PapaShard

A lot of this also depends on just who the "Cult of the Returned" were and exactly what their activities comprised. It's reasonable to assume that if they had the resources, they could identify Returned and provide them with breaths (even if their families were not wealthy). At this point, however, we really don't have enough information about them in their historical form.

I think everyone here can agree that there is something else going on with the Returned amnesia other than the trauma of death and Returning - it is simply too selective, and there's the whole "memory suddenly returns when you achieve what you Returned for" thing. Which raises another interesting question - given the fact that what happens to the Returned is clearly supernaturally imposed, are the Five Scholars operating under the same strictures as the "gods"? That is, are they still missing parts or all of their cognitive memories which will suddenly come back when they complete their "assigned" task? Or were they even assigned a task for Returning to begin with? I think IDanielHolm has a good point about the presence of two pairs of siblings among the Five Scholars; it doesn't seem like the sort of thing Brandon would just slip in there as coincidence, especially since there are no other sets of Returned siblings to be seen in the book.

The only issue I have with the "all in the family" angle is that it's more than just two Returned - it's two amnesiacs. Now, granted, it's been a long time since they Returned, and I suppose they could have stitched the flashes of memory back together into something resembling a sibling bond (though anyone who's had to deal with memory loss can tell you that it's not as simple as, "Here's your family, we all love you! Remember us!"). You basically have to re-learn all those relationships, which as I said is a possibility given the amount of time they've been around. What made it interesting for me was the fact that the loss of memory for the Returned was a heavily used plot point, and yet Denth/Shashara and Arsteel/Yesteel had "normal" (as far as we know) sibling relationships while Vasher could't remember his original name. Now, it's entirely possible that the sibling pairs Returned in a family setting...or maybe they didn't. The fact is that we just don't know, and I simply found it curious that Brandon chose to have two sibling pairs among the Five Scholars when (for the rest of the Returned, including Vasher) he had them all dealing with pretty substantial memory loss such that they saw flashes of their past life but couldn't make anything coherent out of it (much less a sibling relationship). Hopefully some of this will be hashed out in the next book.

That would sort of fit with his grungy hobo persona.

Explicitly confirmed by Brandon in the Brandonothology at a B&N session in 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/brandonothology/QA-by-book/warbreaker Also mentioned (I believe) at several points in the annotation. I know he specifies Denth, Vasher, and Shashara, not sure if Arsteel and Yesteel were in there as well.

A guy I knew back in college (1998 or so) loaned me the first couple of books. I had already gotten into fantasy back in middle school thanks to a Dragonlance book my mom (a teacher) had confiscated from one of her students and had lying around in her classroom. Anyhow, once I started, I was hooked! I really liked the eBook covers, and I can't wait for AMoL!

Brandon just posted that the Emperor's Soul ebook will be on the (virtual) shelves this coming Monday!

I'm in! I did a re-read earlier in the year, but fortunately I read quickly and I have them all on my Nook. Should be fun!