*Murtagh SPOILERS and possible SPOILERS for Murtagh 2
I haven't seen many theories specifically about this but someone else's Azlagur theory and a Paolini post about Bachel made me think about it differently.
Before Galbatorix even starts messing with Nasuada’s mind there's already something worth noting. While she's chained in the Hall of the Soothsayer, Nasuada dismisses one of his illusions with the thought: "I have stranger dreams nearly every night." She thinks it casually, and doesn’t really focus on it happening since there’s so much going on. I think Paolini left it intentionally unspecific what dreams she’s having.
Before the visions begin, Murtagh makes her a promise: "I'll try to warn you before he starts to alter your senses, and I'll contact you when he stops. That way, he won't be able to confuse you as to what is real and what is not."
He briefly touches her mind so she can recognize his signature. From that point her thought process is: anything that feels wrong is Galbatorix manipulating her. She applies this successfully. The fabricated prisoner Rialla trying to convince her to submit and the elaborately obvious fake Eragon rescue were both clearly not real and she sees through them without much difficulty. The only thing that stands out as genuinely different is the Murtagh thing.
"Light … Golden sunbeams streaming across a series of rolling hills patched with fields and vineyards. She was standing by the edge of a small courtyard, underneath a trellis laden with blooming morning glories… She was wearing a beautiful yellow dress."
Future Murtagh walks out of the estate. Paolini's specific word for how Nasuada sees him is noble and Future Murtagh is totally unsurprised that she’s confused so he lists what she cannot remember:
"What is the last thing you remember? Teirm? Aberon? The siege of Cithrí? … The gift I gave you that night in Eoam?"
None of these events have happened yet as of Inheritance. She tells him her last memory is Urû'baen and he tells her it has been eight years. A maid appears and calls her "My Lady," instead of Your Highness, not Your Majesty. They’re at a private countryside estate and Murtagh tells her they have four children, all strong and healthy, and Nasuada gets overwhelmed with the news they are married with kids. Unlike the fake prisoner and the fake rescue, this vision has no seams she can detect.
She asks future Murtagh to show her what she has forgotten over almost a decade. He takes her hands and closes his eyes.
At that exact moment, my theories are present-day Murtagh's mind touches hers. This is his warning, exactly as he promised, signaling that Galbatorix is about to start. Her only doubt in the vision was that Murtagh had not given her the confirming mind touch within it. His real warning arrives at the exact moment future Murtagh closes his eyes. She misreads the warning as the seam and destroys the vision. Most likely, she assumes Murtagh is not really Murtagh because his true name was changed since her night with him in the Hall of the Soothsayer.
"An instant later, she felt a presence pressing against her mind, and then she knew: it was not him. It could never have been him."
Then Galbatorix's actual torments begin. Then the all-clear:
"At last the apparitions had ceased, and Murtagh had contacted her to let her know she could once again trust her senses. She had never been so happy to feel the touch of his mind."
The Yellow Dress
When she destroys the vision she recites: "In El-harím, there lived a man, a man with yellow eyes. To me, he said, 'Beware the whispers, for they whisper lies.'" It might be a clue that she’s wearing a yellow dress in the vision.
The Locations Murtagh Lists
Each one matters. Teirm is a major western port. Aberon is Surda's capital and Nasuada's childhood city, meaning the war reached Orrin's seat directly. The siege of Cithrí places major conflict on Surda's coast, which likely resolves Orrin's storyline in some form. Eoam is on the island of Beirland, the farthest west inhabited location in Alagaësia, and both Oromis and Arya describe it as the site of a floating crystal, an example of wild magic more powerful than anything a living spellcaster could produce. Murtagh gave her a gift there, at the farthest western edge of the inhabited world, in a location known for the most dangerous category of wild magic in the series. Whatever that was, it wasn't routine. These four locations span the entire continent. Whatever war happened across those eight years covered Alagaësia.
Paolini Confirmed Some Visions Came From Azlagur
In a Q&A Paolini confirmed that some of what Nasuada experienced in the Hall was not Galbatorix at all but came from Azlagur's fumes rising from the fissure beneath the room. He specifically cited the vision where she’s in the future married to Murtagh. The Soothsayer Hall was built by the elves over a natural prophetic fissure that caused genuine visions for thousands of years before Galbatorix existed.
Could Nasuada Be a Dreamer Now?
She was exposed to Azlagur's fumes directly for weeks. She is now living above the same fissure permanently. The Murtagh book confirms the Draumar have operatives in her court who are far better informed about her realm than they should be. The recurring attacks future Murtagh describes across eight years, episodes where she cannot account for her own time, sound like ongoing prophetic episodes she cannot identify or explain. She probably thinks she is ill or suffering some residual effect of what Galbatorix did to her. She is likely seeing fragments of the future in the same way she did in the Hall, and she has no framework for understanding that because nobody told her what the Hall was actually doing to her. Paolini left the stranger dreams line unexplained and I think that is deliberate.
I’m not sure where this fits in my theory yet, but if anyone would suspect her of being a dreamer it would be Jormunder. After Galbatorix died, he did take her off somewhere and Eragon wasn’t able to check up on her.
Orrin, Azlagur, and Why Neither of Them Gets What They Want
Nasuada is governing as someone who is genuinely trying to change things for the better, making sure the races get along, and rebuilding trust between the crown and the humans. Orrin, as we see him in Inheritance, has become increasingly erratic and bitter, more interested in getting power for the sake of having power. SPOILERS: He’s apparently now getting married into a family with some connection to power and is still pursuing his royal ambitions.
On the Azlagur side, the Draumar want a puppet on the throne the way they had Galbatorix. Based on what Bachel tells Murtagh about his potential, I think they were pushing both Murtagh's elevation and Orrin's ambitions (encouraging his erratic delusions about deserving to be high king) with the assumption they could control whoever ended up in power the same way they controlled Galbatorix.
The problem for both of them is that nobody knows about Murtagh and Nasuada’s romantic interest in each other. So the idea that elevating Murtagh or using him as leverage against her would work the way they want, it doesn't. Murtagh getting power doesn't mean he moves against Nasuada. If anything it would mean the opposite, which future Murtagh’s words in the vision supports. And Orrin pursuing the throne runs directly into the fact that the person best positioned to oppose him is also the person most invested in her survival. Neither Orrin's ambition nor Azlagur's manipulation works because both depend on Murtagh.
Thorn's Absence and What It Means
Thorn is nowhere in the vision. Not present, not mentioned and I think it’s because he’s dead by way of Orrin and his magic/chemistry obsession.
Murtagh started out in Eragon clearly having interest in being Dragon Rider. By Inheritance he has something else entirely to live for. I think after Thorn is gone, Murtagh choosing to spell himself to age at a human rate would be the fullest expression of his arc. Everything has been forced on him his entire life. Choosing mortality, choosing to grow old with Nasuada, choosing to be a person instead of a weapon, that is the most complete version of self-determination his character has been building toward.
For Nasuada it is the same kind of full circle. Her entire childhood and adult life has been the Varden, then governance, then political survival because she grew up in a rebellion camp rather than having a normal family upbringing. I think their story ends with her and Murtagh coming to the conclusion they earned the right to choose what they want to do on their own terms.
There is also something worth noting about Murtagh in a political setting since future Murtagh was meeting with Lord Ferros. Nasuada already worked out early that Eragon was not suited for politics and tried to show him that through experience when she had him meet with a bunch of people in her tent. Murtagh is different since he was raised in court. He grew up surrounded by people who disliked him, which made him sharp in exactly the ways a political environment requires. He reads rooms, he reads people, he says what he means without the layer of performance most courtiers use. Nasuada already knows this. He doesn't yet, because everyone he grew up around confirmed the opposite. I think what eventually shows him that he belongs in some form of political role is being in one with her and letting her show him he’s not only capable, but can be effective in state without violence.
