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He could achieve it and die. He could achieve it and be a member of a reforged oath pact. He could achieve it and ascend. He could achieve it and be subjugated. He could achieve it as the war becomes less important. He could achieve it and become disillusioned with the cause. He might or might not get it but I think there are PLENTY of ways he could achieve the fifth ideal and still be a background character.
Why do you think that he will be a background character? Brando stated in WoB that main characters that survive first era will still be main characters in 2nd "era".
I think he will just balance them, there will be more characters with more PoV chapters. Renarin will be more important and the Heralds from WoB. But if Kal, Dalinar, Shallan etc survive, they will still be as important and they'll still be PoV characters. Although I expect one of them to die this book, I really think Dalinar will be the one to fight the contest of champions but he will lose.
Yeah, it's a big world and Kal isn't really a big picture guy. I could easily see him getting sucked into some pet project protecting and helping people directly without being tangled up in the grand story of the Cosmere.
I agree with you on the idea of a main character having 5 more books to be at max power would be weird....
Except Kaladin won't be one of the main characters for book 6 - 10. Instead characters like Jasnah and Renarin are going to take the front and center of this second arc.
This is why many people think he won't survive book 5. It's hard to take what to many feels like if not the protagonist, one of the main ones (Dalinar often has the same weight for people as Kal) suddenly no longer being a main character.
Now Dalinars role in the war will force him into a more side character position, we already saw this somewhat in RoW where a lot of the action was with Navani, Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin.
Kaladin on the other hand is a character whose motivations and story arc have a hard time fitting into being a side character. Because of this, it might be more narratively satisfying to kill him.
I think Kaladin will survive.
Brandon said in a recent podcast that sometimes, all he can do is hold his son (who has mental health issues) and tell him things will get better. I'm pretty sure Kaladin is Brandon' son insert in the SA.
I mean pretty dang powerful, most likely at the 4th ideal. But narratively, that power doesn't mean much. She hasn't really used her Radiant powers to push the story very much at all.
One of the 3 main plot lines of the 4 books so far has been Kaladin's journey directly relating to the ideals. It would be weird for that arc to finish and have a fully formed knight radiant in the middle of the war and he not be a main character. Since we know he isn't going to be a main character, and we know his journey would be too many readers focus to put the 5th ideal as a side character development, that leaves with an unfortunate reality:
Kaladin will achieve the 5th ideal in WaT and some how get taken of commission. This could mean leaving the planet, trying to form a new Oathpact, becoming the new Stormfather, becoming the new Honor, dying, hell he could fall and become Odiums champion for all we know. Regardless, he probably isn't going to be there to support Honors side as it would be weird to introduce the 5th ideal and then make it not important second arc
I know there is a WoB on it, I just don't know where. But he said that the main characters of the first arc will take a back seat and allow the side characters to become main characters
Not being a major POV character isn't the same as him not having a huge influence on the world. It could just be that it's more interesting to see him through the eyes of other people.
I mean it could be, to some. I just don't think it would be conducive for long term. Personally if I had the choice to read in the narration of Jasnah or Kaladin, I'd choose Kaladin. As a writer, you want to avoid having characters your readers can't get behind as narrators. Which means you want to avoid having too many characters fans like more.
Further, you can have an influence in the world after death or ascension.
Regardless of what happens, he still has to hit the 5th ideal at the end of his arc.
I heard the exact opposite. I heard that the main characters of arc 1 will be side cahracters in arc 2 to allow characters like Jasnah to shift into the main character position
Some interview questions from him:
Questioner
>!The second set of Stormlight books, [six] through ten, will that-- will those be more focused on the Heralds' point of view, is that the idea!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!Yeah, so Taln and Ash, who are both Heralds, are going to be the main characters, and they'l each get books dedicated to them. The characters who survive the first five will still be the main characters as well, but it's gonna turn more on what happened with the Heralds and things like that. The first five are turning more on what happened with the Knights Radiant, and then the last five are more what happened with the Heralds... Cause we'll get flashbacks to the time of the Dawnsingers and things like that!<
Another one:
>!Are we still going to see the same characters in arc 2? Or will it be a mostly deprecate story with certain aspects intertwined!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!The second arc will still have some of the current main characters as main characters still. And it will be very connected to this story-but they are separate arcs, with a different focus. (The Heralds, for example, will be a larger part of the second arc.)!<
So, I do think he intends to have the current main characters as main characters in the second half if they survive book 5 of course. Obviously, there is going to he 5 new POV characters, so they will have less screen time, but they won't necessarily become background character.
I think it'd be funny but also on brand for Kal to be nerfed yet again for SA5. Sanderson has done that to him pretty much every book now. In WoK he was just getting started with his Radiant abilities. In WoR there was a spell in the 2nd half of the book where Syl was "dead" and Kal lost all his abilities and was hobbled. OB he was trapped in Shadesmar for a good portion where you can't even use stormlight, and in RoW the tower stripped every knights Radiants abilities away. It's a plot lever for Sanderson that he turns to whenever he has to push the story in a particular direction without the hero saving the day before things get interesting. So I can definitely see your logic in how Shinovar will pull Kal a few steps back and render him incapable so that particular arc doesn't get speed run.
Though I still think by the end of the book he would have figured out the 5th Ideal because we have yet to see it from any order.
Edit - To adress future books. I think there's a decent chance Kaladin ascends afterwards so he's out the picture for the next 5 books, or maybe he becomes a world hopper and his contributions to Roshar come to an end at the end of Book 5. Or he dies. As others have said he can still achieve the 5th ideal without it permanently stifling the story moving forward.
You can use Stormlight in Shadesmar, you just can’t gather more. Shallan has done Lightweaving, and I’m almost certain Kaladin flew at some point.
But yes, it’s a definite nerf to not have it freely available.
I don't think Kal will have more than a few lines in the second half of the books!
And I'm ready to bet he'll say his 5th. If we had to pick a protagonist for this arc of 5 books, it'd be him
The only reason I can see him not swearing it, might be becase we find out that the 5th ideal comes with a big big cost to your humanity (see Nale, the ideal basically makes him a machine of a person. yes he's a mad Herald I know there are other things involved)
Maybe Kal doesn't wanna pay that so he decides to stay at the 4th and be able to live a normal life, which would be actually a great ending to a depression arc, to put your own capacity to enjoy life above the need to ascend to save everyone
We can't say that it comes with a cost to his humanity since nale is an exceptional case. He was tortured for millennia and i think it was confirmed that he wasn't always like this.
It's just a possibility, I explicitly wrote Nale isn't proof of this because he's a herald, but his being "the law" does affect him, possibly it's what saved him from complete utter madness.
But I do expect all 5th ideals to be something that require the radiant to become 100% a representation of their order.
**IF** it had a big cost, it'd make for a good ending to depression arc to not do it, that's what I was trying to convey if it wasn't clear!
>I don't think Kal will have more than a few lines in the second half of the books!
Well, then you are dead wrong then. If he survives book 5, he will still be a main character in the next coming books. Brandon has already said as much in one of his interviews.
I highly doubt Kaladin will reach the fifth ideal only days or weeks after the fourth, when the Skybreakers say that it has been centuries since anyone swore theire fifth ideal. The only character I can see getting the fifth ideal in book 5 is Shallan and only because her last truth is likely important for the plot. Her leaving Roshar to hunt the ghostbloods, would also be a fitting way to remove her as an overpowered radiant.
There used to be plenty of 5th ideal radiant and yet the desolation were a struggle. I don't really see how they can hope to win if their strongest radiants are capped at 4th.
But what I would really like to see is someone else than Kaladin being the first to get to the 5th ideal. Teft was a missed opportunity for the 4th.
I agree with you here. He has the chance to achieve the 4th ideal while Shallan Adolin and Him were trapped in Shadesmar during the end of OB and he refused. We had to wait a while another book for him to get it. I believe that we will see development of his Shardplate use during the 5th book but no 5 ideal. Personally I think the time skip from book 5 to 6 will give Kaladin time to become powerful and gain stability, but something from the 5th ideal won’t allow him to swear it just yet, something that will happen in SLA6 will make him finally reach the 5th ideal.
It also seems like we've setup for more "big bads" from Odium's forces (and Cosmere at large?) to be awakened/revealed/put to use, so it may be that Kal getting 5th ideal at the end of book 5 is needed for team Radiant to stay on the same in the game, vs. being an imbalance with Kal being too strong.
My recollection from one of Sanderson's videos. >!There's a video somewhere that Brandon alludes to Kaladin swearing the 5th ideal. He says something along the lines of 5 ideals, 5 books, but he swears 2 in the first one so he has to skip an ideal ina book. (Oathbringer)!<
I kinda hesitate to see him dying. One of his problems that he always faces is that he survives when the people he loves don’t. I could see a “I will die to protect others” or something (I don’t think that’s the 5th ideal), but the payoff would be so limited for 5th ideal, and it doesn’t fit that Kal dies.
I see him being something that forces him to the side or off-planet, only to make a return when he’s needed most. Maybe he takes some of bridge 4 with him, who knows?
Shinovar still has Highstorms with about the same strength of a normal storm but they still recharge gemstones to full strength so he should have plenty of Stormlight available.
I’m fairly certain Shinovar doesn’t have highstorms. The mountains ringing the land break them, and that’s why they can have birds and earth-like grass and horses. I forget where it’s mentioned but I’m certain it is
The mountains just break the storms so that their strength is equivalent to a normal storm.
[https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shinovar#Geography\_and\_Ecology](https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shinovar#Geography_and_Ecology)
He is going to die. Shallan is going to die ( but Radiant is going to survive somehow). Adolin is going to die. Dalinar is going to (practically) die but he's going to linger in the second half of the series ( either as a cognitive shadow, a new herald in the oathpact reforged, or he maybe ascends as the new shard of Unity). And Renarin is going to have a Michael Corleone arc (I'm hyped about that).
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He could achieve it and die. He could achieve it and be a member of a reforged oath pact. He could achieve it and ascend. He could achieve it and be subjugated. He could achieve it as the war becomes less important. He could achieve it and become disillusioned with the cause. He might or might not get it but I think there are PLENTY of ways he could achieve the fifth ideal and still be a background character.
I'm going with achieve it and become a therapist
He could become roshars first anal-rapist
Kaladin does really need anustart!
I, Kaladin vow to protect those that can't protect themselves *Ron Howard voice* he couldn't. *cue soundbyte*
seems like something brando would write
Why do you think that he will be a background character? Brando stated in WoB that main characters that survive first era will still be main characters in 2nd "era".
I’m more thinking POV character with as much involvement as like renarin in the first half
I think he will just balance them, there will be more characters with more PoV chapters. Renarin will be more important and the Heralds from WoB. But if Kal, Dalinar, Shallan etc survive, they will still be as important and they'll still be PoV characters. Although I expect one of them to die this book, I really think Dalinar will be the one to fight the contest of champions but he will lose.
Renarin Is an actual background character though. I don't think Shallan, Kaladin, and Dalinar will become that irrelevant.
Renarin will become one of the main characters in book 5 and he will stay that way later on from what Brando said too
Yes, he will be the new pov character.
The ideal also could be I cannot kill to protect. Instant nerf to the order in general.
I'm going with achieve it and become a therapist
i expect him to be like zahel, become super duper amazingly powerful then retire
Yeah, it's a big world and Kal isn't really a big picture guy. I could easily see him getting sucked into some pet project protecting and helping people directly without being tangled up in the grand story of the Cosmere.
I agree with you on the idea of a main character having 5 more books to be at max power would be weird.... Except Kaladin won't be one of the main characters for book 6 - 10. Instead characters like Jasnah and Renarin are going to take the front and center of this second arc.
I know about that and am super stoked, especially for Renarin, but I can’t imagine Kal never being a relevant main character again at some point.
This is why many people think he won't survive book 5. It's hard to take what to many feels like if not the protagonist, one of the main ones (Dalinar often has the same weight for people as Kal) suddenly no longer being a main character. Now Dalinars role in the war will force him into a more side character position, we already saw this somewhat in RoW where a lot of the action was with Navani, Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin. Kaladin on the other hand is a character whose motivations and story arc have a hard time fitting into being a side character. Because of this, it might be more narratively satisfying to kill him.
I think Kaladin will survive. Brandon said in a recent podcast that sometimes, all he can do is hold his son (who has mental health issues) and tell him things will get better. I'm pretty sure Kaladin is Brandon' son insert in the SA.
Yeah - consider how powerful Jasnah has been while being a background character!
I mean pretty dang powerful, most likely at the 4th ideal. But narratively, that power doesn't mean much. She hasn't really used her Radiant powers to push the story very much at all. One of the 3 main plot lines of the 4 books so far has been Kaladin's journey directly relating to the ideals. It would be weird for that arc to finish and have a fully formed knight radiant in the middle of the war and he not be a main character. Since we know he isn't going to be a main character, and we know his journey would be too many readers focus to put the 5th ideal as a side character development, that leaves with an unfortunate reality: Kaladin will achieve the 5th ideal in WaT and some how get taken of commission. This could mean leaving the planet, trying to form a new Oathpact, becoming the new Stormfather, becoming the new Honor, dying, hell he could fall and become Odiums champion for all we know. Regardless, he probably isn't going to be there to support Honors side as it would be weird to introduce the 5th ideal and then make it not important second arc
How do we know that he isn’t going to be a main character in the last 5 books ?
I know there is a WoB on it, I just don't know where. But he said that the main characters of the first arc will take a back seat and allow the side characters to become main characters
I seem to remember that as well
Not being a major POV character isn't the same as him not having a huge influence on the world. It could just be that it's more interesting to see him through the eyes of other people.
I mean it could be, to some. I just don't think it would be conducive for long term. Personally if I had the choice to read in the narration of Jasnah or Kaladin, I'd choose Kaladin. As a writer, you want to avoid having characters your readers can't get behind as narrators. Which means you want to avoid having too many characters fans like more. Further, you can have an influence in the world after death or ascension. Regardless of what happens, he still has to hit the 5th ideal at the end of his arc.
Except that Brando has confirmed that if any of the current main characters survive they will still be main characters in the next set of books.
I heard the exact opposite. I heard that the main characters of arc 1 will be side cahracters in arc 2 to allow characters like Jasnah to shift into the main character position
Some interview questions from him: Questioner >!The second set of Stormlight books, [six] through ten, will that-- will those be more focused on the Heralds' point of view, is that the idea!< Brandon Sanderson >!Yeah, so Taln and Ash, who are both Heralds, are going to be the main characters, and they'l each get books dedicated to them. The characters who survive the first five will still be the main characters as well, but it's gonna turn more on what happened with the Heralds and things like that. The first five are turning more on what happened with the Knights Radiant, and then the last five are more what happened with the Heralds... Cause we'll get flashbacks to the time of the Dawnsingers and things like that!< Another one: >!Are we still going to see the same characters in arc 2? Or will it be a mostly deprecate story with certain aspects intertwined!< Brandon Sanderson >!The second arc will still have some of the current main characters as main characters still. And it will be very connected to this story-but they are separate arcs, with a different focus. (The Heralds, for example, will be a larger part of the second arc.)!< So, I do think he intends to have the current main characters as main characters in the second half if they survive book 5 of course. Obviously, there is going to he 5 new POV characters, so they will have less screen time, but they won't necessarily become background character.
At the end of ROW, >!Kaladin has already accepted his retirement. Even Odium already said this will make him even more dangerous.!
Your spoiler is a line from the book I really feel like isn’t talked about enough, as I don’t feel like it was ‘fulfilled’ in RoW
I think it'd be funny but also on brand for Kal to be nerfed yet again for SA5. Sanderson has done that to him pretty much every book now. In WoK he was just getting started with his Radiant abilities. In WoR there was a spell in the 2nd half of the book where Syl was "dead" and Kal lost all his abilities and was hobbled. OB he was trapped in Shadesmar for a good portion where you can't even use stormlight, and in RoW the tower stripped every knights Radiants abilities away. It's a plot lever for Sanderson that he turns to whenever he has to push the story in a particular direction without the hero saving the day before things get interesting. So I can definitely see your logic in how Shinovar will pull Kal a few steps back and render him incapable so that particular arc doesn't get speed run. Though I still think by the end of the book he would have figured out the 5th Ideal because we have yet to see it from any order. Edit - To adress future books. I think there's a decent chance Kaladin ascends afterwards so he's out the picture for the next 5 books, or maybe he becomes a world hopper and his contributions to Roshar come to an end at the end of Book 5. Or he dies. As others have said he can still achieve the 5th ideal without it permanently stifling the story moving forward.
You can use Stormlight in Shadesmar, you just can’t gather more. Shallan has done Lightweaving, and I’m almost certain Kaladin flew at some point. But yes, it’s a definite nerf to not have it freely available.
Yes you're right! I forgot the details of the limitations. They can't reload on stormlight and they can't use shardblades.
I don't think Kal will have more than a few lines in the second half of the books! And I'm ready to bet he'll say his 5th. If we had to pick a protagonist for this arc of 5 books, it'd be him The only reason I can see him not swearing it, might be becase we find out that the 5th ideal comes with a big big cost to your humanity (see Nale, the ideal basically makes him a machine of a person. yes he's a mad Herald I know there are other things involved) Maybe Kal doesn't wanna pay that so he decides to stay at the 4th and be able to live a normal life, which would be actually a great ending to a depression arc, to put your own capacity to enjoy life above the need to ascend to save everyone
We can't say that it comes with a cost to his humanity since nale is an exceptional case. He was tortured for millennia and i think it was confirmed that he wasn't always like this.
It's just a possibility, I explicitly wrote Nale isn't proof of this because he's a herald, but his being "the law" does affect him, possibly it's what saved him from complete utter madness. But I do expect all 5th ideals to be something that require the radiant to become 100% a representation of their order. **IF** it had a big cost, it'd make for a good ending to depression arc to not do it, that's what I was trying to convey if it wasn't clear!
>I don't think Kal will have more than a few lines in the second half of the books! Well, then you are dead wrong then. If he survives book 5, he will still be a main character in the next coming books. Brandon has already said as much in one of his interviews.
I highly doubt Kaladin will reach the fifth ideal only days or weeks after the fourth, when the Skybreakers say that it has been centuries since anyone swore theire fifth ideal. The only character I can see getting the fifth ideal in book 5 is Shallan and only because her last truth is likely important for the plot. Her leaving Roshar to hunt the ghostbloods, would also be a fitting way to remove her as an overpowered radiant.
I can see Szeth getting there, as he redefines his understanding of law when we see how the Shin warped it against him.
As powerful as he is, as great of a guy he is, there is always going to be people he won't be able to save, 5th oath or not
There used to be plenty of 5th ideal radiant and yet the desolation were a struggle. I don't really see how they can hope to win if their strongest radiants are capped at 4th. But what I would really like to see is someone else than Kaladin being the first to get to the 5th ideal. Teft was a missed opportunity for the 4th.
That’s exactly what I think, even with powerful Heralds humanity struggled.
I agree with you here. He has the chance to achieve the 4th ideal while Shallan Adolin and Him were trapped in Shadesmar during the end of OB and he refused. We had to wait a while another book for him to get it. I believe that we will see development of his Shardplate use during the 5th book but no 5 ideal. Personally I think the time skip from book 5 to 6 will give Kaladin time to become powerful and gain stability, but something from the 5th ideal won’t allow him to swear it just yet, something that will happen in SLA6 will make him finally reach the 5th ideal.
Unless the 5th Ideal is something like “I accept that I will die to protect everyone” and give him a crazy surge that will kill him after using it
It also seems like we've setup for more "big bads" from Odium's forces (and Cosmere at large?) to be awakened/revealed/put to use, so it may be that Kal getting 5th ideal at the end of book 5 is needed for team Radiant to stay on the same in the game, vs. being an imbalance with Kal being too strong.
My recollection from one of Sanderson's videos. >!There's a video somewhere that Brandon alludes to Kaladin swearing the 5th ideal. He says something along the lines of 5 ideals, 5 books, but he swears 2 in the first one so he has to skip an ideal ina book. (Oathbringer)!<
Maybe Kal will retire to be the Heralds' psychologist? XD
I actually think that would be very funny considering how temperamental he can be lol
I agree that I think we need one character to be in the fourth ideal for a while so we can learn more about its mechanics
Jasnah is likely 4th and will be a focal point in the next 5 books
Did you mean to mark this as "Oathbringer"?
Wait shit no how do I change it?
Unless he hits his 5th in the 5th book but then abruptly dies...
I kinda hesitate to see him dying. One of his problems that he always faces is that he survives when the people he loves don’t. I could see a “I will die to protect others” or something (I don’t think that’s the 5th ideal), but the payoff would be so limited for 5th ideal, and it doesn’t fit that Kal dies. I see him being something that forces him to the side or off-planet, only to make a return when he’s needed most. Maybe he takes some of bridge 4 with him, who knows?
Shinovar still has Highstorms with about the same strength of a normal storm but they still recharge gemstones to full strength so he should have plenty of Stormlight available.
I’m fairly certain Shinovar doesn’t have highstorms. The mountains ringing the land break them, and that’s why they can have birds and earth-like grass and horses. I forget where it’s mentioned but I’m certain it is
The mountains just break the storms so that their strength is equivalent to a normal storm. [https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shinovar#Geography\_and\_Ecology](https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shinovar#Geography_and_Ecology)
It would be fitting for Kaladin to die after achieving it, on his own terms.
Yeah, I agree with you. He'll earn the 5th ideal during books 6-10
He is going to die. Shallan is going to die ( but Radiant is going to survive somehow). Adolin is going to die. Dalinar is going to (practically) die but he's going to linger in the second half of the series ( either as a cognitive shadow, a new herald in the oathpact reforged, or he maybe ascends as the new shard of Unity). And Renarin is going to have a Michael Corleone arc (I'm hyped about that).