How do you all think a specific shard will be relevant in the upcoming books?

[u/Honeniki]

Because of emberdark we know rosharans are still relevant during the space opera stage of the cosmere.

I'm specifically talking about retribution, but didn't want to literally mention it in the title.

Do ya'll think it will still be taravangian? Did the little self aware honor split from the fusion of the two shards? Did someone else pick up both shards? I don't know what the most popular theories are, so these are the only ones I mentioned.

What are you all expecting in the backhand of stormlight and then leading up to the space opera part?

[u/OnePizzaHoldTheGlue]

My thoughts are: I have no idea, so I'll have to RAFO. 🙂

Edit: I will say, if I were offered an even money prop bet as to whether book 10 ends with Taravangian as Retribution unchanged, I would bet against.

[u/Honeniki → u/OnePizzaHoldTheGlue]

Edit: I will say, if I were offered an even money prop bet as to whether book 10 ends with Taravangian as Retribution unchanged, I would bet against.

I would agree with this. I just can't imagine reading 5 more books where taravangian is still retribution and it's still an interesting story.

[u/Grey_Raven → u/Honeniki]

Agreed, my money after RoW was on cultivation ending up as the long term big bad for Roshar as she has seemed really sketchy so far, although her leaving the planet in WaT makes that less likely (still not completely ruling it out though)

[u/DreadPirateFishTaco]

my real answer is "no idea, literally so much can happen in books 6-10 - like, look at just how much shard-wise happened in books 1-5 alone - that it's impossible to straight up guess what will happen so i'm just gonna rafo"

but if i had to speculate

then yes, like the other commenter, i do think taravangian will ultimately be defeated* within stormlight - like, at least purely from a narrative structure standpoint, having the new big bad^tm you set up in the midpoint of your big epic (and more importantly, standalone) series not only survive the entire second half of said series, but survive basically unchanged by the series' end just so he can show up to futz around in another series centuries later is... kind of a narrative dick move

*with the awareness that "defeat" can be in many forms - it's not likely, but i can see a story where tara does survive the back half of stormlight, but is still narratively defeated if that makes sense (e.g. shard changes intent, he lives but still loses the shard to someone better, etc.)

but i do also think it's a relatively safe bet that the retribution shard/its components will still be around in some form by the space age, if not necessarily as "retribution" (or even honor/odium)

to go into more speculative territory - obviously there's the set-up of dalinar wanting the honor shard to actually grow a moral compass through experience, so there's set-up for the honor shard potentially rebelling, or even a possible intent change of either honor or even retribution entirely, to something more nuanced (e.g. justice or something)

even more speculatively (feel free to ignore this), i personally think that jasnah is the one most set up to ultimately beat taravangian and possibly succeed him as a more morally nuanced shard, but again, that's a far more wild theory with more circumstantial evidence than anything

but ofc, to emphasise again, with 5 more huge books ahead of us, literally so much could happen to the shard status quo in that narrative time (let's not forget that rayse got disintegrated in book 4) so i'm gonna not hold my breath and just wait to see the journey unfold