I’m having serious thoughts about the contest of champions being Kaladin vs Moash bc like… it kind of brings everything full circle, right back around to Way of Kings. It brings back all of the questions that book raised that the rest of the series tried to sidestep. Can you actually protect by killing? What if that death that protects your people then means an entire other race of people gets subjugated— is Kaladin finally forced to confront his unease with slaughtering the Parshendi that he’s been sidestepping for 5 books? How good does he really feel to be letting someone he cared about die to protect people like Dalinar, to uphold the Alethi government that’s still taken almost no steps to rectify the abuse and injustice the darkeyes face every day, the government that will assuredly maintain the exact same caste system if it retains power?
Then, how do the Singers feel that Odium’s chosen Moash, a human, to fight for their freedom? (Assuming this is a timeline where Rayse is still Odium, since Taravangian basically lost interest in Moash entirely). Presumably Odium picked Moash partly because he knew Dalinar would pick Kaladin, and imagine the Singers like… hang on, is this a fucking game to you? We’ve been oppressed for thousands of years and you’re playing mind games with the humans?
And the thing is, Moash could actually maybe win, but not, I think, if he keeps letting Odium take all of his emotions away. He could win if he harnesses the energy he had in Oathbringer, when he protected the Singers in the caravan. He could win if he finds the part of him that’s capable of caring about others, that actually cares about real justice. But of course, feeling all that might also give him the space to wonder, is Odium justice?
The great irony is the fight brings them all the way back around to how they met, running bridges. Fighting on the front line of a war they had no part in starting, meant to die to protect everyone else. Because even after everything, the only solution Alethkar has to this war that it caused by relentlessly pursuing genocide against the Parshendi, by enslaving the Parshmen, by refusing to consider an ending without full dominion for the ‘forces of honor’, the only solution Alethkar has after everything that’s happened is the same solution it always has: feeding its darkeyed young men to the war. At the end of the day, no matter what you try to do, the Alethi war machine will take possession of you, will pit you against each other, will destroy your friendships, destroy your solidarity, kill your empathy, covet your righteousness, make you into someone you don’t recognize and tell you the fall of your blade is honorable. And then it will eat you.
