[Theory] Cause of the Recreance

[dvoraen]

Because of the formatting (I need footnotes for parts of it), I will have to resort to giving a Google Docs link.  It's approaching lengthy, and it's not fully complete, but I got two of the major points out of the way.

 

Secondly, I'm not fully finished with even those two points; I've got the main argument out of the way, but I feel like I'm lacking a few things, so expect the document to evolve over time, including parts III and IV.  If you're really curious, part V (the notes) should be enough to explain what I'm getting at.

 

Link to Rambling: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AZg-dlftdqdBy32egf23Ar5ugtrfFgUYEXk6ljCL1LM/edit?usp=sharing

[Shiranuhi]

Well, first good work with that. 

 

(I want to say that I'm new in this, so there's a high chance that I'm wrong)

 

I always assumed that the breaking of the Oathpact was linked directly to the Recreance. How could the orders keep existing if their leaders had left, had betrayed them? if there would be no longer Desolations? what would be their porpuse? 

 

Now, I will only say that the Heralds deciding to leave the Oathpact falls right in place with each epigraph (I think). Also, the fact that the Radiants left their plate and blades means something. Their spren died but remained in physical form? that seams fishy. Maybe they didn't break their oaths but the act of the Heralds leaving the Oathpact might have, or at least it prompted it. 

 

So, in short I think the matter of "why" the Recreance happened is the breaking of the Oathpact by the Heralds.

 

 

I repeat, I'm just sharing my opinion. And I realise that the idea is simple and that I don't have much to back it up, but well I remember taking this as a fact while reading. 

[Andvari]

I don't doubt that they're related, but I don't think the breaking of the Oathpact was the direct reason for the Recreance, since in the prelude to WoK the Heralds seem to think the Radiants will still be around to protect everyone.

[LloydSev]

I like the thought you put into it, but I believe that you have one fact wrong which may cause you to completely rethink your theory. The Stormfather was not a survivor of the Recreance, or rather that wasn't the thing that tops his list when it came to being a survivor if he was a bonded spren at the time.

 

Honor was shattered; Splintered in the terminology of the shards. The Stormfather is a splinter of Honor, which implies he did not exist until after Odium killed Honor. The Stormfather says he is a sliver of God in Chapter 82 of WoR.

 

I believe that both the Recreance and the Heralds leaving were caused by the same overarcing issue. I believe that when Honor died it set into motion the Heralds betraying the Oathpact. What causes someone who has dedicated millenia to their cause to abruptly change? And not just one, but all of them except the one who had no choice, all on the exact same night in a life that has lasted hundreds of thousands of years. Something changed after Honor was killed, and it caused both the Heralds, and shortly afterward the Knights to break their oaths.

 

It is said in the book that they did not win that war, despite the fact that they survived the desolation.

Edited December 17, 2014 by LloydSev

[RawToast225 he/him]

I do not believe that the Recreance was a bad thing. I think that the Knights as a whole decided that humanity was undeserving of their protection. They all decided at once to give up on the human race because the human race betrayed them, not the other way around. Their spren were probably the ones that convinced the Knights that this was the right thing to do and, essentially, committed suicide. The reason I say this is because of the total unconcern the Knights have in the vision of the Recreance. They just walked away without looking back as if it were the most important thing in the world that they not do so. They were so callous. I interpret this as a denunciation of the rest of the human race.

[hoser he/him]

There is a long-dead thread about the Recreance that may be of interest.  There is good information and speculation even though it predates WoR. 

Well,...

I always assumed that the breaking of the Oathpact was linked directly to the Recreance. How could the orders keep existing if their leaders had left, had betrayed them? if there would be no longer Desolations? what would be their porpuse? 

 

Now, I will only say that the Heralds deciding to leave the Oathpact falls right in place with each epigraph (I think). Also, the fact that the Radiants left their plate and blades means something. Their spren died but remained in physical form? that seams fishy. Maybe they didn't break their oaths but the act of the Heralds leaving the Oathpact might have, or at least it prompted it. 

 

So, in short I think the matter of "why" the Recreance happened is the breaking of the Oathpact by the Heralds....

Zas unearthed a quote which more or less contradicts this notion in this post.  There was also a significant amount of time between when the Heralds packed it in and the Recreance if you credit the following quote from tWoK. 

 

“‘ The book is a copy of a text originally written in the years before the Recreance. However, the illustrations are copied from another text, even older. In fact, some think that picture was drawn only two or three generations after the Heralds departed.’”

Sanderson, Brandon (2010-08-31). The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) (p. 425). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

I find this theory to be wonderfully creative.  While it does explain some things, it also presumes something about the fate of one of the orders that is, as far as I can tell, unsupported and seems to contradict some of the little evidence we do have.  

 

Specifically, the assassination of the Bondsmiths would have meant that only 8 orders could have participated in the Recreance, while one order did not.

[Moogle]

I do not believe that the Recreance was a bad thing. I think that the Knights as a whole decided that humanity was undeserving of their protection. They all decided at once to give up on the human race because the human race betrayed them, not the other way around. Their spren were probably the ones that convinced the Knights that this was the right thing to do and, essentially, committed suicide. The reason I say this is because of the total unconcern the Knights have in the vision of the Recreance. They just walked away without looking back as if it were the most important thing in the world that they not do so. They were so callous. I interpret this as a denunciation of the rest of the human race.

The issue I have with this is that Taravangian holds "the secret that broke the Knights Radiant". That doesn't strike me as callousness, that strikes me that there was something about being a Surgebinder which provoked an existential crisis on their parts. The secret might be something about humanity itself, but that feels a little bit like a stretch to me.

 

I myself think (very uncertainly) that the Surgebinders discovered that they were responsible for the Desolations happening at all, and so gave up. Nalan seems to think this is the case, even though it seems like it's more related to when the Heralds leave Damnation.

[lol_king he/him]

I don't think it is certain that Taravangian holds the secret yet, the epigraph seems to be written in a to-do list sort of way, that Taravangian should hold the secret, it may be needed, but if he already had it there was no need to refer to it as a secret or make that point at all. So it is entirely possible Taravangian has no idea/wrong idea what the secret may be, as he can't divine information, he needs some source and it seems highly unlikely that the radiants told anyone.

Or he may have acquired the secret since then but we still don't know if it can be used to cause another recreance, Taravangian was probably guessing that it can be and at that intelligence he could have problem contemplating that the feelings or emotions of the radiants themselves could be a possible cause.

[Moogle]

I don't think it is certain that Taravangian holds the secret yet, the epigraph seems to be written in a to-do list sort of way

 

I looked it over again, and you're right that it's not certain. I messed up. It's odd, though, that he would encrypt that section of the Diagram if he didn't actually know the secret. How would he plan on learning it if he didn't know how to figure it out when he was at the height of his intelligence? Very odd.

 

Or he may have acquired the secret since then but we still don't know if it can be used to cause another recreance, Taravangian was probably guessing that it can be and at that intelligence he could have problem contemplating that the feelings or emotions of the radiants themselves could be a possible cause.

 

I don't think this is the problem. Taravangian has issues understanding the emotions of others as he grows more intelligent, but he seems to break this hurdle past a certain point when he's intelligent enough. It seems that while he's stupid, he's very intuitive and understands people that way, and as he gets smarter and smarter, that intuition decays... but eventually he grows so smart he doesn't need the intuition to understand people and can just use his gigantic intellect to figure out what they'll do.

 

If Taravangian had issues understanding people's emotions when he wrote the Diagram, there's no way he could have predicted how the civil war in Jah Keved could go, he couldn't predict that helping people from a "plague" in the Purelake would gain him major brownie points, etc.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Moogle

[dvoraen]

I like the thought you put into it, but I believe that you have one fact wrong which may cause you to completely rethink your theory. The Stormfather was not a survivor of the Recreance, or rather that wasn't the thing that tops his list when it came to being a survivor if he was a bonded spren at the time.

 

Honor was shattered; Splintered in the terminology of the shards. The Stormfather is a splinter of Honor, which implies he did not exist until after Odium killed Honor. The Stormfather says he is a sliver of God in Chapter 82 of WoR.

 

I believe that both the Recreance and the Heralds leaving were caused by the same overarcing issue. I believe that when Honor died it set into motion the Heralds betraying the Oathpact. What causes someone who has dedicated millenia to their cause to abruptly change? And not just one, but all of them except the one who had no choice, all on the exact same night in a life that has lasted hundreds of thousands of years. Something changed after Honor was killed, and it caused both the Heralds, and shortly afterward the Knights to break their oaths.

 

It is said in the book that they did not win that war, despite the fact that they survived the desolation.

The Stormfather also says that he bore witness to Odium murdering Honor.  In addition, the Stormfather was also commanded by Honor to bestow the visions on chosen people.  How is it possible, then, that the Stormfather was born/created after Honor's Splintering, if Honor gave the Stormfather the visions which surely required some of the Shard's power?

 

There is a long-dead thread about the Recreance that may be of interest.  There is good information and speculation even though it predates WoR. 

Zas unearthed a quote which more or less contradicts this notion in this post.  There was also a significant amount of time between when the Heralds packed it in and the Recreance if you credit the following quote from tWoK. 

 

 

I find this theory to be wonderfully creative.  While it does explain some things, it also presumes something about the fate of one of the orders that is, as far as I can tell, unsupported and seems to contradict some of the little evidence we do have.  

 

Specifically, the assassination of the Bondsmiths would have meant that only 8 orders could have participated in the Recreance, while one order did not.

I do realize that the numbers game doesn't add up, but I did make a footnote about that.  Specifically: just because there were 1-3ish members of the Bondsmiths doesn't mean that they didn't have initiates that were progressing in their Ideals towards becoming one.  What about those Surgebinders that weren't fully Radiants (hadn't sworn all Five Ideals for their particular order)?  They aren't squires; they're bonded to a Nahel spren, so what would you call them except a member of a given Order, if not necessarily a full member?  What I'm getting at, is they could just as easily have been tarred with the brush as well.

 

A different way to respond to that, is that the Order that seemingly (per the epigraph) betrayed the other nine, made sure to discredit all of them.

 

This all assumes that the epigraphs are 100% factual, of course, and that there isn't a plethora of hearsay involved in the way they were written.

 

On the subject of the Diagram's messages, I have one question: Why is it so insistent that Dalinar be assassinated, at threat of "competition"?  I never got the impression that he was going to end up "King of the World" so much as a beacon for it.  I still personally think the Diagram is a sham in the exact same ways as the Terris prophecies in Mistborn are, for exactly the same reasons.  The best way to get people to do your bidding is to make them believe it's their own idea, and to disguise the source of that idea.  "I wasn't precognitive, I was just really smart!" = Justification for carrying it out, because it "clearly" wasn't predicting the future, despite the general accuracy of the Diagram or informing Taravangian of several subjects (such as the Unmade) that people, including Jasnah, consider folklore.

Edited December 17, 2014 by dvoraen

[Oudeis he/him]

It's odd, though, that he would encrypt that section of the Diagram if he didn't actually know the secret. How would he plan on learning it if he didn't know how to figure it out when he was at the height of his intelligence? Very odd.

 

He mentions at one point that a bunch of sentences had been written on top of one another. To Diagram-Taravangian, it was so obvious how to parse them that it didn't occur to him others might have trouble translating. It's possible that it was simply this. perhaps there was some reason within his own mind why the information would benefit from being written in code, and like the other part, it simply never occurred to him that he was making it harder to understand.

 

Another thought. Taravangian clearly believed the secret was something that could be used to destroy the refounded Knights Radiant. If it were simply, "You're causing the desolation..." well, the desolation is already here. Sticking around will help survive it, and giving up now will only hurt humanity. So, if that is the secret, it's a useless one.

 

I never got the impression that he was going to end up "King of the World" so much as a beacon for it.

 

“You must become king. Of Everything."

 

Source.

[Lord Tavash Shar]

Were also assuming that " Some Wicked thing of Eminence" is not simply a lie that they discovered.

Things like "The Parshmen are evil" or "They are responsible for X" would cause the Human not clairvoyant orders act. If they later discovered that they acted with too much has and not enough facts and killed the innocent by mistake I could see that Breaking the order. Especially if there spren justified it with "You could not have known, You acted with honor at the time."
Humans would still blame themselves for the deaths they caused. They would not see that as having acted with honor. If It was bad enough then Like an Oil spill in the Gulf they would try to make amends and/or abandon the project. In this case Knights radiant orders. 

It could even be as simple as finding out that the Heralds Lied and left.

[dvoraen]

He mentions at one point that a bunch of sentences had been written on top of one another. To Diagram-Taravangian, it was so obvious how to parse them that it didn't occur to him others might have trouble translating. It's possible that it was simply this. perhaps there was some reason within his own mind why the information would benefit from being written in code, and like the other part, it simply never occurred to him that he was making it harder to understand.

 

Another thought. Taravangian clearly believed the secret was something that could be used to destroy the refounded Knights Radiant. If it were simply, "You're causing the desolation..." well, the desolation is already here. Sticking around will help survive it, and giving up now will only hurt humanity. So, if that is the secret, it's a useless one.

 

 

 

 

 

Source.

I was referring to Dalinar as the beacon versus "King of the World."  I wasn't clear.  Sorry.

 

As far as "wicked thing of eminence" is concerned, the term is so ambiguous and vague that it could be almost, dare I say, anything.  I just think that there's evidence supporting it being an event rather than an actual person or object.  "Something happened" that put the Windrunners in a frenzy.  Based on what we know about their Ideals, I figured that it was more that they heard about an event that they would have had a heavy hand in had they been present.

 

To put it in a more real-world sense, think of the massacre at the school reportedly done by a Taliban group.  I can't see the Windrunners not going into collective apoplexy over "discovering" that sort of event happened.  (I think we can agree it would qualify as a "wicked thing of eminence.")  They would certainly "respond immediately and with great consternation" over it, would you not agree?

Edited December 17, 2014 by dvoraen

[Mimiddle04]

From your Google Doc: "So what does Sylphrena have to do with anything?  She’s been very clear with Kaladin that, in the past, she has helped her Knight kill men before, and that it was the right thing to do."

Do you have a page and quote where Syl says she helped HER knight kill someone? When you say her knight do you mean Kaladin or a previous Knight?

[Moogle]

The one thing with all these explanations here is that basically none of them explain how you can get all the Knights - a diverse group of people, some with incredibly contradictory moral values - to mass-murder their best friends. (Spren might be more appropriately somewhere between friend and lover-in-the-platonic-sense but I don't have a word for that.)

 

A good portion (perhaps even half, though at the moment we only know the Windrunners for sure) of these are people who have a morality which is basically "killing sorta-innocents is wrong". The idea of Kaladin killing Syl on purpose, and I think we can all agree that he is probably a decent representative of the Windrunners of the past, is nothing short of laughable to me. And yet, I'm also pretty sure Taravangian's secret could be enough to get him to do it, or at least seriously consider the possibility. Even if Kaladin were responsible for a mass massacre of the listeners and it turned out they were innocent and he was horribly guilty about it, I don't see how that translates into him killing Syl.

 

This has to be big. Looking at my assumptions, I see some avenues that open up to me for speculation:

 

1) That their mere existence causes something so awful that even though they aren't really consequentialists they are forced to abandon their oaths (only thing coming to mind here is the Desolations, and Outis rightly notes that this secret isn't going to be enough to break the orders mid-Desolation... though, maybe the point is not to break the orders themselves, but to "break the orders" as in get the public to hate them, and if they were causing the Desolations, that would also work), or

 

2) Maybe they realized the spren aren't their best friends. The spren themselves are horrible/doing awful things (which gives me mixed feelings). However, even if the spren are all secretly monsters, the Knights' differing morality should mean some orders are less offended by their spren's theoretically horrible actions, so this doesn't quite fit 9/10 of the orders abandoning their oaths. An important thing to note here is that the Radiants left behind their spren's corpses for men to use (the Feverstone Keep vision implies this). There's a difference between killing your best friend and letting people at large play with their corpse, though it could just be that the Knights thought the Blades were too important and needed for Desolations.

 

3) No, the secret isn't that big, the Knights overreacted. (This is unlikely.)

 

(I am currently looking for other options to add to this list)

 

I don't agree with the speculation that it was an event of some sort because Taravangian calls it a secret, and the in-world WoR describes it as "the discovery of some wicked thing of eminence", which while you could argue seems like it might be an event, doesn't give anything useful to Taravangian that he can use.

 

Another important fact which might be worth exploring: the cause of the Recreance is unknown, which suggests the Radiants as a whole thought it would be better off keeping quiet about it, despite the fact that spren could return in the future and this "wicked thing" could arise again. If this horrible thing is enough that the Radiants want to make sure there are no more Radiants in the future, keeping quiet is a bad idea. So, the secret itself must be a bad thing to let out, and what's more it's so bad that the vast majority of Radiants were able to keep quiet about it such that the scholar who wrote in-world WoR didn't know about it. Normally, big groups of people can't keep secrets - someone gets drunk and the spells the beans, for example. There has to be a strong reason the Radiants kept quiet about it.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Moogle

[hoser he/him]

From your Google Doc: "So what does Sylphrena have to do with anything? She’s been very clear with Kaladin that, in the past, she has helped her Knight kill men before, and that it was the right thing to do."

Do you have a page and quote where Syl says she helped HER knight kill someone? When you say her knight do you mean Kaladin or a previous Knight?

As you wish:

... “I thought you didn’t like killing.” “I hate it,” she said, growing more translucent. “But I’ve helped men kill before.” Kaladin froze on the ladder. “What?”“It’s true,” she said. “I can remember it, just faintly.” “How?”“I don’t know.” She grew paler . “I don’t want to talk about it. But it was right to do. I feel it.”

Sanderson, Brandon (2010-08-31). The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) (pp. 604-605). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

Other interesting things about the Recreance:

• The Knights very deliberately left certain invested objects behind in a way that people could get to them: Soulcasters, Plate and Blades.  The healing fabrials and possibly others were not left to people.  Why only certain fabrials?  The Knights could certainly have put the blades and plate somewhere harder to get to.  They could also have escaped.  Why the public display that resulted in near total fatalities?
• The in-world book titled "The Way of Kings" and the dawnchant were preserved at Vanrial.  Was that part of a Radiant plan?
• We have WoB that Honor witnessed the Heralds quitting, but there is a running debate about whether he witnessed the Recreance.  The Recreance vision argues for him witnessing it.  There is an epigraph that seems like a Radiant lamenting about the absence of the "Shard of my soul" which suggests that he could have created the vision using precognition.  Does the Stormfather's upset about the Knights killing their spren mean that he was around at the Recreance?  Does that mean that Honor was splintered already?
• The Knights must have met to communicate about the "wicked thing."  They apparently agreed to the public display we saw.  Their spren would have likely been at these meetings where their deaths were decided.  Did the spren agree, force or disagree with the conclusion? If they disagreed, why is there no record of it?  Syl and Pattern can appear before and communicate w/anybody they want.  If some number of spren had protested the Recreance, it seems like it would have been noted.  The spren could at least have done it to inform the remaining and future Nahel bond spren. 
• Dalinar is a Bondsmith bonded to the Stormfather.  He and Gavilar may have both been somewhat bonded to the Stormfather simultaneously.  Does that mean that the pre-Recreance Bondsmiths were bonded directly to Honor? 
• What communications did the Knights have w/Honor?  Did they know when Honor was splintered?  Did they know that the Heralds lied about winning when they quit?  Did they discuss the Recreance?
• The Knights could have left objects and/or information at Urithiru.  It could be discovered soon.  Nale (assuming he was the one who retrieved his blade) and the Skybreakers (assuming they were the ones who did not participate in the Recreance) could have tampered with or taken anything afterwards. 

Edited December 18, 2014 by hoser

[Mimiddle04]

 

As you wish:

 

 

Thank you.  I don't have electronic versions so it's hard for me to find stuff like that.  I never realized she said "I" I always thought she said "we."  Doesn't Pattern tell Shallan all the spren who bonded Knights before were dead?  Am I remembering wrong or is there another explanation.  It is certainly possible even probable I don't remember right.

[dvoraen]

Thank you.  I don't have electronic versions so it's hard for me to find stuff like that.  I never realized she said "I" I always thought she said "we."  Doesn't Pattern tell Shallan all the spren who bonded Knights before were dead?  Am I remembering wrong or is there another explanation.  It is certainly possible even probable I don't remember right.

Pattern states there were few survivors, and that the Stormfather was one of them*.  The only definitive statement regarding which spren is that of few survivors, and that there were no survivors (of those bonded) among the Cryptics.  I can dig out a specific quote a little later; just got home.

 

* This, too, is one of the major points that makes me wonder how that's possible unless those bonded to him had been killed and/or were dead before the severing of oaths.

 

 

EDIT: Adding quote.

"Not just one people," Pattern said, solemn. "Many. Spren with minds were less plentiful then, and the majorities of several spren peoples were all bonded. There were very few survivors. The one you call Stormfather lived. Some others. The rest, thousands of us, were killed when the event happened. You call it the Recreance."

 

The part in bold is very relevant, as it implies that the Stormfather was a survivor of the Recreance, which, again, I ask how this is possible if the Bondsmiths were included in forswearing their oaths rather than exterminated.

 

I also want to point out one (arguably corner) case: Kaladin's got a lot of skeletons in the closet, yet despite being bound to an honorspren, it was enough to get him to all but break his bond.  Even Syl's guidance -- and I think it's safe to say he at least considers her a companion if not friend -- was not enough to stop this from happening.  It may have worked out in the end, but the point still stands that even a Windrunner could be goaded or manipulated into actions that potentially break the oaths binding the Nahel bond.  Having an honorspren around does not necessarily stop you from violating an oath, which could be all that's needed, no matter how high a regard you hold for your spren.  I'm saying it really could be a simple thing that allows it to be broken.

Edited December 18, 2014 by dvoraen

[Oudeis he/him]

We know that if a Radiant simply dies, the spren will go on. One possible simple explanation is that Sylphrena was Bonded to a man or woman, that Radiant died, and before Syl had the chance to bond another (either she had a mourning period or she simply didn't find someone honorable in time) the Recreance happened.

 

I don't know if this is what happened, but it fits the data as we currently know it. I'd personally accept this answer, but it would of course be awesome if Mr. Sanderson writes some fascinating story which explains what happened in a far more awesome, unique way.

 

Of course, another option is the whole "all spren are one" thing. Maybe she never personally bonded a Knight, but she shares the collective memory, and there's no proper Alethi word to convey the idea of "a thing which i never personally experienced but which i have direct knowledge of because it happened to one part of a collective consciousness of which I am a part."

[LloydSev]

The Stormfather also says that he bore witness to Odium murdering Honor.  In addition, the Stormfather was also commanded by Honor to bestow the visions on chosen people.  How is it possible, then, that the Stormfather was born/created after Honor's Splintering, if Honor gave the Stormfather the visions which surely required some of the Shard's power?

 

This isn't too hard to explain, but it obviously requires more assumptions (though all of this does). The Stormfather was a part of Honor prior to his splintering, so before that took place The Stormfather was Honor (or rather, a part of him). If we assume that, then he would witness his own death, and possibly his own birth. Also, another assumption, but born our of a little knowledge from other books is that the shard and the person wielding it are two separate entities. Tanavast held Honor, and we refer to him as Honor, but without the shard he is just Tanavast. It is possible that after the shard was splintered, that Tanavast lived for a (probably very) short period to give The Stormfather instructions before he ultimately died.

Again, a lot of speculation and assumption, but it's born out of at least the little knowledge we have about how the system works from other books.

 

The quote from Pattern would still support my theory, if we assume that Tanavast died prior to the Recreance.

Edited December 18, 2014 by LloydSev

[hoser he/him]

Building onto Moogle's list, I can see another couple of possibilities or alternate explanations (which I am not sure how to number):

 

4 or 1b) That their non-existence causes something really good, like, say, Odium's defeat or Honor's being reformed. 

 

5 or 2b) There is an inconsistency in the oaths (which would have to be an inconsistency in the first oath, as that is the only oath for Lightweavers).  A dilemma, where one must do something, but all actions lead to violating the oaths. 

 

6 or 3b) The Knights were tricked into quitting (perhaps by a Herald serving Odium). 

 

edit: speelinge

Edited December 18, 2014 by hoser

[Twenty@20 he/him]

Some wicked thing of eminence - rarely has a five word phrase caused so much speculation. On first look the phrase looks like an oxymoron- a thing (not a person) both wicked and eminent. Eminence can also refer to a raised portion of ground (thanks to Google) - perhaps Urithiru. I am going out on a limb here without any textual evidence. Perhaps the conspiracy was to denounce Urithiru as a place of evil or linked to Odium. The Radiants were tricked into believing it by some cleverly planted evidence and felt sullied by association.

 

I wish to be clear that this is only an armchair speculation. So I expect it to be quickly disproved. However on the far fetched hope that some of it turns out to be true I fully reserve the right to gloat to the end of my days.

[dvoraen]

The one thing with all these explanations here is that basically none of them explain how you can get all the Knights - a diverse group of people, some with incredibly contradictory moral values - to mass-murder their best friends. (Spren might be more appropriately somewhere between friend and lover-in-the-platonic-sense but I don't have a word for that.)

 

A good portion (perhaps even half, though at the moment we only know the Windrunners for sure) of these are people who have a morality which is basically "killing sorta-innocents is wrong". The idea of Kaladin killing Syl on purpose, and I think we can all agree that he is probably a decent representative of the Windrunners of the past, is nothing short of laughable to me. And yet, I'm also pretty sure Taravangian's secret could be enough to get him to do it, or at least seriously consider the possibility. Even if Kaladin were responsible for a mass massacre of the listeners and it turned out they were innocent and he was horribly guilty about it, I don't see how that translates into him killing Syl.

 

This has to be big. Looking at my assumptions, I see some avenues that open up to me for speculation:

 

1) That their mere existence causes something so awful that even though they aren't really consequentialists they are forced to abandon their oaths (only thing coming to mind here is the Desolations, and Outis rightly notes that this secret isn't going to be enough to break the orders mid-Desolation... though, maybe the point is not to break the orders themselves, but to "break the orders" as in get the public to hate them, and if they were causing the Desolations, that would also work), or

 

2) Maybe they realized the spren aren't their best friends. The spren themselves are horrible/doing awful things (which gives me mixed feelings). However, even if the spren are all secretly monsters, the Knights' differing morality should mean some orders are less offended by their spren's theoretically horrible actions, so this doesn't quite fit 9/10 of the orders abandoning their oaths. An important thing to note here is that the Radiants left behind their spren's corpses for men to use (the Feverstone Keep vision implies this). There's a difference between killing your best friend and letting people at large play with their corpse, though it could just be that the Knights thought the Blades were too important and needed for Desolations.

 

3) No, the secret isn't that big, the Knights overreacted. (This is unlikely.)

 

(I am currently looking for other options to add to this list)

 

I don't agree with the speculation that it was an event of some sort because Taravangian calls it a secret, and the in-world WoR describes it as "the discovery of some wicked thing of eminence", which while you could argue seems like it might be an event, doesn't give anything useful to Taravangian that he can use.

 

Another important fact which might be worth exploring: the cause of the Recreance is unknown, which suggests the Radiants as a whole thought it would be better off keeping quiet about it, despite the fact that spren could return in the future and this "wicked thing" could arise again. If this horrible thing is enough that the Radiants want to make sure there are no more Radiants in the future, keeping quiet is a bad idea. So, the secret itself must be a bad thing to let out, and what's more it's so bad that the vast majority of Radiants were able to keep quiet about it such that the scholar who wrote in-world WoR didn't know about it. Normally, big groups of people can't keep secrets - someone gets drunk and the spells the beans, for example. There has to be a strong reason the Radiants kept quiet about it.

Belated reply to the bolded part.

 

What if they couldn't keep quiet about it, but weren't necessarily alive to pass it on?

 

 

 

This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at this time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership; but this was only nine of the ten, as one said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine.

I still stand firm on the following rough timeline of this epigraph (if we assume that it's factual and not hearsay):

 

- The Radiants did something that was considered "impudence."

- The "withdrawl" spoke of above was the Radiants disengaging from the intense fighting that was going on at the time.  This was considered an "act of great villainy" and betrayal.

- After the Radiants forswore their oaths, those who felt it a villainous and/or traitorous act slaughtered them for it.  ("About two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership.)

- One of the orders was not among all of this, because they stayed involved.  I still contend that this was the Skybreakers.

- The last order falls out of public eye (and/or goes into seclusion), and the long span of time, the Hierocracy's alterations of history, and hearsay, did their job to bury the event deep to the point perhaps no one knows the truth unless they were directly involved.

 

As to why they wouldn't divulge it: If people by then considered the Radiants traitorous, as "common/present knowledge" states, and you tried to explain why, would you risk the likely lynch mob, assassination, disbelief, and so on?  It could do some good, but I really don't think that the (likely very few) survivors went that route.  The reason for this is that I still claim there has been an undertone of the Radiants losing faith in humanity as a whole, that they didn't want to have anything more to do with being guardians of the world (ref. the Feverstone Keep visions when Dalinar is chasing after the man who is trying to shake him off.  I don't have my copy of The Way of Kings to quote, though.)

Edited December 23, 2014 by dvoraen

[Oudeis he/him]

interesting both that the one order who kept secret somehow injured the Recreanting Orders somehow thereby, and also that there's one order which didn't recreant, kept it secret, but somehow this was well enough known thereafter that the author of Radiance published it widely.

[Moogle]

Belated reply to the bolded part.

 

What if they couldn't keep quiet about it, but weren't necessarily alive to pass it on?

 

This seems unlikely. The Recreance seems to have been pre-planned, as all the orders did it at once, and WoR's author remarks that her Radiant contact wouldn't tell her what it was. They had time before doing the Recreance to share what it was.

 

Keeping it quiet because you know people won't react well might be understandable, but isn't a sufficiently good reason to explain why no Radiants ever spilled the beans and had it recorded. The writer of WoR was clearly interested, and would have been looking for that information.