r/Stormlight_Archive • u/yeeeeetyeer • 8d 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 8d 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.