History Literature / Oathbringer

** The Parshmen, after they've regained their minds, are rightfully angry about how mankind has treated them, and Kaladin, a former slave himself, has more than a little sympathy for them.
** Perhaps because of this, the humans enslaved by the parsh are treated surprisingly well. They are given shelter and clothing, freedom to roam when they're not working, and can choose what type of work they want to do--they can even choose not to work at all, though they don't get food in that case. They are also careful not to work their slaves to exhaustion and excuse slaves who are simply too weak to do the job (though they keep an eye out for slaves just ''pretending'' to be too weak to do the job) and keep them well-equipped as necessary. It's a stark contrast to the way humans treat their slaves. There's an argument to be made that technically the humans aren't slaves at all, just ordinary laborers.

* NeverLiveItDown: InUniverse. Syl is understandably still a little miffed about Kaladin killing her in ''Words of Radiance'', and insists he apologize every time the subject comes up. Which she does often.

* EasilyForgiven: [[spoiler:Adolin stresses about what his father might think about his murder of Sadeas, but to his surprise Dalinar takes it pretty well when the truth comes out. Szeth is also accepted as one of Dalinar's Radiants -- his personal bodyguard, even -- with only some grumbling and mistrust, mostly because at the point where he joined then, Dalinar ''really'' needed his assistance and they still need as many Radiants as possible.]]
** [[spoiler: Taln forgives the other Heralds for leaving him in Damnation for four and a half thousand years, since it prevented the Desolations from coming and gave humanity a chance to thrive]].

** Meta-wise and in-universe, the explicit mention there's only one Perpendicularity in Roshar despite there being 2 Shards, and that it belongs to Cultivation. [[spoiler:Honor's Perpendicularity is part of the climax, and has many imlicaitons both in and out of universe.]]

** Averted with just about every other character though. Most humans, and virtually all lighteyes, see nothing inherently wrong with slavery, although many do disapprove of masters mistreating their slaves. At least a few of the main characters [[DeliberateValuesDissonance technically own slaves themselves]], although it's fairly easy for the reader not to notice this.

** As a side effect of having his soul be caught and prevented from ascending in death, Szeth is now constantly followed by a ghostly afterimage. He can also more acutely hear the voices of the dead, and being around Stormlight quells these voices.

* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler: The Fused are the spirits of ancient parshmen transformed into spren by Odium, growing more insane each time they take over the body of another parshman, killing them in the process, with many so focused on revenge on humanity that they're willing to destroy Roshar to get it. Some of them don't even seem aware of what's going on anymore, and some souls are so twisted Venli can barely recognize them as Listeners anymore]].

* PrivateProfitPrison: One of the Skybreaker tests has the new recruits investigating a small private prison where the prisoners escaped and killed the guard on the way out. Note that this is considered "bleeding heart progressive" by the world's standards; they're still mostly at the stage where all criminals are executed as a matter of course. The recruits are told to hunt down the prisoners and bring them back dead or alive; the test proctors already have received writs of execution for all of them. Szeth realizes that the reason the prisoners were able to escape was because the prison was of shoddy construction with only one guard--the warden had been spending the absolute minimum amount of money and pocketing the rest. Szeth asks if he's allowed to execute the warden. [[HiddenPurposeTest The proctors tell him his writ of execution was the first one they received]].

* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: on finding Sadeas' body, there's a large confrontation between Sadeas' men and Bridge 4 that draws a large crowd, and no one can really figure out who did it. Everyone is sure blame will fall on Dalinar's camp, but the list of potential suspects is oo large, so everyone just agrees to continue on, not looking into it.

* WhoKilledTheAsshole: on finding Sadeas' body, there's a large confrontation between Sadeas' men and Bridge 4 that draws a large crowd, and no one can really figure out who did it. Everyone is sure blame will fall on Dalinar's camp, but the list of potential suspects is oo large, so everyone just agrees to continue on, not looking into it.

* DisneyDeath: Played with. Eshonai fell into a chasm at the end of ''The Words of Radiance,'' but was wearing Shardplate (which we know is able to cancel some amount of fall damage) and was in Stormform (whose exact specifications are unknown). Dalinar sees a vision of the Voidbringer champion, and they are clad in shardplate painted black, just like Eshonai's. After the end of Part One, one of the interludes details her sister on and a strange new Spren searching for her. They discover that she survived the fall, used her Shardblade to anchor herself to the wall while the storms met, [[spoiler: and drowned as the storms' rain filled the chasm she fell into]].

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Amaram (see IDidWhatIHadToDo below) is close to snapping for good, insisting that he has no blame because he acted how it was right in those circumstances. [[spoiler: Kaladin then asks why, if that's true, he's so vehemently trying to justify himself. This ends up cementing Amaram's VillainousBreakdown.]]

* DarkSecret: The secret that broke the old Knights Radiant is brought up again. The Stormfather knows it, but refuses to share it. [[spoiler:The truth is that humans were the first Voidbringers. They arrived on Roshar as refugees after their homeworld (implied to be Yolen, or possibly Ashyn, the first planet in the Rosharan system) was destroyed and rendered uninhabitable by Surgebinding to coexist beside the parshmen, but they grew greedy and tried to take everything for themselves. At first, whenever the Knights discovered this, Honor was able to calm them down and convince them to keep fighting. But by the time of the Recreance, he was dying and half-mad, so talking to him only made things worse]].

* TransformationIsAFreeAction: {{Averted}} in one of the book's worst TearJerkers. [[spoiler:Elokhar gets within ''a single word'' of speaking the First Ideal...only for Moash to stab him in the back before he can finish]].