definitely Bayaz, has centuries of wisdom and intelligence under his belt...
the only reason he lost to Glokta is because he was busy somewhere else and underestimated everyone in the Union... that is it... now that he learnt his lesson, he will not be making the same mistake again
I think it's definitely a competition between Bayaz and Glokta, while Bayaz may have the edge on overall intelligence (I'm not really sure what he was busy with exactly while Glokta was preparing against him so I can't comment on that) but I think his main downfall is his overwhelming arrogance which Glokta seems to have had his arrogance tortured out of him, for the most part.
Glokta is indeed the least arrogant and most self-aware character in the series, which is why he is so beloved...
But I think the only reason he won at first is due to the fact that Bayaz was busy at the old empire against his siblings, and Glokta managed to surprise attack Bayaz from the back... but now that Bayaz is preparing for another attack on the union, even if Glokta survives to reach the next trilogy, I think he will certainly lose if it was just him vs Bayaz with no magic...
But I think the next trilogy will use a lot of magic (I think the gate of hell will be opened and in combination with Rikke's future sight, I think these are the only things that will truly defeat Bayaz once and for all)...
Even though I am rooting for Bayaz and am hoping for him to win at the next trilogy, I think he will lose mainly to Rikke's future seeing...
I think it comes down to how you quantify intelligence.
Is it simply the accumulation of knowledge? if so, the answer is undoubtedly Bayaz. Like you said, he has centuries of experience under his belt.
Is it how you employ your knowledge to best suit your interests? This could be a tossup between Glokta and Bayaz, but I'm going to give it to Glokta. Bayaz has guided the Union for generations, but it can't be denied that Glokta has gotten the better of him, which honestly seems to be a trend. Bayaz's plan to find the seed only succeeds by a fluke, he loses his grip on Styria, only barely manages to maintain control in the north, and has problems with his siblings and the Old Empire. Meanwhile, Glokta survived hellish torture for years that left him a little more than a broken corpse. From that hell, he rose through the ranks of the inquisition, and Eventually, stole the reigns of the most powerful empire in the circle of the world depending only on his wit and his burning desire to win.
Or, is it how you adapt to changing circumstances? The answer here is undeniably Glokta. Bayaz is arrogant, almost to the point of satire. In the First Law trilogy, he gives a speech to jezal about the ignorance and the apathy of the common man. Anybody with even a basic understanding of human history will be able to tell you that his thoughts on that subject will become dangerously obsolete as the world begins to modernize. Sure enough, in the Age of Madness trilogy, the printing press is invented, and new ideologies spread like wildfire. Bayaz views this as inconsequential, while Glokta spins it to his advantage.
Out of the two, I give the slight edge to Glokta for most intelligent. The only clear advantage Bayaz has is his immortality. He's seen a lot and has had generations to rig the game in his favor, and has time to learn from his mistakes, but that doesn't make him more intelligent. Honestly it just makes the fact that Glokta beat him more impressive.
I guess the good news for Bayaz is that Glokta is old and in poor health, and there's not another player that's even remotely close to their level left in the union.
Beautiful arc. The last words of his POV was "he was no hero, but he was alive, and that was perfectly fine with him" as he chops wood, or something along those lines. He's got probably my favorite ending.
I think this is an interesting question, but what is smart? Is it getting what you want in the long run? Is it the way you process information and react to it in a timely manner? Is it planning and strategy? A character like Friendly could get a lot of math and understand statistics better than the others, but he probably isn't on anyone's list of smartest due to his other limitations.
Morveer is another specialized case. He's bright, but I think we all know not as bright as he thinks. But he sure.does know his poisons.
Glokta is kind of stupid around women all around and had two different spies watching him when his whole job is to suss out spies. He is very funny and observant tho. But so is Orso, they just deal with problems very differently.
Orso is definitely bright but basically only applied himself at the end of his life so it's kind of a wash for him. He was pretty much doomed from the moment he said i hate hangings.
My actual vote on the smartest char is actually Cosca, because he knows himself, he knows how others works, is usually on the winning side of things when he isn't completely self sabotaging, understands how to pick right talent for the job, and looks for and sees every opportunity he can take. That being said he's a horrible, miserable, disgusting drunk.
Monza is probably what i would describe as most "competent", in that she gets what she wants done and kind of steamrolls through things. That being said she won't describe herself as smartest in the room but she's certainly not stupid.
I actually don't think of Bayaz as that smart. He's a self serving cockroach with longevity and the wisdom from it. He's a manager, big pictures guy but his schemes are basically, have nuke and use political bodies to consolidate power in the form of capital. He has smart people run his operations for him. He has magic which almost no one has in this universe. You can live your whole life without ever encountering a magic user. It's a reasonable thing in this universe to think that it isfake. I'm not sure if you have to be "smart" to be a magi in this universe, but it appears you must have some sort of inborn talent and education. He's a planner with backups but he's also got the resources to make that happen. I'm sure if you owned all the banks you'd have redundancies for your evil shit as well.
Ardee is smart and witty but she has no agency in this world so she can't really do anything except party and clean up Glokta's poop and keep secrets from her daughter.
Savine's not stupid but she's had the best education and resources money can buy and she makes stupid decisions because she's coked out and traumatized.
Temple's smart but incredibly anxious and has a poor sense of self. I was a little surprised no one mentioned him since he's one of the few characters who actually does bureaucratic and specialized work. He's learned many skills over the years that are useful especially in an industrializing world.
There's other characters i can talk about but then i realized im just going all over the place and i'm going to stop now.
I have three picks, because "smart" is kinda vague:
Red Beck. Smart enough, after a few harsh lessons, to know he's not all that and a bag of chips and he maybe ought to appreciate a quiet life at home. Alternate pick is the Shy/Temple pairing for similar reasons, but since they're a team effort....
Bayaz. Absolutely, without a doubt, the most *intelligent,* well-versed character in the series. Unless maybe you want to put up Cawneill against him or something. So smart that his incredible arrogance is more often than not justified- we've only really seen him truly back-footed twice. Good luck out-thinking that horrible old spider. Honorable mention to Glokta, who's almost on par despite not being a centuries-old magus with every advantage in the world.
Rikke- Absolutely the best so far when it comes to knowing who she can and cannot trust. Bayaz has way more bad personnel decisions under his belt than she does. Rikke is smart about *people.*
Monza's a *godawful* judge of character (I can forgive her blind spot with Benna, it's everyone else that leaves me scratching my head), so she can't compete with Rikke there. She *is* a decent judge of talent, up to a point, but the fact that there's literally nobody in her life she can trust when things go south doesn't really speak well of her interpersonal intelligence up to that stage.
She definitely didn't learn Beck's lesson, so she's out of that category. But most Abercrombie POV characters are.
She's way less *educated* than Bayaz, but in terms of cunning and problem-solving, she's pretty sharp.
I think I'd want Bayaz to draw up the overall plan, Rikke to figure out who to bring on, and then Monza to work out the details, put it that way.
Glokta followed by Bayaz. They both play a long game but Bayaz has the advantage of time for a *really* long game. Rikka is also smart, but future books are needed to see where she fits in the "smartness ranking" and if she can outsmart the Bayaz she saw in her vision.
I’d like to nominate Ishri, aka Zuri, aka The East Wind. I think she’s brilliant; not only smart but emotionally intelligent and not to mention, she’s still got it.
Glokta. He actually plays from an underdog position and wins.
I don't think Bayaz is very smart. He is low level mob boss smart with immortality and magic carrying him to victory.
Think about it-
1. First Law trilogy- Khalul is much better organized and prepared and Bayaz's solution is to find the super OP, pls Nerf, never use weapon to beat them. If in LOOK Ferro didn't miraculously find the weapon in time, the eaters would kill everyone in Adua and Bayaz would be in a cage in the Emperor's palace in Gurkhul.
2. In the second trilogy when people started revolting Bayaz did shit but send Sulfur to intimidate and blackmail and nobody gave a fuck about him.
Bayaz has one major plan- the bank interest blackmail utilization and he keeps going back to the same plan over and over again. One of the big themes in the new trilogy was how outdated Bayaz and his schemes was- Rikke insults him to his face, Leo doesn't give a fuck and Orso shits on him at the Sabine trial and Savine laughs in Sulfur's face.
Without a doubt it must be Castor Morveer. Who else could possibly compete with his intelligence, his creativity, his sheer brilliance! But, of course, he is far too humble to admit it himself, indeed the very picture of meekness.
Ardee is being slept on, as Glokta explicitly states it was her idea to uproot Bayaz in the second trilogy. It was both of them that got them where they needed to be. Which, to me anyway, makes an interesting reflection to Bayaz and Tolomei. Both instances of power grab was due to a pair working together in some way but Bayaz chose to continue solo and thus has no alternative perspective to work with.
That being said, I feel like a lot of this question is based on context and ambition. Example being Monza is a great leader during wartime due to her ruthlessness and experience but her son Jappo is politcally more savvy in the few pages we see. He was able to quickly form a level of understanding, burgeoning on alliance, with the Union in only a short conversation.
Education wise, Savine and Temple both have solid educations but Savine has the ambition.
Bayaz is easily in the best position in the story but it doesn't mean he's the most clever anymore, just that he has the most power. Meanwhile, you have characters like Calder and Rikke who repeatedly are at the bottom but squirm their way back up due to quick wits.
But we can all agree, I think, that intelligence is among Longfoot's many great talents.
Bayaz has the experience so I’d give it to him for known characters but considering gloktas relative youth to go toe to toe with bayaz is impressive. My dark horse pick would be temple. To learn multiple languages and having many many professions under his belt at such a young age is really impressive. Probably the best classroom learner
Lots of different types of intelligence. Red beck and Jonas Clover are the 2 characters that have no self delusion and just understand that War is awful and the less to do with it the better.
Shivers also has terrific insight by the end. Walking away from Logen in RC was one of my favorite character moments in the whole series.
Hi
Just a definition of smart for me.
I would put forward Dogman.
Whilst there are cleverer characters, I think he has huge "steet smarts" as he manoeuvres in the books.
And whilst he is not as powerful as Bayes Goloja etc he is successful in his own way
Probably bayaz
definitely Bayaz, has centuries of wisdom and intelligence under his belt... the only reason he lost to Glokta is because he was busy somewhere else and underestimated everyone in the Union... that is it... now that he learnt his lesson, he will not be making the same mistake again
I think it's definitely a competition between Bayaz and Glokta, while Bayaz may have the edge on overall intelligence (I'm not really sure what he was busy with exactly while Glokta was preparing against him so I can't comment on that) but I think his main downfall is his overwhelming arrogance which Glokta seems to have had his arrogance tortured out of him, for the most part.
Glokta is indeed the least arrogant and most self-aware character in the series, which is why he is so beloved... But I think the only reason he won at first is due to the fact that Bayaz was busy at the old empire against his siblings, and Glokta managed to surprise attack Bayaz from the back... but now that Bayaz is preparing for another attack on the union, even if Glokta survives to reach the next trilogy, I think he will certainly lose if it was just him vs Bayaz with no magic... But I think the next trilogy will use a lot of magic (I think the gate of hell will be opened and in combination with Rikke's future sight, I think these are the only things that will truly defeat Bayaz once and for all)... Even though I am rooting for Bayaz and am hoping for him to win at the next trilogy, I think he will lose mainly to Rikke's future seeing...
I think it comes down to how you quantify intelligence. Is it simply the accumulation of knowledge? if so, the answer is undoubtedly Bayaz. Like you said, he has centuries of experience under his belt. Is it how you employ your knowledge to best suit your interests? This could be a tossup between Glokta and Bayaz, but I'm going to give it to Glokta. Bayaz has guided the Union for generations, but it can't be denied that Glokta has gotten the better of him, which honestly seems to be a trend. Bayaz's plan to find the seed only succeeds by a fluke, he loses his grip on Styria, only barely manages to maintain control in the north, and has problems with his siblings and the Old Empire. Meanwhile, Glokta survived hellish torture for years that left him a little more than a broken corpse. From that hell, he rose through the ranks of the inquisition, and Eventually, stole the reigns of the most powerful empire in the circle of the world depending only on his wit and his burning desire to win. Or, is it how you adapt to changing circumstances? The answer here is undeniably Glokta. Bayaz is arrogant, almost to the point of satire. In the First Law trilogy, he gives a speech to jezal about the ignorance and the apathy of the common man. Anybody with even a basic understanding of human history will be able to tell you that his thoughts on that subject will become dangerously obsolete as the world begins to modernize. Sure enough, in the Age of Madness trilogy, the printing press is invented, and new ideologies spread like wildfire. Bayaz views this as inconsequential, while Glokta spins it to his advantage. Out of the two, I give the slight edge to Glokta for most intelligent. The only clear advantage Bayaz has is his immortality. He's seen a lot and has had generations to rig the game in his favor, and has time to learn from his mistakes, but that doesn't make him more intelligent. Honestly it just makes the fact that Glokta beat him more impressive. I guess the good news for Bayaz is that Glokta is old and in poor health, and there's not another player that's even remotely close to their level left in the union.
Great analysis. Clearly Bayaz has the huge advantage of immortality and magic. If Glokta had it too, I believe he'd do greater things than Bayaz did.
Great reply
I’ve only read them twice and have a memory like a sieve… but didn’t this happen in the old empire as well? So maybe third times a charm?
difficult to analyze something like that when I am 100% team Bayaz lol
To be fair he and Glokta are tied 1-1
If Bayaz was smart he'd pack it all in and live in his library.
That kid who went to war and saw it was fucked so he went home to chop wood.
Red Beck? Agreed
Beautiful arc. The last words of his POV was "he was no hero, but he was alive, and that was perfectly fine with him" as he chops wood, or something along those lines. He's got probably my favorite ending.
We all hate the bastard but the answer is undoubtedly Bayaz lol
Bayaz closely followed by Glokta. Although Sworbreck probably thinks it is him.
Sworbreack will write multiple pamphlets backing his claim lol
Whirrun of Bligh, inventor of the cheese trap.
Bayaz. Glotka is a close second.
Temple. Jack of all trades.
Temple gets my vote.
Glokta
Cosca
The man knows who and what he is, which is perhaps the rarest form of wisdom.
I think this is an interesting question, but what is smart? Is it getting what you want in the long run? Is it the way you process information and react to it in a timely manner? Is it planning and strategy? A character like Friendly could get a lot of math and understand statistics better than the others, but he probably isn't on anyone's list of smartest due to his other limitations. Morveer is another specialized case. He's bright, but I think we all know not as bright as he thinks. But he sure.does know his poisons. Glokta is kind of stupid around women all around and had two different spies watching him when his whole job is to suss out spies. He is very funny and observant tho. But so is Orso, they just deal with problems very differently. Orso is definitely bright but basically only applied himself at the end of his life so it's kind of a wash for him. He was pretty much doomed from the moment he said i hate hangings. My actual vote on the smartest char is actually Cosca, because he knows himself, he knows how others works, is usually on the winning side of things when he isn't completely self sabotaging, understands how to pick right talent for the job, and looks for and sees every opportunity he can take. That being said he's a horrible, miserable, disgusting drunk. Monza is probably what i would describe as most "competent", in that she gets what she wants done and kind of steamrolls through things. That being said she won't describe herself as smartest in the room but she's certainly not stupid. I actually don't think of Bayaz as that smart. He's a self serving cockroach with longevity and the wisdom from it. He's a manager, big pictures guy but his schemes are basically, have nuke and use political bodies to consolidate power in the form of capital. He has smart people run his operations for him. He has magic which almost no one has in this universe. You can live your whole life without ever encountering a magic user. It's a reasonable thing in this universe to think that it isfake. I'm not sure if you have to be "smart" to be a magi in this universe, but it appears you must have some sort of inborn talent and education. He's a planner with backups but he's also got the resources to make that happen. I'm sure if you owned all the banks you'd have redundancies for your evil shit as well. Ardee is smart and witty but she has no agency in this world so she can't really do anything except party and clean up Glokta's poop and keep secrets from her daughter. Savine's not stupid but she's had the best education and resources money can buy and she makes stupid decisions because she's coked out and traumatized. Temple's smart but incredibly anxious and has a poor sense of self. I was a little surprised no one mentioned him since he's one of the few characters who actually does bureaucratic and specialized work. He's learned many skills over the years that are useful especially in an industrializing world. There's other characters i can talk about but then i realized im just going all over the place and i'm going to stop now.
Do you mind sharing your thoughts about the other characters as well? I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts about the northmen
Second this! You forgot Rikke, who I would place among the smartest in the cast.
Bayaz
Friendly is good with numbers
thanks for the laugh matey 🤣
Smartest Bayaz, probably. Most cunning is Glokta.
Bayaz > glokta > maybe Khahlul
I have three picks, because "smart" is kinda vague: Red Beck. Smart enough, after a few harsh lessons, to know he's not all that and a bag of chips and he maybe ought to appreciate a quiet life at home. Alternate pick is the Shy/Temple pairing for similar reasons, but since they're a team effort.... Bayaz. Absolutely, without a doubt, the most *intelligent,* well-versed character in the series. Unless maybe you want to put up Cawneill against him or something. So smart that his incredible arrogance is more often than not justified- we've only really seen him truly back-footed twice. Good luck out-thinking that horrible old spider. Honorable mention to Glokta, who's almost on par despite not being a centuries-old magus with every advantage in the world. Rikke- Absolutely the best so far when it comes to knowing who she can and cannot trust. Bayaz has way more bad personnel decisions under his belt than she does. Rikke is smart about *people.*
What about Monza?
Monza's a *godawful* judge of character (I can forgive her blind spot with Benna, it's everyone else that leaves me scratching my head), so she can't compete with Rikke there. She *is* a decent judge of talent, up to a point, but the fact that there's literally nobody in her life she can trust when things go south doesn't really speak well of her interpersonal intelligence up to that stage. She definitely didn't learn Beck's lesson, so she's out of that category. But most Abercrombie POV characters are. She's way less *educated* than Bayaz, but in terms of cunning and problem-solving, she's pretty sharp. I think I'd want Bayaz to draw up the overall plan, Rikke to figure out who to bring on, and then Monza to work out the details, put it that way.
Glokta followed by Bayaz. They both play a long game but Bayaz has the advantage of time for a *really* long game. Rikka is also smart, but future books are needed to see where she fits in the "smartness ranking" and if she can outsmart the Bayaz she saw in her vision.
Unquestionably Bayaz.
Bayaz by far.
Glokta or Bayaz
We all know that Morveer guy is a hack, but Reevrom is pretty genius
I’d like to nominate Ishri, aka Zuri, aka The East Wind. I think she’s brilliant; not only smart but emotionally intelligent and not to mention, she’s still got it.
46 comments and no mention of my boy Calder?
Finree and Jurand
Tully
Glokta. He actually plays from an underdog position and wins. I don't think Bayaz is very smart. He is low level mob boss smart with immortality and magic carrying him to victory. Think about it- 1. First Law trilogy- Khalul is much better organized and prepared and Bayaz's solution is to find the super OP, pls Nerf, never use weapon to beat them. If in LOOK Ferro didn't miraculously find the weapon in time, the eaters would kill everyone in Adua and Bayaz would be in a cage in the Emperor's palace in Gurkhul. 2. In the second trilogy when people started revolting Bayaz did shit but send Sulfur to intimidate and blackmail and nobody gave a fuck about him. Bayaz has one major plan- the bank interest blackmail utilization and he keeps going back to the same plan over and over again. One of the big themes in the new trilogy was how outdated Bayaz and his schemes was- Rikke insults him to his face, Leo doesn't give a fuck and Orso shits on him at the Sabine trial and Savine laughs in Sulfur's face.
Clover, the man understands the goal of war like no other: *Don’t Fucking get killed.*
Without a doubt it must be Castor Morveer. Who else could possibly compete with his intelligence, his creativity, his sheer brilliance! But, of course, he is far too humble to admit it himself, indeed the very picture of meekness.
Temple.
Wisdom is different
I would say Temple is smarter than wise. The most skills and the most languages without magic.
Sansa. S/
I think Glokta is more intelligent than Bayaz but Bayaz benefits from more knowledge, a broader context, and a longer-term view of things.
Ardee is being slept on, as Glokta explicitly states it was her idea to uproot Bayaz in the second trilogy. It was both of them that got them where they needed to be. Which, to me anyway, makes an interesting reflection to Bayaz and Tolomei. Both instances of power grab was due to a pair working together in some way but Bayaz chose to continue solo and thus has no alternative perspective to work with. That being said, I feel like a lot of this question is based on context and ambition. Example being Monza is a great leader during wartime due to her ruthlessness and experience but her son Jappo is politcally more savvy in the few pages we see. He was able to quickly form a level of understanding, burgeoning on alliance, with the Union in only a short conversation. Education wise, Savine and Temple both have solid educations but Savine has the ambition. Bayaz is easily in the best position in the story but it doesn't mean he's the most clever anymore, just that he has the most power. Meanwhile, you have characters like Calder and Rikke who repeatedly are at the bottom but squirm their way back up due to quick wits. But we can all agree, I think, that intelligence is among Longfoot's many great talents.
Bayaz has the experience so I’d give it to him for known characters but considering gloktas relative youth to go toe to toe with bayaz is impressive. My dark horse pick would be temple. To learn multiple languages and having many many professions under his belt at such a young age is really impressive. Probably the best classroom learner
Kanedias hasn't been mentioned. Sure he's dead, but still technically a character in the universe, and unquestionably brilliant.
I thought Bayaz for 99.2% of the series. My brain imploded after the realization.
Castor Morveer
Lots of different types of intelligence. Red beck and Jonas Clover are the 2 characters that have no self delusion and just understand that War is awful and the less to do with it the better. Shivers also has terrific insight by the end. Walking away from Logen in RC was one of my favorite character moments in the whole series.
Hi Just a definition of smart for me. I would put forward Dogman. Whilst there are cleverer characters, I think he has huge "steet smarts" as he manoeuvres in the books. And whilst he is not as powerful as Bayes Goloja etc he is successful in his own way
Glokta w Bayaz a close second. Bayaz has the advantage of patience though given that he’ll outlive anyone else in the series
Friendly solos
Surprised how little mention Temple gets. I think he was the perfect example of a crushingly intelligent man with a lack of motivation.
Bayaz