Hey friends, long time no write about the Name of the Wind, Kingkiller, etc. I’ve intended to do a Name of the Wind analysis reread (not to mention the other books) for some time now. — 

You should assume spoilers henceforth! Forthwith! This post shall take a fortnight of hours to read!

Table of Contents

• You should assume spoilers henceforth! Forthwith! This post shall take a fortnight of hours to read! 
• Note about me:
• Name of the Wind Analysis — Ch 16:
• A note on the Ptolemaic system. 
• Navigate to other chapters:

Note about me:

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Name of the Wind Analysis — Ch 16:

His parents tried to “patch the hole left by Ben’s absence.” The shade.  The shadow. 

In this season, he starts a more formal training in the actor’s trade. And twice this includes manners training. 

“Spara-thain” for the Vintish crew is a “shooting servant” or a “shot servant.” Game warden maybe? Or maybe dating to an older etymology of a servant who was shot through with arrows or some other volley? 

Or perhaps skewered? 

Prepped for the bonfire? 

Green with a ring of gold around the pupil again. 

I still want to know the lyrics to The Pontifex Always Ranks Under a Queen. 

Again with downed trees. This is a classic fairy trap, you know? It’s happening frequently enough to drive their on nuts. 

Man. I don’t know how I’d feel as a kid with my parents making this many freaking innuendos at one another all the time. I suppose I was raised in a very different home where other things were the matter, but holy smokes. It’s not a prudish thing, it just almost seems abusive the other way. Maybe that’s just me, but it reminds me of some horror stories of friends of mine. 

Anyways.

The futile wild sage hunt makes me laugh every time. “I don’t know if it grows around here…” 

“Blood and burning hair” to me sounded like the burning smell of the fae, which I connected to the scrael, being non-Temerant creatures. But another reader connects this directly to the scrael. Totally an option:

The Scrael were at the troupe and Mauthen killings.
byu/Jandy777 inKingkillerChronicle

“fact. I would spare you the burden of any of it if one piece were not necessary to the story. It is vital. It is the hinge upon which the story pivots like an opening door. In some ways, this is where the story begins.”

I maintain that he got the door open. 

Here’s silence again. The silence of the troupe of singers. “Acrid grey smoke,” again the acrid smell we have with the scrael. The fire. The broken sword of Teren. 

The flames were tinged with blue. The only way you get that is from either a gas or flying flakes of copper. It seems to me that the gas is far more likely: the coaldamp.

Rotten wood, rusty iron. All of this seems to be just entropy to me. The presence of entropy: of decay, of the abyss.

“Quicksilver” is the word describing Ferule, which is weird to me because I would pick Cyphus for that, but I suppose if we’re really going with the cold iron Mars against the heat of Haliax, it makes sense in terms of literary alchemy. It’s tricky, but it works. 

“Pale, elegant sword.” — is this the sword he’s labeled Folly? A quicksilver sword? A sword of cold iron? Ice? Star iron like a loden stone? Does it have the power of a meteor inside it? 

Again, the silence of winter here with King Holly or Jack Frost or whatever we call him. He’s called porcelain, frost, winter’s pale. Cold, sharp, white. Is it because he’s the embodiment of ash? Is it because he’s the embodiment of iron, of mars? Or is it something to do with the homunculus and this isn’t his real body? 

Black goat eyes: refusing to reflect the light of the fire or the setting sun.

Again, like Folly. 

I maintain that it’s very likely the sword on Kvothe’s wall is not saicere, but Cinder’s sword: all iron is one iron, and it’s the sword behind every sword. The s-word. Unsure what it’s made of, quicksilver or a bit of moon or what have you, but I think the one on the wall — if not part of the foil — is Cinder’s.

The bald man with the grey beard isn’t Haliax, isn’t Ferule, and isn’t Dalcenti if Dalcenti never speaks. I think it’s fair to say he’s not Alenta either if the moon thesis is right. That leaves Stercus, who seems to be a thrall of Ferule, Usnea, the decay, or Cyphus. 

Were I guessing, after talking it over with another reader, I do think this is Usnea — the old man in the beard with the double sexed nature who lives in nothing but decay.

Man, again the “nightmare smile” with the black eyes reminds me of an eclipse. I can’t get it out of my head. 

It’s interesting that Haliax’s voice catches on the word “sleep.” Is it because he has pity on the child Kvothe and doesn’t want to kill? Or is because he himself cannot die and wants to? Again, the way he’s wrapped in shadow reminds me of an eclipse. “Thick oil.” The “deep cowl” like priests wear is the shadow’s hame. 

“Good as a watcher” because he doesn’t act? 

Or because he’s a moral police? 

Their purposes are different, Cinder’s and Haliax’s. 

“Long acquaintance.” Is this someone else that didn’t start with the seven? I could totally be wrong about the original seven. Hrm….

I have “prince of twilight” written here, but no idea why. It’s been a long while since I made that note. 

I’ll rehearse the names below in a second. “There was iron in his voice” seems to parallel “the soft voice went as hard as a rod of Ramston steel.” 

The “tool in his hand” is the sword, the iron, of the sun. A schoolmaster reciting a forgotten lesson calls “Reshi” to mind. 

“Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe?” What if these are Amyr, Edema Ruh, and Ademre? 

There does seem to be a marked difference between the cruelties the six enjoy and Haliax. He does seem to have “sun” where the rest have only shade. 

As to the “whimsy” they indulge in, it shows up exactly once more in NOTW:

The fellow sounded rather sinister to me, like a fugitive from the law or someone hiding from his family. I was about to say so when I saw Denna looking at me anxiously. She was worried, worried that I would think less of her for pandering to the whimsy of some paranoid lordling.

And I’m reminded again of Kvothe’s attempt to name her patron:

Feran. Forue. Fordale.

What do they seek? What to the want to achieve? Like literally what is their plan? Are they trying to reunite the worlds? Or keep them divided? Or free Haliax? What is it? 

Bring the threefold goddess back together? Can Haliax forget? Does this demiurge have dementia? Dementiurge? 

Then he turns his head to the sky. 

They all grew still. They look at the same point in the twilit sky as if catching a scent of something. 

They are being watched. 

“As bad as a watcher.” 

They come. 

Cinder is legitimately afraid. He scrambles, he staggers, the shadow blooms. They all go into the shadow, “as their feet came down, they slowed.” Is that a dynamic of shifting realms? 

Or is there legit time dilation happening? 

Now here’s the thing that strikes me. Kvothe was there for a long time. Watching the pot, staring at a tent, all of this. It’s true that Cinder says, “Someone’s parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.” 

It seems as if he has a cold anger about this. But again, we have zero proof other than the cruelty of Cinder that they killed Kvothe’s parents. Everything is done in implication. So… who knows about that one. 

Here’s what I will say. 

Haliax says they’re coming. We don’t know who. But they leave. 

Kvothe then feels for signs of life, digs a grave, found his parents. Finds his wagon in the darkest hours. 

He lit every lamp and candle. 

Then we have him sleeping. 

Then the wagon’s on fire. He grabs the book and the lute, goes in to the forest. Dawn in the sky, playing till his fingers bleed until he falls asleep. 

Here’s the most important question of this chapter for me:

Was it the candles? 

Why did whatever they’re scared of not show up? 

Is it possible the Amyr showed up, not the “parents clothes” of the original angels who were just present, but the current organization that seems to burn fae creatures? 

Were they the ones there burning evidence? 

Burning, perhaps, the scrael? 

A note on the Ptolemaic system.

I thought about this originally when Haliax calls Cinder’s name. I’ve said for some time that this is a riff on the old Frazier golden bough idea (with some of Paxon’s personification thrown in) and coupled with the old alchemical, Ptolemaic system. For the record, that system is the alchemical wedding of the sun and moon (sulfur and quicksilver, sometimes) with the participation of the other five of the system: Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter. I’m hoping to get a literary alchemy scholar to read this soon because he’s better at this stuff than I am, but I wanted to point to this poem: 

Cyphus bears the blue flame.

Stercus is in thrall of iron.

Ferule chill and dark of eye.

Usnea lives in nothing but decay.

Grey Dalcenti never speaks.

Pale Alenta brings the blight.

Last there is the lord of the seven:

Hated. Hopeless. Sleepless. Sane.

Alaxel bears the shadow’s hame.

• Haliax bears a striking resemblance to ἡλιακος — the greek word for “of the sun.” The sun hides all over this book that’s otherwise obsessed with the elements. That’s telling, to me at least. Again, sun and shade to the same degree that the moon is quicksilver and shadow: king and queen of the living as much as the realm of the dead, corn gods, Pluto, those sorts of things. Life, death, love. That means his main metal is gold. 
• Ferule is the word for “rod,” the tool in the sun’s hands. What rod? The rod of war. This is Mars, the iron fist.
• Stercus is a Latin word for dung. This is Saturn. The fertilizer god. Lead is the element here. 
• Usnea is a kind of moss, a lichen, that’s also called “old man’s beard.” We could go on a wild tangent here with that and compare this to Leshy. But no, it’s simpler — a word scramble: Eanus. Venus. Who is sometimes connected with undertakers through Venus Libitina and therefore lives in nothing but decay. I keep kicking this around and I think this saves more “faces” with a simpler explanation and here’s why: there’s a little known version of Venus called Venus Barbata (the bearded Venus) that, when writing of the Saturnalia, Macrobius said was basically a cross dressing old man in a beard. That Venus mixed male and female was pretty late in the ancient world, but a thing. One of the double-sexed — and since the hermaphrodite is pretty crucial for esoteric alchemy, it makes sense here. Copper is the element. 
• Dalcenti is a soft mutation of talcen tŷ, a Welsh phrasing meaning gable-end. Gable crosses are common on germanic and Saxon houses, partly to protect from the wind, but also to invoke the divine twins — the sons of Zeus — Castor and Pollux. They can also be two sides of Jupiter. Twin cities, anyone? Also the element is tin.
• Cyphus also happens to be another name for the capital of Thessaly, the site of Mount Oeta and Mount Olympus, where the battle of the titans and olympians happened. The earlier name, however, was Aeolus: the kingdom of the man who kept the names of the wind. That makes this rather Mercurial and also quicksilver. Hermes, interestingly enough, could come from the primitive form of “one cairn,” a human made pile of stones to mark a burial ground.
• Alenta brings the blight is a reference to things that kill crops. The harvest diety and moon diety is Artemis / Diana. The moon. And normal silver is her element.

Navigate to other chapters:

I’ll put this at the end of each chapter so we can actually navigate the text. Because this is getting unwieldy — we’re going to eventually have dozens of links — I’m going to just link to the category from here on out: