PhineasGage

Yes this makes sense. Indeed it might be that Renarin's "Truth"-watching may be more what I suggested for Shallan and hers is more what you suggest - a cognitive aspect rather than a spiritual one. That way their illumination is sufficiently different from each other to be interesting - and Shallan's can be more "deceitful" as per the cryptics love of lies and truth combined (and that those are subjective anyway), but Renarin's could be more absolute - which might be partly why he can't use illumination like Shallan can.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116-general-reddit-2017/#e4007 Mrrobot112 Now when Oathbringer is finished have you already chose a flashback character for Stormlight 4? Brandon Sanderson Yes. It's Eshonai. Just FYI @Ailvara just read your alternate ending for OB and I loved it. I get why she couldn't have done it because she was probably still too broken to have enough insight into herself, but how I wish she had been that Shallan. in OB. SO much better as an outcome. And makes her seem to like Adolin more. *sigh*

I have loved reading this thread - its been really great to see everyone's perspectives and I want to thank everyone here for maiking it such an interesting read. For the record, I can see why each person has their opinion and I think there is good evidence for each interpretation - it comes down to personal feelings. So even if my comments contradict anyone here, it is more about my own attitudes than specific evidence. This is amazing. I both agree and disagree with you! So you are completely right that each of Szeth, Dalinar and Taravangian are worse in their respective problems (responsibility/killer/traitor) but where Moash is more than just a normal man is that he is all of these. He isn't as deeply in each problem as the others, but he has his fingers in many pies. That, in my mind, makes him more compelling as a character and also likely more attractive to Odium - because Rayse will have multiple ways in to gain a foothold. I hate Moash. But I hate him because he is compelling. I can't hate Odium (yet) because he isn't enough of a person to me - Moash betrays Kal and that makes me very anti him. But I can't wait to read more of his arc. I don't care whether he is redeemed or not, as long as he remains interesting! I am definitely on the side of thinking Kaladin and Moash are similar in many ways. I'll just point out my reasons: Moash resists Kaladins ladership at the beginning. Kaladin resists leadership from others as well (he puts himself outside the chain of command with Dalinar -and even then he is often autonomous) They are both natural fighters (ok so is Skar, but Moash is mentioned very frequently as having been extraordinary in his speed of skill acquisition - as was Kaladin) They both want(ed) vengeance against a lighteyes of rank "Moash" is an ancient name from the Singers. Kaladin means "born into eternity" (i guess - "kalad" = eternal) so even their names invoke age - and we find out their meanings in the same book They are both socially miles from where they started (both become light-eyed). Both feel separated from ordinary people (Moash by being with the Fused, Kal by being a Radiant) Both take up leadership roles with the same group of Singers. They miss each other. We see Kaladin refuse to talk about Moash leaving and worrying about it internally, and we see Moash think of Kal a great deal) On top of that there are some interesting mirror moments. Kaladin recovers Jezrien's blade, Moash kills Jezrien Kaladin doesn't kill Amaram (despite his hatred), Moash kills Elhokar (because of his hatred) Kaladin is paralysed by seeing his men on both sides fight at the palace. Moash acts to kill Elhokar despite having loved ones on both sides Kaladin doesn't kill Moash when Moash/Graves try to assassinate Elhokar in WoR - this allows Moash to later kill Elhokar but he doesn't attack Kaladin - he salutes him. Kaladin voluntarily gave up his shards (in tWoK) and gained his own blade (Syl). Moash lost his shards but got his own blade (?Odiumblade?) My personal take is that Kaladin and Moash are very similar and their different arcs occur as a result of only tiny differences between them. Kind of like a tiny miscalculation in direction can change your end destination dramatically if you travel far enough. To me, Moash and Kaladin would have been the same had Moash been able to set aside his hatred of Elhokar, the way Kaladin set aside his desire for revenge on order to swear his 3rd Ideal. I think Moash regrets his decision and he cannot figure out how to go back and fix the mess he's in. So he just keeps digging - hoping to get himself out of the hole he has made, but instead just keeps getting deeper. As he gets deeper, he tries harder and harder to justify his actions and this is where his problem with Odium will lie - he may end up going down the Amaram route as a result. To be clear, I don't think he regrets killing Elhokar or the assassination attempt, but he regrets attacking Kaladin and he doesn't understand why Kaladin changed his mind and he regrets not being able to understand why. Because Moash doesn't see where he went wrong he doesn;t (yet) understand why he and Kal are on opposing sides. I am not sure if he'll ever figure it out. If he does it will likely be part of a redemption arc. So my personal take is that Moash's salute is more akin to the salute between Eshonai and Dalinar (i think? the one in tWoK iirc) where they are definitely opponents but can still have respect. I think Moash still respects Kaladin and this was a form of that. I think he wishes they weren't on opposing sides and knows Kaladin well enough to know that Kal would only have changed his mind if there were good reasons (from Kal's perspective). So it isn't an F U so much as acknowledgement of their similarities and (former) bond. I think it is possible that Moash will learn to hate Kaladin because he doesn't understand the change of heart in WoR and that will make him dangerous going forward.

Thats a very interesting interpretation and definitely has some traction. I had thought she was seeing their "ideal selves" (Plato style - ie their spiritual aspects) and helping them see that self and therefore see a path to become that best person. I kind of wondered if that is why we see Adolin as the "perfect" person he seems to be from Shallan's perspective (also she is unreliable, but we don't need to go there here!) and why Kaladin "lightens" in her presence - I suspect it is not only that she "lightened" his mood, but that she made his burdens seem "lighter" too. They are both being exposed to her illumination/transformation and thus move towards a version of themselves that she sees in them (subconsciously). From what I understood from your post, you are implying that there is no "ideal" except what is in Shallan's head - would that be fair to say?

Oh this is much better - not quite so many posts for me to catch up on this morning Phew. *wipes brow* Yes I agree - I see her having a similar moment to Kaladin's moment where he said "Fleet kept running" - just before he says the 3rd Ideal. She hasn't yet properly realised that she is not a monster (what she takes from the Girl who Looked Up story imo) - tho I believe she is on her way (hence she allowed herself to be happy at her wedding). She needs a story about being split/reunification in my mind - and then she can take that and work with it. It works - WoB is that Shallan is subconsciously bisexual so that aspect of her could be pushed onto Radiant. I like the way this ties with the scars - the stone and the scars represent his emotional burdens that he has to set down so that he can view himself as whole and undamaged. The scars, to me anyway, represent more than simply his time as a slave - they represent his failures as well. I wonder if he is transferring the idea of his failures to the rock - and then once he is ready, he can put it down. Perhaps keep the rock somewhere as a form of shrine/memorial so he can still remember but doesn't have to have it as a constant reminder to him, literally weighing him down. True - I hope not too much tho (Kaladin is my fave) - I was surprised how much time Kaladin got in WoR and how much time Shallan got in OB. I suspect that in SA4 we'll still get a lot of Dalinar, but perhaps less Kaladin and Shallan as a result of the time. I am looking forward to the Eshonai/Venli flashbacks and obviously Venli will give us loads of info we wouldn't otherwise get from our other MCs, but I don't want to lose too much of Shallan/Kaladin/Dalinar - mainly because I am assuming that at least 1 of them will progress in book 4 (Kaladin is my guess) - depending on exactly how many oaths Dalinar has actually said. Do we have WoB on that? Make it so. Oh wait, that's your line Shallan definitely doesn't fracture at that point in WoR. The key is who is named when she thinks - Shallan never thinks as Veil in WoR afaik (i can't find an example anyway). She sort of thinks of Veil as separate but it is still really more of a mask she wears to reveal aspects of her own personality that she normally hides. She only wishes "Veil" was in the chasms once - and then she goes on to manage just fine on her own. Later in OB we seem her think as Veil or Radiant and refer to Shallan in the third person. I don't think this is resolved because they get sidetracked by deciding who will be king and then Shallan pushing for Jasnah to take the throne. Dalinar is horrified when he finds out. He isn't about to go and make a proclamation because he needs to protect Adolin from the fall-out. We see a week gap between Dalinar finding out and the wedding but the announcement isn't made and I don't think it is going to be - which frankly is a political mistake (you should reveal things asap to prevent them leaking out and being used by your political enemies). This means someone else can find out the secret and use it against Adolin in some way. Blackmail, undermining his political power, his trial/execution etc. There are loads of possible ways this could go. Dalinar's view of Adolin is now very different as well. He specifically thinks that "Adolin [isn't] the man he thought he was". He still loves his son, but he genuonely thought Adolin was steady and a better man than Dalinar is. Now he knows Adolin is neither of these things - or at least is not them all the time. Dalinar doesn't trust himself. Its a constant recurring theme. Now he may not trust Adolin either. We may see his behavior gradually change over the time-skip. Even if Dalinar manages to get over it (not sure how - I mean it isn't something most parents can just brush aside - even while they still love their kids) it doesn't mean that there aren't many other people who wouldn't try to profit from the situation. What about the Skybreakers? I can't see Szeth loving this fact for example. The Ghostbloods want to make a play of some sort for power and this kind of secret could be huge. If they find out they could use it as further leverage over Shallan and Adolin. I mean, they may need to blackmail them to force Shallan to deal with Sja-Anat which seems likely to happen in SA4 rather than in the timeskip. Lastly - of course such a statement would be damaging. It would suggest that Dalinar ordered Adolin to kill his political opponent. The truth wouldn't even matter then - people would worry (with good reason) that the Blackthorn was re-emerging and that he was prepared to do anything to seize power -including using his son as an assassin. I disagree with this so entirely. Brandon uses minor plots all the time and has them drag through under the radar. Mistborn is literally filled with minor plots that seem to go slowly/be dropped then randomly appear later on and prove to be significant. This is by no means a complete list, it is just a few threads I could come up with quickly to make my point. Storms he even has scenes that are reflected in each of the three books. The difference between Mistborn and SA is that the first Mistborn trilogy is complete so we can see the threads tie up. He cares what his fellows think of him. If he didn't he wouldn't worry so much about his appearance. And of course he cares what the Sadeas troops think of him - he will just want it to be negative. Point is that we don't know because we don't see it. I am happy that Adolin was simply being a decent human being. But I can't prove it. This is my point. We need to be careful whenever we push motivations onto him - whether we see those motivations as good or bad is irrelevant. Going forward, if his motivations change we also likely won't see it and thus we cannot be sure if they are changing or how. Can you tell me what you mean? I didn't find Adolin inconsistent at all except for his murder of Sadeas. He still looks at other women, he still likes socialising in winehouses, he is a bit of a snob (think the menagerie is "low") but nothing too awful, he is still decent to those beneath him socially - aside from Kaladin at the beginning (and thats a personal grudge which he gets over). I can't think of many inconsistencies at all. If he'd been inconsistent I'd have found him more interesting - but he's predictable to the point of being boring in WoR (imo). So I had a look for som WoBs on this and I'll quote them below - these are from https://wob.coppermind.net/basic_search/?query=adolin the search I did and all come from BS. So that last one completely refutes the idea that it is going to be dropped. That was from 2014 but just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. If there is a WoB that shows nothing will happen that is more recent then we can consider it done as a plot, but as far as I could find, there is nothing more recent that refutes this statement. For one thing, we haven't seen any character react extremely negatively to it yet. I didn't say "personal" I said "vengeance". Adolin, as you pointed out, identifies with his House. He was acting to gain revenge for his House. And he did so when he was "irrevocably" enraged - apart from a tiny part of him that was "amused". Amused? I mean that, if nothing else, is sociopathic. No matter how much you hate someone, the act of murder is not amusing .

Ok, now we're fighting. I love, love, love Snape. "Always" will still bring tears to my eyes. Even after all this time.. I love Snape too! I mean I love him because despite being a really unpleasant person he was able to redeem himself. He had the potential to be a good decent person - and likely would have been had he had a better childhood, but the point is that he isnt a nice person and yet chooses what is right. I was always on team Snape when there were debates on whether he was a good or bad guy. But that doesn't make him nice. He just isn't. Hmm thats a good point. I didn;t see it that way personally - i thought he just couldnt keep it in any longer - esp if she was opening up to him. Well I'll take a compliment but I suspect it has more to do with efficiency than flattery

Hello all given the positive feedback on the long posts and the absence of negative feedback I'm going to continue in the same pattern as before until I get told to stop I had totally forgotten about this. I know Kaladin was being a bit of an arse in this moment but there is no way he would have done the same had the positions been reversed. Indeed he even balks at the idea of killing and hurting his enemies - he finds Adolin annoying at this point, but he knows he can't actually hurt Adolin through the plate. He also loses his stormlight as soon as his motive are less than pure anyway, so we know exactly what his motivations are when he fights. That is why i went with self-assured. It would have to be false humilty if he said he wasn't that good for example. I don't know how much he actually boasts about it? We see one of the people he challenges say he has been boasting but that could be part of the confrontation rather than an accurate representation. (this is when he ends up challenging Elit but it was said by his cousin whose name I can't remember). Of course that could be something true but we can't be sure one way or the other. True. We also don't know how much his hand squeeze was pure luck - tho the WoB suggests that it wasn't, it is just that he only sees one alt as being Shallan, rather than a fragment of the whole. So this is where we are at risk of projecting again - we don't know what he was thinking during this ionconversation - there is only one way to be sure whether he is listening or not, and that is to see into his head. Wthout that, we can only guess. Those who like Adolin will assume the best, those that don't will assume the worst. His actions are not so clear cut as to definitely be the result of a specific motivation. I definitely see this as being a good descriptor in terms of their personas, but as they evolve I think it is fair to allow their alignments to evolve with it. Given that Sadeas' murder is definitely not lawful (both in the sense of against the law, but also against the strict codes that Adolin is supposed to be following) he is definitely slipping. I'm not sure I agree with this. He doesn't try to "fix" Shallan in the chasms despite everything she tells him. He fixes physical woulds sure but when he cannot fix those he finds ways to make sure people don't fall off the face of the Earth - eg Hobber and Dabbid are still Bridge 4 despite their injuries. He isn't pushing for Dabbid's recovery at all, he just lets him be. She might feel this way, though I doubt it because she genuinely thinks she is 3 separate people. She doesn't recognise the feelings for Kaladin as being "hers" - they are "Veil's", so why should Shallan feel guilty? It isn't her fault that someone else fancies someone after all. I also don't think the fracturing is the result of romantic feelings at all - it is her past catching up with her. I therefore dont believe that the romance element to her story will be important for her eventual healing. Stay a while - we'll bring you round Oh, also - Welcome aboard. I'm the Ship's cat - if you happen to have any food or water on you I'd keep it quiet or there might be a riot. I can see that there is some good evidence for the theory, so I'm not actually against it myself. I'd be more inclined to wonder if he is possibly going down the route of corrupted ED or possibly the voidbringer ED version (like the ED fused). Not sure how it works so not sure if that is even possible. That said, we don't see him worry about his mother's chain once he lost it (tho as i pointed out, we don't get much PoV from Adolin anyway) and we actively see him not act to better the lives of the people of Kholinar in OB despite opportunity. I don't think he makes people's lives worse either - more that he just doesn't think at all about it. So I personally see it a little differently, but the evidence is sketchy in either direction. I think "Shallan" has feelings for Adolin, "Veil" has feelings for Kaladin and "Radiant" has feelings for neither - she is the pragmatic unromantic one - she likely doesn't have the ability to love (she is a very 2D alter) at all. The "True Shallan" is separating her conflicting feelings by putting them in different personas. It is likely that she cannot therefore tell whether her feelings for one man or the other is greater. I don't see her emotions as "love" for either, she is infatuated in different ways. I personally think that her infatuation with kaladin is more a result of recognising his ability to challenge her mentally/verbally so it has better long term prospects that just wanting to rip off his shirt. That is me projecting a bit though as I personally look for intellectualism in a partner. I agree that this narrative may not ever come forward, but I suspect if that is the case it will be because Dalinar chooses not to tell Renarin and Adolin. Renarin may find out on his own, depending on how much "truth" he can see. I am a firm beleiver that the Sadeas murder will be dealt with before the end of book 5. Dalinar and Shallan have only just found out. It is possible that Ialai will place spies in Urithiru - she has a history of having extensive spy networks so I wouldn't be surprised if the secret is eventually found out and there is some kind of ramification. On top of that, why make Adolin kill Sadeas? It acheieves nothing for OB - that means the payoff is just later. It is coming, I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. I believe @aemetha is a trained psychologist and is using the term sociopath in the professional sense, rather than the sense we hear it in lay culture. This is important. An action can be sociopathic without the whole person being a sociopath. All that means is that the behaviour is sufficiently outside "normal" behaviour to be considered unhealthy both to the person in question and to society as a whole. A lack of remorse is considered a sociopathic behaviour, but a lack of remorse on its own is not enough to make someone a sociopath. The example I'll use is the Antisocial Personality Disorder (DSM-5). Adolin does not have this. But one of its hallmarks is a lack of remorse and guilt. These people tend to act violently and don't learn from their actions - even if those actions result in legal problems (eg prison). These are the people sometimes termed "psychopaths" though psychiatists don't like the term because "psychopathy" just means disease of the mind - in the most general sense (eg depression is a form of psychopathy - but depressed people are not all "psychopaths"). My point is that you can call his behaviour problematic because it is closely associated with a specific disorder, without labelling him with that disorder. I also quickly want to point out that even with justification, most people would feel guilt in this setting and that is what makes Adolin's lack of guilt appear sociopathic. Indeed generally people feel guilty even when they shouldn't. They justify their actions after the event and use that to erode their guilt away, but Adolin doesn't seem to start from there - at most he is ashamed because he doesn't want to be caught letting his father down. I'm taking this to heart - thank you I must admit I enjoy other people's long posts myself so I am glad that you think this! So I would say even this is projection. We don't know Adolin's motivations for most of his behaviours. Kaladin gives an alternative option for Adolin's motives himself - that it is part of the games between Sadeas and Kholin princedoms. It might be that - we don't know. Adolin seems decent I grant you and his PoV'sdont give us any reason to think he is "evil" (i don't think he is) but I do think he is generally guided more by how he wants to be perceived than by his conscience. I think this might be one reason that the fashionista element to his character is being pushed so much. I wasn't suggesting that he is anything like Snape as a person - Snape was a nasty piece of work. But I do think that there is an opacity to their actions that gives them something in common. I disagree - he loses his temper - he isn't considering anything but vengeance when he kills the man Mind. Blown. Thank you for this - its an incredible piece of analysis and ties in so well with all aspects of Kaladin's arc. Do we think that Rock may also be of importance here as a result? I mean, he too was named for a pretty rock and I personally think he is going to be a LW. This whole post was fantastic. Alas I have only one upvote to lay down for my 'Ship. I would love to see this - if you haven't posted it yet in a thread can you make a new one? I think it could be really interesting. Difficult to know. I can't find one - but then we get so little directly from Adolin. He declares he didn't feel guilty about confronting Dalinar about his madness - tho he says he "felt sick" about having to do so. He apologises for how he confronted Dalinar later, but not for doing it. Personally I have always preferred the term "punchy guys"..... This, unfortunately is a repeat of Shallan's joke about the hangman and the headsman (it's easier to get a head). I need BS to get some more jokes, and soon.

Lets have a look at her reasons: Handsome as sin kind to everyone passionate about his art humble in a confident way he gets her listens to her encourages you to be you and not hide yourself away being near him makes her want to rip his shirt off So of those, the first and last are essentially the same and not relevant for a long term relationship. I think they are good as part of a romantic relationship - but they won't last. Lets therefore focus on the rest of them. 1) Adolin is decent to people in the grand scheme of things - this is a fair comment, but he is hardly unique in this regard. Indeed, Shallan herself does more for "the common man" in Kholinar than Adolin does. He doesn't actually go out of his way to make people's lives better. Its not a criticism so much as a fact. He believes in the hierarchy of society. 2) Yes - he loves duelling. I am not sure why this matters to Shallan as she is less interested in duelling herself, and as far as I can see they share little time discussing each other's interests. It is fine not to be as engaged with your partner's interests, but you should be interested a bit - if only for their sake. Do we see passion in other aspects of Adolin's life? Not projected passion we ascribe to him- passion he himself tells us of? 3) Not really. He is realistic about his lack of radiant powers. Prior to that he was self assured and therefore not boastful of his position because he didn't need to be. He was one of the most instantly recognisable people in the Shattered Plains, he imply didn't need to boast. I don't think that makes him humble so much as self assured. Self assurance is good - but she is wrong to describe him as humble. 4) Does he? Are we sure? We don't see Adolin's perspective on him "recognising her". She assumes so, but she is not 100% infallible. Because I can think of at least 2 situations where he doesn't get her at all. 5) Really? Again, are we sure? I think he listens pretty well in general, but Shallan hasn't actually told him that much of herself yet so she has no empirical evidence of this. Does he know the names of her brothers? Or what her favourite food is for example? If not, why not? Why don't we know whether he knows them? Storms even Kabsal knew about her favourite food.... 6) This is a dig at Kaladin. And actually is probably wrong anyway given that she should be aiming to reintegrate her identities not split them further The problem is that the reasons sound hollow. Can she not come up with something more specific? I mean, Adolin has some really good qualities that are his own but none of the ones she mentions couldn't be applied to Kaladin as well. And yet they are quite different people. Why doesn't she love the fact that he can always see the positive side of things, or that he doesn't really get her jokes, or that he loves fashion despite having to be in uniform all the time, or that he is surprisingly good at admitting when he is wrong.? Those are all things that are specific to Adolin. They may seem frivolous (like the fashion) but they can also show his ability to push aside more serious concerns and just have some fun. I can see where you are going with this. I am not anti the whitespine thing myself - to me Kaladin is the chasmfiend, not the whitespine. He is even more at home in the chasms and is vastly more dangerous than Adolin could be (in their present states). I personally see Kaladin as Neutral Good - he follows laws he agrees with, and breaks those that oppose "what is right". If I were a DM for this character I would have him be switching between chaotic and neutral - mostly neutral leaning chaotic. I cannot see him breaking laws without good reason so I wouldnt leave him fully chaotic personally. On top of that as a person he isn't "chaotic" - he is controlled. Also his oaths are kind of laws he has to follow so he cannot break them. I suspect that he will never quite get to lawful, but that he will lean closer and closer as he has more and more sway over how those laws are applied (eg in his newly acquired lands) With Adolin its a bit more difficult for me. Prior to his murder of Sadeas I'd have said he was true neutral or neutral good (remember he hates having to follow the codes and would prefer not to have to even tho he can see the point), but I could possibly have said he was leaning lawful good. However the murder made me very uneasy about his arc. The murder strikes me as a Chaotic Evil choice, and he gets there very suddenly. I definitely feel he is True Neutral now because he feels no remorse, and acts in a neither lawful nor chaotic manner. He seems happy to go with the flow to an extent - and currently the flow is coming from "Good" characters like Dalinar and Kaladin. True Neutral characters are very interesting from a plotline perspective because their motivations are usually the most opaque. Interestingly, Dalinar was Chaotic neutral/evil as a youth. He has changed over time to reverse this entirely to become Lawful Good. His period immediately around his visit to the Nightwatcher was his "True Neutral" period - he spent most of it drunk and unconscious after all. We could suggest that he and Adolin are on inverse arc as a result? As an aside, Shallan is Chaotic Good, and I don't see any suggestion that she is changing. Szeth is Lawful Neutral and also seems set in his alignment. Yes I do, but I don't think she will be complete with it by the end. I think she will continue with the "Shallan" alt dominating over the other alts for most of it, and her progression will come from unerstading her 4th ideal in some way she hasn't acknowledged yet. Her final "healing" will come when she recognsised herself as 1 person - not 3 and this will be her 5th truth and the stormlight will be able to heal her spiriweb because her understanding of herself will mend her psyche. This is very much opinion based tho - I have no evidence to support it.

Nope Except when I had a bad night - usually I love doing them. I just had other things that also needed doing today so I couldnt blitz through it like normal. I overslept this morning so didn't get my usual 2-3 hours free first thing (stupid insomnia)

Good morning all! So after a very poor night's sleep, I am hyped up on coffee and painkillers so if I ramble needlessly (more so than usual) I deeply apologise. Quick question actually - should I stop doing these very long posts? Are they too much? I can probably summarise my thoughts to posts made over my afk periods, but I might lose some nuance if I do. If people want me to cut them down I will - there is no point posting these monsters if people find them too hard going. For now, I'll do my usual long post, but I am going to address something about Adolin's character at the bottom that doesn't really answer a specific point (but relates to the overall discussion re Adolin) and is probably the most important bit of this if you want to skip the post/responses bit nearer the top. I was more thinking that because family planning is implied in Roshar (very few big "catholic" type families) we can use this as a basis for the discussion. That said, very few people actually know that family planning availability precedes the fall in infant mortality I wouldn't be surprised if BS didn't know so it perhaps is less relevant. Gapminder is still a storming fab resource. Interesting idea - he has actually left out the two most important interactions (or at least those that ought to have been the most emotionally charged). This is relevant. If he had included one and not the other then it would have possibly been too obvious the direction he is going? Oh yes, I completely agree. She doesn't know herself (as an aside, because - as ommented on below) Shallan is a Jane Austen heroine-esque character, it could be likened to Lizzy Bennet not knowing herself ("Until that moment I never knew myself") until she realised she had misled herself about Wickham and Darcy's characters completely. Not that I think Adolin is a Wickham by any means. hmmm I didn't think this actually happened either. Is this essentially a drawing from her imagination? Does she do it unconsciously? We got one drawing (of Nergaoul - and I still think that is relevant because she hadn't seen that Unmade at the time) that she had no memory of producing. Has she drawn this one in a similar position? OMG How did I miss this? This is huge. BS doesn't do coincidence. He foreshadows. What is the sign of the nine in terms of local Lore? Argh, I am really worried about Adolin now. It surely is an unlucky sign? Nine is so not good on Roshar. I agree - and even more so because BS rarely uses red herrings. Nearly everything thrown in seemingly at random is relevant. It is more likely that we misunderstand the foreshadowing or miss it than we spot it only to find it was misleading. He misdirects, as @Dreamstorm would say, not misleads. To quote a phrace, "coincidence? I think not!". Actually that was massivaly significant - just not to Elhokar. Wit is now a LW Roshar style, rather than using other investiture to use his Yolen form of LW. That is really big. It also showed that spren can watch an individual for a while before being chosen and that a person's choices really matter in terms of them bonding a spren. I think we can use this more than any other situation to understand the bonding process because we actually see the moment the bond starts to form. This is quite different from all our other Radiants who all are subconsciously using stormlight prior to knowing they are bonded. I doubt Elhokar is doing this prior to the attack on the Palace because he was so unwell after his assassination attempt at the end of WoR - he is only just getting better as he gets to Kholinar. What do you mean "now and advanced-level English class" ? I expect 3000 words from each of you by next week regarding your favourite character in OB with supporting quotes. I agree. It isn't useful to just keep a character as the light aside and still have them get so much screentime. Shakespeare was very good at this actually. You often got "comedic" characters but if they stayed comedic throughout the play, they were essentially only put in scenes that were used to allow costume changes for the MCs. If they were "mains" as well as comedic relief, then they had to have other arcs for their story. Many of the "jester/fool" type characters in his plays follow this pattern - they are initially there for comedic relief but then go on to have more complex roles. I am particularly pointing to Touchstone in As You Like It as an example of this - he is used for light relief but is actually one of the wiser characters and is used in many ways to tell the whole story. Obviously Hoid as "Wit" is also playing this role, but he is less of a "light" character than Adolin because we see so much less of him prior to OB and in OB he is less light. You could also argue that Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing follows a similar vein as he is pretty comedic for most of the first half of the play but as his love for Beatrice grows (or imo simply is no longer suppressed by him) he becomes a more complex and serious character - tho he never loses his ability to see the funny side of things. Indeed, the Beatrice/Benedict love story is actually much more important for that play than the Hero/Claudio love story which is the story the play ostensibly revolves around. Characters who are only there fore humour and to lighten the situation get much less time on stage. In Much Ado, Dogberry is the best example of this. If you aren't a Shakespeare buff, I would definitely recommend watching the Joss Whedon Much Ado about Nothing film. Firstly because it is really easy to follow, despite the Shakespearian language, and secondly because it is a really good study in how different romances can be portrayed - contrast Beatrice/Benedict with Hero/Claudio and you'll see what I mean Oh *blushes* thanks I am sure that isn't true about your dissertation. The essay virtually wrote itself because SA is so well written. So I probably need to add to this, but in an addenda. I think opposites can "attract" but that isn't what keeps a relationship going. I don't actually see Shallan and Kaladin as being opposite really, so much as two sides of the same coin. They are called opposite, but you can't have one without the other to make a 3D object. Thats obviously an oversimplification but I hope you see my point? Fascinating. Is this all from BS directly, or is it just the bit in bold? So I have long thought that Veil is more like the Shallan she might have been without her horrible childhood. Not that Veil is the "real her" by any means, but is the bit she has suppressed because of her upbringing (including the way her tutors tried to control her). I am pretty certain there is a WoB that he tweaked the love triangle to highlight her fracturing identity rather than he wrote it in to make sure her identity issues were clear. Given how much effort has gone into the Shalladin stuff it seems like it would be a weak plotlining device because of the way it is so rushed at the end. If Shallan had chosen Adolin in a more coherent, less rushed manner and had done so in line with the sitting/standing bits as well, I'd be more inclined to agree. I also think both Kaladin and Shallan have kind of ended up at the same point as they did at the end of WoR in terms of their relationship - and this is interesting because they also both fail to progress further as KR, despite the possibility of progression being clearly indicated in the text. I very much agree. Game of Thrones spoilers (tho if you don't know this - where is the cave you are living in and how does it have wifi?) I had missed that they both go looking for him in WoR. I think Shallan still needs another story from Wit - Kaladin has had 2 from Hoid, but Shallan has only had one so far (not including the flashback because it isn't really a story in the same vein). I am going to cover Adolin more thoroughly at the bottom of this post but I wanted to address something you mentioned here. I think people are conflating the idea of a predator being evil and it simply isn't. A lion must kill to eat, and so must the whitespine. "Good" and "Evil" can only be attributed to human behavior and they are extremely subjective terms even in that context. Whether Adolin can be seen as a whitespine or not is a separate idea to him or his actions being good or evil. I want to address the anthopomorphic personifications of whitespine, but it does have "evil" connotations because it is dangerous, but those ideas are as equally false as the idea that "cunning" is an epithet we use in the West to describe foxes. Real foxes aren't "cunning" because they don't have the necessary thought processes to manage it. They are scavenger/predators so they have traits that lend them to steathy behaviour that may look "cunning" to a person, but in reality we are simply projecting. I really want to see these! When you've got them done feel free to PM them to me. I am hoping to build a huge Urithiru like tower in minecraft between now and SA4 so any ideas about what it should look like from multiple angles would alsobe amazing The nice thing about Jane Austen is that she wasn't wedded to the idea that landed gentry were the only options for romantic heroes. Look at Anne Elliott and Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion. Wentworth is Anne's equal in terms of intellect, attitudes and understanding, but not her social equal. She is persuaded to refuse his offer of marriage 8 years prior to the start of the book - a decision she deeply regrets. Despite his earning a fortune in the Napoleonic wars, he remains her social inferior but that ultimately doesn't matter. Don't get me wrong, plenty of the Austen heroes are landed gentry, but that is as much because she was of a particular class and wrote her characters into the same social sphere because she was writing what she knew. Point is that she wanted her characters to be matched for their minds over other "political" concerns. Oh thank you I really appreciate your insights and I looking forward to adding all the addenda to make the whole analysis more rounded and complete. A song about addiction seems especially appropriate for this thread These lines stand out as particularly fitting! Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends By all means - this is going to become a collaborative effort anyway so any futher thoughts are always welcome! Me too - both Kaladin and Shallan end up almost where they started - as I said above, this mirrors their KR lack of progression, though I think both are now in a place to move forward on that front so perhaps the relationships will shift as well. I don't expect Shallan to progress until SA5 and Kaladin and she will likely hit level 5 more or less simultaneaously imo. I think she needs to accept her 4th truth properly still (perhaps coincides with Kaladin's 4th ideal) and then she can move on. I don't think she is going to make any progress on this in the timeskip - assuming Adolin continues to differentiate between her alts - because she won't be addressing her fractured identity. I like this interpretation. It is very interesting. I am not sure I buy into the Shallan being influenced by Adolin (yet) - I think she wants to be influenced by him but as you say is forcing the issue. Kaladin is more honest about his emotional state than Shallan is (what's new right?) but I think because he never really considered her an option (how can Kaladin compete with Adolin after all - he's a storming prince) he doesn't allow himself to acknowledge that his feelings had any depth. I bet we find that Kaladin is away from Adolin/Shallan for the majority of the timeskip - he'll find perfectly rational reasons to avoid them - eg rescuing refugees etc. At some point though (assuming the foreshadowing is pointing toward the Shalladin outcome) then he'll be forced to confront his feelings. This may be the point at which Kaladin is actually at his most vulnerable - love is probably the most dangerous emotion humans can feel after all - it causes people to react unpredictably and somewhat out of character. Yes I agree. The "journey before destination" is very important We see that the Moash and Amaram see the "ends justify the means" and I suspect (tho I may be projecting) that Adoin feels the same way about Sadeas - a feeling that is reinforced when he sees how his peers react to Sadeas' death. Interestingly, I see the opposite as likely. I think he tries to justify the murder to himself using Dalinar as an excuse, but I don't actually think it was something foremost in his mind when he killed the man. I think he will already have solved any issues in his own mind regarding the murder by the time he finds out about Evi's death (if he ever does) and his lack of remorse will actually be even more obvious. Great point! Bingley is also terribly dull in my opinion. I wouldn't trade places with Jane Bennett for all the tea in China. Welcome Aboard the SS Shalladin. Just curl up on the deck wherever you can find room - its starting to get a bit crowded. I'd offer you a drink, but we're out I'm afraid. I just found some dried ships biscuits in the hold - its the last of the food I'm afraid and they are full of weevils, but at least that means extra protein right? I'm just glad people are enjoying it and it is proving useful for additional discussion. I like your point on choice - Shallan seems to throw her agency away at the end of OB - and she didn't need to. I mean, she could have chosen Adolin properly and then we'd all already be at the bottom of the sea likely tangled in the rigging of the SS Shalladin, a ship of corpses sailing forever on underwater current.... wow - morbid. Anyway, point is, we could have had an ending that sank our ship rather than leaving it becalmed for the next 3 years. Huh - it totally missed that - and yet she definitely felt safe in Kaladin's arms because she slept. As a non-snuggly person, I can't even sleep snuggling with my SO. I get Shallan is more tactile than I am but this takes it a bit far surely? So we know Adolin knows at least a bit of Dalinar's troubled past because he tells Kaladin so when he discussed Amaram with him (after they get out of prison in WOR). I am not sure how much Adolin knows - but he must know some of it? I mean, it seems to be pretty common knowledge that "the Blackthorn" was a crazy killing machine. What worries me, is that if Adolin knows enought to know his father was a monster, then why does he want Dalinar to be "the Blackthorn" so much in tWoK? If he doesn't then of course it implies a very romanticised view of his father , but that is then undermined by his knowing Dalinar has a checkered past. Phew, so now that's over I'd like to add my thoughts to the Adolin discussion. I haven't addressed this point by point because it is a complex subject and I want to try and keep my thoughts on it coherent. Firstly, I want to address something that occurred to me this morning. How much are we each projecting onto Adolin? This is a really important subject - and needs to be dealt with before we can go further with his character analysis. If we fail to recognise this may be an issue, then any analysis is inherently flawed. So why do I say this? Well firstly, I feel Adolin falls into a kind of "uncanny valley" in terms of his portrayal. He gets a lot of screentime from other people but relatively little time as an actual PoV character. Let me put it this way - do you know how many PoV chapters Adolin gets in tWoK for example? I massively overestimated it - he only gets 10 PoV chapters - and he shares every one of those with at least 1 other PoV character - ie Kaladin or Dalinar. This puts Adolin in a unique position in the story - he gets a great deal of page-time for his actions (at times almost equal or even greater than Kaladin) , but vastly less time for his motivations. This makes him ripe for us projecting onto him because we want to explain his actions and without his inner monologue, we have little or no information to go on. I suspect that this explains in part why some people relate to him and others do not - we are projecting different things onto him. Let us look at a specific example - his protection of the whore in tWoK. Why does he do it? Quick answer: We don't know. Long answer: We see this from Kaladin's perspective and the whole episode is coloured by Kaladin's perspective - he is not an unreliable narrator like Shallan, but he still tells things as he sees them, not as they "truly" are. We know the truth is subjective and our PoVs are equally so - and we must remember this is true for all our characters, though some may be more problematic (*cough Shallan *cough) than others. We never see Adolin think about this event. His motivations may have been pure and honourable, or they may have been base, but the crucial thing is we don't know because we don't see them. So I know people will try to draw analogies with other events and say this points to this thought patterns and behaviors, and they will have a point. The problem is that throughout all 3 books, we see relatively little of Adolin's motives. He tends to get "in the moment" PoVs - eg his duels, where his introspection is limited. That means that we have many examples of behaviors that are never explained. We can try but we are working with very limited data. The issue for Adolin's actions is that they are primarily seen through the eyes of people who want to see the best of him. Dalinar is exceptionally proud of Adolin and doesn't see his flaws particulary. Shallan wants to see him in the best light and goes out of her way to make herself like him. Even Kaladin, despite the fairly rocky start, conceded that Adolin is a decent bloke long before he acknowledges it verbally. His view of Adolin also may therefore work in Adolin's favour. This is very different from how the same characters view (eg) Sadeas - who gets almost nothing but negative ideas - even from Dalinar - throughout tWoK and WoR. We might agree he is "bad" because he opposes our heroes but let's be honest, we know even less of his motivations than we do Adolin's. He may yet be redeemed. Unlike other side PoV characters, it is Adolin's onscreen actions that are important rather than his on-screen thoughts. That seems likely to continue. But where we see Renarin's position (i.e. a good guy - definitely trying to be one based on his PoV) - we see Adolin acting in concert with his position within his family and the expectations of him. That doesn't mean he doesn't "think like a good guy" the problem is that we have limited proof of it. Renarin sees his father fail to fight Odium in his vision and pleads for him to fight (and so shows his feelings about it) and he essentially allows Jasnah to kill him (because he thinks she is probably right to) whereas Adolin does what he is told and doesn't question it. As I said, I am not suggesting that Adolin wants to question it - the point is, by not seeing himself question his own actions, we don't know where he stands. The closest we get is his introspection about how to handle Dalinar's "madness" and even then he doesn't tell us much about why he is worried. We get a few hints - that he is worried for Dalinar (understandably) or that he is worried for himself (he doesn't want to be highprince). But we don't see how he reconciles himself to his eventual outcome. Is it selfishness that drives him or selflessness? I don't think we know because we don't see him make the decision. Again, I am not suggesting Adolin's position is "evil". It is more that I think we feel like we know him as well as our 3 MCs - but in fact we don't. So given all this, where do we go from here? I think people are concerned regarding Adolin's arc progression and I just wanted to point out that (a) Sanderson wouldn't invest this much time into a character just to keep him as a light aside - so we will see more, and (b) we actually have limited info regarding where he is now so deciding his progression is difficult. I actually think the "whitespine" may be a very good analogy for Adolin as a result of this. A top predator is not "evil" or "good", it simply "is". Anthropomorphism of an animal tells us more about people than the animal in question. I feel that Adolin is perhaps more neutral than many of us would naturally place him. He has the propensity to go either way (as do we all) and thus is likely to be very important. Like Snape in Happy Potter, his position is unique and may be much more important than he initially appears. I know we can argue that "actions speak louder than words" and I would normally agree, but in a work of literary fiction, we essentially only have words and motivations are vital for truly understanding someone. I, for one, will be re-reading Adolin with this in mind and trying to decide what his PoVs alone can tell me - and try to ignore the bias regarding him that other PoVs inevitably give him. Ok, this post has taken me about 4 hours (on and off) to finish and I'm flagging. I hope I made my final point properly. I wanted to address specific points, but I can't remember them all now so I'm going to leave it for a bit.

Hi all, its late here but I finally got the "essay" up if you want to read it Go here: http://www.evidencebased.info/?page_id=30 and use password: Shard Please be aware that I have only thrown this site up tonight so it is not formatted etc - and its just a wordpress site so I C+Ped in the text so the formatting isn't great but should be legible. There are no comments etc and no contact stuff is real - so please don't use it If you want to comment on it - either do so here (please tag me) or PM me directly. There are probably a few typos etc but the most important thing I'd love from you all is your feedback. Please let me know if you agree/disagree with my interpretations of each piece of evidence, or if you see something in WoR or tWoK that you think should be included. What I'll do is add additional points and post them up on the site as addenda in a few weeks. Please be aware this was written last year, long before we had any OB information (afaik) so don;t expect any of that in it. I am happy to discuss the essay in light of OB information (you'll notice I got some serious predictions wrong for example) but I'd rather leave the essay in the setting of being essentially Pre-OB. I'll do another analysis with OB stuff in it in the future and probably use this essay plus any feedback you give me to write it up. I have only put the password in to reduce traffic. The server I'm using is in the UK and it was running very slowly for me (in Cyprus) so I hope you don't have any trouble using it. If you think anyone else would be interested, feel free to send them the link and password. I will eventually get this site up and running as a proper blog type thing - you know actual pictures etc. Probably a mix of minecraft and Stormlight if I'm honest But if I change the site I'll make sure to keep that page up just in case. I'll also likely be interested in putting up anyone else's analysis in the future if anyone wants it posted. That will be some time off yet though so don't get excited! So just as a final thing, I'm not looking to fight about this. If you want to give me another interpretation of a piece of evidence I will happily include it in the addendum, but I'm not going to debate my conclusion because that was a "feelings" thing. I can't change how writing that essay made me feel at the time. I can change the way I interpret the evidence now and that may change my mind if enough is altered to change my perception of the story as a whole. I want more Adolin evidence in particular because I am worried I missed bits and that has biased my results. Anyway, hope you enjoy. PS I haven't read up the thread tonight (sorry) but I'll answer posts in the morning .

Oh yes I like this. On top of that, perhaps Adolin was a "passive" or "caged" (but coping) whitespine and it is only in "Whitespine Uncaged" that he really gets loose - and therefore dangerous. He had been able to keep a leash on his temper before that with Sadeas (they interact a couple of times). That being said, we don't see him be "dangerous" like he was to Sadeas all the way through OB. Do we think that his lack of remorse will lead to an increased risk of further murders or other reckless behaviors? I'm struggling to see Adolin as a Whitespine in OB - aside from the excellent points that @Dreamstorm raised. Looking at his behaviour is there anything that we can link to the behaviour we might associate with a dangerous top-tier predator? I mean the fashion issues don't really align as far as i can see. He is cuddly with Shallan, he is chummy with Kaladin. etc. Are we thinking that this is his "Prince Adolin" persona (not to be confused with Shallan's alts) and that it simply covers a much nastier aspect to his character? That would make him an unreliable narrator - and I don't know that there is room for 2 - esp as Shallan is a MC. thoughts?

I agree it should probably be dropped - the issue is that we cannot discuss it in terms of evidence because there isn't any. I vote we return to the "Adolin is a whitespine" and if anyone has any thoughts on it? Can we link it to further foreshadowing?

Ha - well that's fair. I'm a bit meh about Adolin myself!

I agree but then from a story perspective it doesn't add any interest. The main arguments in favour of a child within the story seem to be: It is a normal progression after marriage It may provide possible conflict between Adolin and Shallan It may provide internal conflict between Shallan's alts It will help Shallan consolidate Well the argument can be countered Yes.... and ? This is a fantasy setting so "normal" rules don't have to apply. It doesn't work as a "good" argument anyway because it is equally normal for people not to have kids in their first year of marriage. Fine, but then we presumably have one of them not doing a good job of parenting = possible problems for kid. And even if kid is fine, how does this get resolved? children grow up slowly so the problems wont be going anywhere. Fine, but then we have problems for the kid because their mother is struggling to cope. Again, how does this get resolved? Not necessarily - especially if not all the alts are on board - it would cause major intrasystem disruption. And this also causes problems with resolution. And it is a dangerous road for a male author to write a female character who magically gets better from a serious psychological problem because "baby". On top of that, there are plenty of other currently unresolved arcs that may manage each of those goals mentioned above without adding yet another element to the story. Heleran's death, the return of Shallan's brothers, Sadeas' murder, the Maya arc. They are all in the air at the moment - unless we are happy that they will just be dropped in favour of a baby? I just can't see the point of a baby if we are assuming it goes well for the kid, and I am not massively keen on the idea of watching two likeable characters screw up someone else's life just to have an interesting story. And as I said, the inbetweens need exposition to explain why their child rearing is working. I'd rather read more Renarin or Jasnah frankly. Thats a personal preference though and I know others feel differently.

I'm not. I am thinking that we already have limited space for the actual story which we all want to read (ie the handling of the desolation and the KRs/magic usage etc) - and I don't want to see loads of time devoted to an obvious side arc. If Damien's childhood is sufficently complex to lie between your a and b scenarios will have to be given loads of screentime (parental concerns, parental time commitment etc). your two scenarios are the simplest and therefore the easiest to include without taking over the book. If every time we open a Shallan or Adolin chapter and we have to read exposition about time they spent with their child or time they spent worrying about it (thus explaining why the kid is essentially growing up in a safe happy situation with 2 working parents) then we lose time that could be spent on other things that actually change. Once the kid is on the scene those worries/commitments aren't going anywhere - they will be with us for at least the next 2 books. Its realistic, but like I said before, how much realism is too much realism for a fantasy book? Good point. Even tho Kaladin says "you can see she's made her choice" when he says it to Syl. Also, yikes. Not a good sign for Adolin. Interesting that Kaladin has actual scars that he wont let heal but Adolin chooses to scar his own soul by lacking remorse. I am thinking Harry Potter here - healing from horcruxes requires remorse because only that can heal the soul.

So I think he is kind of thinking about this deleted scene then as well. He also tries to push this kind of thought about Shallan away - he never really believes she might actually be considering him so any interactionduring that flight was probably less odd than her behaviour later when she starts being more erratic. She was probably much more like she had been in the chasm and he doesn't dwell on that much either. Also, I was actually joking, I hadn't put that much thought into it!

If she keeps handing the kid off to others to raise it, then can we really say she is fulfilling motherhood? Evi was with Renarin half of each year. She had Adolin with her almost all the time from my understanding. If Shallan has to keep giving the baby to others to look after it, is this actually looking at the very real situation where a woman has to juggle motherhood and a working life? Most real women don't have the "luxury" of letting their kids be raised by someone else - they have to manage their own work and the raising of their children (ideally with the support of their partner, but many women manage without that too). To suggest that we would be getting an interesting take on a working mother in the KR then saying she can just palm the kid off to some nanny negates the idea that we'd be looking at motherhood in a fantasy setting. We wouldn't be - the kid would be dealt with off-screen and Shallan wouldn't need to worry about it. What does that do for the story? What conflicts does it raise? It isn't a realistic portrayal of motherhood for the vast majority of people - both in-world and IRL. No matter what anyone says Prince William and Kate are not raising a normal family - they are royals and thus those kids are getting nannies all the time. And they aren't trying to save the world. If Shallan has a baby, the most interesting way (imo) to take it is for her to take on the primary carer role. This means she has to commit a huge amount of time to her kid. That is normal. She also has a 24/7 commitment to the KR - she is their only known LW at present. And what about her doing stuff for the Ghostbloods? How will they react to her not dealing with Sja-Anat because she's pregnant/nursing? What about her wardship? She can't continue her wardship and her commitments to the KR and have a kid. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Particularly when she also has a mental disorder. And, as I said, if she just gives up care of the kid to someone else, then (from the story perspective) why have it in the first place? Plenty of couples don't have kids in their first year of marriage, so if they don't get pregnant it wouldn't be completely unrealistic. I suppose one other option would be for Adolin to be a working dad, but I am not sure that will be an option from a Vorin perspective. This could be an interesting twist but we have no idea about Adolin's attitudes to parenting. Indeed, I am not sure we know much about his attitudes to all sorts of things that are actually important when starting a life together. It might be interesting to look at a male caregiver but the issue is that if Adolin does it poorly, people will say it is a stereotype and if he does it well then people will resent him for being too perfect. It would be a difficult line to tread imo. Actually it does. Shallan's OSDD is likely a result of pooly formed attachment to her family unit that occurred during her very earliest years. If you don't have stable parental figures around, it massively impacts personality and attachment and thus affects all relationships going forward. Shallan may already have passed on some risk of poor attachment (some personality types may be more prone) so doing this could be very bad for her kid. If they have one person acting as a replacement parent then it can work - but then she won't have a real relationship with her kid. Think Victorian era royalty - there's a reason all the European royal families could essentially sell of their kids to gain political power - they weren't attached to them. I can see it working from a literary perspective, but it would also make me really dislike Shallan if she is prepared to get pregnant (when we have some evidence that thereis some family planning available on Roshar - most people not having huge families being the evidence) but then just gives it all up for her career and doesn't care. I am not sure Sanderson can pull that off and still keep her sympathetic. If she wants to do both roles then she has to embrace both fully to remain sympathetic. If she doesn't think she is ready for motherhood (which is a reasonable stance no matter your age) then she shouldn't have a baby if she wants to focus on other things for now. Not necessarily. If neither parent is regularly involved in the parenting there is neglect - the child might be raised by others in a safe way and be happy and healthy. Thats fine, but then we lose the conflict the child storyline should bring because the true "parents" would be those who raised the kid, not Shallan and Adolin because they might not be around that much. With only a year time-skip the baby would be very small if they had to go elsewhere to do whatever needs to be done. This. Is. Amazing. Really great analysis. I had totally missed how much Adolin is linked to the whitespine. It is fascinating because I think of Kaladin as being more like the chasmfiend in more senses and there are some interesting things we could point to regarding this as well (I'll probably post something on this later if anyone is interested). So what I want to think about first though is what the whitespine represents to Shallan and how they are seen both as creatures that exist in an ecological niche (ie how Shallan the naturalist would see them) and how they are viewed in their anthropomorphic setting (ie how Shallan the artist would see them). So here is a non-exhaustive list of what we know about whitespines: Top predator People go on hunts for them as they are "trophy" kills They are very dangerous They like to predate scavengers as well as other prey They need to go dormant during their lifecycle (and form a crysallis/crystal when they do so). It is unclear whether this is seasonal, age-related, sex-related or part of a lifecyle where they can pupate into something else (last one seems unlikely) They do poorly in captivity (reasons unclear- may be food types, lack of space, prevented from going dormant, others also likely) They are (likely - certainly implied) solitary animals They (probably) have a gemheart - but we have seen no spren associated with them at this point. Can we relate this to Adolin in more thorough ways? Probably tho I expect this to cause some debate Adolin is basically "top" predator now - he is a highprince, but was always top of society (the alethi court is the most ferocious in the world according to Shallan (WoR) Adolin could be considered a "trophy" as he was the most eligible bachelor in Alethkar (even ROshar). I think this is even more true when we see how Shallan objectifies him throughout her narratives in OB and WoR (NB Adolin doesn't objectify her nearly as much - his objectification is pretty much limited to the beginning of their acquaintance) Well Adolin is dangerous - Ialai Sadeas calls him a "weapon" and Torol agrees - saying you rarely get hurt by a weapon you are holding. He wasn't holding Adolin tho (he was a whitespine uncaged after all) Adolin doesn't like hunting (this is a reach I know) Er.....not sure how this might relate? Perhaps his trip to prison was more of a dormancy period than captivity? We haven't seen Adolin in true captivity - he weathered his time in prison fine (Kaladin tells us this) - but then it was essentially entirely optional and he was given access to the outside world via spanreeds etc. He even got his cologne in.... Well Adolin was not good at relationships prior to Shallan - we have yet to see if it will work out because they've only known each other a few months. Not clear how long his previous courtships lasted - it is thought he may have been engaged previosuly (Tyn said so) but have no further confirmation. It seems most of these relationships failed as a result of his actions/boredom. Can't see a link here either unless no spren for whitespine = no spren for Adolin? If we think we can use the whitespine as an allegory for Adolin, I am not sure that Shallan is hugely invested in them. She seems much more fascinated by the chasmfiend but then it was wild/free and the only chasmfiend we see her see is caged and thus not terribly inspiring. She doesn't seem to think of whitespines with quite the same reverence though. Good point. I think it is safe to say he might choose to go there because this is his magnum opus but at the same time it would be a departure from his normal pattern. If he did want to explore it more he might feel more comfortable doing it in the gap between the front and back fives. Great point. I have felt uneasy about Adoli killing Sadeas right from the start but he made me actively dislike him for a moment when he said he was "proud" and that he'd "do it again" - Rock clearly felt awful about killing Amaram, Kaladin killing Szeth was retconned out, Dalinar has taken the responisbility for killing all those people, including Evi but Adolin seems to feel that he isnt responsible. It is very odd. It also feels like he is avoiding responsibility on multiple fronts because he also avoided being king. It isn't analogous to Vivenna either - despite what she said to him. She tried to take resposnibility and couldn't - by the time she was in position to take it, she realised she didn't need to. Adolin didn't have a suitable alternative in mind. Actually, it is a sign of reduced autonomy of women. Even in areas with high infant mortality, provision of contraception that women control (eg the pill) tends to reduce birth rates. Reduced birth rates --> reduced death rates because small populations are less prone to disease spread and each child can get more resources to live and grow. Have a look at Gapminder https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/ Yes I agree. We are supposed to be able to infer something. It isn't like that IRL because even if you could watch inside a real person's head during their wedding, the thoughts will be much less clear, more varied, and you'd get to see the ceremony etc. We didn't see Shallan and Adolin after the wedding - so we only have her pre-wedding thoughts. To assume that they can be pushed away because IRL it is fine to have a moment like that to help yourself get over any nerves (eg like @maxal said - thinking "I look gorgeous" makes you feel good and then look even better - and everyone wants to look good on their wedding day) but you probably had some other feelings either on that day or possibly the next (weddings are stressful so I can see people just being too exhausted to be over the moon initially) - we don't see that from Shallan, and we likely never will. Yes I can definitely see the similarity - their second personas being particularly important as part of their story arc. I was hoping for some kind of name thing but I can't find one - de Valette is the surname of the grandmaster of the Knights of St John (the Hospitallers) who founded Valletta (capital of Malta) but i can find no meaning behind it. Anyone got any ideas? Yes this - and we can see Navani and Hesina deal with working motherhood - I am not sure what Hesina does but we know Navani has a significant role in the court of Urithiru. Not sure this is going to be that important - based on a 10-15 year gap they will all still be in their teens. So far the youngest we have is Shallan - the rest are in their 20s now. Perhaps Gavinor will be old enough to take the crown from Jasnah then, but a new baby born in the 1 year timeskip between OB and SA4 will only be 14-15 years old - and we don't know for certain that the gap is guaranteed because we didn't expect big time gaps within the front 5 but they've come in anyway. On top of that, it means introducing them as clean slate characters because we won't have seen them grow up so they will essentially strangers to us. Childhood - especially as very small children, can't accurately predict adult personality. As a side note that I think fits with this idea from a purely literary perspective - Kaladin looks for "light" - he is attracted to Shallan's "light" and lives off Tien's "light". It fits that Tien and Shallan can therefore both make him smile even when the weather is awful. Obviously not a real situation, but it highlights that his mood is very weather dependent. True - iirc you need persistently low mood for at least 3 weeks for it to be called a recurrence of MDD. And as he definitely has SAD then those instances cant really be counted because they occur due to a different factor -you'd have to see if the low mood lasted beyond the end of the weeping to see if it could be considered a new episode of depression. The memories have been shunted off to Veil and Shallan is blocking them so she wouldn't tell us about them I am not saying I'm right but Shallan is very unreliable so it is totally possible that she is suppressing them and pretending it didn't even happen. We don't see her think about it at all and we don't get anticipation about either episode either. Sorry guys, another long post. Oh, and if we do go down the Shadolin baby route, I will be calling that baby Damien!

Regarding the Sibling - anyone else think that "the parent" that the gate-spren referred to at the TC Oathgate were referring to the Sibling? We know the Sibling is linked to Urithiru, the Oathgates are linked to Urithiru, the God spren can create other spren (Stormfather made Syl for example) and "the parent" lines up with "the sibling" in terms of the language - non-gendered and non-named. Just a thought.

Good video. That being said, it is pretty clear from that video that facts do matter, it is just that you need to present them from the perspective of a common goal. I mean using their vaccine example, vaccines are meant to prevent measles, mumps, rubella, polio etc. That is fact based, not opinion based. It is just that by presenting it as a "we should do this" rather than "you should do this" you can get more parents to agree to vaccinate. No-one will get anywhere by just saying "I think you should just believe my opinion" - we need the evidence to be available to us, or it is very easy to disregard it. That is why I keep asking for in-book quotes and references regarding support for Shadolin, but no-one seems to be helping me out.

It might be worth it - esp if we can find someone to join that has a better understanding of the actual mechanics of the genetics of human colouring. For example, I disagree that there was a chance for Adolin or Renarin to be all blonde on earth - IRL if Dalinar's parents were both Alethi, then chances are he had black/black alleles rather than black/non-expressed colour. That would mean 100% of his children would inherit his black hair. This is true - both his children have his hair but unlike RL, they also have Evi's blonde (likely blonde/blonde alleles). IRL, if Dalinar was black/black then neither of his children could be blonde because their blonde from their mother would be recessive to the black. If Dalinar had (eg) Black/red then he would have a 50% chance of black hair (per child) and a 50% chance of blonde (per child) and a 0% chance of red because red < blonde IRL and blonde <black IRL. If you think a discussion is worth it, then I'm happy to draw up a real-world pedigree based on what we know and post in in a new thread. I'd have thought they also can't really allow their only LW (they don't know about Wit yet) to stop being battle ready. You can't really expect her to go into fighting whilst heavily pregnant - for one thing your centre of balance is really off when you are heavily pregnant. On top of that, medieval child birth comes with its own very real dangers. We also don't know how stormlight affects eg fertility, pregnancy, risks to the foetus etc etc. I'd be inclined to recommend against pregnancy whilst using stormlight for that reason alone if it were IRL. We advise most drugs are stopped during pregnancy for this reason - we simply don't know the potential consequences. Huh, I didn't know this. That's interesting - especially given how much time Lopen spends thinking about marrying the king of Herdaz's daughter. I think Renarin may be asexual so that is why Glys is male? Not sure if there is WoB on that.

So the issue is that Evi's hair does breed true because both her boys have her hair at least in part. Regardless of the statement of whether or not hers is Iri gold (and I agree that it isn't) - we have physical proof that it competes with Alethi black on a even footing. And if red doesn't breed true, then only Adolin's hair would be passed on because it would dominate the red. That leaves us with either a mix of red + black/blonde (depending which comes through) or black or blonde alone if the red is recessive to the black and blonde. It cannot be recessive to one and not the other because those are co-dominant as per the Kholin boys phenotypes. Oh yes I agree, I'm not pointing to any specific evidence that dictates Shallan's likely choice. I am simply stating my preference. The closest I can get to evidence is that Jasnah may not want her ward to go and get pregnant in the middle of her education.

If anyone has read "His Dark Materials" Trilogy by Philip Pullman. I see the human-spren relationship being more like that of a human and their daemon. For this reason I am firmly against Syladin. Also, at no point do we get any romantic feelings about either of them from either of them. If you want to try and win me over, point me to specific pieces of text that support your argument

I'm not sure on the genetics of this - I mean, IRL, red < blonde < brown < black. But Stormlight seems very different in this regard because blonde and black are obviously co-dominant or Adolin wouldn't have bi-coloured hair. I'm by no means an expert on hair colour but afaik whilst we have shades within our own hair colours, we don't have multiple colour bases. When you see very stark highlights (natural ones) they tend to be lighter than the rest because they are essentially a loss of the pigment we use to colour our hair and skin. It could be (for example) a kind of albinism that causes streaks of different coloured hair. I don't think this is the case for Adolin. I am not sure we have any good evidence for what the actual case may be. Most of our cast is "pure Alethi" and those that aren't are generally separated from them on some genetic as well as cultural level. Given that Alethi hair breeds true, and it seems that Rira hair does too, we could assume that Shallan's red might as well (everyone in the Horneater Peaks is redheaded iirc) If we ran with a situation of Mendelian genetics, I'd be more inclined to believe that the kids would be either red, blonde or black depending on which specific genes are dominant/co dominant. If the red is co dominant with the blonde and the black, then I'd say red-blonde or black-red are the most likely outcomes (Adolin cannot pass blonde and black on to a single offspring if Mendelian genetics holds true). I know this was a joke, but I seem to have run with it. Sorry about that. As an aside, I am not in favour of said baby regardless of their hair colour.

So originally it was meant to be 10-15 years : http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1125#36 But As you pointed out that seems to have changed since because it depends where he gets to in terms of overall arc by the end of book 5. I can't find anything recent on this. If it is 15 years, that would make Renarin (a confirmed character) in his late 20s-early 30s, Jasnah in her 50s, Shallan about 32, Kaladin about 35 and Adolin 37. The kids would range from 15-17 years old. I don't think they'd be main characters. Funny, I could have sworn read a WoB that it was slated to be 5-6 years but i cant find it so I must have dreamed it. EDIT: added to reply No. Just....no. Their children would have really weird hair. I mean, red, blonde and black? They wouldn't be able to wear anything because it would clash - Adolin wouldn't stand for that