters debating a magic system question and coming down on opposite sides of the issue; in the end, there is a right answer, so in a binary question like this (or trinary is you put neither as an option) someone will be right and someone will be wrong. If you don't like doing this kind of theorizing around characters and their emotional relationships, that's totally fine! But some of us clearly do, and it can't logically be treated as different than any other open question in the books. Where the tension comes in, is that in any open question there are also people's feelings around it, and as such there is a subjective viewpoint as well. In emotional relationship plots, this seems to be more intense as people tend to have more intense feelings (no one is too emotionally agitated about how skybreakers use division, they just want to know the right answer.) If I posed a theory that Shallan likes to fly and therefore I'm pretty sure she's going to learn to fly with her surgebinding, you would probably slap me down and say there's absolutely no way that will happen. So, my viewpoint would be objectively wrong, but that doesn't invalidate my subjective feelings - I just really want that to happen! That's a bit what is going here (though of course the answer is way less clearcut); you (or anyone else) likes Shadolin, you got some feelings about it, I'm saying that view contradicts a lot of evidence in the books. Doesn't invalidate your feelings, of course, but the fact you have feelings about it doesn't invalidate my search for the objective answer. To summarize - you can't logically treat finding the objective truth in the emotional plotlines of characters any different from finding the objective truth in a magic system questions. Just because emotional plotlines raise more subjective feelings doesn't make the search for that truth invalid.

Yeah, important in the world, but like you said, that doesn't necessarily mean important to him... Yeah, to teach her sword-fighting. Which he is super passionate about. It's great he wants to share that with her, but (like with Janala and the cut strap) this is still him including the woman he's courting in activities which he likes to do. It honestly feels weird to me to be thinking about Adolin like this. From Shallan's viewpoints, he comes across as so infatuated and attentive and interested in her and just the perfect boyfriend so that is what feels emotionally right. The contrast from that to the picture you get when reading just his viewpoints in a row is jarring.

Edited to add. I may have just made up using this as an acronym though! I always got the sense that Adolin was the one who usually got dumped because he wasn't paying enough attention (such as Janala being dragged around on the strap mission) or was flirting with other girls (had to end things one girl after she got upset he went to lunch with Janala I think?) He only broke it off with Danlan because she was saying nasty things about him, presumably about flirting with other girls. Adolin at least seems to see it as him not being able to keep any girl as that's what he tells Kaladin (he can make them interested but can't keep them) and he tells Shallan he always manages to screw up relationships. I agree the screwing up probably originates from him being bored and not trying, but he seems to be treating Shallan fairly similarly though perhaps she's putting up with it because she wants it to work out so badly. I don't see anything from his viewpoints which shows a lot of effort on his part, though he isn't actively telling himself he's bored of her. I don't know... I'm just not convinced he's actually changed his ways that much, even though I agree he wants a relationship to work out. I just feel like if one of those other girls had not been bothered by how he acted he would have stayed with them too? He wants to be in a relationship, but I don't get the sense (again, just from Adolin's viewpoints) that Shallan is all that special. At least he's not identifying her as special in his internal monologue. (Contrast that with how he thinks about Kaladin; there is a strong sense that he see Kaladin as very special.) That all being said, putting up with someone's quirks (not getting upset they look at other women for instance - we see Shallan do this), is part of what makes two people work. Also Shallan would have liked something like the strap cutting investigation, so she fits in better with things Adolin already liked to do and as such the copycat killer investigation is right up their alley. So Adolin might be acting as he always had... and then it comes back to the same things we're all always saying - Shallan has shaped herself (consciously...) into someone who fits with him perfectly. (I went in a circle here; overthinking!)

I should probably add this in my original post (where I list the Adolin viewpoints), but as much I would love, love, love for Kadolin to happen, I don't think we're supposed to think it will. I agree Adolin a bit hero-worships and has a strong affection for Kaladin, but (sadly for me, lol) it's not supposed to be romantic. He's likely more fascinated than anything, as Kaladin to him is the epitome of this brave new Radiant world. The thing with his internal dialogue (or lack thereof) about Shallan is it doesn't read like he wants to meaningfully interact/grow with her. We see a lot from her viewpoints that suggest he does (and this heavily colored how I perceived his feelings before), but this doesn't follow through in what we see from Adolin's perspective. Just like the end when Shallan chooses Adolin, there are so many little ways, with only a sentence or two, that Brandon could show us Adolin is thinking about Shallan, noticing her, concerned about her. Instead he chooses to show us mostly the opposite. If Adolin was honestly really into her but just didn't know how to act, I would expect a lot more fumbling around; he would be trying really, really hard to connect and interact but it would be awkward because that's what happens when you experience new, intense emotions and don't know how to act on them. Instead, he seems to be playing a role, and in fact we see explicitly that he doesn't believe the "romantic" line he feeds her before arriving in Celebrant. He's been SO perfect in this relationship, but it's much easier to act perfectly when you don't have strong feelings to contend with inside yourself. And the muted emotion when stepping aside makes sense - yeah it's a blow to his pride (it appears he's more concerned about since we aren't shown feelings of distress about losing Shallan) - he's not that emotionally invested, so it's easy to do so. Just want to point out that I know we don't have many Adolin viewpoints, so there could be times he's internally incredibly focused on Shallan that would exhibit his intense feelings for her. But we don't just happen to go into Adolin's head at random times. We have an author (with a plan) who is deliberately showing us certain things (for Adolin, like for all the characters) in order to build a story. Any pattern of behavior, especially when it is pretty consistent across of character, is then likely significant solely based on the fact that is what the author chose to show us. ETA: I agree with your general premise, but I don't think he's clinging to Shallan. In some way he does the opposite; he tried to break up with her and she wouldn't let him. Even his concern about her feelings for Kaladin are couched in the manner of "well the guy is a demi-god so of course she's into him" rather than "I am in love this with woman and am going frantic at the idea I might lose her." I know Shallan sees him as crazily into her, and he says these lines in her viewpoints that suggest that is true, but that just doesn't align with what we see from Adolin himself.

https://youtu.be/Ww3VhMxxJNA?list=PLPdJIpbJfgiR-pZysJ7nM9TjiJ-X-MH1Q&t=303 I am going down a rabbit hole with these videos, but I loved this one. Especially when he's talking about promises and fulfilling them or subverting, and in response to a question from a student (6min mark) he says that if you're going to subvert a promise you need to foreshadow appropriately... And then you have to have what happens be way cooler than what they (the readers) are imagining, so they are more excited about that then what they lost.

They were causally betrothed, which is a step below being officially betrothed - it seems akin to exclusively dating the way it’s discussed. (See Ch 1 Santhid and Ch 49 Watching the World Transform in WoR for some discussion.) But I don’t think this would lessen your distaste, as it is an exclusive romantic relationship, just one where “oaths” (ie official promises) have not been spoken yet. The lack of oaths is what people were trying to say in the quotes above (a spren wouldn’t understand a commitment without the oath; note Kaladin gets it and even tells Syl she’s not understanding correctly.) I find your suppression language a little odd because the idea of suppressing anything has a very unhealthy connotation. That said, I agree that when you are in a committed relationship and you have romantic feelings outside of your committed relationship you should either (i) resolve those feelings and continue with your committed relationship or (ii) end that committed relationship. Shallan instead chooses to intensify her commitment (by progressing to marriage) while simply attempting to ignore (or as she puts it, stuff to the back of her brain) her feelings for Kaladin. But if you truly believe those feelings should be “suppressed”, then she does this rather well because they are shoved onto an alter and that alter is subjugated. So I guess you should be happy with that? I think most of us here don’t think she handled it well, and given the state of her feelings, she should have chosen no relationship with either (so option two which you consider an acceptable choice.) In my personal opinion, this was not a fun fluffy love triangle where our heroine just can’t figure out which boy to kiss (I find those annoying) but a literary device to show just how fractured and confused Shallan has become. All three character participants were extremely uncomfortable by the feelings present (Kaladin didn’t want his feelings for Shallan, Shallan didn’t want her feelings for Kaladin, Adolin didn’t want Shallan to have feelings for Kaladin), so I don’t think it was supposed to be an enjoyable experience. Especially against the backdrop of Shallan’s increasingly more severe mental illness. I actually find the reaction that Shallan choosing Adolin was great conclusion to their cute relationship to be emotionally off for this exact reason; none of this was fun to read. But SA often isn’t fun as it grapples with hard, painful issues; that’s the nature of Radiance, they are all broken. I also hope we don’t see Kaladin as part of Adolin and Shallan’s marriage issues. They have plenty of issues on their own without him, so I think (and hope) the termination of their relationship will not involve him. If you are morally opposed to the ending of a marriage, I can’t help you there though, except that I think the same parameters apply to any marital issue: you have to resolve it or end the relationship. I believe Adolin and Shallan will have issues they cannot resolve, and thus will hopefully do what they should have done in OB (and what Adolin seems to have wanted) and end the relationship.