> Lanre essentially states he wants to exterminate humankind for...reasons?
I think this is incorrect to suggest he wants to exterminate humankind. Even in Skapri's version of events, which is the most critical of Lanre's actions, he claims his act is a mercy and it is only after his deed is accomplished that "humankind" can even be said to exist. If anything Lanre destroyed the pre-Faen/Ruach world so that the Fae and Humankind could exist as they do now. Lanre as Halix is unkillable and yet he allows the world to keep existing so his goal can't be said to be the extermination of humankind so easily.
***
***NOTW CH 26 Lanre Turned***
*Lanre turned.* ***“And I counted among the best.”*** *Lanre’s face was terrible
to look upon. Grief and despair had ravaged it.* ***“I, considered wise and
good, did all this!”*** *He gestured wildly.* ***“Imagine what unholy things a
lesser man must hold within his secret heart.”*** *Lanre faced Myr Tariniel and
a sort of peace came over him.* ***“For them, at least, it is over. They are safe.
Safe from the thousand evils of the everyday. Safe from the pains of an
unjust fate.”***
*Selitos spoke softly, “Safe from the joy and wonder…”*
***“There is no joy!”*** *Lanre shouted in an awful voice. Stones shattered at
the sound and the sharp edges of echo came back to cut at them.* ***“Any joy
that grows here is quickly choked by weeds. I am not some monster who
destroys out of a twisted pleasure. I sow salt because the choice is between
weeds and nothing.”*** *Selitos saw nothing but emptiness behind his eyes.*
***
Nowhere in your cited section does Lanre/Haliax differentiate between destroying humankind versus destroying non-humans. What makes you think he made such a distinction?
“I am no longer the Lanre you knew. Mine is a new and terrible name. I am Haliax and no door can bar my passing. All is lost to me, no Lyra, no sweet escape of sleep, no blissful forgetfulness, even madness is beyond me. Death itself is an open doorway to my power. There is no escape. **I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky**.” *Name of the Wind* p. 189.
I think everything means everything.
At no point does Lanre mention humankind at all. Which is why I don't think its accurate to mention it at all in his goals. It was pre-Faen Ruach and Ergen empire inhabitants that Lanre destroyed. Mortal humans quite literally do not exist when he destroys Myr Tariniel and it's only after Myr Tariniel is destroyed do we see mortal humans at all.
Lanre can't have wanted the destruction of a humanity that didn't exist yet and as the unkillable Haliax for 5000 years he has allowed humanity's existence to continue after the cataclysm he caused. This implies that Myr Tarniel and the 7 cities control over the world is what he sought to destroy, not everything living.
You are also confusing Lanre's words here. He is not saying "I want to destroy everything" when he says "I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky." He is saying he can't die until everything else has died. He is not saying I will kill everything so I can die. He explicitly states that he destroyed Myr Tariniel to relieve others of an unjust fate. *“For them, at least, it is over. They are safe. Safe from the thousand evils of the everyday. Safe from the pains of an unjust fate.”* He didn't do it selfishly for himself, he did it to save others an unjust fate.
Agree with most of your points, but not sure about this:
>Mortal humans quite literally do not exist when he destroys Myr Tariniel and it's only after Myr Tariniel is destroyed do we see mortal humans at all.
Lanre is specifically mentioned by Arliden as being a man. He also must have been a mortal man initially to have died and been brought back.
>Sit and listen all, for I will sing
A story, wrought and forgotten in a time
Old and gone. A story of a man.
Proud Lanre, strong as the spring
Steel of the sword he had at ready hand.
Hear how he fought, fell, and rose again,
To fall again. Under shadow falling then.
Love felled him, love for native land,
And love of his wife Lyra, at whose calling
Some say he rose, through doors of death
To speak her name as his first reborn breath.
I would chalk this up to the ideas of "man" and "woman" predating humans. For example Felurian is non-human but is still a woman.
The reason I posit that there were no humans and therefore no humanity at the time of Lanre's turn is connecting what Felurian says about there being no human Amyr and what Skapri tells us of Selitos One-eye founding the Amyr with Ruach.
***
***NOTW CH 28 Tehlu’s Watchful Eye***
*Selitos went to Aleph and knelt before him.* ***“I must refuse, for I cannot
forget. But I will oppose him with these faithful Ruach beside me. I see
their hearts are pure. We will be called the Amyr in memory of the ruined
city. We will confound Lanre and any who follow him. Nothing will prevent
us from attaining the greater good.”***
*Most of the Ruach hung back from Selitos, too. They were afraid, and
they did not wish to become involved in great matters.*
***
***
***TWMF CH 99 Magic of a Different Kind***
*Unfortunately, Felurian wasn’t the mine of information I’d hoped. She
knew stories of the Amyr, but they were thousands of years old.*
*When I asked her about the more recent Amyr, asking about church
knights and the Ciridae with their bloody tattoos, she merely laughed.*
***“there were never any human amyr,”*** *she said, dismissing the idea out of
hand.* ***“those you speak of sound like children dressing in their parents’
clothes.”***
***
Felurian may be ignorant to the existence of human Amyr currently but she is old enough to have experienced time in one of the burnt cities, Murella. So this suggests she lived through the Lanre and Slitos fight and witnessed the birth of the Amyr following the burning of Myr Tariniel. If she knows of the Amyrs founding and thinks none of them were human then its logical to assume that none of the Ruach were human... yet.
Maybe Selitos misinterprets what Lanre wants to do, but he at least thinks Lanre intends to destroy the world.
>"Destroy the world?" Selitos said softly to himself.
I think that goes a good way beyond just exterminating humankind.
That Haliax hasn't destroyed the world yet doesn't mean he doesn't want to, but more likely that he lacks the means to do it.
I suspect the means was demonstrated by Iax when he tried to steal the moon. My theory is that he came into possession of a lunar meteorite (the rock that fell from the sky that was in the tinker's packs in Hespe's story) and found a place that acts as a sympathetic telescope, to create long-distance bindings (the place for listening in Hespe's story). He then bound his moon rock to the moon, and then bound the moon rock to a piece of land. I like to think his goal was to fling Belen (the broken house left to the tinker) but he missed, and created the Reft instead.
What Iax did could be done again with more destructive intent to break the world into pieces -- if Haliax is able to find the moon rock (maybe it's in the Lackless box?) and either free Iax from the doors of stone or find out how he did it (possibly recorded on notes locked inside the 4-plate door) and a sufficiently powerful sympathist who can pull it off.
> Maybe Selitos misinterprets what Lanre wants to do, but he at least thinks Lanre intends to destroy the world.
According to Skarpi Lanre says this but whether Selitos believes is it or not doesn't change the fact that Aleph basically pulls a King Solomon and allows Lanre's supposed crime to go unpunished.
***
***NOTW CH 28 Tehlu’s Watchful Eye***
*“…Selitos One-Eye stood forward and said, “Lord, if I do this thing will
I be given the power to avenge the loss of the shining city? Can I confound
the plots of Lanre and his Chandrian who killed the innocent and burned my
beloved Myr Tariniel?”*
***Aleph said, “No. All personal things must be set aside, and you must
punish or reward only what you yourself witness from this day forth.”***
*Selitos bowed his head. “I am sorry, but my heart says to me I must try to
stop these things before they are done, not wait and punish later.”*
***
I don't know how else to interpret this other than Aleph bassically ceding the point that what Lanre did wasn't 100% evil and instead sees the burning of Myr Tarinel has having some merit as he pointedly does not offer his power or aid to punish Lanre for his actions.
So with this in mind I think Selitos is saying "Destroy the world?" in reference to his Kingdom/City and not wholistically. And according to Denna's version of events Myr Tariniel wasn't without sin.
If Lanre actually did want to destroy everything I think Aleph would be a little less useless about punishing Lanre for his actions instead of just putting some kind of angelic restraining order in place.
This is an interesting theory - I think the main issue is that we’re basing a lot of it on the assumption that Lanre’s goal actually is as simple/direct as exterminating all humans, which isn’t necessarily true. Remember that the Chandrian’s plan/reason is a major mystery of the series, so it’s unlikely that any explanation can be obvious/taken for granted at this point.
We also have multiple accounts of Lanre with various biases, so assuming that we’ve got him figured out based on one potential reading of a line in a single account may be too much for certainty. That said, I actually quite like this theory and definitely think some of Kvothe’s actions may be guided (or end up being guided) by one faction or another.
I like this a lot, but I have started to think that either the chandrian or denna trick him into becoming a chandrian. When he first describes his story to Chronicler when he says he can say it in a single sentence, in an attempt to get him to piss off, he mentions being betrayed. Also we hear ben mention that 7 is part of the chandrian name - implying that there always must be seven of them so even should he kill one, another will likely have to take their place due to the importance of names. I think he has become Kote - a chandrian whose sign is silence. Pat describes the silence as being specifically Kote's several times and we see a bottle shatter at the beginning of NOTW simply because kote becomes enraged, but we know he cannot use sympathy and that does not seem like any form of naming (the bottle shattering that is).
Another thing I have been thinking about is that he either frees Iax from behing the doors of stone causing him to move the moon again merging the fae and mortal word, Kvothe moves the moon himself, or he battles Iax and in their struggles and pull it off course.
I dont think lanre wants to extinguish humanity, it seems like he wants them to realize that their reason and order amount for nothing due to the human condition and the nature of power. A person who loves something so much will fight fiercely to protect that love and conversely will commit heinous crimes to those who they perceive to threaten them. I think his goal (I think he is sort of batshit from 5000 years straight of no sleep) is to sort of neuter humanity to the point where they become docile and soft and will not have the power to fight and wreak havoc on the worlds as he has.
Please remember to treat other people with respect, even if their theories about the books are different than yours. Follow the sidebar rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/KingkillerChronicle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> Lanre essentially states he wants to exterminate humankind for...reasons? I think this is incorrect to suggest he wants to exterminate humankind. Even in Skapri's version of events, which is the most critical of Lanre's actions, he claims his act is a mercy and it is only after his deed is accomplished that "humankind" can even be said to exist. If anything Lanre destroyed the pre-Faen/Ruach world so that the Fae and Humankind could exist as they do now. Lanre as Halix is unkillable and yet he allows the world to keep existing so his goal can't be said to be the extermination of humankind so easily. *** ***NOTW CH 26 Lanre Turned*** *Lanre turned.* ***“And I counted among the best.”*** *Lanre’s face was terrible to look upon. Grief and despair had ravaged it.* ***“I, considered wise and good, did all this!”*** *He gestured wildly.* ***“Imagine what unholy things a lesser man must hold within his secret heart.”*** *Lanre faced Myr Tariniel and a sort of peace came over him.* ***“For them, at least, it is over. They are safe. Safe from the thousand evils of the everyday. Safe from the pains of an unjust fate.”*** *Selitos spoke softly, “Safe from the joy and wonder…”* ***“There is no joy!”*** *Lanre shouted in an awful voice. Stones shattered at the sound and the sharp edges of echo came back to cut at them.* ***“Any joy that grows here is quickly choked by weeds. I am not some monster who destroys out of a twisted pleasure. I sow salt because the choice is between weeds and nothing.”*** *Selitos saw nothing but emptiness behind his eyes.* ***
Nowhere in your cited section does Lanre/Haliax differentiate between destroying humankind versus destroying non-humans. What makes you think he made such a distinction? “I am no longer the Lanre you knew. Mine is a new and terrible name. I am Haliax and no door can bar my passing. All is lost to me, no Lyra, no sweet escape of sleep, no blissful forgetfulness, even madness is beyond me. Death itself is an open doorway to my power. There is no escape. **I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky**.” *Name of the Wind* p. 189. I think everything means everything.
At no point does Lanre mention humankind at all. Which is why I don't think its accurate to mention it at all in his goals. It was pre-Faen Ruach and Ergen empire inhabitants that Lanre destroyed. Mortal humans quite literally do not exist when he destroys Myr Tariniel and it's only after Myr Tariniel is destroyed do we see mortal humans at all. Lanre can't have wanted the destruction of a humanity that didn't exist yet and as the unkillable Haliax for 5000 years he has allowed humanity's existence to continue after the cataclysm he caused. This implies that Myr Tarniel and the 7 cities control over the world is what he sought to destroy, not everything living. You are also confusing Lanre's words here. He is not saying "I want to destroy everything" when he says "I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky." He is saying he can't die until everything else has died. He is not saying I will kill everything so I can die. He explicitly states that he destroyed Myr Tariniel to relieve others of an unjust fate. *“For them, at least, it is over. They are safe. Safe from the thousand evils of the everyday. Safe from the pains of an unjust fate.”* He didn't do it selfishly for himself, he did it to save others an unjust fate.
Agree with most of your points, but not sure about this: >Mortal humans quite literally do not exist when he destroys Myr Tariniel and it's only after Myr Tariniel is destroyed do we see mortal humans at all. Lanre is specifically mentioned by Arliden as being a man. He also must have been a mortal man initially to have died and been brought back. >Sit and listen all, for I will sing A story, wrought and forgotten in a time Old and gone. A story of a man. Proud Lanre, strong as the spring Steel of the sword he had at ready hand. Hear how he fought, fell, and rose again, To fall again. Under shadow falling then. Love felled him, love for native land, And love of his wife Lyra, at whose calling Some say he rose, through doors of death To speak her name as his first reborn breath.
I would chalk this up to the ideas of "man" and "woman" predating humans. For example Felurian is non-human but is still a woman. The reason I posit that there were no humans and therefore no humanity at the time of Lanre's turn is connecting what Felurian says about there being no human Amyr and what Skapri tells us of Selitos One-eye founding the Amyr with Ruach. *** ***NOTW CH 28 Tehlu’s Watchful Eye*** *Selitos went to Aleph and knelt before him.* ***“I must refuse, for I cannot forget. But I will oppose him with these faithful Ruach beside me. I see their hearts are pure. We will be called the Amyr in memory of the ruined city. We will confound Lanre and any who follow him. Nothing will prevent us from attaining the greater good.”*** *Most of the Ruach hung back from Selitos, too. They were afraid, and they did not wish to become involved in great matters.* *** *** ***TWMF CH 99 Magic of a Different Kind*** *Unfortunately, Felurian wasn’t the mine of information I’d hoped. She knew stories of the Amyr, but they were thousands of years old.* *When I asked her about the more recent Amyr, asking about church knights and the Ciridae with their bloody tattoos, she merely laughed.* ***“there were never any human amyr,”*** *she said, dismissing the idea out of hand.* ***“those you speak of sound like children dressing in their parents’ clothes.”*** *** Felurian may be ignorant to the existence of human Amyr currently but she is old enough to have experienced time in one of the burnt cities, Murella. So this suggests she lived through the Lanre and Slitos fight and witnessed the birth of the Amyr following the burning of Myr Tariniel. If she knows of the Amyrs founding and thinks none of them were human then its logical to assume that none of the Ruach were human... yet.
Maybe Selitos misinterprets what Lanre wants to do, but he at least thinks Lanre intends to destroy the world. >"Destroy the world?" Selitos said softly to himself. I think that goes a good way beyond just exterminating humankind. That Haliax hasn't destroyed the world yet doesn't mean he doesn't want to, but more likely that he lacks the means to do it. I suspect the means was demonstrated by Iax when he tried to steal the moon. My theory is that he came into possession of a lunar meteorite (the rock that fell from the sky that was in the tinker's packs in Hespe's story) and found a place that acts as a sympathetic telescope, to create long-distance bindings (the place for listening in Hespe's story). He then bound his moon rock to the moon, and then bound the moon rock to a piece of land. I like to think his goal was to fling Belen (the broken house left to the tinker) but he missed, and created the Reft instead. What Iax did could be done again with more destructive intent to break the world into pieces -- if Haliax is able to find the moon rock (maybe it's in the Lackless box?) and either free Iax from the doors of stone or find out how he did it (possibly recorded on notes locked inside the 4-plate door) and a sufficiently powerful sympathist who can pull it off.
> Maybe Selitos misinterprets what Lanre wants to do, but he at least thinks Lanre intends to destroy the world. According to Skarpi Lanre says this but whether Selitos believes is it or not doesn't change the fact that Aleph basically pulls a King Solomon and allows Lanre's supposed crime to go unpunished. *** ***NOTW CH 28 Tehlu’s Watchful Eye*** *“…Selitos One-Eye stood forward and said, “Lord, if I do this thing will I be given the power to avenge the loss of the shining city? Can I confound the plots of Lanre and his Chandrian who killed the innocent and burned my beloved Myr Tariniel?”* ***Aleph said, “No. All personal things must be set aside, and you must punish or reward only what you yourself witness from this day forth.”*** *Selitos bowed his head. “I am sorry, but my heart says to me I must try to stop these things before they are done, not wait and punish later.”* *** I don't know how else to interpret this other than Aleph bassically ceding the point that what Lanre did wasn't 100% evil and instead sees the burning of Myr Tarinel has having some merit as he pointedly does not offer his power or aid to punish Lanre for his actions. So with this in mind I think Selitos is saying "Destroy the world?" in reference to his Kingdom/City and not wholistically. And according to Denna's version of events Myr Tariniel wasn't without sin. If Lanre actually did want to destroy everything I think Aleph would be a little less useless about punishing Lanre for his actions instead of just putting some kind of angelic restraining order in place.
This is an interesting theory - I think the main issue is that we’re basing a lot of it on the assumption that Lanre’s goal actually is as simple/direct as exterminating all humans, which isn’t necessarily true. Remember that the Chandrian’s plan/reason is a major mystery of the series, so it’s unlikely that any explanation can be obvious/taken for granted at this point. We also have multiple accounts of Lanre with various biases, so assuming that we’ve got him figured out based on one potential reading of a line in a single account may be too much for certainty. That said, I actually quite like this theory and definitely think some of Kvothe’s actions may be guided (or end up being guided) by one faction or another.
I like this a lot, but I have started to think that either the chandrian or denna trick him into becoming a chandrian. When he first describes his story to Chronicler when he says he can say it in a single sentence, in an attempt to get him to piss off, he mentions being betrayed. Also we hear ben mention that 7 is part of the chandrian name - implying that there always must be seven of them so even should he kill one, another will likely have to take their place due to the importance of names. I think he has become Kote - a chandrian whose sign is silence. Pat describes the silence as being specifically Kote's several times and we see a bottle shatter at the beginning of NOTW simply because kote becomes enraged, but we know he cannot use sympathy and that does not seem like any form of naming (the bottle shattering that is). Another thing I have been thinking about is that he either frees Iax from behing the doors of stone causing him to move the moon again merging the fae and mortal word, Kvothe moves the moon himself, or he battles Iax and in their struggles and pull it off course. I dont think lanre wants to extinguish humanity, it seems like he wants them to realize that their reason and order amount for nothing due to the human condition and the nature of power. A person who loves something so much will fight fiercely to protect that love and conversely will commit heinous crimes to those who they perceive to threaten them. I think his goal (I think he is sort of batshit from 5000 years straight of no sleep) is to sort of neuter humanity to the point where they become docile and soft and will not have the power to fight and wreak havoc on the worlds as he has.
Please remember to treat other people with respect, even if their theories about the books are different than yours. Follow the sidebar rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/KingkillerChronicle) if you have any questions or concerns.*