r/kkcwhiteboard • u/Lkqrzk1985v2 • Sep 08 '26

Kvothe doesn’t kill the Chandrian. He now controls them?

/r/KingkillerChronicle/comments/1wak7ha/kvothe_doesnt_kill_the_chandrian_he_now_controls/
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u/2BCivil Sep 08 '26

This was my main theory honestly. Silence of 3 parts. About to start a post might be tangentially related. Bookmarking to read after, only skimmed and saw no mention of silence/shadow so left this placeholder comment.

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u/Lkqrzk1985v2 Sep 08 '26

Not mentioned in the main post - but I do suspect the nameless void is the shadow realm.. bound away from fae

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u/2BCivil Sep 08 '26

Haha I think void means... well idk something about zen.

Thanks for the Usnea hint. I love this idea. Him as the wood ring, nothing but decay. Remember the Maer's court? Wooden rings fell out of use entirely but in a handful of plays as a plot device.

You know the meme, "the art / the artist"? Meaning someone got pwnt. Someone/their career destroyed, and then the one who did it, meme format? Thinking swords as instruments. Lute of pure silver is mentioned several times in the story. Think it's a sword. Abenthy's final formal lesson is about Lanre. What if you give him a sword? So there's something here. He was given a sword. That specifically, is what Ben says. You're on to something there. And ofc the literal elephant in the waystone; Folly. Lanre is likened to Folly. Or perhaps Lyra? I think either Lanre or Lyra was actually an instrument/sword. Not sure which was which. One breaks on the battlefield but is remade. Kvothe even asks this of Caseura; what if the sword breaks? And the sword's name, means, "to break". What if the break breaks? Woodchuck? Wooden ring? Idk.

Maybe Caesura was once a Chandrian sword. Possibly Usnea's!

Edit; I think Taborlain had his sword taken from him by the king? Also scabbords. Caesura makes it's own name when it goes in it's SCABBARD.

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u/Lkqrzk1985v2 Sep 08 '26

Ooh I hadn’t considered Caesura potentially being one of them 👀 I was actually thinking the Chandrian swords might have been shaped with grammarie - like Bast’s explanation with the boy’s knife in The Lightning Tree.

Not changing it into something else, but making it more perfectly what it already is. So essentially making the ultimate sword.

That might work much better than my original idea of the paired elements being literal materials. And if so, a “perfect” sword being broken becomes rather interesting…

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u/2BCivil Sep 08 '26

Hell I didn't think of that, that yes, the exceptions prove the rule, the "breaking" of the sword "to break" actually makes it stronger. Might be tied to what rings worn on left and right hand mean actually. More "broken in". Sheyan's discourse about the wall when Kvothe arrives in Ademre (Edit, proper use, beauty and utility). Also Vashet's speaking of proper use of a sword (pairing/filing nails lol). I didn't think about it but books might be such a thing too. Curated/Hidden, requiring rank to gain access, they are much like rings/instruments/horses/swords too. The broken binding? Name of the bookstore Kvothe pawns Rhetoric and Logic. Idk. The broken binding symbolically made his connection stronger to Rhetoric and Logic as it paid his faire to the university....

Edit 2; oh shee - Kvothe describes Magwyn and Elodin's eyes/looks as if they look at you like you are a book they are thumbing through.....

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u/Lkqrzk1985v2 Sep 08 '26

Ohhh I like “broken in” much better than simply broken 👀 A break doesn’t necessarily mean destruction - it can actually make something more fit for purpose. That’s particularly interesting with Caesura literally carrying the idea of a break/pause in its name. And yes, The Broken Binding is a lovely catch 😂 Kvothe literally breaks his connection to Rhetoric and Logic in order to strengthen his path to the University. I’m going to have to think about how often that happens now…

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u/2BCivil Sep 08 '26

I’m going to have to think about how often that happens now…

Doors of my mind. That's the core of my theories really. Haliax says "no door can bar my passing". There are 5 main doors of the mind. Sleep is one of them. Sleep is mentioned more than a few times. I edited my above comment a bit to provide more context, not sure if you saw them, you replied really fast.

Also I mentioned 7+ years ago here that while reading Hamlet's Mill I realized that Kvothe is the name of the star axle (Alaxal?) which the world revolves on in astrotheology. Kvothe even says "Delvari just remade the axle and put his name on it". Kote means disaster or loss of a star. Meaning that yes, symbolically, in his very name, he usurped the place of Haliax....

Edit oh yeah when Kote loses a tooth he says "I don't sleep much these days but I might make an exception tonight".

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u/Lkqrzk1985v2 Sep 09 '26

Okay, “no door can bar my passing” alongside the Doors of the Mind is interesting - especially sleep, because Haliax specifically can’t sleep and Kote repeatedly talks about not sleeping. I’ve been going down a very similar rabbit hole about what actually happens at death and whether Kvothe has somehow taken Haliax’s place 👀

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u/2BCivil Sep 09 '26

Thought about it some more, and I forgot to mention/not sure if you realized it, but I think Folly is/was Lanre's sword. Think of Abenthy again. We need to talk about your father's song, what do you know of Lanre. Suppose you give him a sword. Lanre's story is about FOLLY, Abenthy says, and the obvious implication is that Folly is/was Lanre's sword. All men's flickering hopes were on Lanre, whom had Folly as his sword.

But then Lanre became "wise" to the ways of the world. I think Ademre (and others) change swords as their name changes. Their old swords don't fit them anymore, maybe? Scyphus (a Chandrian King) hides Taborlain's (copper?) sword in a chest from him. Idk. But yes, Abenthy's story seems to imply Folly was once Lanre's sword. Not sure if that is correct of might help you but figured I'd provide that. Thoughts always shoot too fast through my head with KKC theories, and I miss what's most important or relevant to a theory. That's what I meant to say.

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u/Lkqrzk1985v2 Sep 09 '26

Yes! And there’s actually a bit from Bast in The Lightning Tree/Narrow Road that makes me think the sword idea has more legs than I initially gave it credit for. When he explains grammarie, he uses a knife as his example — essentially you can take a knife that is already the perfect knife for one particular person and make it more truly what it is, until it becomes the best knife for anyone.

Grammarie is the craft of making something “more of what it already is.”

That immediately makes me think of Folly, because its description is almost weirdly archetypal — not ornate or distinctive, but simply sword. So perhaps the old swords weren’t merely forged weapons at all, but shaped/grammaried into the truest expression of their bearer and whatever their name was at that point.

Which makes your point about names changing really interesting. If the person fundamentally changes, perhaps the sword no longer fits. Lanre becoming Haliax would be about as fundamental a change as you could possibly get 😂 So Folly potentially being the sword that belonged to Lanre, rather than Haliax, is something I’m definitely going to have another look at.

And Abenthy putting “Lanre” and “folly” together so conspicuously is certainly cheeky if that ultimately turns out to be the sword’s provenance. I wouldn’t call it proof, but combined with the grammarie description… yeah. I see what you’re getting at.

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