In this passage from The Way of Kings, The Way of Kings, Chapters 43-45: Shallan's Hidden Past, readers encounter a pivotal moment that illuminates the novel's central themes.
The Way of Kings introduces Roshar, a world ravaged by highstorms — massive storms that sweep across the land with regular violence, shaping every aspect of how people build, farm, and organize their societies. The Alethi, the dominant culture, are defined by war: they have spent a decade fighting on the Shattered Plains for reasons that most soldiers no longer remember. Sanderson uses this backdrop to ask what happens to a society that mistakes the continuation of conflict for honor.
Kaladin begins the novel as a bridgeman — a slave whose only function is to carry bridges to allow soldiers to cross the chasms of the Shattered Plains. Bridgemen are used as arrow fodder: run forward, expose the enemy's archers, be killed so the real soldiers can cross safely. Kaladin's arc is built around a question Sanderson takes seriously: how does a person maintain moral agency and care for others when the system they are trapped in is designed to kill them?
Dalinar Kholin is a highprince — a military commander and one of the most powerful men in the Alethi army — who has begun experiencing visions during highstorms. The visions show him the ancient Knights Radiant, a legendary order of warriors who held Roshar together before mysteriously disbanding. Dalinar's challenge is not physical but epistemic: how do you trust what you have seen when everyone around you believes you are losing your mind?
Shallan Davar's sections in The Way of Kings take place far from the Shattered Plains, at a Rosharan university where she is trying to apprentice herself to Jasnah Kholin, a brilliant and skeptical scholar. Shallan needs Jasnah's access to resources her family is desperate for — but to get it, she is planning a theft. Sanderson uses Shallan to explore the relationship between talent, deception, and the self-image we build to survive difficult circumstances.