Mage of Lirigon

...That's really not how that works. No one said it was. That doesn't change the point I'm making. No legal system will allow unlimited use of force in an altercation. Jasnah was in absolutely no danger from the footpads. You could argue that killing the ones who attacked was fine, mostly because Shallan was also in danger but there's no way killing the runners was OK. Because premeditated murder. And you think the differing ways Jasnah handles people has nothing to do with classism?

You're being pedantic again. Whatever you want to call it, creating a legal loophole to kill people will result in more people being killed. How on Earth would it result in less people being killed? There is no self defense law IRL that allows for unlimited use of force in any altercation. If someone punches you in the stomach and runs away you can't shoot them in the back and claim self defence. Even Stand your Ground laws only allow lethal force when proportion to an imminent threat. Of course we don't know Kharbranth's legal codes but considering they have a policing system, I'd be willing to err on them having something similar. From a moral perspective we'd have to consider her intent which makes what she did even worse. What exactly do you think classism is? He accused him of both.

It's not designed to aid the criminal. It's designed to reduce loss of life in general. A world where you can legally kill anyone that gets into a fight with you is world with a lot of murder I'm talking from a legal perspective. She used an intermediary in the case of Aesudan and she spared Renarin and Fen. On the other hand she felt completely free to discuss and complete her plans of premediated murder right in front of Shallan with no fear of censure. Why? Shallan knowing about her murder plot or the killing the footpads would result in anything happening to her at all, because of the class divide. Lmao what? Of course Elhokar acts like he's better than everyone. There's multiple chapters of Oathbringer where Kaladin bemoans exactly this. Sadeas accuses Dalinar of being a hypocrite for trying to be honourable, because Alethi culture values the appearance of honor more than actually being honourable. That's a riff on Sadeas more than Dalinar. Alethi male culture revolves around fighting as a virtue, so yes, Dalinar Kholin, commonly held to be the greatest living soldier in Alethkar is a good example of Alethi masculinity. The same goes for Jasnah, where Alethi society holds that women be beautiful, intelligent and cultured as their core virtues, Jasnah is a perfect examplar. Shallan brings this up more than once in Way of Kings. her only "flaw" is being an atheist.

The fact that Jasnah is willing to show mercy to nobility before killing them yet acts mercilessly towards plebians by itself casts her actions in that lens. It would be far stranger to me if being born and raised as a princess had no impact on her in those ways. Her callousness to me surely stems from her position at the top of Alethi society. We've certainly seen throughout the series how their society excuses excesses like that. I would find that highly implausible considering her behaviour throughout the series. I mean, he justified himself using the exact opposite logical the comparison doesn't really hold water. Jasnah having some un-Alethi traits or rather traits belonging to Alethi men not women doesn't change how many of her behaviours stem from her upbringing in Alethi society, just like Dalinar picking up female Alethi traits like reading and writing don't detract from many of his behaviours being typically Alethi. The fact that these two similar people who are often described as being so typically Alethi are revealed throughout the stores to have serious faults in their behaviour is Sanderson's way of critiquing Alethi culture as a whole. blockquote widget

Yes they do. There's a reason things like proportional use of force exist. In civilised societies, we don't kill down to the last man anyone who starts a conflict with us. You're only supposed to use enough force as necessary to stop the attack and prevent harm. Jasnah is so much more powerful than the footpads that deadly force is far beyond the pale. Subtext is a thing. Jasnah being so socially above both the footpads and Shallan are a big part of why she feels so comfortable to play judge, jury and executioner with the footpads and allow Shallan to watch.

You're being pedantic. They weren't soldiers repositioning to continue attacking, they're thieves running away because their friend got turned to smoke in front of them. The utterly asymmetrical power balance between them makes killing someone who ran away instead of just leaving them alone or capturing them morally repugnant. No one said she forced them to attack her or that walking around in a set of particular clothes in a particular location is wrong. It also does not change the fact that she engineered the whole situation simply to demonstrate to Shallan the power she had over people of lesser social classes than her (like Shallan) and dressed it up as a lesson in morality.

She did have an obligation not to kill the ones who fled. Pretty much any rules of engagement would agree there. I could accept her having the right to kill the one who attacked her, but the ones who ran away? No. There's a certain classist perspective to this whole affair. Jasnah is not incapable of offering mercy or clemency to defeated foes, so it sticks out that she offerered none to the footpads. There's also the point that the whole reason she did the whole thing was as an object lesson to Shallan, no different than when Dalinar attacked Elhokar. She did it to show Shallan that she could be erased just as easily as the footpads if Jasnah wanted to, just like Dalinar almost killed Elhokar to prove he wouldn't. There's a reason why she and Dalinar are noted to be so alike and both are considered to be the pinnacle of what it means to be Alethi.

The Cosmere was always heading in this direction, you could see it even in say Mistborn, look at how Vin changed how she operated and even commissioned experiments once she learned new truths about Allomancy. Once you have a magic system in use by people, they're going to experiment to focus out how things work, that's simply human nature. It's something you rarely see in fantasy novels and something I appreciate with the Cosmere.

Also as of the end of WaT, there's not much incentive for a spren to have a Nahel bond anymore since they can manifest and live normally in the Physical World without it. Same as above. Inkspren don't like Nahel bonds already. Once they find out they don't really need it anymore, why bother with the risk?

Seems more like they just borrow and integrate tech from other planets a lot.

This book still has that message, in fact I'd say it handles that message even more than earlier books because it asks these questions in a more systemic manner rather than just a personal one. Nowhere in this book does it say that taking oaths probably isn't a good idea, just that doing so blindly and without thinking isn't, which is an important qualifier. The major characters we see renounce oaths did so in line with their own characterization, like Szeth's lifelong inability to make his own decisions, Dalinar's bad habit of authoritarianism, or Sigzil growing into the Knight Radiant he always wanted to be. This is a book written in modern times, so yes, it had modern messages. That didn't start with this book. Dalinar literally came up with a whole new religion more or less for that same purpose. The idea that critical thinking about religion is a modern or liberal idea is quite a take. People have doing this IRL for thousands of years, there's a whole field of study about this, which is practised to some degree by regular believers everyday.

It was like this in those books too, or did you forget about the Heralds and the original Knights Radiant? The story has simply reached a place where it's focusing on things like this. If you really thought this was a story about how simply following rules without thinking about them, you've seriously misread the whole story. Not once did the story say that morality is bad or that you should only do what you want, it's saying you need to really think about your behaviour if you want to be a good and moral behaviour. Again, if you think that dogmatically following any rule is good and examining how the rules were created and how they apply to you is bad, you've really missed the plot. We see in the story how blindly following rules only leads to suffering being perpetuated throughout the generations.

The moral of the story is to think critically about your morals. Any moral system you use without thinking about the context behind it is like a house with a bad foundation. When a disaster happens it's going to collapse and you might get hurt with it. Being a moral person isn't about following a set of rules someone gave you, it's about asking questions about how those rules came about in the first place and how they relate to your life. That's the most practical fashion in which morality can impact people. That's what Sanderson was trying to teach in this novel.

I don't know where you get the idea that Adolin dislikes oaths because he wants a reason to be dishonest. He dislikes oaths because he thinks they're too dogmatic, especially within the context of his personal experience.

I can't even imagine, Shallan was doing so well (relatively) and now she's gonna crack again. I can imagine Chana will not be kind.