What ELSE caused Bannor's greatest regret? TIW/TPTP spoiler

[Durris]

A while ago I asked "Was Korik culpable?" for the Vow's end.

Currently I'm wondering where that chain of causality really started--not in Korik's fatal choice or in Bannor and brethren's response to it, but in things that brought them to the point of those choices.

Obviously none of this would have been set in motion without Kevin's misuse of Bloodguard loyalty at the RoD; but Bannor and Korik had already been living with those consequences for centuries. Terrible enough, but on the evidence, indefinitely endurable. What event(s) that came later made their position suddenly unsustainable?

I have some guesses, but I want to hear others' ideas first.

(Since I've been off the board for eons, this may already have been discussed; if so, bookmarks to the relevant threads would be welcome.)

[dlbpharmd]

Good to see you back Durris - would love to see you around more!

Certainly, the events at Rivenrock played a role in the dissolution of the Vow. Covenant and Elena forced Bannor and Morin to a crisis of decision which they had never faced before - to live in the past and serve Kevin, or the present and serve the New Lords.

[Furls Fire]

Welcome back Durris!!! You've been missed!!

[Cail]

The Vow was hosed at the RoD. Everything past that point is just more icing on the cake. SRD made it pretty obvious (and beat us over the head in Runes) that the Haruchai, while fierce warriors, have the reasoning skills of children. They're looking for absolute, perfect answers in an imperfect world surrounded by imperfect people. From their perspective, it's a no-win situation.....Serve the imperfect Lords, you end up with imperfect service (Rivenrock, RoD), serve the vow, and you're not serving the Lords. Their "service" in Runes is a natural extension of that frustration, and frankly the only role the Haruchai could have played in the book that makes sense and is consistant with their character.

[Durris]

I've missed y'all too. *bows*

At my most recent rereading of TIW (in December) I came away feeling that Covenant and Elena between them had actually done more damage to the Vow than Kevin did. Elena forced Morin and Bannor to choose between loyalty to herself (actually obedience as an index of loyalty--translate that into Haruchai and it becomes a capital heresy) and adherence to the Vow as they had always understood it. No other New Lord had dared put them to such a test. Elena's hubris--the intersection of her drive to redeem the ills of her parents and her unbalanced hatred of Fangthane--made her able to demand this without a flinch; and it was Covenant's bargains (both with the Ranyhyn and tacitly with/against Elena) that brought them all to this point.

Poor Morin. If he hadn't been killed alongside Elena, he could have gone mad in the aftermath.

Cail, you have quite a point--even in the first six books, the moral reasoning of the Haruchai is childlike, resembling the stage at which conscience has first developed and has no subtleties, only black and white judgment applied to others and oneself irrespective of mitigating circumstances or its cost.

[Cail]

Covenant and Elena may have done more actual damage, but you have to admit, the seeds of the Bloodguard's fall, and the questioning of the Vow came from Kevin...Serving his wishes, not protecting him.

[Durris]

Agreed. When Kevin ordered the Bloodguard into the mountains, they obeyed in good faith, because they couldn't conceive of his intent being as contradictory to their Vow as it was. But when Elena in her turn demanded obedience, Morin knew that obeying against his Vowed better judgment could be a disloyal act.

Would it have been possible, I wonder, for him and Bannor to have exercised the right of questioning that had become central to them after Kevin? "High Lord, trust us, you don't want to know the name of this power! To tell you would not serve your safety, as we are pledged to do." Or did Elena's demand foreclose that option, making "loyal opposition" a contradiction in terms?

[Cail]

I just don't think they had it in them. If you look at the nature of the Vow itself, it was flawed from the get-go. You can't give perfect service to imperfect people. The issue with Kevin would have come up eventually.....serve the Lords or protect them. Eventually those to directives would have come into conflict.

What is somewhat surprising is that Morin and Bannor nearly duplicated the "error" with Elena. This is (yet another) one of those things that I find fascinating and frustrating about the Haruchai.

[drew]

I have always felt, that one of Kevin's biggest misstakes-and lets face he's made quite a few, was acctually accepting the Haruchai's service in the first place. I mean after a couple of weeks, when he noticed that these guys weren't sleeping, just to better protect him, I would have told them, "Listen, thanks a lot, I'm moved, really I am, but just stay here and train my Warward, I don't need a vow, now get some sleep alright?"

[Cail]

I dunno Drew, I get the feeling he really didn't have any choice.

[Durris]

What is somewhat surprising is that Morin and Bannor nearly duplicated the "error" with Elena. This is (yet another) one of those things that I find fascinating and frustrating about the Haruchai.

Yes, the Haruchai are ever a people who repeat history.

Not quite.

It's not exactly that they don't learn from their history (and their preternaturally long communal memory, during AND after the Vow). It seems to me more that they learn erroneous things, draw mistaken conclusions. After Kevin they learned survivor guilt and vigilant moral judgement; vigilance did not save them from Elena's ultimatum, and survivor guilt drove Korik to a fate worse than death.

In the Second Chronicles they apparently were still trying to serve the Lords, though the successors of the Lords were morally unrecognizable as such. Trying to expiate the forswornness of their ancestors. At least that's what started the cycle, and then every time a foray of warriors disappeared they sent more, never figuring out, "The last three expeditions never came back. Why should we send more into the same oblivion?"

And my namesake would have renewed the Vow to TC, no questions asked. In amongst his abashed gratitude, TC must have been thinking, "Have you learned nothing?!" Even aHKA wasn't enough to break the cycle without TC also intervening; for aHKA proved their ontological worth, but TC alone had the moral weight to redirect their service.

I gather there's more to this story that awaits my reading of Runes.

[drew]

Yes you're probebly right, they can be damn persistant can't they?

[Durris]

We're the stubbornest folks on the face of the Earth!

[wayfriend]

I just don't think they had it in them. If you look at the nature of the Vow itself, it was flawed from the get-go. You can't give perfect service to imperfect people.

I think that's essentially it.

It was enevitable that something would cause the Vow to end, because it was in essense unstable and doomed. If it was not one thing, it would have been another.

But you can bet your boots that Lord Foul knew that very well, and, when it served his plans the best, he set it up for it to happen. Kinslaughterer with his Stone was a pawn that had been spent; what better plan for them than causing the breaking of the Vow in the Land's greatest need?

So the Vow was cracked, but Lord Foul jimmied a knife into that crack and twisted it at the time of his choosing.

[tonyz]

We note that Kevin <i>did</i> try to refuse the Bloodguard's service. (I think the passage in question is in <i>Gildenfire</i>, where Korik is remembering Way Back Then.) He thought the Vow had flawed them somehow.

This is the interesting part: the Giants "taught him to accept" the Bloodguard. I would really like to know what they said.

[MrKABC]

Hey Tonyz, nice to see a fellow local on the board! I'm in Corona - a hop, skip, and a jump from ya!

I remember Bannor's summation of the failure of the Vow in PtP...

"Ah, Bannor, are you so ashamed of what you once were?"

"I am not shamed - I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. No one should give up sleep and wives and death for any service, lest the price of failure become to abhorrent to bear..."

The Vow was doomed to fail after the Ritual of Desecration - but it took Covenant and Elena's destructive passion to finally make the fatal flaw in the Vow apparent to the Bloodguard.

[Avatar]

(actually obedience as an index of loyalty--

I like that. I like it a lot. If you're not obedient to me, you can't be loyal. Seems most of our rulers feel the same way?

--A

[Durris]

Leaders in many domains (political life, religious communities, families) can define obedience to their personal wills as a litmus test of loyalty, and this is a form of human fallenness that has gone on throughout recorded time, IMHO.

I'm indebted to Fist and Faith for originally pointing out that the Vow did not carry a promise of obedience as such; I had at first misparsed it as being more similar to the vows of Christian monastics than it is. (Poverty, irrelevant; chastity, much too much of it; and in the First Chronicles there do seem to be more occasions of tension between obedience and service/protection than just Kevin's and Elena's demands.)

[drew]

The neat Part about his quote:

"I am not shamed - I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. No one should give up sleep and wives and death for any service, lest the price of failure become to abhorrent to bear..."

Is that it was Covenant who first berated Bannor for giving all that up! He was the one who pushed Bannor into asking him if'd he do it again (in LFB) that Bannor said , "no!". And it was Covenant who pushedthe Bloodguard into telling the name of the Seventh Ward.-Not to mention the maiming of the three to look like Cov!
So a lot of the blame could be easily put on Covenant...but is it blame? Is it a bad thing that they gave up their vow-it's so un-natural and wrong on so many levels? I think this is one more of those examples were Covenant did the right thing, though It seemed like the wrong thing at the time!

[Cail]

Well, in the long run it may have been a good thing, but I don't believe in looking at things that way. The other thing to consider is was it a good thing? What effect did Covenant's actions have on the Haruchai that led to their abomination with the Clave? Did TC's reinforcing their doubt cause them to become more stubborn?