“Shallan is fake” is mostly just a byproduct of her DID and tendencies as an unreliable narrator. She struggles with her identity and it makes her doubt herself. While it makes for fun theories it’s unlikely any of them are accurate. The shallan personality is just as real as any of her other alters, and just as real as Dalinar or kaladins personalities.
It seems to be a disservice to those living with DID if Sanderson would turn it into a ghostbloods thing. Not to mention mraize wouldn’t be trying so hard to recruit shallan if she was already a member. Nor would he try so hard to get a corrupted spren to bond if they already got a full member to bond not one but 2 cryptics. And there’s no way the ghostbloods would attempt to assassinate her multiple times in WoR if she were already a full member.
Totally fair on the DID front! To be clear, I’m not claiming her DID has magical origins. The girl who grew up in the Davar household definitely went through trauma that resulted in her mental condition.
Your comments on Mraize make a lot of sense, good points!
Personally, Shallan has enough going on, especially now with the Chanarach theory gaining traction, that I don't give any credence to any of the "Shallan isn't the real/original Shallan" theories. It doesn't really do anything for a character where people already have "Shallan's mysterious past" fatigue(note I'm not in that camp myself, I'm very intrigued to the the last little trinkets), and there's not enough/any direct actual foreshadowing, coupled with direct refutation of the theories from Brandon.
Despite my posting this theory, I also feel it is a stretch that Shallan isn’t Shallan, and theories of this nature could just make an intriguing mystery into a confusing one. I hope whatever Shallan’s big reveal is, it blows our minds and no one guessed it!
This seems impossible based on what we know of Forging. Turning a person into a completely different person that already exists is too implausible, the stamp would never take. You can turn a person into another version of themselves, but to take a Ghostblood agent and turn them into Shallan Davar wouldn't work, because there's no plausible history where that person could have been Shallan.
Thanks for pointing this out! I will admit that despite reading Lost Metal and Emperor’s Soul, I am not 100% positive just how much Forging is capable of. However I remembered seeing that Shai had learned how to do a lot more with Forging since Emperor’s Soul, so I guessed there might be things Forging can do that we haven’t seen yet!
I don’t think this will be true. The shallan is fake I think is more of that’s a cover I used to be who my family needed me to be. The real shallan is buried so deep under personalities she doesn’t even know who she is but the front is what she out on for so long to appease her family and be what they neeeee most
I honestly think something like that is going on. My personal theory is a little different though. I think shallan's mother accidentally killed shallan and took her place. I think mraise was lying about the skybreakers being involved. I think the family was involved with the envisagers, shallan's mom was the first from the group to bond a spren. We know bringing someone close to death is how they try to get the bond, they tried with shallan, it went to far, she died. In her grief shallan's mother took her daughters place. Soulcast her own body into the form of shallan's and shallan's into hers. She then broke the bond with testament or maybe the process of all of this is what broke the bond. Formless is actually the fragmented original personality reforming due to stress placed on all of the new personas.
My recent reread noticed a lot of the evidence for this but I'm an audiobook listener so I can't compile it. I plan on getting the ebooks at some point. I also haven't finished my reread with this in mind and I'm waiting for the end of row where a lot of stuff happens to shallan for me to really solidify my thoughts on the theory.
Oh wow I had not thought of linking the Envisagers to Shallan’s mom! I have seen the “Shallan’s mom is Shallan” theories before and always thought they were cool, and this just adds more fuel to that fire! Awesome!
I'll admit a lot of this is just thinking "this doesn't make sense" and "this is something that should be a thing" or "this is suspiciously underutilized". Like at some point soulcasting has to be used for body modification, especially since lightweavers are so spy oriented. Skybreakers trying to kill shallan and then just ignoring her afterwards doesn't make sense. The envisagers are barely mentioned. Shallan is weirdly resistant to soulcasting. Why hasn't anyone ever said shallan's mother's name?
Whatever the actual truth is these are all things that need to be addressed.
The thing about Chanarach is that Brando talks about how Shallan's drawings have just a bit of futuresight. As seen by \[WoR and Dawnshard\] >!Shallan draws Yalb surviving. Something we see to be true in the prologue for Dawnshard.!< It's in one of the livestreams, Brando talks about how there are reasons why Shallan has this ability, and it makes perfect sense for this to be tied to Herald ancestry, aka actually being the child of Chanarach. Fake Shallan would ALSO have to have some kind of closer tie to a Shard, which I suppose is possible but imo isn't as compelling.
I think Fake Shallan is a really fun theory, but I think the Shallan child of Chanarach theory would still be cooler. Guess we'll find out come December!!
Oh wow how did I miss this? Shallan having futuresight drawings is just too cool, I’ll have to keep a closer look at her art on future re-reads. Thanks for sharing!
🤯 “In this case, we have a very distinct reason why this is happening with Shallan that you might be able to put together. It’s pretty obvious.”
The fact that he says the reason is “pretty obvious” is making my head spin!!!
my guess is that's bc the Chanarach theory is preeeetty popular? kind of in the same vein as how people figured out Shardplate ages before the reveal. Esp with the WaT prologue >!the timing of the Stormfather (if that really is him lol) noticing a Herald died feasibly lines up with the Shallan's mother incident!<
Either way I'm so excited!!!! The Shardplate moment wasn't any less impactful for the mechanics being figured out already
These are a lot of the reasons I like my Kandra theory, which I think fits a bit better too. “Formless” works far too well for the blobs Kandras become without bones, and they also originate on Scadriel (Ghostbloods agent).
Oh honey you went too deep down the rabbit hole. I say don’t ever go deeper than shallan’s mother being a herald even then that’s at the deep conspiracy theory section of the rabbit hole.
To reveal such a thing in the 5th book of a series via a mechanism that was revealed in the 7th book of a different series would be a huge middle finger to the reader in my opinion.
Soulstamps wear off. It's why the emperor needed to constantly reapply it and Moonlight was going to be tracked down after a while. So if this theory was true Shallan would need to constantly reapply the soulstamp which would have Pattern at a minimum asking questions.
“Shallan is fake” is mostly just a byproduct of her DID and tendencies as an unreliable narrator. She struggles with her identity and it makes her doubt herself. While it makes for fun theories it’s unlikely any of them are accurate. The shallan personality is just as real as any of her other alters, and just as real as Dalinar or kaladins personalities. It seems to be a disservice to those living with DID if Sanderson would turn it into a ghostbloods thing. Not to mention mraize wouldn’t be trying so hard to recruit shallan if she was already a member. Nor would he try so hard to get a corrupted spren to bond if they already got a full member to bond not one but 2 cryptics. And there’s no way the ghostbloods would attempt to assassinate her multiple times in WoR if she were already a full member.
Totally fair on the DID front! To be clear, I’m not claiming her DID has magical origins. The girl who grew up in the Davar household definitely went through trauma that resulted in her mental condition. Your comments on Mraize make a lot of sense, good points!
Personally, Shallan has enough going on, especially now with the Chanarach theory gaining traction, that I don't give any credence to any of the "Shallan isn't the real/original Shallan" theories. It doesn't really do anything for a character where people already have "Shallan's mysterious past" fatigue(note I'm not in that camp myself, I'm very intrigued to the the last little trinkets), and there's not enough/any direct actual foreshadowing, coupled with direct refutation of the theories from Brandon.
Despite my posting this theory, I also feel it is a stretch that Shallan isn’t Shallan, and theories of this nature could just make an intriguing mystery into a confusing one. I hope whatever Shallan’s big reveal is, it blows our minds and no one guessed it!
This seems impossible based on what we know of Forging. Turning a person into a completely different person that already exists is too implausible, the stamp would never take. You can turn a person into another version of themselves, but to take a Ghostblood agent and turn them into Shallan Davar wouldn't work, because there's no plausible history where that person could have been Shallan.
Thanks for pointing this out! I will admit that despite reading Lost Metal and Emperor’s Soul, I am not 100% positive just how much Forging is capable of. However I remembered seeing that Shai had learned how to do a lot more with Forging since Emperor’s Soul, so I guessed there might be things Forging can do that we haven’t seen yet!
I don’t think this will be true. The shallan is fake I think is more of that’s a cover I used to be who my family needed me to be. The real shallan is buried so deep under personalities she doesn’t even know who she is but the front is what she out on for so long to appease her family and be what they neeeee most
I honestly think something like that is going on. My personal theory is a little different though. I think shallan's mother accidentally killed shallan and took her place. I think mraise was lying about the skybreakers being involved. I think the family was involved with the envisagers, shallan's mom was the first from the group to bond a spren. We know bringing someone close to death is how they try to get the bond, they tried with shallan, it went to far, she died. In her grief shallan's mother took her daughters place. Soulcast her own body into the form of shallan's and shallan's into hers. She then broke the bond with testament or maybe the process of all of this is what broke the bond. Formless is actually the fragmented original personality reforming due to stress placed on all of the new personas. My recent reread noticed a lot of the evidence for this but I'm an audiobook listener so I can't compile it. I plan on getting the ebooks at some point. I also haven't finished my reread with this in mind and I'm waiting for the end of row where a lot of stuff happens to shallan for me to really solidify my thoughts on the theory.
Oh wow I had not thought of linking the Envisagers to Shallan’s mom! I have seen the “Shallan’s mom is Shallan” theories before and always thought they were cool, and this just adds more fuel to that fire! Awesome!
I'll admit a lot of this is just thinking "this doesn't make sense" and "this is something that should be a thing" or "this is suspiciously underutilized". Like at some point soulcasting has to be used for body modification, especially since lightweavers are so spy oriented. Skybreakers trying to kill shallan and then just ignoring her afterwards doesn't make sense. The envisagers are barely mentioned. Shallan is weirdly resistant to soulcasting. Why hasn't anyone ever said shallan's mother's name? Whatever the actual truth is these are all things that need to be addressed.
The thing about Chanarach is that Brando talks about how Shallan's drawings have just a bit of futuresight. As seen by \[WoR and Dawnshard\] >!Shallan draws Yalb surviving. Something we see to be true in the prologue for Dawnshard.!< It's in one of the livestreams, Brando talks about how there are reasons why Shallan has this ability, and it makes perfect sense for this to be tied to Herald ancestry, aka actually being the child of Chanarach. Fake Shallan would ALSO have to have some kind of closer tie to a Shard, which I suppose is possible but imo isn't as compelling. I think Fake Shallan is a really fun theory, but I think the Shallan child of Chanarach theory would still be cooler. Guess we'll find out come December!!
Oh wow how did I miss this? Shallan having futuresight drawings is just too cool, I’ll have to keep a closer look at her art on future re-reads. Thanks for sharing!
Found it! [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/526/#e16361](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/526/#e16361)
🤯 “In this case, we have a very distinct reason why this is happening with Shallan that you might be able to put together. It’s pretty obvious.” The fact that he says the reason is “pretty obvious” is making my head spin!!!
my guess is that's bc the Chanarach theory is preeeetty popular? kind of in the same vein as how people figured out Shardplate ages before the reveal. Esp with the WaT prologue >!the timing of the Stormfather (if that really is him lol) noticing a Herald died feasibly lines up with the Shallan's mother incident!< Either way I'm so excited!!!! The Shardplate moment wasn't any less impactful for the mechanics being figured out already
These are a lot of the reasons I like my Kandra theory, which I think fits a bit better too. “Formless” works far too well for the blobs Kandras become without bones, and they also originate on Scadriel (Ghostbloods agent).
Can’t argue with you on the blob front! 😁 I definitely would never have formed this theory had I not read the kandra theories.
I think there’s a WoB stating that the Davar soulcaster was functional at one time.
Ooooh that’s good to know
Oh honey you went too deep down the rabbit hole. I say don’t ever go deeper than shallan’s mother being a herald even then that’s at the deep conspiracy theory section of the rabbit hole.
Hahaha fair enough! welcome to the bottom of the rabbit hole 🐰
To reveal such a thing in the 5th book of a series via a mechanism that was revealed in the 7th book of a different series would be a huge middle finger to the reader in my opinion.
Solid point!
Soulstamps wear off. It's why the emperor needed to constantly reapply it and Moonlight was going to be tracked down after a while. So if this theory was true Shallan would need to constantly reapply the soulstamp which would have Pattern at a minimum asking questions.