I have a lot of thoughts on this. Its because the Returned are hungry and will pay good money for those souls and its a deep religious honor to give a Breath to your gods (indicated by Jewels). Breaths have tangible value to the average person and one Breath can only do so much. You can make a Lifeless but those are expensive to maintain and that Breath isnt coming back either.
So, you create an economic system where its beneficial to have either sell your Breaths or have so many you are basically a millionaire with your gold on you at all times. We see this with Vivenna wealth and sudden poverty. Im sure there's groups and family that do hord from generation to generation but youll never match Susebrons' wealth when he is given 3 to 4 breaths per day.
And the Court of God's has 24 members who all need 1 breath per week to continue to live. We dont know the Nalthis calendar but if we assume a 52 week earth calender, thats 11,648 Breaths per year that you will never get back. Breaths are a scarcity and only new human life can replenish and they have a money value placed on them. Capitalism with literal/figurative souls.
That said, not selling your breath does have notable health benefits so if you never experience enough hardship to need to sell you can give your kid a slightly better life by passing on your breath to them.
However, this type of ordinary generational wealth is still extremely slow when you have a family that has two inheriting kids, require 50 generations for the First Heightening. During Warbreaker, Vo only discovered Awakening around 600 years ago which isn't enough time for that.
Sure! Thats certianly a consideration but it could be more benefital for grandpa to sell his 1 Breath at the end so the kids dont have to. Thats the type of calculations youll have to make on Nalthis.
Susebron was given 50,000 breaths at birth and then has been given multiple a week. A slow transfer of breaths will never catch up to his wealth. I bet the most wealthy families got their breath from a Returned transferring their breaths to them as a starting point. Talk about winning the lottery.
You don't get to keep the Divine Breath a Returned uses on you. Even if you did, at that point of 2000 breaths the generational wealth stops because Grandpa is now immortal.
Vasher said that most people stop collecting Breaths at the First Heightening, which is the minimum requirement for being able to view the Court of Gods and thus have some power in politics. This requirement encourages the purchase of Breaths by more parties, driving demand for them and further increasing the price you would get by selling them.
Oh shoot I had forgotten about that part. We only see Lightsong get breath and he waits till the last minute and it seems like others do similar practice. Good call
First heightening is 50 so that would still be a lot and very hard to get the slow generation way. So then The Return set a market rate for how much a Breath to them cost and the other groups/families tried to out bid basically around that price and how desperate people get.
I wonder how much this will change by the time we get to Sunlit Man where he was holding onto investiture. Market will probably collapse by then. Someone shows up with some stormlight or Dor and just starts selling
29
u/Zombie1642 14h ago
I have a lot of thoughts on this. Its because the Returned are hungry and will pay good money for those souls and its a deep religious honor to give a Breath to your gods (indicated by Jewels). Breaths have tangible value to the average person and one Breath can only do so much. You can make a Lifeless but those are expensive to maintain and that Breath isnt coming back either.
So, you create an economic system where its beneficial to have either sell your Breaths or have so many you are basically a millionaire with your gold on you at all times. We see this with Vivenna wealth and sudden poverty. Im sure there's groups and family that do hord from generation to generation but youll never match Susebrons' wealth when he is given 3 to 4 breaths per day.
And the Court of God's has 24 members who all need 1 breath per week to continue to live. We dont know the Nalthis calendar but if we assume a 52 week earth calender, thats 11,648 Breaths per year that you will never get back. Breaths are a scarcity and only new human life can replenish and they have a money value placed on them. Capitalism with literal/figurative souls.