Line #47 Headscratchers/TheKingkillerChronicle


1	New entries on the bottom.
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3	[[foldercontrol]]
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5	[[folder:The Creation War]]
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7	* Skarpi (Name of the Wind) and Felurian (Wise Man's Fear) both say the Creation War happened so long ago that history has forgotten it. The Cthaeh says to Kvothe that "Haliax has been alive five thousand years," implying that the Creation War took place around 5000 years before the book's events. How is it that nothing from that era is remembered? In real life, we at least know of the existence of ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Mesopotamian, etc. civilizations, even though they existed around 7000 years or more ago. Kvothe even finds massive ruined structures underneath the University. Do archaeologists not exist in the Four Corners?
8	** Back in the Dark Ages and other medieval times, archaeologists were not really present. While the Four Corners may be more advanced, with the University, archaeology still probably doesn't have much of a presence. It isn't helped by the fact that much of the ancient stuff is liked to magic, which is feared by most, speaking of the Amyr, which has been hidden for some reason, dealing with the Fae, which is dangerous, or connected to the Chandrian, which is a sure route to death.
9	** On top of that, the civilizations that took part in that war were explicitly and deliberately destroyed, except for one city. And so many people died in ''one battle'' in that war, that there were more deaths than there are people alive in the world currently. Its not hard to imagine that something as traumatic and destructive as that was not something people talked about much after it finally ended(I mean even today its much harder to find a war vetern or refugee who wants to talk at length about what they saw, than one who is more concerned with putting that terrible time behind them and trying to piece their life back together, and the conflicts most militaries are involved in today are not on nearly the same scale as what we are talking about here), and over the centuries it just gradually faded from public knowledge. On top of which, the written records of that time have also been deliberately removed/destroyed from the places they were kept. I mean the records of someone has hugely significant as Lanre, or the events of something as world shaking as the Creation War don't all just... vanish without ''somebody'' specifically setting out to do so, same with the Amyr, its just that with them, they are recent enough that the missing records are noticed whereas the Creation War may have just been gradually phased out over time, and with less and less people even being familiar with it in the first place, wasn't noticed nearly as much.
10	** There are two other.
11	** First, the Cthaeh lives in a place where times doesn't flow as it does in the real world, so "5000 years" to him might have a completely different meaning for the Four Corners. Second, Skarpi and Felurian. Felurian, old as she can be, is not quite interested in history, so she most likely just doesn't know (not everyone would know when the punic wars were actually fought, most would just know it was ''really'' a long time ago), and Skarpi is still a storyteller, he himself admits to have changed some details to make the story sound better, and "so long that no one remembers it" sound better than "something more than 5000 years ago" (plus, over 5000 years ago might mean two or three hundreds years, even more if you consider that the resulting empire is ruled by Aleph, by some believed the actual god who created the whole world).
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13	[[/folder]]
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15	[[folder:Adem Pregnancy]]
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17	* The Adem don't know that sexual intercourse causes pregnancy because they have so much sex that no one never linked the two. However, they do practice animal husbandry. Wouldn't that have clued them in? Without selective breeding, they would not be able to domesticate their livestock. All of their animal products, like meat, leather and wool, would be inferior to those outside their borders. A large percentage of the eggs they eat would be fertilized.
18	** Kvothe makes the comparison to cats, and the woman in question points out that humans and cats are not the same--which Kvothe admits is true, he was using a fallacy. They just think they're different that way. After all, humans don't give birth in litters either.
19	** The Adem don't believe that animals reproduce through sexual intercourse either. They believe that sex has nothing to do with reproduction. They don't even have a word for father. If they did concede that animals reproduce sexually, just not humans, then the argument would have been much different. The culture would also have a word for father, because they'd need to use it for animals.
20	** I wonder if there's something resembling celibacy in the Four Corners. Granted, the Adem probably wouldn't believe Kvothe something like that exists, but the general idea that celibate women don't get pregnant is quite hard to counter.
21	** Patrick actually answered this:
22	--->Fan Questioner: Have you read about the Trobriand Islanders, the matriarchal society whose diet serves as birth control for the population?\
23	PR:Yup.\
24	Fan Questioner:Did you deliberately choose recessive traits for the Adem people’s general appearance?\
25	PR: Yup. Because I’m awesome.
26	** As you can see in both the fictional and real society matriarchal mothers pass along the secret of a child bearing diet completely controlling reproduction.
27	** Adem women secretly controlling their pregnancies through diet is never even hinted at in the books. That would be a pretty major lie at the center of their society. Also, as I recall, the only cook we meet in Haert is a man. How do Adem women secretly control their diet when there are men making their food? Also, Adem women spend a lot of time away from their homeland fighting. How do they maintain a contraceptive diet when food resources are limited? Also, none of this addresses my previous concern that animal husbandry reveals the link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy.
28	** The Adem don't have sex outside their own society, since they're afraid of STD's. The most likely possibility is that the contraceptives are a naturally occurring part of their diet, some herb they use to spice their foods, not a vast conspiracy. Still not sure about animals, but maybe they're affected by the contraceptive too, so the Adem don't really have animal husbandry? Been a while since I read the book, so I don't recall how much detail was given there.
29	** First off, Adem ''do'' have sex outside of their own society. Kvothe has sex with them. They also talk about having sex with other outsiders. Secondly, the Adem must have animal husbandry because they have leather and meat and aren't a hunter/gatherer society. Kvothe comments on the quality of their food and various possessions. If their livestock were wild animals, their products would be inferior to what Kvothe is accustomed. Thirdly, if the Adem diet is a natural contraceptive and everyone is always eating it without realizing that it's affecting their fertility, that would really only explain why Adem women aren't perpetually pregnant. It would also mean that Adem would be much more fertile when they're away from their homeland, which would mean that all their recessive traits wouldn't make any sense. Almost all of their children would be from women having sex with foreigners in distant lands while they're off their contraceptives.
30	** The Adem ''explicitly'' do not have sex when they are away from their homeland. They don't trust random outsiders not to have diseases. Outsiders they invite into their lands for training are an exception, not the rule.
31	** Except, of course, when they do. Vashet spent quite a long while talking about her Poet King. Explicitly an outsider she had sex with.
32	** Keep in mind, Vashet is frikken weird by Adem standards, because she herself is someone rather well traveled. The Adem are a culture, not a monolyth, and individuals are going to accept some norms of Adem society and reject others, like literally any other culture in the world. To think otherwise is to stereotype. So when the Adem say they don't have sex with outsiders as a rule, that's perfectly true. But that doesn't exclude the possibility of exceptions. Also, as far as her Poet King goes, we have no idea the circumstances of Vashet's relationship with him. Who knows, maybe she only consented when she drove enough Outsider out of him.
33	** Vashet isn't "weird" and specially not because she's "well-traveled"; by the very nature of their business, ''all'' of the Adem have to be well-traveled: their main source of income is being paid swords. And nothing in Vashet's mentions of her poet king remotely implies that he even so much as trained a bit, unlike Kvothe, so, yes, he was an outsider. And this contradicts the second-level bullet anyway: It means the Adem don't explicitly not have sex with strangers; they can and will, making all of their ideas about pregnancy even more nonsensical. And there's no such thing as "stereotyping" fictional cultures; we don't expect consistency in real life because it's real life. Fiction isn't real life and, thus, if a culture is described, it ''should'' be consistent. If not, then we might as well drop the headscratchers section of every work altogether.
34	** The Adem are a bunch of liars and hypocrites, they are aware their society doesn't make sense and don't care about it. Vashet explicitly said that she didn't care for the truth.
35	*** I don't recall any suggestion that any of the Adem disbelieve anything that they say.
36	*** Except for the statement, not even suggestion, that they don't care for the truth.
37	*** I just reread the book and I don't recall her saying that. The closest I can recall is that she tells Kvothe he can think what he wants.
38	*** Eh:
39	----> Vashet smiled lazily. “And if the pursuit of truth was my goal, that would concern me.” She gave a long yawn, stretching like a happy cat. “Instead I will focus on the joy in my heart, the prosperity of the school, and understanding the Lethani. If I have time left after that, I will put it toward worrying on the truth.”
40	*** I don't have the context of that quote on me, but the quote in and of itself just speaks to a lack of curiosity, not a knowing understanding that they believe lies. Vashet feels convinced enough of what she understands to be true to simply accept it and move on with her life rather than ruthlessly testing everything with the scrutiny of a scientist. Furthermore, I'm not sure how the assertion that Adem don't believe what they say answers the original question. If the Adem really ''don't'' believe that there are no such things as fathers, are they secretly breeding their animals without acknowledging it?
41	*** Yes, "lack of concern for the truth" does not mean "knowingly believing lies", the original point was that: "lack of concern for the truth", the first reply to that equated ''that'' to "believing in lies" is a non-sequitur. As for that question of breeding their animals without acknowledging it: indeed, that must be exactly what they are doing. How that makes sense, well, it doesn't, hence a headscratcher.
42	*** Sorry, I just can't parse the first sentence in the comment directly above, so I'm not exactly sure what you're saying.
43	*** What that sentence means is the same original point: it was never said that the adem "knowingly believe lies", the point is that they don't care for the truth, which they don't.
44	*** When I said "knowingly believe lies," I meant it in the sense of knowing that their society's beliefs (the things they say are true) are lies, not doing ''1984''-style doublethink. Nothing in the text supports the idea that the Adem are all aware that they're speaking hogwash, that their fundamental philosophy is founded on untruth, and that they're all living double lives publicly agreeing on nonsense while privately studding out their prize male livestock to make better leather, unwilling to admit that they're all hypocrites. Rather, they base their whole society on the validity of their beliefs and argue stringently in support of them. Only Vashet's flippant response to Kvothe's relentless argumentation suggests otherwise, and like I said before, speaks more to the exact lack of scientific curiosity that you would expect from a society that never figured out sexual reproduction. Rather than a massive lie at the center of the culture that goes completely unexplored, I would think that the obvious Doylist explanation is that Rothfuss just didn't think about domestication when he wrote about how great Adem products were.
45	*** Again, all that is beside the point: it was never said that they knowingly believe lies or that they deliberately live secret lives. They don't, but they still ''are'' hypocrites, they just don't care that they are and don't care about finding out how. As for the Doylist explanation, it's really only a matter of perspective, it remains a headscratcher. Also, just because a line goes against a particular interpretation doesn't mean that everyone should dismiss it. Nothing says that Vashet is not merely voicing what all the Adem think, and in my interpretation, that's exactly what she's doing. They're a bunch of anti-intellectuals and happy about it.
46	** Kvothe mentions offhand that he eats a herb as a contraceptive. Vashet's "poet king" likely did similar. One can be wrong without also being a liar and a hypocrite. Anyway, it's not as if it's the silliest thing any culture has ever believed about human reproduction.
47	*** That explains why Vashet didn't get pregnant after having sex with those two men, but not why Adem have domesticated livestock without understanding sexual reproduction.
48	*** This counterargument to the Adem being liars and hypocrites, or simply dogmatic (to put it another way), requires every outsider an Ademre woman has sex with to be eating contraceptives just because. Even just Kvothe and the Poet King is too much of a coincidence already.
49	** Up until the 17th Century, a lot of Europeans, including many scientists, believed that only some animals reproduced through sex, believing that other species were generated by interactions among non-animal substances. It took a series of elaborate controlled experiments just to convince the Catholic Church that maggots came from eggs laid by flies. If the Adem were to decide to gather data on pregnancy and its relationship to sex in their culture and in, say, Vintas, they might see a pattern, but why would they do that? And as we saw from Penthe's conversation with Kvothe, 'barbarians' have no evidence except their own personal experiences and what they think of as common sense, which the Adem can just counter with their own personal experiences and assumptions about common sense. The only thing that could potentially counter their argument would be female mercenaries coming home and then having babies with 'barbarian' traits. But they could even explain that away. In real life societies that believed that the father alone was responsible for conceiving the child (and that the mom just carried it), children resembling their mothers was explained away as the mother leaving an imprint on the father's mind that influenced his conception of the child. The Adem could invent some similarly nutty excuse.
50	*** As I recall, the animals that Europeans thought reproduced without sex were animals like flies, not domesticated animals like cows and chickens that they could observe having sex and getting pregnant. And while Europeans might have not understood the arcane biological details of reproduction, they knew enough to understand that sex causes it and use that knowledge to domesticate animals.
51	** The idea that the Adem don't draw a connection between sex and pregnancy because none of them ever go long enough without sex to notice the effect it has on pregnancy rates . . . does Adem society not have any lesbians in it?
52	*** That's another good question. Homosexuality ''is'' addressed elsewhere in the story.
53	* OP Again: Here's a related question: Adem don't believe that sex causes pregnancy, and one female character even laments that men have nothing to offer the world. So ''why'' would Adem keep male animals around? From their perspective, what would be the point of tending a male cow past the first opportunity to slaughter it for meat and leather? How would they keep their herds populated?
54	** This is brought up not just by you, but by the above responses, so it's worth addressing why the Adem can recognize animal reproduction takes 2, but not human. This is brought up indirectly during the conversation Kvothe discovers the Adem's lack of belief when he brings up cats. Aside from the fact that Kvothe is unable to conclusively prove genetic inheritance, Penthe states that reproduction with animals is different. Cats, for example, only give birth in litters while humans typically only give birth one at a time and cats and dogs only mate when they're in heat while humans do it year round. These differences serve to point out Kvothe is trying committing a fallacy. Specifically, the argument from analogy, which is to say that just because two things are similar in some respects does not mean you can assume them to be similar in all respects. So if you brought up animal reproduction, all the adem would do is point out that humans are not animals, so reproduction works differently. And this would be the logically correct response, even if it happened to be wrong.
55	*** I completely understand that the Adem would be ''able'' to believe that animals reproduce sexually while still maintaining that humans do not, but all evidence suggests that they ''don't'' believe it.
56	** The best the book offers to explain that one is Penthe dismissing a fallacy with another (and far more blatant) fallacy, and even then the book only acknowledges the first one as a fallacy.
57	** It's entirely possible to engage in selective breeding while considering only the traits of the mother. It's not nearly as effective or efficient as understanding that both parents contribute traits to offspring, but it can be done - with many plant crops, in fact, that's traditionally how breeding WAS done, because the supplier of pollen often couldn't be known.
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59	[[/folder]]
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61	[[folder:Kvothe and the fight at the inn]]
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63	* At the start of book 1, Kvothe still appears to have some sort of magical power, destroying a bottle of wine just by making a fist in the air. He then states after the incident with Bast (where he is capable of restraining the Fae) that he would break Chronicler's calling of Iron if he did not release it. Afterwards, Bast is physically hurt by Kvothe's grip. However, later on in the story, not only is Kvothe said to have lost his magic, being unable to light a person on fire, but he is also easily defeated by an ordinary soldier in hand to hand combat (Bast tries to justify this by noting his wounds from a fight several days ago, but Kvothe seems to disbelieve that was the reason, only accepting it to make Bast feel better). Did Patrick forget about the earlier events?
64	** It was implied that halfway through the fight, Kvothe realized it was a trick by Bast to make him reveal himself, so he intentionally stopped fighting effectively. There's clearly ''something'' wrong with his magic, judging by the fact that he can't open his chest, but we have to wait for the third book to know for sure.
65	*** This is supported by Kvothe chuckling "Forgot who I was there for a minute." after the fight is concluded. He started fighting well, then realized he is supposed to be "Kote" and not know how to fight.
66	** Kvothe's really impressive feats in-story involve randomly knowing or discovering Names even without study, possibly implying some third-party source of knowledge (along with his strangely rapid acquisition of other skills). It's possible, and given that he's now living with one of the Fae (their queen being one of the Names he pulled from the air) that it's the Naming/inspiration part of his power that's on the fritz... meaning that he's "just" a skilled sword-mage and sympathetic magician/binder. Given that he's the Ace and possibly even something of a Mary Sue, he can be crippled pretty thoroughly without losing his ability to wipe the floor with a couple supernaturals.
67	** I didn't get the impression that Kvothe intentionally threw the fight. Kvothe is caught between his "Kote" and "Kvothe" personas, making his abilities inconsistent when he tries to draw on them. Sometimes, when he's firing on all Kvothe cylinders, he's as badass as he ever was, but most of the time these days he's Kote, and he's not able to harness his old abilities. Kvothe's crack about forgetting who he is admits to this. He knows that he's becoming Kote more and more: a shadow of his former self.
68	*** He changed his name. He is Kote, and Kote can't do all the things Kvothe could.
69	[[/folder]]
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71	[[folder:Denna and the Chandrian]]
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73	* Towards the end of the first book, Denna, with Kvothe, finds evidence that the Chandrian are real, and that they were the ones who attacked the wedding party. This was well before she got dosed with denner resin, so she shouldn't have any trouble remembering it. About halfway through the second book, when Kvothe objects to her song [[DracoInLeatherPants sympathizing Lanre]] on the grounds that he became one of the Chandrian, she ''gets all mad at him for believing in silly children's tales.'' What gives?
74	** When investigating the wedding party attack, the Chandrian theory seemed to be to Denna just that, a half-serious, half-silly theory. She never explicitly states she believes in them. Still counting as a incoherence, however, as the proofs were clear enough to make Denna realize when she was researching for his song. IdiotBall?
75	** It's possible that it has something to do with her patron. He's clearly a pretty skeevy guy, and a lot of the talk about him on the WMG page has him connected to the Chandrian or Amyr in some way. It's possible that Master Ash has been manipulating Denna's views on the Chandrian and the validity of the children's stories since the wedding.
76	** In any case, Denna doesn't know the Chandrian-Lanre connection. Kvothe objects to it on the sheer grounds that Lanre was an asshole, the Chandrian connection kept private. Denna may or may not believe in the Chandrian (given her interaction in the wedding and also the various implications of her life story, I would guess she's aware of them), but even if she has come to do so, it doesn't mean she will believe all folk tales. As far as I can tell, Denna just thinks she made a song about an obscure but otherwise random folk hero, and Kvothe is getting huffy for no reason she can understand because he won't tell her.
77	** Kvothe explicitly mentioned the Chandrian as the root of his criticism of Denna's song. It was then that Denna called him a child.
78	** The plot hole is not only Denna's complete change in attitude about the Seven in comparison with the first book but Kvothe himself calls it childish in the narration. He seems not to remember that Denna accepted the Chandrian once before.
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80	[[/folder]]
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82	[[folder:Wax Doll]]
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84	* In The Wise Mans Fear (p.796), while Kvothe is with the Adem, he makes a wax doll, and it's implied he is going to use it on Vashnet, as he took some hairs from her earlier. However he never uses it or gets rid of it and we never hear of it again. Has Rothfuss forgotten it or have I just missed something?
85	** If I'm not mistaken, that was an intentional red herring. It was used to indicate how nervous Kvothe was getting around the Adem, and that fighting his way out may have to be an option, raising the tension. In the end, it wasn't necessary, but it illustrated how uneasy things got.
86	** Exactly. The whole scene indicated that Kvothe having to fight his way out was a very real possibility; not only did he have the doll, but he also gathered spare sword-iron and a vial of hot water (to power his sympathy). The scene was meant to illustrate how desperate things almost got.
87	[[/folder]]
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89	[[folder:Training with Abenthy]]
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91	* When Kvothe foolishly formed a sympathetic link between the air in his lungs and the air outside, why did Abenthy have to call the wind to save him? Abenthy certainly had a stronger Alar than Kvothe at this point, so he could have just countered the link.
92	** I think that the way Sympathy works, one would have to contest the link to break it. This would imply that Abenthy would have to link himself with the air as well in order to break it. Although he obviously is a more experienced sympathist, linking your air supply to anything would maim pretty much any Namer, so one can see where he would get his reluctance from.
93	** Energy would still be needed, Sympathy only adds a cause for movement and such, but otherwise follows physical laws, particularly the conservation of energy, while onomancy ignores these rules.
94	** Plus, you can't just break a link, what they actual do is identifying what the link is and focus their alar in believing such a link does not exist, and Abenthy didn't know what exactly Kvothe linked its breath to, so perhaps he just decided not to risk it (after all, there are no drawbacks in using onomancy, the only problem is the prejudice surrounding it, but it was established it wasn't a problem with the Edema).
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96	[[/folder]]
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98	[[folder:Total lack of musical ensembles]]
99	* This is more of a strange omission than a plot hole, but there seems to be a curious lack of musical ensembles in the Four Corners. Outside of one or two singing duets, I'd be hard-pressed to recall any specific mention of several musicians performing together, and none with multiple instruments. The Eolian, which is said to be ''the'' place in the region to find good music, has its entertainment composed completely of solo performances, even though the crowd is packed with talented musicians who know most of the songs already. Kvothe, a consummate musician, never once to my recollection expresses an interest in performing with another musician, or even implies that a song could be performed by multiple instruments. This seems like a very strange omission.
100	** In book 2 while in Sevren Kvothe is talking about preforming with Denna, and even says "Half-Harp and lute is uncommon, but not unheard of."
101	*** Heh, that's sort of an exception that proves the rule. The one time we hear about two instruments being played together is to say that it's "uncommon," and Kvothe is only interested in doing it so he can spend time with Denna.
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104	[[folder:Embezzling from the University]]
105	* Kvothe intentionally drives up his tuition price on a deal with the University's bursar and gets to keep half of all money above 10 talents. From the perspective of the school's accounts, that's no different from stealing from the school. If anyone reviewed the accounts, there would be money missing. Shouldn't Kvothe and the bursar simply tack on extra money to the school's official tuition when requesting money from the Maer, and then divide ''that'' between them? That way, all of the masters' assigned tuition ends up in the school's coffers, and the Maer still gets overcharged.
106	** No. It is extremely easy to cover up said embezzlement. There are about 1500 students in the University, assuming an average tuition of 20 talents this amounts to 30.000 talents earned by the University every span. This also means that the University spends a lot. All the bursar has to do is to add the embezzled amount to a bulk purchase, faking a minor price increase. On the other hand, if the students' tuitions are recorded, making Maer pay extra would be revealed in an instant if he ever decided to check it out.
107	*** I'm not seeing how that makes sense. Trying to hide the missing money by inventing added expenses is still garden-variety embezzlement. Unless the bursar is given complete carte blanche over the school's finances (something that seems doubtful in an advanced institution of higher learning that is so concerned with tuition), he risks getting exposed if anyone else at the University did an audit. On the other hand, there's no threat of the Maer making any sort of inquiry over the tuition. First of all, the whole point of the scam is that the Maer does not care how much he's paying toward Kvothe's tuition. Secondly, he has no reason to suspect that the bills he's receiving are not for the same amounts that are being recorded in the University's ledgers. At the most, he'd suspect that he's being overcharged by the University itself, not that the bills are being secretly inflated by a rogue faction within the school. Thirdly, having no authority over the University, he has no authority to inspect the University's accounts. Fourthly, even if he ''did'' send someone to check whether the money he payed to the University is the same amount of money the University thinks it received from him, he would be getting that information from none other than the bursar himself. Long story short: there's much more danger of the University checking its own books than the Maer checking them, so the bursar should be lying to the Maer, not the University.
108	* Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the OP think that the Bursar is not overcharging the maer? As in, when Kvothe's tuition is 24 talents, he thinks the Bursar charges the Maer 24 talents, and then only actually gives 10 talents to the school? Because if it is, I think the OP just misread the implications, because what he's describing about overcharging the Maer is basically exactly what the deal is. Half of everything over 10 talents split between them means that if Kvothe's tuition is 24 talents, they're gonna charge the Maer 38 talents and split the extra between them. If that's not what the OP is getting at, then I think they're referring to Kvothe being immediately paid, meaning that the Bursar is going in the schools coffers and giving the money directly. Something like that would be noticeable in our modern economic system of paper money run by computers that record every transaction. The fantasy world of Temerant, however, uses not just metal coinage, but coinage of multiple currencies that I don't think can be accounted for with the same efficiency. So I imagine that the Bursar is comfortable taking money from the university because he replenishes it as soon he gets the tuition money from the banks - a short enough amount of time that someone discovering there is money missing isn't realistic. They'd basically have to do it as soon as the Bursar headed off to the bank, on the financially busiest day of the year. If we assume that the Bursar A. can take money from the coffers without recording the transaction and B. quickly replenishes the amount by overcharging the Maer, the time window where there is money missing would be very small.
109	** I'm assuming that the bursar does not charge the Maer more than what the tuition was set at. It's never stated in the text that he does. If the bursar is changing the tuition in his bill to the Maer in the first place, why does Kvothe need to go through the whole rigmarole of driving up his tuition? The actual tuition would be irrelevant at that point. Their system would be unnecessarily complicated and add unneeded variables into Kvothe's income, when they could have just agreed to have the bursar charge whatever he wants and kick down a set stipend to Kvothe each semester. That would avoid the suspicious and embarrassing theatrics of Kvothe flunking every exam and guarantee Kvothe that he has enough to live on at a stable comfort level. I think all the details suggest that Kvothe and the bursar's plan needs Kvothe to drive up the tuition as high as possible because that's the exact amount that they're charging the Maer.
110	** If the Masters set Kvothe's tuition at 25 talents, the bursar can't just withdraw 60 talents from the Maer's account and put it into the universities coffers--someone would notice that Kvothe overpayed (or was overcharged) for his tuition. Thus, by sandbagging for an unusually high (for him) tuition of 60 talents, Kvothe gives the bursar the power to give the university more money from the Maer's account. So, the bursar is in turn paying him half of that extra money as a commission for doing so. The 25 talent commission is either charged to the University coffers, the Maer's account as a higher tuition than Kvothe was really given, or the bursar's own funds. The University would notice the missing talents as easy as they would have noticed Kvothe over paying, and the bursar would never agree to pay Kvothe's commission at no real reward to himself, so the ''only'' logical conclusion is that they're overcharging the Maer.
111	*** I do admit that this would be the best version of the scheme to avoid both a deficit and a surplus in the school coffers, but I don't recall the text either stating or implying that they're charging the Maer more than the school's official bill. I'd have to reread the section again.
112	*** Quoting from the book: ''I drew the bursar's attention to the fact that the Maer's letter would allow the University to draw any amount needed to cover my tuition. Any amount''. It would make no sense to emphasize this point, and then proceed to abandon it in favor of embezzling the University. I think Kvothe's description of the arrangement might just have been poorly worded.
113	*** I really don't see how this excerpt addresses the point in question. We already know that the Maer will pay whatever bill the bursar sends him, whether it's (A) a normal tuition, (B) a tuition that Kvothe has inflated by intentionally flunking his exams, or (C) an amount far greater than Kvothe's real tuition that the bursar simply invents. No matter what they do, the Maer will send the money. The question is how the University gets the money it expects. For that reason, they should be using Plan C, but but all evidence points to the pair actually using Plan B, since Kvothe ''is'' inflating his tuition by flunking his exams.
114	[[/folder]]
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116	[[folder:Elodin]]
117	* WTF is up with Elodin's admissions question at the beginning of ''The Wise Man's Fear''?
118	** A few nights prior (p59), Kvothe is playing cards with his friends at the Eolian, and misplays a hand:
119	*** Manet glared at me while he gathered in the cards. "Here's a primer for admissions." He held up his hand, three fingers spearing angrily into the air. "Let's say you have three spades in your hand, and there have been five spades laid down [...] How many spades is that, total?"
120	** Then (p88) at Kvothe's admissions interview:
121	*** Elodin gave me a wicked, knowing grin [...] he held up three fingers dramatically. "You have three spades in your hand," he said. "And there have been five spades played." He steepled his fingers and looked at me seriously. "How many spades is that?"
122	*** Presumably Elodin was spying on Kvothe, either through his Naming powers or simply by attending the Eolian in disguise. I doubt we'll get a definitive explanation. Elodin works in mysterious ways.
123	*** Or he was just being a total {{Troll}} and asking a random question ForTheLulz. This ''is'' Elodin we're talking about.
124	*** I second this motion. I imagine he just heard it as a rumor or something ("The Great Kvothe sucks at cards" at the rumor mill or something) and decided to tease him about it.
125	*** Naming seems to give a person the ability to spout accurate things when they're making an AssPull. So it could be a combination of all the above.
126	*** I was always of the impression that Elodin asks this question at every admissions, that his doing so is a big joke on campus, and that Manet was making that joke in the earlier excerpt.
127	[[/folder]]
128
129	[[folder:Training with Tempi]]
130	Why does Tempi train Kvothe in Adem martial arts and Lethani, knowing that it's one of the worst taboos of his society, punishable by death or explusion?
131	* The basic answer is he likes Kvothe. Kvothe was the only one to actually try and get to know him while he was cut off from his culture and struck in a strange land. Plus Kvothe's natural curiousity for knowledge meant that Kvothe was learning about the Adem stuff just by watching him. Tempi explained to the other adem that he saw Kvothe as being worthy of being taught the Lethani, which is probably true or atleast the other leaders came to see it as true. And, if you look back at his interactions with Kvothe through the forest after learning about the Adem ways, you might even go as far as think Tempi is romantically attracted to Kvothe, what with how into it he was when Kvothe playing music. So, basically, platonic or not, Kvothe was special to him and he shared what was a sacred part of himself with Kvothe.
132	* Also, Tempi is revealed to be pretty foolish as far as Adem go and only seems to realize what a potentially grave mistake it was after he returns to his countrymen and everyone freaks out.
133	* Considering how the other Adem treat him, I wouldn't rule out that he did it out of spite. Conversely, it might just be that they treat him poorly simply because he's far less xenophobic than his peers, as evidenced by his willingness to teach Kvothe in the first place.
134	[[/folder]]
135
136	[[folder:Lanre Mystery]]
137	Why do Denna and Ash have to go to such lengths to piece together the story of Lanre(she mentions how it's a lot of work), when the Skarpi scene introduces it as a well-known tale? Skarpi has reason to know it because he's more than just a random storyteller - he's connected to Chronicler - yet why do all the children know it? If Lanre isn't a famous - if shadowy - folk hero, then why do all the children agree that they want to hear Lanre? How did Lanre go from famous to obscure?
138	* It might only be well-known to the children at that tavern because it's one of the tales that Skarpi knows and tells. He might be their only source for the tale, so it would still be a rare story outside of that tavern.
139	[[/folder]]
140
141	[[folder:No Sympathy in Tarbean]]
142	Why did Kvothe never use Sympathy while he was starving on the streets of Tarbean? He had enough training with Ben to make E'lir, and that was with being three years out of practice. He could have found a lot of uses for being able to move objects from a distance, start fires, or create voodoo dolls. In some cases these would have been matters of survival. Instead, he seemingly forgets he has this incredibly useful tool for three years.
143	* As I recall, Kvothe describes how his brain partially shut down while he was an urchin, so perhaps he didn't have the strength of mind or wasn't able to access that part of himself.

Context Headscratchers / TheKingkillerChronicle