Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-27713488-20180615004848/@comment-27713488-20180724015435

The Scoutman wrote: Wildly theorizing here, but what is interesting to me is that Mestan said something must have changed fundamentally about Simon when he received his power, so to avoid being just a "very powerful grunt", maybe Simon was just undervaluing himself and how much he had grown by being a war veteran and having had a great partner like Wendis, but what if there is more to it? We know shards can transfer characteristics of their previous owner to the next and, thinking about it, we don't really see much of Simon before he is infused with a shard, just the prologue and the occasional dream sequence. What if some of Simon's ambitions and talents were inherited from the shard's previous owner? Who would that previous owner be? Maybe the change just came from the godlike nature of the power of the shards and Simon was just feeling naturally motivated from having so many possibilities made available for him, but it is interesting to think about the possibility when people like Wynn comment on how much Simon changed since they last saw each other. It's possible, but his ability to work with old acquaintances like Sarai depends on them recognizing that he's still fundamentally the same person, and much of chapter 1 is about him struggling not to be defined by the shard or allow it to change him or others. He doesn't fully succeed at not changing others, but I suspect he was more successful with the introspective part.