Theory: Spren choose people to be Knights who have mental illness

[the_archduke]

This came to me as an epiphany at 3 am this morning after I woke up from a crazy dream where Brandon Sanderson was swearing me in as a Knight Radiant after I won an international writing competition with a LARP finale.  The dream was AWESOME, but don't let its strangeness distract from this theory.

 

I went to the Phoenix signing a week ago, and Brandon read from a work where Investiture is granted through being infected with a disease.   All of Brandon's works have quirky ideas like this, following what he has termed Sanderson's First Law.  http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

 

So this leads us back to the question, what are the circumstances that lead to the Nahel Bond?  Why do Spren choose those that they do?

 

Fact 1: Spren are beings that primarily live in the Cognitive Realm.  

 

    We don't know precisely how this interacts with the rest of the Cosmere, but we will come back to this 

 

Fact 2: We have seen 7 proto-Radiants so far: Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, Renarin, Ym, Jasnah and Lift.

 

   I am not a psychologist, but several of these exhibit signs of serious mental illness.  Anyone with more training or experience feel free to correct the following.

 

     Kaladin: Depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder

 

     Renarin: Epilepsy and Autism Spectrum Disorder

 

     Lift:  Total guess here, but ADHD?

 

     Shallan:  We don't know exactly what is going on here, but she is completely repressing a large number of memories.  Is there a diagnosis for that?

 

     Ym:  Little evidence here as Darkness came for him so quickly.  He was living with the guilt of the murder he participated in so many years back.

 

     Dalinar:  This stumps me. but we will get his flashback at some point.  Maybe he is different as he sought his Spren out, not the other way around.  On the other hand, he does see things that aren't really there...

 

     Jasnah:  She has serious issues with men, organized religion, authority and thinks she can save the world.  She may be right on all counts, but we need to know more to give a better diagnosis.

 

Fact 3: From the back cover, "It is the nature of magic.  A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit.  Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves; they can brace a broken soul, but hey can also widen its fissures".

 

     "The broken soul" is a person suffering from some sort of mental illness.  I hypothesize that the Spren, existing in the Cognitive realm, can somehow sense this brokenness and seek to insert themselves to fix it.  Thus the Nahel bond.

 

     Some Spren seem to be specifically tailored to helping the specific illness.  Syl cheers Kaladin up during his depressive moods, Pattern is trying to get Shallan to stop repressing her memories, etc.

 

Conclusion:  Spren choose people to be Knights who have mental illness

 

So, what does everyone think?

Edited March 23, 2014 by the_archduke

[Edgedancer he/him]

From what we know a broken soul is caused by extreme experiences, both phisical and mental. An example for this would be the beatings on Scardrial to cause snappings. Although, happy events apparently can cause this as well. It´s hard to say just how high this treshold is on Roshar but there is no need for an actuall mental illness instead "only" some kind of trauma.

In conclusion every KR will have some kind of problem but they can recover from it.

[Aleksiel]

Syl told Kal she was drawn to him when he started defending those young experienced boys on the battlefield. Jasnah's issues with religion don't strike me as a sign of a metal problem.

 

I suppose having a mental disorder makes a person prone to break more easily than people without one, but it's the same as those with mental illnesses getting spren. Being broken/having a mental illness is not enough; that's why there are word/truths/whatever that has to be spoken so a surgebinder can progress.

 

(Side note:I'm using illness=disorder and I have no idea if that's correct, but hopefully the meaning is clear enough regardless.)

[Vibronicgoose]

I think the mental problems are irrelevant/symptomatic rather than the key aspect. I like the idea of extreme circumstances 'breaking' the soul, similar to breaking in Mistborn, and those who survive them being beacons to the spren. Not all people who have gone through horrific things attract spren because they also need to live by the 'code' of the spren they attract. Those who have not been broken but live by said 'code' don't have the blazing soul that the others have and so don't attract the spren either.

 

I couldn't think of the right words for what happens to the soul, but i can imagine these events do something to the representation of humans in the cognitive realm?

[bschnebs he/him]

Even with Shallan's book out, we still don't know what caused her "breaking".  I always assumed that it had something to do with the deaths of her mother and later her father.

 

But we learned in her book that she had bonded to Pattern even before she killed them.

[Levian]

I started to wonder about this myself before I got sort of halfway near the book. Then at one point Syl herself confirms it when talking to Kaladin. He says something along the lines of how he can't be a Radiant because he is broken, and Syl tells him that they all were.

 

 

Even with Shallan's book out, we still don't know what caused her "breaking".  I always assumed that it had something to do with the deaths of her mother and later her father.

 

But we learned in her book that she had bonded to Pattern even before she killed them.

 

I was damnation near 100% sure that killing her mother broke her mind. She went mildly insane and repressed those memories so she could function normally. But reading your comment makes me think. She killer her mother with Pattern, so when and how did Pattern first get drawn to her?

 

I'm thinking that Spren are attracted to the people who think or act out one or more of the ideals, but can only bond one of them if they have those "mental cracks". 

Edited March 23, 2014 by Levian

[name_here]

Shallan was able to use Pattern as a Sprenblade, so she was pretty well bonded at the time she killed her mother. I'd put her down as having an anxiety disorder of some form, though, which could predate that incident and come from somewhere else.

 

I don't really agree with diagnosing Renarin as autism spectrum; he's socially awkward but not in the right way so far as I understand it, and doesn't seem to have any of the other symptoms. I don't know if he'd fit any formal diagnosis for a mental illness, but he's high nobility in a warrior culture and can't fight and his respected role models yell at him for trying. He clearly has serious self-esteem issues resulting from that.

 

Dalinar has apparently mellowed out considerably, but used to revel in violence and considered killing his brother over Navani.

 

I don't think Jasnah fits, because she takes being wrong pretty well, really.

[JamHeretic]

I believe we have WoB that Renarin is on the autism spectrum.

 

I disagree with categorizing ASD as "mental illness", though.  Many consider it to be an unusual but not unhealthy neurotype, and you may want to rephrase.  There's a lot of stigma attached to "mental illness" that could upset some people, and detract from the point you're making.

[RShara she/her]

Shallan talks about how she felt sick when her mother and father argued, so I think that even before she killed her mother, there was a fair amount of stress in her life, quite easily enough to break her.

 

Also, birth trauma can cause the breaking, so really no one is exempt from the process

[name_here]

I believe we have WoB that Renarin is on the autism spectrum.

 

I disagree with categorizing ASD as "mental illness", though.  Many consider it to be an unusual but not unhealthy neurotype, and you may want to rephrase.  There's a lot of stigma attached to "mental illness" that could upset some people, and detract from the point you're making.

 

Well, it's officially diagnosed as one. Personally, I feel the problem isn't with categorizing it as a mental illness, but with the stigma attached to mental illnesses. ASD impairs interacting with a majority of people, with attendant consequences for obtaining employment and sustaining friendships, and causes adverse reactions to common sensory stimuli. I don't think it benefits anyone to say those are not problems which we should work to resolve. They may well be caused by atypical chemical balances that cannot be separated from positives that people would like to keep, but there are non-drug methods of helping with the downsides.

 

Personally, I'm not three feet from my prescriptions for two distinct mental illnesses, and am quite happy to have gotten treatment.

[Tarontos he/him]

Jasnah was likely in Sexualy abused, their is some evidence for this, in that  Navani desciribes her as being young and full of questions, and then one day becoming emotionaly distant. This is one of two common out comes for those who are sexualy abused at a youg age, the other becoming hyper sexual.

[Aminar]

I completely agree with the possibility of this. I think it will be more background, but broken and mental illness are often very close to each other in what they mean(but they are not synonomous.)

[Mistdork she/her]

I don't really agree with diagnosing Renarin as autism spectrum; he's socially awkward but not in the right way so far as I understand it, and doesn't seem to have any of the other symptoms. I don't know if he'd fit any formal diagnosis for a mental illness, but he's high nobility in a warrior culture and can't fight and his respected role models yell at him for trying. He clearly has serious self-esteem issues resulting from that.

 

Dalinar has apparently mellowed out considerably, but used to revel in violence and considered killing his brother over Navani.

 

Eh, I think that Dalinar probably 'broke' when he felt he let his brother die, that's always stuck out as a very traumatic event in his life and caused a major shift/change in his character as well...

 

I believe we have WoB that Renarin is on the autism spectrum.

 

I disagree with categorizing ASD as "mental illness", though.  Many consider it to be an unusual but not unhealthy neurotype, and you may want to rephrase.  There's a lot of stigma attached to "mental illness" that could upset some people, and detract from the point you're making.

 

Except that it really would depend on what side of the spectrum a person falls...If someone is too severe, then it would count, but if they're not then it's questionable...Anyways, I think something else might have broke Renarin, he did lose his mother, after all (I'm not sure when...) and considering that, it doesn't mean that his breaking is a direct result of his place on the spectrum. My real point here is that his breaking might be related, but it doesn't have to be...

 

Anyway, it might be that it's not just that these people are broken, but that they also match up to the intent of their spren (an individual spren that can grant the power); best examples we have so far are Syl and Kaladin, and Pattern and Shallan. However, my thinking is that they don't have to have a metal illness, just that they have to have suffered emotional trauma, since there are characters (Jasnah and Dalinar) who don't seem to quite fit the category (in my mind) of being mentally ill. It's possible that Jasnah is the way she is because something happened (and part of her personality is a coping mechanism), but it's also possible that while something happened to break her that it didn't result in an illness, just a change in characters/goals as a result of whatever happened...

 

Though really, why does a strong woman have to be mental to...well...be a strong woman? Seriously, while I can understand being distrustful of men (in general) might be a sign that someone kidnapped Jasnah and did certain things-for example, I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's a possibility-it would explain quite well why she thinks the things she  does about certain types of men without putting blame on her family. Still, the whole "doesn't like men" thing might just be a general fear of being forced to settle and not pursue her research...She would hate that..., and, hey, there's nothing wrong with smart women pursuing other things for then men and babies. Perhaps it's just me, but I hope she stays single. *shrug; might be slightly grumpy today*

[MistLord he/him]

Though really, why does a strong woman have to be mental to...well...be a strong woman? Seriously, while I can understand being distrustful of men (in general) might be a sign that someone kidnapped Jasnah and did certain things-for example, I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's a possibility-it would explain quite well why she thinks the things she  does about certain types of men without putting blame on her family. Still, the whole "doesn't like men" thing might just be a general fear of being forced to settle and not pursue her research...She would hate that..., and, hey, there's nothing wrong with smart women pursuing other things for then men and babies. Perhaps it's just me, but I hope she stays single. *shrug; might be slightly grumpy today*

She's mental because she killed three men in cold blood, not because she's a strong woman. From the way she spoke of the event hints strongly at some form of trauma got to do with men abusing her, and now that I think of it, Navani's own recollection of Jasnah being full of questions one day and cold and withdrawn the next fits completely. 

 

While I feel the theory itself presents strong merit and evidence, I just feel that it would be too niche, and that I agree that if anything the Knight must have experienced an extreme event of a kind that would help him bond a spren, similar to Allomancy's Snapping. It would be kind of cool to realise that these noble Knights are simply broken souls trying to do what's right however, it has a poetic sadness to it.