Tear Jerker / Words of Radiance

• The attack on the Wind's Pleasure early in the book. Not only are innocent soldiers and Jasnah cut down, but Shallan has to Soulcast the boat into water to escape. The ship is intelligent, and just wants to serve. It sounds so...sad that it isn't able to remain serving as a ship.
  • Particularly since Shallan fails to Soulcast anything else when she tries later. The only reason that she succeeded was that the Wind's Pleasure accepted her point that its crew would be slaughtered unless it changed, and gave up its life for its crew.
• About 90% of Shallan's flashbacks, but the one where she poisons her father, then strangles him with a necklace he gave her as a present stands out.
  • Not to mention the revelation that she also had to kill her mother, who apparently turned on Shallan due to some sort of Fantastic Racism.
• Shallan reveals what lies Beneath the Mask:
  An image formed in front of her, born of Stormlight, created by instinct. She hadn't needed to draw this image first, for she knew it too well.
  The image was of herself. Shallan, as she should be. Curled in a huddle on the bed, unable to weep for she had long since run out of tears. This girl... not a woman, a girl... flinched whenever spoken to. She expected everyone to shout at her. She could not laugh, for laughter had been squeezed from her by a childhood of darkness and pain.
  That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival.
• "I don't want revenge. I want my family."
  • Also, think it from Pattern's point of view. Luckly, for him Blue-and-Orange Morality is in effect, but he fully knows the person he is closest to hates him, and will kill him in the future.
• Kaladin being told by the Stormfather that he killed Syl.
• Szeth's realization that he was right about the Radiants' return the entire time, meaning that he was made Truthless for nothing.
  Szeth: THEY TOLD ME I WAS TRUTHLESS!
• Kaladin trying to justify Elhokar's murder and coming to a horrible realization about the king and Dalinar:
  Kaladin: Storms. Elhokar is Dalinar’s Tien.
  • And that is after Elhokar pours his heart out to Kaladin about his anguish over knowing that he is a bad king, and that he wants to be a good king, but doesn't know how. He even apologizes for imprisoning Kaladin, saying that what he did was entirely fueled by jealousy over Kaladin's valor and heroism. He's still too prideful to even consider handing the throne to his uncle, but this truly and tragically defines Elhokar as a good but flawed man who wishes to rule well but lacks the capacity to do so.
  Elhokar:When I try to be merciful, people walk all over me. When I try to listen to counsel, it turns out I’ve picked the wrong men! When I try to do everything on my own, Dalinar has to take over lest I ruin the kingdom. “How do people know what to do? Why don’t I know what to do? I was born to this office, given the throne by the Almighty himself! Why would he give me the title, but not the capacity? It defies reason. And yet, everyone seems to know things that I do not. My father could rule even the likes of Sadeas—men loved Gavilar, feared him, and served him all at once. I can’t even get a darkeyes to obey a command to come visit the palace! Why doesn’t this work? What do I have to do?””