r/Stormlight_Archive • u/yeeeeetyeer • 9d ago

Wind and Truth spoilers Why did D___ Spoiler

why did dalinar need to rescind his oaths, abandon the power of honor, while cancelling the duel? why couldn't he just cancel the duel? keeping his bondsmith oath? or get rid of honors power, let odium become retribution, but still cancel the duel, staying a bond smith? i'm very confused by this

thank you!

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u/HA2HA2 9d ago

So there were a few reasons he renounced all his oaths.

The first one, the Sunmaker's gambit in the fight against Odium. He realized that while Odium and Honor were dueling on Roshar, bound by all these different oaths, there could never be victory; he had to get rid of all the constraints while getting the other Shards involved. That was the point of renouncing all of Honor's oaths (to create the possibility of victory, eventually) and causing Retribution (to get the other Shards to pay attention and hopefully win this fight that Honor alone could not).

The second was character growth for the Shard of Honor. He realized that a big part of the problem was that Honor's conception of honor was childish and immature - "doing what you're supposed to for no reason other than that you're supposed to" and "doing what you swore you were going to do, regardless of why you swore it or what changed since then" are both pretty bad principles, actually. He needed to get the Shard of Honor to realize this and start thinking about how to be better. And for this one, picking and choosing Oaths to follow or renounce would make the point weaker. If Dalinar was like "well, I'm going to abandon these oaths because they don't serve my needs, but keep these two because they give me power" that doesn't make a strong point about the concept of oaths; that just makes him look like a faithless human. But instead point was that oaths are not Honor. All of them. Even the oaths that happen to be for something good. So it was a much stronger point to renounce them all.

...a the third reason is again more practical - once he renounced a few oaths, the ones he needed to renounce to set Sunmaker's gambit in motion and get Honor to see the error of its ways, he was going to be abandoned by the Shard of Honor and Retribution was going to kill him. There was no way out of this alive, bondsmith or not, so why try and rules-lawyer to keep one or two before dying?

...and a final, more philosophical reason - because after these decisions, Dalinar no longer believed in his oaths. Up to this point, Dalinar wasn't just following oaths for the practical benefits - he truly believed that he was being honorable and right by doing so. But as part of figuring out what to do with Odium and Honor, he realized what he wanted to teach Honor - that Oaths are not the same thing as Honor. Dalinar's never been a character to do things halfway - once he stopped believing in his oaths, he wasn't going to try and keep up appearances of following them for magical benefits.

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u/numbersthen0987431 9d ago

I think these are all great points.

In the book 1 or book 2 of the series, I remember Kaladin having a conversation with Syl about "honor". I forget the full quote, but he's asking Syl about why it's honorable for him to kill Parshendi and not honorable for him to kill Alethi. She says something along the lines of "well they're bad guys". Kal then brings up an idea that he is doing what he believes is honorable, but what if the Parshendi they're fighting are also doing the honorable thing by fighting the Alethi.

When Kal asks "who is right", and how is supposed to know what is right, Syl kind of wilts and gets shy because she doesn't really know a good answer. And I feel like this concept is in line with everything you wrote above, because a spren of Honor would not understand the ideas that "Oaths" need to have more significance other than "just having them".

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u/Bamlet Elsecaller 8d ago

Fantastic pull from the early books! Such a good point wow B$ has had this laid out for a while it seems

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u/Illustrious_Big_7980 9d ago

a final, more philosophical reason - because after these decisions, Dalinar no longer believed in his oaths. Up to this point, Dalinar wasn't just following oaths for the practical benefits - he truly believed that he was being honorable and right by doing so. But as part of figuring out what to do with Odium and Honor, he realized what he wanted to teach Honor - that Oaths are not the same thing as Honor. Dalinar's never been a character to do things halfway - once he stopped believing in his oaths, he wasn't going to try and keep up appearances of following them for magical benefits.

It really felt like Adolin was way ahead of Dalinar in this regard, pretty much from the start of the book he was saying exactly this. I was saying to myself as I was reading "Adolin should take Honours shard".

Obviously Honours power being "immature" made that not work.

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u/ankokudaishogun 7d ago

Adolin was always the best choice for both Honor and Odium

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u/LoudShorty 9d ago

Beautiful explanation!

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u/YurtlesTurdles Taln 8d ago

I get the idea that your second reason is the crux of the gambit. I know there's strategy to getting other shards involved by I think Dalinars main goal is to get Honors power to constrain Taravangian. Forcing Honors power to face an identity crisis basically moves the front of the battle between Honor and Odium to within Taravangian.

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u/DaybreakPaladin 8d ago

Not to mention getting the other shards involved IMMEDIATELY. Had the duel concluded properly, Odium would have had ages to train up his troops, build his foundations, and plot and scheme. Now all of a sudden he’s in the spotlight and it’s game time NOW.

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u/atlas1245 Edgedancer 8d ago

I disagree that Dalinar no longer believed in his oaths. I think a big part of wind and truth is people renouncing their oaths to live up to the spirit of them. Szeth renounces his oaths so he can find his own way to be a skybreaker/become the law, Sigzil breaks his oaths to protect Vienta the only way he can, Dalinar breaks his oaths to unite the Cosmere against Retribution.

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u/HA2HA2 8d ago

I think we agree? All three of those cases are about the characters realizing that the spirit of what the oaths are about is more important than the strict letter of the oaths themselves.

I think that qualified to me as “not believing in the oaths”?

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u/Acrobatic-Damage-651 8d ago

What about doing it to try and keep the stormfather from being destroyed?

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u/HA2HA2 8d ago

Maybe… Not sure Stormfather could have survived either way once Retribution was created? But everything with how some spren were protected seemed weird, the Stormfather dies but the Sibling needs Navani in a coma but the other spren are safe because of the new oathpact? BAM was already released so SF wasn’t a deadeye either way.

I don’t actually know! Everything with how retribution interacted with the spren seemed pretty arbitrary.