On Shallan’s Trauma

The source of Shallan’s trauma appears to be the night of her mother’s death. However, she had already bonded Pattern at that point—and it’s impossible to bond a spren without already having experienced some degree of trauma already.

So what did it? One answer lies in the vitriol with which Shallan’s mother spoke of her. I find it unlikely that Brightness Davar got caught up in the Skybreakers’ fervor, seeing as they’re not very fervent people. They don’t seem to hate Radiants the way Shallan’s mother did. Might this have been some other, displaced prejudice on her mother’s part? What does it really mean that Shallan was one of “them”?

Consider the following possibility: Her mother’s protestations grated on Shallan. Her father wasn’t as nearly mean, but neither did he believe her. The certainty that she would remain trapped forever, never allowed to be who she truly was, weighed heavily upon Shallan’s soul. She often cried herself to sleep.

It was with horror that Brightlady Davar watched her youngest child utter those accursed, unforgettable words. Her husband took the transformation as a sign from the Almighty; almost immediately he bent to the child’s wishes. But she could not. She sought out an explanation, told everyone who would listen what had happened. Few believed her, but one man did; he called himself a Skybreaker.

He validated her anxieties. This was no act of providence, he claimed; her child was a Surgebinder, someone who tampered in dangerous magics and who, for the greater good, must die. Her Brightness nearly wept for joy. The two began to plot the child’s death, for she could not, would not, grapple with the reality of the situation—that in a flash of Stormlight, the fifth Davar son was a son no longer.

In this essay I will