At some point in NOTW, Kvothe mentions the he remembers the troup playing for his mother's family when he was very young. I don't remember what part of the book that was it, and I couldn't find it when I just looked. If someone else does or has time to find it, that might help confirm or deny Meluna being Kvothe's aunt.

 

He wasn't actually expelled; the expulsion was suspended. It's not as clearcut as you're trying to imply.

 

SPOILERS

@Kvothe's rings: The rhyme about Kvothe's rings is mentioned to the smith's apprentice early on. Left hand was stone, iron, amber, wood, & bone. Right was blood, air, ice, flame, and nameless. I'm guessing the rings of wood and bone are the Lackless and Stapes rings, respectively. Flame, air, ice, and stone I'm guessing are names he learns (air is obvious). Iron could be another name or another Vintish ring (he gets Maer's back eventually?). Amber and blood I don't think are for names, so they could be anything. The nameless ring I obviously can't make any real guesses except to that it could possibly be Denna's. But if the rhyme about his rings was formed during the height of his fame I doubt he would have had it.

@Denna being a Chandrian: Loathe her. But I think the patron's a Chandrian, not her. On the plus side, I very much think she's dead in the present and that's what broke Kvothe's will and made him hide away from the world. That line he feeds to the apprentice about having a price on his head does not ring true for me.

@Bast being Felurian and Kvothe's son: I played around with the idea, but when I reread NotW Kvothe introduces him to Chronicler as Bastas, son of Remmen. Not conclusive, as either Kvothe or Bastas could be giving a false lineage, but it does lean away from the idea.

I think my favorite scene in the present was the two thugs beating Kvothe up. I knew his magic was gone, but I don't think it really sunk in how much he's lost of himself until those guys wiped the floor with him. And the chapter after with Bast going to meet the thugs was also excellent.

My favorite scene in the past, which I don't think anyone has mentioned, was the encounter with the false Ruh troupe. The Edema Ruh have always been portrayed by Kvothe as being very non-confrontational. The only time violence is ever implied is that one of his troupe members was a swordsman. Finding out the Ruh butcher people who betray the troupe was excellent.

I also think Meluan's his aunt, and Auri being Princess Ariel is intriguing. I will reread Auri scenes but I think it fits.

I've been wondering how he'll possibly finish Kvothe's story in the final book, so I was glad to hear that there are sequel(s) planned. But someone else says the sequels aren't going to focus on Kvothe? Some clarification would be welcome; I'd really like his inevitable actions in the present to be given the time they deserve.

random stuff: I hope he still has his shaed in the present. That thing is cool.

 

I am surprised no one mentioned the drug in the beginning of the story.

How Kvothe acted under its influence should be a primer for how to write a Dark Harry.

Which is the worst of the two, killing Ambrose or stealing a pie?

Is it a meat pie or a fruit pie?

WIN!

 

I could easily see Ambrose doping Kvothe again without understanding what Kvothe is capable of, which would definitely mean his death.

One other thing that I thought was great was the darkness that Vashet saw in Kvothe. Kvothe has a lot of powerful teachers and associates teaching Kvothe some very dangerous things, and he is remarkable in that he picks them up so quickly. One thing on its own might be overlooked, but Kvothe is amassing a lot of dangerous skills from a lot of different folks, and put together they form a very scary skill set. I'm glad someone finally stopped and said, "hey, should we really be encouraging this?"

One thing that I found rather chilling, when put into context, is Kvothe's conversation with the Maer about intrinsic power vs. granted power. Kvothe seems to be inclined toward the opinion that intrinsic power is the greater and seems obsessed to some degree with increasing his personal power. It's the framework for every descent into darkness story there is.

I know that Kvothe isn't evil, but it seems to me that he's like an Amyr in thought and action. He'll do some truly terrible things if he thinks it's the right thing. In a lot of ways Kvothe is an antihero.

 

Finished the book yesterday and it was awesome.

But to some points: I actually liked the tree, and if the Tree only tells the truth to hurt people and knows everything, I believe he would have told Kvothe that Denna was a Chandrian, so I don't believe she is one, or is obviously connected to them.

Neither do I think is her patron one of them. If the tree wanted to hurt Kvothe and make his life unbearable, saying that would have ensured it.

Similarly, I don't think Lackless is Kvothe's aunt, as it seemed like rather recent news that the sister run of with the Ruth, whereas Kvothe's mom ran off ca. 20 years ago.

Now I can err on this, but it really seemed that the knowledge that the sister running off was a "new" scandal that still everyone remembers freshly.


But the most intriguing character by far was Bredon with his comment: "Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?"

Am calling it now, he is either Amyr or Chandrian

 

Quick note, which is of course a SPOILER.

Just a weird little thing I caught on the re-read. When, near the beginning of the book Kvothe points out how a servant's bell works with Sygaldry Denna gets extremely interested in this form of 'writing' magic. Later, when she asks about how magic works, she first asks about storytale magic, where someone writes something down and it comes true. She quickly drops it once they Kvothe et. al. explain sympathy, but she talks as if it really exists at first.

Yeah, at first I was suspicious too. But its right there.

Denna has the Deathnote.

And just some other little things, like during a drunken discussion, Wilem mentions that a 'red ring of amber' can control demons. And during this same discussion, Kvothe sings a song that his father made for his mother. In it, Arliden refers to her as 'Tally', which was implied in book to be a reference to skill with numbers, but it does sound like a short version of Natalia, does it not?

 

Not an in depth analysis or anything, but I get the feeling it's because she wants to change herself. It seems like she's filled with no small bit of self loathing, so she was probably just grasping at the chance of something like that existing, rather than it hinting at unknown magics.

 

I agree with the idea that Brendon might have been the most important character introduced in the book. Everybody else was explained to some degree. We know Rothfuss likes to flesh out his characters a bit. Even the mercs in the woods were given depth. Brendon, who is more than just a passing acquaintance, we know next to nothing of. Not to mention he has a strong grasp of a relatively unknown game that is otherwise only seen in Fae... trickery.

The idea that Ambrose is getting closer to the crown is nice too. Bracken his arm is fun but I want to see Kvothe earn the Kingkiller title.

I tend to forget about Auri too. Another character who we have met many times but never gotten much information about her. Another person to watch for.

 

I don't think Auri is a princess, or even that significant a character. I remember somewhere on his blog when Rothfuss was talking about why the books took long so long to publish despite the fact that they were already completed. Rothfuss explained that while they were done, he was doing a crazy amount of revisions, and one example he used was the addition of Auri as a character.

That being said, it doesn't mean that Rothfuss didn't add her to be that princess or someone of importance, but the fact she was late revisions gives me doubts.

Oh hey found the link and quote
"The other problem is that the first two books of the series have changed considerably since 2000. I've added characters and plotlines. I've probably added, 250,000 words worth of new material since then. Back in 2000, Devi wasn't in the book. Neither was Auri. Neither was the Draccus. "
Link

 

That says the Draccus was added later, but it was the reason Trebon burned. The burning of Trebon is mentioned in the same paragraph as rescuing a princess from a barrow hill. I'm assuming the only princess Kvothe rescues is Princess Ariel. If so, Auri could easily be Princess Ariel, even if she was added later.

EDIT: Also, I have to believe that that Devi is going to fuck something up fierce because of her obsession with entering the Archives, so I'm guessing she's an important part of the book added after the fact as well.

 

This subject has inspired me to try to tally up the days of the span. I've only figured out eight of them from various mentions and searches in the Kindle editions:

1. Unknown
2. Unknown
3. Theden: third day? Five days before Felling
4. Shuden: 5-6 days before Cendling
5. Unknown
6. Hepten: 6 days after Mourning
7. Caenin: seventh day, "we celebrate" catching Encanis; day before Felling
8. Felling: Eighth day, 8th day of admissions, night for partying & generous tips
9. Reaving: (TWMF ch.147: "it took me all of Reaving to get [to Tarbean], and I spent most of Cendling visiting old haunts...")
10. Cendling: 2 days after Felling; last day of admissions; last day before Mourning; tuition due noon the following day
11. Mourning: sabbathlike, no drinking. The day Tehlu and Encanis both died.

It doesn't look like anybody else has pieced this together yet: when I Google [theden shuden hepten caenin felling reaving cendling mourning], I find only bootleg etexts of TNoTW.

Edit: Obviously, this is the Aturan calendar, although the mixture of Anglo-Saxony names like Felling/Reaving/Cendling and Madeupical names like Theden/Shuden/Caenin suggests a possible mixture of day-naming traditions.

 

Well, I started rereading Name of the WInd again, and this particular passage at the start caught my eye.

I do wonder who he kills, with magic it sounds nonetheless. The only person that I can think of who would inspire that much hatred in Kvothe would be Ambrose, and Malfeascence (sp) would certainly be grounds for permanent expulsion from the University.

 

I'm thinking Ambrose ends up King of Vint, since his father has jumped from 13th in line to 9th during the course of two books and approximately a year and a half of story time (family of 3 lost at sea and then someone killed in a duel). I guess the King of Vint could meet his end in Imre but it'd be kind of weird.

I wonder if this Kingkiller trilogy will end with him killing Cinder. We know the Chandrian are still around in the present, but we don't know all the Chandrian are still around. Killing Cinder would be a satisfying ending.

 

Overnight it became obvious to me that Ambrose's real badness has yet to take place. Kvothe is full of rueful hindsight about the consequences of messing with Ambrose. But we haven't really seen anything deeply, tooth-gnashingly bad yet. We will.

Kvothe has said that the war in the present is somehow his fault. If the war is purely a political one, then it's definitely Ambrose-related. Ambrose may use his resources to dramatically shorten the line of succession. Kvothe rescues the princess (Auri/Ariel) from the sleeping barrow king (the Underthing is a kind of barrow or contains a barrow) specifically because Team Ambrose has risen to the top of succession, so Team Ariel needs to step up and fight him. But clearly Team Ambrose is still in power in the present, whether or not Ambrose himself is killed in the square in Imre. Whether they're still fighting Team Ariel or not, I can't guess.

On the non-political front, though, after reading the thread over at Westeros http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/48123-wise-mans-fear-spoilers-thread-spoilers I am persuaded that the Lackless box contains the germ of the Scrael. Whether the return of the scrael has any direct bearing on the war remains to be seen/spotted.

A newbie at that thread also incontrovertibly demonstrates that Arliden's song about "Tally" is saying that Kvothe's mother is Netalia L@ckless:
"It's worth my life/To make my wife/Not tally a lot less" == Netalia Lockless.

[For me] it follows from that that: Kvothe inherited the L@ckless box as ranking scion of the L@ckless clan; Kvothe's fae power comes partly from the old blood of the Loeclos. Kvothe is ranking scion of the L@ckless because Team Ambrose has likely killed both Maer Alveron and Meluan (and therefore has taken other steps to shorten succession as above). Or if not Ambrose, it may be that the scrael that comes out of the Loeclos box kills the Maer and lady Meluan. This may even be how Kvothe earns the title of Kingkiller, since so many of his other epithets are also variously poor reflections of the truth: he manages the epic achievement of unlocking the Loeclos box—only to see its contents immediately kill his deep-pocketed, recently-crowned ally and his finally-reconciled snooty aunt.

 

The feeling I get from the books is Kvothe is viewed as a legend, but is generally admired instead of thought of as a moron. If he ended up killing a king by mistake I don't think they'd confuse him with Taborlin the Great.

 

Wow. For your first two posts in this forum, you sure bring a lot of interesting infos. Welcome to DLP!

Huh, I don't remember any "germ of scrael" being mentionned in TNotW or WMF. What do you mean?

 

Thanks! I'm in a sufficiently obsessive phase of Kingkiller rereading right now that I didn't even bother to lurk first, so I'm glad I'm at least not putting my elbows in the soup yet.

Yeah, I made up that concept and chose germ because my first thought, "seed of the scrael", seemed too, uh, seminal, and possibly misdirecting. Basically the idea is that the scrael are not part of the background story, so something has to create them or hatch them into the present. Near the end of chapter 88 of NotW Kvothe says to Bast: "All of this is my fault. The scrael, the war. All my fault." So the scrael are somehow unleashed through Kvothe's agency, direct or indirect. TeaSpoon's post at Westeros http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.ph...ead-spoilers/page__view__findpost__p__2386954 (what's the etiquette for referencing posts from other fora?) compares the description of the texture of the scrael in NotW with Kvothe's guess at the contents of the Loeclos box in WMF and finds them similar. In WMF Kvothe also guesses that the contents of the Loeclos box may be something too dangerous and/or impossible to destroy, which the scrael appear to be.

This makes the scrael basically the Daleks.

Clearly the box is too small to hold a wagon-wheel scrael, but it's clear that even a small part of a scrael can either regenerate into a new scrael, or summon more scrael. So there's a wee scraelfoot in the box, Kvothe opens it and there goes the neighborhood.

Oh BTW FWIW I like to think that the "Singers" in Haliax's "who keeps you safe from the Singers?" are not any sort of special order of warriors or enforcers: they're just musicians who sing. And that the Seven believe, presumably for a good reason, that the singing of songs exerts some huge power over them. This may possibly have something to do with why Denna's evil patron has her write a song about Haliax/Lanre.

 

Im sorry to say that this sounds fucking shit, like a bad fanfic, hopefully the Singers will be something else or mentioned briefly as extinct or wiped out.

Though i do like your other theories... now let the speculation for the next book continue.

On topic, i'm currently rereading it and this time i am taking my time and enjoying it far more than the 1st read. But Denna really pisses me off something fierce.

 

What I always got from that reference to "singers" was that the Chandrian wanted as little knowledge about themselves as possible to be out in the world. I don't think their fear of singers is born of song's hypothetical power to shape the world, but more of their desire to keep their weaknesses, whatever those might be, secret.