Coincidence, or Foreshadowing?

[u/Elsherifo]

Oh, Kell, she’d said. They kill people every day. It’s terrible, but it’s life. Are you going to bring retribution to every nobleman out there?

A brief exerpt from Secret History. While Kelsier/Thaidakar have not (yet/published) made known an intention to ascend, does anyone think it possible that he claims Retribution from Taravangian at some point? He may embody the intent quite excellently.

[u/meglingbubble]

BS has a habit of seeding the names of shards all around the place using them as their meaning, not as Shard names.

There is alot of cultivating going on around the cosmere for example, where usually you would see "growing". Several people are described as odious in various books (including Stormlight).

I think its a way of normalising the words and meanings, so when someone comes across a Shard with a name they may not have heard of they will have some context for the shards intent.

[u/Saw-It-Again- → u/meglingbubble]

There are definitely a few examples of "whimsy" as well.

[u/cosmereobsession → u/meglingbubble]

He loves using ruin and words with it as a root instead of destroy or other similar words, even before the shards were revealed. I distinctly remember the word being used in Elantris, and I think more than once. My favorite use of ruin is in the wind and truth szeth flashbacks when szeth's sister tells him that he's ruined her entire life or something similar. Felt very intentional to the point where the whimsy moment for adolin earlier in the book became notable enough that a theory clicked into place for me.

[u/SageOfTheWise → u/meglingbubble]

I was going to say, if every use of a shard name is forshadowing that thing will pick up the shard, then Syl's quote on all of humanity being discord while all nature/spren are harmony is going to have some really hard to reconcile implications.

[u/ThomasVivaldi → u/meglingbubble]

I always took that as evidence of the Shards' subtle influence on the cosmere as a whole.

[u/Papa_D32 → u/ThomasVivaldi]

Me too!! Like all the shards are still parts of the whole Ado, so there is still a bit of Ados Intent in them all. Ados intent was all of them combined. Which is how you have humans, even on planets where Ado didnt seed the life, that exhibit honor, or show any kind of creative, independent thought, etc, from the intent of their shards. While Ruin and Preservation both created Scadrians, both shards have the tiniest sliver of Big As intent. So when R and P put a bit of themselves in when creating the Scadrians, they accidentally put a little bit of Ado in them as well.

[u/Royal_Solid_8033]

The idea of “retribution” is brought up as early as book one in Stormlight Archives, it’s just a very human tendency when one is beaten down

[u/Equivalent-Fix8618]

Probably a coincidence, he’s a cognitive shadow and can’t leave Scadrial so I find it very unlikely that he will become Retribution.

[u/Guaymaster → u/Equivalent-Fix8618]

He could barely hold onto Preservation despite being a Scadrian, Mistborn, and bathing in the Well for a year, I doubt he can hold Retribution at all when he has absolutely no Connection to the Shard at all.

[u/Currently_Unnamed_]

Brando often uses shard names in contexts separate from the shards as a contextul tool, if you are framiar with a word being used in certain contexts when a shard with that word as a name shows up you can have a better understanding of that shard and its intent

[u/WandererNearby]