Fae and Cold Iron
In the KKC subreddit, I previously asked my fellow arcanists if they had any good guesses as to why iron hurts the Fae- from an in- world perspective. Patrick Rothfuss is too good of a storyteller to rely solely on the reasoning that this is common in our modern day mythology. In fact, one of the reasons I’m so interested in it is because I suspect it is somewhere where he is using our assumptions against us. There isn’t even a strong “nature versus civilization” dynamic between the Fae and the human occupants of Temerant, which is supposedly the origin of this trope in our real world mythology. The origin of the Fae is critical to the entire mysterious history of Temerant- it was the making of the Fae and the Faen realm that was at the crux of the Creation War after all. It puzzles me twice as much when you consider the contradiction of the Iron Rook, which is a fairy creature made of iron. (more…)
Master Lorren
I was inspired to write this post because it’s about the first Kingkiller Chronicles theory I ever came up with. It was the gateway thought that led to my obsessive re-reading. It is something that as I have become more of a KKC lore nerd, seems so much like obvious fact that I felt it was redundant to make a post about it. (more…)
Unpacking Kvothe’s dream in Chapter 18
In Chapter 18 of Name of the Wind, Kvothe has a dream. He tells us when he wakes that it is a dream of two parts. “I thought very little of the other matter of the dream. Ben had never taught me sailors’ knots. My father had never finished his song.” He didn’t want to think about the second part, but as readers we should. These few paragraphs are absolutely stuffed with multiple layers of imagery we know to be very important to the story. But even more, I believe this short sequence… is the story. It is the author and Kvothe’s sleeping mind telling us what is to come. (more…)
A BIG theory: Wolf vs. Hawk
This is the post I first had in mind when I started this blog. However, it took some leading up to. It requires explaining why I think the Death card from the Commonwealth Pairs deck is Cinder’s “sign.” (See the series of posts about Chandrian signs.) And it requires one other theory posted about previously on this blog (more on that below). (more…)
How Many Chandrian Are There?
So the namesake of this website provides the simple answer to this question: Chaen-dian means “seven of them.” But seven of who? Is Haliax one of the seven or does he make eight? Are they all still alive, or have any been killed over time by the Amyr, the Singers, or the Sidhe? (more…)
Signs- Thrall of Iron- Possibility 2
So, this is the fourth post in a sequence that started with analyzing every Rothfuss-blessed mention of the Chandrian’s signs. In the original post, I deemed three sources of information “reliable” within the narrative:
- Kvothe’s firsthand encounter
- The Trebon pot (although I did posit that not every piece of imagery was a on it was a “sign”)
- The Adem’s rhyme from Wise Man’s Fear
However, reliable does not mean perfect. (more…)
Chandrian Signs- Thrall of Iron, Possibility 1
Now things start to get really fun! So, in my last post, we left off with this grid as a potential mapping between the Chandrian and their signs
So if we pare this down, it really leaves matching up the following as the logic problem: (more…)
Analysis of Signs Including Pairs Calamities
So, in my last post I inventoried the Chandrian’s signs as mentioned in the books.
Now let’s look at the Calamities cards from Pairs. (more…)
Hints in the Pairs Noble Card
I was re-reading the Cthaeh scene yesterday and musing on the idea someone once posted (I think it was in the Kingkiller facebook group) that the red and gold butterflies represented the Calenthis line. Then I also considered some recent art examination I’d been doing.
As Pat would say, “click to embiggen”
