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Wise Man's Fear X (SPOILERS)


Elaena Targaryen

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Kvothe has lied, stolen, and murdered people by his own account at this point of the story. He also routinely tells us that whatever his objective, he quickly becomes the best at the endeavor. He associates and mentors a person who threatens another persons life if they don't get Kvothe to tell a story the way that he wants.



How in the world does anyone read that Kvothe is a "Good" character? He is extremely charismatic and likable, but there are certainly more than enough signs to let us know that there are serious issues with him.


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well if you list his actions and strip the context of course it will sound bad. Although i do maintain heavily that when Kvothe takes the girls back to town and visits the doctor and says something to the extent of "i think there's something wrong with me", There's a greater meaning to it than a boy in a bit of a traumatized state. To me it just felt like he was saying something on the edge of his mind for the longest time akin to how different he is from other people.


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No, Kvothe was not "evil", but he was also not a "good" person. If we use characters as benchmarks, he is closer to being Ambrose than being Sim on the personality spectrum. If we are quoting characters from the story, we could also quote Kilvin about doing good things the proper way. Kvothe has/had some serious character issues.



Also, Lanre is still the hero according to Denna and Master Ash. :leaving:


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SS, If i am mistaken, i beg your pardon. I have very often found that to be the case when engaging in similar exchanges of this nature. I am pleased to be wrong, if I am. It is a tiresome exercise.

As for kvothe... Are you saying the fellow who is having his student smash his fence and other similar objects to find a way to assist the unfortunate farmer with a young wife and family who's field has flooded is closer to Ambrose than Simmon?. And that is no new thing.... at the university he barely has two coins to rub together but yet he devotes a considerable amount of his income towards helping the starving homeless girl living in the sewers.

When he does get a bit of money he spends the great majority of it on an old priest who looks after other homeless children and some shop keepers who aided him (wittingly on otherwise) in Tarbean.

We don't know what happened with the king.... all we know is that Kvothe stated everyone he has killed deserved it. Thus far that has held true. We shall have to wait and see if that remains true.

Several people who deserved death were spared by Kvothe. SEE: Ambrose's assassins.

Lanre wanted/wants to destroy the world. Kvothe laments that his actions have played a role in the calamities unfolding all around them. Kvothe is far from perfect but on a morality scale his good deeds far outweigh the bad. (Some of the worst things you guys have come up with amount to stealing a bundle of old rags, as a starving homes child, to buy a bit of bread) He might be vengeful against those who have wronged him but that does not make you a 'bad person'.

Ps. Auri is almost certainly nobility. Missing princess, most like. Rothfuss describes her sitting in a sewer as Dumas describes Anne of Austria at court.

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Well, the most comparable character would perhaps be Sovoy, but yes, personality wise Kvothe is closer to Ambrose than Simmon as I see those two as being the extreme ends. Also, I'm talking about flashback Kvothe. Innkeeper Kvothe/Kote shows flashes of his old personality but also seems more mature.



I really don't want to go over why Kvothe's problems again. See: roughly 10 pages ago. I could come up with more rebuttals and justifications if you want, but we basically won't agree anyway.




It is possible that Lanre is exactly as Skarpi portrayed him, but Denna's version might also have some truth in it. I hope we find out how, when and why he fell in Doors of Stone.

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SotMA,

Your mistake, in my opinion, is failing to recognize Kvothe is tooting his own horn in the story he's telling Chroniciler. You are accepting his story as facf when Kvothe himself states some things are imbellished and we see him force Chroniciler to exclude material he doesn't care for and skip over elements of his "complete" life story he doesn't want to discuss.

Kvothe is an unreliable narrator telling a story from his perspective that may be mostly true but is frequently spun to show him in the most positive light.

As for his kind acts in the frame story. If Pol Pot turns out to be the guy who owns the local Chinese restaraunt and who is doing much philanthropy with his profits does that make him any less culpable for the "Killing Fields"?

We don't know what Kvothe has done and can't properly evaluate him until we know what he has done.

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We don't know what Kvothe has done and can't properly evaluate him until we know what he has done.

I'm not so sure.

I think we've seen enough of Kvothe to ascribe the following characteristics to him:

1. He generally has good intentions

2. He believes that the ends justify the means

Whether a person views him as "good or bad" I think says more about the person evaluating Kvothe than it says about Kvothe.

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So, something in the Slow Regard of Silent Things is relevant in regards to the discussion of how Kvothe lost his powers.



It's been theorized that Shaping involves changing Names in some manner, and that Kvothe's tranformation into Kote is relevant to his power-loss. Yet, we when see Auri Shape, there doesn't seem to be any sort of Naming involved, instead she forces her will on world so that it conforms to her desires. So I'm not sure how important Kvothe's being Kote is in a metaphysical sense.



Of course, I could be misreading and it's not Shaping Auri performs but rather Sympathy since that uses concentration or will-power and what not. But the way it's describes it definitely appears to be Shaping.


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  • 2 weeks later...

had a theory i shared on the kkc reddit about one of the C'Theahs lines. specifically "you wouldn't have a hope of someone taking you seriously until you reached the stormwal" or something to that effect. basically i was wondering about that line and the purpose of it. from what i could see it kind of lent itself to a chicken/egg paradox. Why did the C'thaeh need to lure Kvothe to the Stormwal when he would have probably gone anyway? and if he initially wouldn't of gone, how would it have known to send him there? Personally i believe Kvothe would have gone with Tempi whether or not he thought the Adem knew anything of the chandrian.



So I came to the conclusion that the Cthaeh sabotaged his entire learning experience with the Adem by telling him they had stories of the Chandrian. It effectively caused him to treat the Lethani as a simple mental exercise he'd learn to fake so that he can get the knowledge he wanted. He even viewed 'Spinning Leaf' as a simple parlor trick with no practical value.



It may be a stretch but i'm on my umpteenth re-read and and i cant help but feel its the case. since as soon as Tempi says he needs to go home to the Stormwal, Kvothe is immediately reminded of what the Cthaeh said. now I'm not attempting to contradict myself by saying he went with Tempi only because of the promise of Chandrian stories. I'm saying i think its clear he had already decided to go before he even knew it would help Tempi.



I find this theory would especially fit if the lethani was initially devised as a way to fight against Cthaeh influence but is not really dependent on the theory. Obviously preventing Kvothe from doing right actions in the right way serves its purpose.


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Has anyone postulated the theory that Savoy is a denner addict? Rereading NOTW and struck about Kvothe commenting on how white his teeth are. Plus he has money trouble.

Now I totally forget what happens with Savoy later in this book and WMF so there may be stuff that contradicts the theory.

ETA: also Stanchion is Yllish which I hadn't picked up before. He has the red hair (Lorren's giller mistakes Kvothe for Yllish because of the hair) and the drink he serves to those that play for their pipes is Yllish (per Wil).

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I finally finished WMF today. There is a lot of material I need to weed through in the previous threads, so I still need to get up to date on theories and what not. Personally, I loved it and enjoyed it even more than NOTW. NOTW was excellent, but it took me awhile to get into, although I really enjoyed the 2nd half. Perhaps on a reread I'll feel otherwise.


Some highlights off the top of my head:


-The plum bob sequence was really enjoyable for me. It cracked me up when Kvothe was being brutally honest with Fela, and we also got to see Kvothe really open up about his parents' death.


-Although the bandit chase dragged a bit, wow what a climax! That may be my favorite moment in the series so far. I love how Rothfuss is able to set up these climactic events early in the story, so they make sense to the reader when they finally happen. You're able to understand how Kvothe makes a sympathetic link with the dead body to the other soldiers and uses the arrows as a lightning rod to obliterate the camp.


-Kvothe's time with Felurian was pretty interesting as well. It was nice to get some information about the Fae realm and I especially enjoyed the explanation for the lunar cycle. A wise man views a moonless night with fear indeed!


-The Ademre section dragged at times, but I mostly enjoyed it. Kvothe's test with sword tree was epic.


-Although it got pretty dark, I also really liked the section where Kvothe saves the girls from the Ruh imposters.



ETA: I forgot the scene where Kvothe confronts Devi. That was a really fantastic scene and Devi is a great character. My alar is like the ocean in storm. Wow Devi is a badass. I love how even though Kvothe is shown to be good at most things, Rothfuss is not above having him get shown up by people that are better, like with this and the constant ass kickings he takes in Ademre.



I'm sure there's much more I'm not thinking of but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Overall Kvothe is just a fantastic character and belongs with the likes of the ASOIAF greats IMO. Nice to know I now have a 2nd book, along with TWOW, that I must patiently wait for over the next several years. :bang:


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  • 2 months later...

Hi. I'm a long time reader, and finally made my way through the quiz in order to sign up...

Anyway, something I've noticed but not seen anyone else mention in the previous hundreds of pages, is the interesting connection between

Kvothe

Edema Ruh

Kote

Ademre

Now the letters v and u are the same in some ancient languages (where there is no v) so...

If you remove the v and h from Kvothe (Kote)

and then remove the corresponding u and h in Edema Ruh, you end up with EdemaR which is an anagram of Ademre

This means we have gone from Kvothe of the Edema Ruh to Kote of Ademre

As Kote was stated by Kilvin to mean disaster. Does this mean He is now the "disaster of Ademre". As Kvothe didn't think the Scrael would have made it "this far West yet"and as he thought the mountains would delay or stop them, and as Ademre on the map is the other side of the mountains. Did Kvothe see himself causing the disaster of Ademre through the Scrael?

.....

Abenthy warned Kvothe to be aware of Folly. Was this sword obtained through the above folly?

Kvothe said he took the name Kote for several reasons. Maybe also, for some reason Kvothe who considered himself Ruh to the bone has now lost that belief (he is maybe not as much Ruh as he thought, due to the Lackless link) and so renamed himself Kote of Ademre rather than Kvothe of the Ruh...

The renaming and loss of this means he's losing his abilities of Kvothe.

...

Also, it states in chapters 7 and 8 of NOTW "before I was anyone else, I was one of the Edema Ruh". Is the "was" significant?

In addition it says I was "brought up as Kvothe" not "I was named Kvothe." This is after he lists what others had named him. Does this also mean his true original name wasn't Kvothe?

...

Does anyone else wonder why we don't hear about his father's relatives?

Can't wait till book 3!

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  • 1 month later...

Soooo, I happened upon a KKC reddit page while looking for something else the other day and was reading a bunch of Cthaeh speculation... do any of you decent folk actually buy into the Cthaeh = Selitos theory? I certainly do not.

The Cthaeh discussion made its natural progression to the M. Ash, 'stick by the Maer' debate , which is all well and good, but it got me thinking. Not having thought about KKC since slow regard interest waned, I have something resembling a fresh new perspective on things....

I don't think Bredon could possibly be M. Ash. Aside from my 'gut feeling', there is the following :

-Kvothe meets with Denna in Severen & is asked for court gossip.... he rattles off a few scandalous tales regarding various courtiers. Denna then seems very unimpressed, being ready aware of these things. Bredon couldn't possibly be Ash- he is a prominent middling noble at court. If Denna is familiar with the other high born personages K mentions, surely she's familiar with Bredon as well. Bredon is too much a public figure to have any hope of concealing his identity in Severen.

"But what about the 'stick by the Maer' ??"

-when Cthaeh says that, he begins to laugh saying mortals lack the wit to fully appreciate him. Are you suggesting that the evil curse wielding prescient monster tree is so thoroughly pleased with his own cleverness by referencing Bredon ' s walking stick? That doesn't really require much in the way of wit. I would expect a little bit more from the worst entity in the universe....

Last of alll, Denna says she suspects Ash MAY have some dealings with the Maer.... Bredon doesn't have 'some dealings' with the Maer, he has an apartment in the royal palace.

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-snip for length-

Interesting observations. I think you could be reading too much into it, but it seems logical.

Soooo, I happened upon a KKC reddit page while looking for something else the other day and was reading a bunch of Cthaeh speculation... do any of you decent folk actually buy into the Cthaeh = Selitos theory? I certainly do not.

The Cthaeh discussion made its natural progression to the M. Ash, 'stick by the Maer' debate , which is all well and good, but it got me thinking. Not having thought about KKC since slow regard interest waned, I have something resembling a fresh new perspective on things....

I don't think Bredon could possibly be M. Ash. Aside from my 'gut feeling', there is the following :

-Kvothe meets with Denna in Severen & is asked for court gossip.... he rattles off a few scandalous tales regarding various courtiers. Denna then seems very unimpressed, being ready aware of these things. Bredon couldn't possibly be Ash- he is a prominent middling noble at court. If Denna is familiar with the other high born personages K mentions, surely she's familiar with Bredon as well. Bredon is too much a public figure to have any hope of concealing his identity in Severen.

"But what about the 'stick by the Maer' ??"

-when Cthaeh says that, he begins to laugh saying mortals lack the wit to fully appreciate him. Are you suggesting that the evil curse wielding prescient monster tree is so thoroughly pleased with his own cleverness by referencing Bredon ' s walking stick? That doesn't really require much in the way of wit. I would expect a little bit more from the worst entity in the universe....

Last of alll, Denna says she suspects Ash MAY have some dealings with the Maer.... Bredon doesn't have 'some dealings' with the Maer, he has an apartment in the royal palace.

Cthaeh=Selitos and Bredon=Ash theories are based them being people that have been described that have matching/similar characteristics. Selitos and Ash are both third party accounts and are therefore abstract existences, which means they can be both new characters or characters that have been introduced and have similar characteristics.

From what I remember, the Cthaeh and Selitos are both all seeing, trapped and hate Lanre. There are some details which seem like contradictions but its not that far fetched. So, maybe?

As for Bredon=Ash, I think the main thing is that Kvothe doesn't know who Bredon actually is or really anything about him, just that he is a noble at court. Hence the confusion with the type of ring to summon Bredon.

By the way, here is Jumbles' compilation of theories. Been awhile since I read them though. The Cinder=Ash theory seems compelling too.

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