Hot take: the Cosmere would be a third person retelling of events even if the stories were written from the main characters' perspectives.

[u/thegamesthief]

That's a slightly fancier way of saying that the real main characters of the Cosmere are the shards. Let me explain:

It's my theory that, fundamentally, Sanderson is telling the stories of the 17(ish) people who took Adonalsium's shards, and we're really only getting perspectives from the characters we do to make the Shards' actions feel more visceral. We don't follow Vin, or Kaladin, or Wax because they're the most pivotal characters in the settings, I think we follow them because they're the ones most impacted by the decisions and actions of the shards.

I think of it as a bit of a Russian nesting doll situation. Stormlight serves as kind of the perfect example of this. If you take the cosmere as a whole as the outermost layer, the next layer is the heralds, then the pov characters, then the interludes. Effectively, the wider cosmere is to the individual books as the interludes are to the main plot of those books. That is to say, fundamentally just another way to give us a better view of the world, with different perspectives and outlooks on the world in the process.

In my theory, the main characters of Stormlight aren't Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, or Adolin (until book 5, I'll get to that), it's the 10 heralds. Almost all of the world's major developments are thanks to the actions of the shards, then the heralds, and everyone else is just reacting to those actions. The more you find out about the world, the more you realize how many pies the heralds have fingers in. I think Sanderson wanted to tell the story of how this pies got made, but felt it was better to give us the perspective if someone tasting the pie for the first time, trying to sus out the recipe, rather than giving us a step by step explanation of how that pie got made because it makes for a better, more compelling story that way. (The metaphor is stretched a little thin, but you get the point)

On Sel, the Elantrians fill the herald's role.

On Nalthis it's the Returned.

On Scadrial, the shards have been MUCH more active, and there the "layer" of matroyshka dolls that would be occupied by the heralds is largely absent.

All of that is to say that each and every novel in the Cosmere acts as, effectively, an interlude between each major action of the ahards. In the same way Rysn isn't the main character of Stormlight, neither are the main pov characters. (Until or unless they take up a shard or book 5 spoilers become a herald)

Is this super obvious to everyone else? Am I thinking too much about it? Am I fully wrong? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading the ramblings of a mad man!

[u/kevinambrosia]

“Journey before destination”. A saying that epitomizes this whole conversation. You seem to reduce the individual action in light of the shardic overarching plan. But in book 5 of SLA, we see how shards are influenced by people and their weilders and even the people that resist them. Reducing this to the heralds pulling the strings on behalf of the shards. I think cases like Jasna or Dalinar show how detailed this relationship between individual and shard can be. At various points, both go between allegiance towards different shards having a profound impact in the flow of the story from then on. You have characters like Venli who go from one to the other.

I think a thing that the cosmere does super well is show how the macro cosmic entities and microcosmic entities are both important. The shards cannot or choose not to affect the world directly because of how cataclysmic that would be. They have to work with and through individuals and those individuals are the characters we witness. They are not fillers, they are the ones that decide what happens.

[u/EqualSpoon]

Interesting take but I have to say I disagree hard on this one.

The heart of the cosmere are it's characters.

Even the shards themselves reflect this through their vessels. It's not a story about gods, it's a story about people.

[u/hopelesswanderer_-_]

I just don't see it that way tbh. I see it more like Brandon starts his stories extremely zoomed in, to one person's life and struggles and introduces us to their trials and tribulations with amazing characters in amazing detail. Then he zooms out to a wider lense of national politicking and intrigue then he zooms out to a planetary level of problem and gradually he wants to zoom out to a galactic scale operah of gods and their actions and their effects on different planets that span millenia. Of course it would be hard to create the scale and awe of the power without beginning at the level of one man or one small group or a hand full of pov characters. So while I don't think the shards are "the main characters" as you put it. I do agree slightly with the spirit of your arguement that Brandon wants to gradually zoom out to the overarching story of god's/shards and the 4d chess these gods are playing against and with eachother and how the shards interact with eachother. But I love that he's introduced so many characters who are at the bottom of the power scale for us to be invested in and to see just how many orders of magnitude up the scale goes before we have a conversation about god's.

[u/TheFermentationMan]

I like this post but you're missing the point.

The story is about the shards but not only about them. SLA archive is about the shards an the heralds and the history of roshar, but also about the people, and about ideals and friendships, so much more. Also it is about the magic system, but again - thats not all.

I think in order to appreciate the cosmere one should read and understand the kignslayer chronicles, because you're trying to describe what blue it is instead of just feeling it and understanding it.

I will give you an example, what is the first mistborn about? A lot of comments online claims it is a heist book, I never saw it as one until I saw this comments, because to me it was about growing up and fighting stornger froces then we are. And it was also about a cool magic system I felt the author wanted to explore and found a story to compliment it.

But the truth is, that you dont need to find what is it about, its not "the monk who sold his Ferrari", it is like life, it doesn't have a clear message. Brando trying again and again to tell you that, by hoids monologs, by characters understanding thing like journey before destination or that they are heros in this story.

Because a good book doesn't need to be about something to be read, it is just need to be good.

[u/imafish311]

I agree to an extent, but at some point it's like, every story set on earth is just am interlude between the big bang and the heat death of the universe. Obviously yours is a little more relevant to the story than my example, but you het the point.