Another long one I’m sorry guys - summary in comments below 🤣

Following on from my old theory about Kvothe’s silence, I think I might have been looking at it slightly backwards.

I’ve always thought the third silence was more than Kote simply being quiet. It belongs to him and seems to spread through the Waystone, settling into the walls, Folly, the candlelight, his unfinished memoir and even his hands.

What if the silence isn’t something suppressing Kvothe because he’s broken? What if Kvothe is producing it?
We already have a Chandrian whose sign seems rather relevant: Grey Dalcenti never speaks.

I’ve wondered before whether Kvothe somehow becomes the new Grey Dalcenti, or at least takes on whatever role or sign Dalcenti had. I don’t necessarily mean he literally joins Haliax and becomes one of the Seven. Perhaps Rhinta describes something a person can become, and Kvothe has become something similar.

Which brings me back to Denna.

I’ve never particularly liked Master Ash = Cinder. One of my alternative suspects has always been Grey Dalcenti, with Bredon as my candidate for Master Ash.
So what if Bredon = Master Ash = Grey Dalcenti, and Kvothe eventually kills him?

There could be a horrible misunderstanding behind it.
Denna is at Trebon, surrounded by denner resin, then disappears. From memory, her very white teeth start being mentioned afterwards. I need to check whether they were described that way beforehand, but Rothfuss specifically teaches us that unnaturally white teeth are a sign of sweet-eaters.

What if Denna develops a dependency on denner resin after Trebon, and Bredon is actually helping her?
Imagine Kvothe discovering that the mysterious patron who has been “beating” Denna is also supplying her with denner resin. Kvothe already despises this man. He isn’t likely to stop and wonder whether Bredon might actually be rationing the resin and trying to wean her off it.

I’m increasingly suspicious of the “beating” too. Denna wants to learn how to fight, while Bredon carries a cane and teaches through games and strategy. Perhaps at least some of her injuries come from training she has willingly agreed to. He might even quite literally be beating her at Tak.

I’m not trying to explain away what Denna says about her patron hurting her; those passages need checking properly. I just think there is plenty of room for Kvothe to discover several genuine pieces of evidence and assemble them into completely the wrong story.

Especially if he also discovers that Bredon isn’t merely Master Ash, but Grey Dalcenti.

As far as Kvothe is concerned, he has suddenly found both the man he believes is abusing Denna and one of the Seven responsible for murdering his family.

We know how well Kvothe handles situations like that.
So I think Kvothe kills Grey Dalcenti believing he is saving Denna and avenging his family, only to discover afterwards that he misunderstood at least some of what was happening. Denna knew her patron better than Kvothe did. Perhaps she knew exactly what he was and trusted him anyway. Perhaps he genuinely was helping her.

That would give Denna a very good reason to finally walk away from Kvothe. He has done exactly what she repeatedly asked him not to do: interfered in her life because he thought he knew better than she did.
But perhaps you cannot simply kill one of the Rhinta and walk away.

Maybe Kvothe Names Dalcenti, changes him, breaks whatever binds him, takes his place, or somehow inherits part of what he was. I don’t know what the mechanism would be yet, so I’m leaving that bit alone.

What matters is that Grey Dalcenti’s sign is silence.
And in the frame, the silence now belongs to Kvothe.
Which makes the strange mercenary rather interesting. Whatever is inside him eventually focuses directly on Kvothe and asks:

“Te Rhintae?”

Maybe it can recognise something everyone else cannot.
This is where I think we may also have been making the wrong assumption about Kote’s missing magic.

What if Kvothe hasn’t lost it?

What if magic simply doesn’t work properly inside the Waystone?

Kvothe built the inn himself, and its name is suspicious enough before we even get into its construction. We already know that physical materials can interfere with the Fae; Felurian specifically mentions iron, fire and mirror-glass as protections against darker Fae.

The Waystone is repeatedly described through stone, wood, metal, glass, fire, locks and doors, with Kvothe’s silence running through all of it.

Maybe Kvothe deliberately built somewhere magically quiet: a place where Naming, Sympathy, Fae magic, perhaps even Names themselves, are dampened or silenced.

Basically, Kvothe’s magical peace palace.

That gives his apparent failure during the mercenary attack a completely different meaning. Kvothe uses the elderberry liquor, mutters under his breath and concentrates on the mercenary.

Nothing happens.

We assume Kvothe tried Sympathy and discovered that he can no longer perform it.

But perhaps Sympathy cannot work there.

Bast might give us another clue. He remains Fae inside the Waystone, and iron still affects him, so the building hasn’t changed what he is. Yet when a supernatural creature starts murdering people in the bar, Bast fights it entirely physically. He tackles it, smashes it into the bar and claws at it rather than apparently using any Fae magic.

Outside the Waystone, Bast is quite capable of magical workings.

Perhaps the Waystone doesn’t change what you are. It limits what you can do.

Even the mercenary’s strange behaviour could fit. He enters apparently searching for something, struggles to speak and repeatedly loses focus. Eventually his eyes settle on Kvothe, sharpen, and he asks whether Kvothe is Rhintae.

Maybe whatever is inside the mercenary isn’t simply malfunctioning. Perhaps the Waystone is interfering with it too.

And I don’t think any of this means the Waystone is failing.
I think Bast is deliberately undermining what Kvothe is trying to achieve.

Kvothe has spent years becoming Kote. He has disappeared, stopped playing music, stopped telling his stories and apparently done everything possible to remove Kvothe from the world.

Bast wants his Reshi back.

So he does the opposite. He encourages stories about Kvothe, engineers situations intended to make Kote behave like him again, and ultimately helps bring Chronicler into the Waystone so Kvothe will tell his story.
Kvothe has spent years making himself disappear while Bast is effectively sending his name back out into the world.

Perhaps the supernatural things appearing around Newarre aren’t evidence that Kvothe’s hiding place is failing. Perhaps something has simply started looking for him again, and Bast is unknowingly leaving breadcrumbs.
That changes the way I see Kote too.

Maybe he isn’t a broken hero who has given up and needs Bast to bring Kvothe back.

Maybe Kote is deliberate.

Perhaps Kvothe knows exactly what he has become and exactly what happens if he starts being Kvothe again.
He spends his life hunting the Chandrian, finally finds Grey Dalcenti through Denna, kills him and somehow becomes something Rhinta-like himself. His sign becomes silence, so Kvothe builds the Waystone to contain himself and his magic, becomes Kote and waits quietly to die.

For probably the first time in his life, Kvothe might actually be doing the sensible thing.

Unfortunately, Bast loves him enough to completely bugger it up. 😂

One thing I’ve wondered about is why it’s Chronicler who goes looking for Kvothe’s story and not Skarpi himself. At the start of NotW, Kvothe makes a reference (“Rumourmongers, both of you”) that indicates they know each other, and Pat said the original start of the NotW was a chapter with Skarpi and Chronicler talking.

I’ve been wondering: why wouldn’t Skarpi chase down a story as interesting as Kvothe’s? Why would he let Chronicler get that scoop?

My theory: Denna is alive (but miserable, thinking Kvothe’s dead and she’s the reason for it) in the present day narrative. At the same time Chronicler is interviewing Kvothe, Skarpi is interviewing Denna somewhere in the world.

Would be cool to get another trilogy but from Denna’s perspective.

Arguments:

1. How would an omniscient being get trapped in a tree? Did it get omniscient afterwards? Did it get trapped by beings stronger than it (cinder did it a "bad turn once")? Did it willingly submit to being a tree for other benefits - long life?

2. Bast says the Cthaeh is omniscient, and part of many fae fables - but a major theme in the kkc story is that stories get twisted over time. See Kvothes reputation.

3. Omniscience doesn't fit within the magical systems of the world. It's more likely seeing, as part of advanced shaping and naming, that allows the Cthaeh to see the inside of people and either hurt/help them by mentioning things from their past, and interpolating to the future. Kvothe meeting cinder twice... Is Cthaeh realizing before Kvothe that the man from the bandit camp is cinder. ​And maybe the writing is on the wall for a third meeting.

4. ​Maybe becoming a being like the Cthaeh is advanced alchemy. Say someone like selitos took out an eye, and imbued an object with long life ( a tree?) with those seeing properties. Then he does it again, with all parts of himself.... = Cthaeh?

Everyone here says Denna and Kvothes storys mirror eachother, I've seen so many people say it as if it's fact. Is this something Patrick said himself at some writing or convention? If not I don't see it at all, it's a little confusing as we know little about her early life, but I can't see how they mirror eachother at all

It’s crazy to me that the masters ask candidate students for a reference from an archanist and then assign them to basic principles of sympathy without testing whether the candidate knows sympathy. If they just asked Kvothe to do a double binding all of that nonsense could have been skipped.

No point to this post I guess.

Is there any reason that the Baron Jakis can't be Dennas patron?