Fifth Ideal Theory

[maybunny she/her]

Hi everyone! This is my first theory I'm posting, and first time posting here in general, so apologies if I've formatted this weird or anything. I read all of Stormlight last year, and doing my first reread now. I read them all pretty quickly, so I admit I may have missed things that completely invalidate everything I'm about to say.

I've been thinking about what Kaladin's 5th ideal could be, since I'm really positive we'll see it. I know it's been discussed a lot that it could be something similar to the Skybreaker ideal of 'I am the law', and I do agree that it could be something like that. But I've got my tinfoil hat on and am going to take this a step further. What if the 5th ideal somehow allows the radiant to become a spren of their order? If the bond between human and spren has changed the radiant so much by that point that they are able to cross the bridge between physical and cognitive to become a cognitive being if they wish to. I think I've seen the opposite theorized, where the spren can become physical, but I don't believe I've seen this version before. 

If the skybreaker ideal is to "become" the law, perhaps they can become a highspren? Assuming the other orders have similar 5th ideals, maybe Kaladin's fifth would involve being a living embodiment of honor by becoming an honorspren? 

For me, I have two points where I feel this could be tied in/have been foreshadowed.

1. Ishars experiments. I've seen it theorized that he's trying to give spren a physical form for whatever his reasons are. What if he is studying spren that specifically were once human. Possibly to see how human they still are and if he could return one to a physical being again. 

2. Something that stuck out to me in TSM is when Auxiliary says that he also spoke oaths. Maybe i missed it, but I don't think we've seen other references to the radiant spren swearing oaths. Could Auxiliary possibly have been a skybreaker that became a highspren upon swearing their 5th ideal, who then bonded Sigzil?

 

Flaws I can see with this theory:

What happens to the Nahel bond if both spren and radiant are now both spren? Is it considered broken? Is it somehow considered 'completed' and the now-spren radiant is free to bond a human of their own? 

If a now-spren radiant bonded someone, why wouldn't this have been mentioned? The same mechanism that doesn't allow Syl to tell Kaladin what his oaths will be? Maybe it's one of the things they forget when they cross back over into the physical realm?

The recreance - I know we haven't yet learned all the reasoning for the recreance. I had previously thought that whatever the 5th ideals were had a part to play, and I'm not sure how this would fit into that. 

Bondsmiths. This really falls apart with bondsmiths. I have no clue how they would fit into this.

Would be an easy leap to Syladin for some people. Not hating on people who want that, I just...very much do not lol.

This is a total crackpot theory, so I'm sure there are more flaws than just these, but these seem to be the big ones to me.

 

Feel free to explain exactly how wrong everything here is. As I said, I read the entire cosmere minus mistborn last year pretty quickly, so it's very possible I missed tidbits that completely destroy this theory.