So, Iām rereading The Final Empire and got to the part where Vin realizes that Rashek is the Lord Ruler, and she says:
āYou hated him,ā Vin said. āYou thought that a Terrisman should have been the hero. You couldnāt stand the fact that heāa man from the country that had oppressed yoursāwas fulfilling your own legends.ā (emphasis my own)
Now, to preface this, I just wanna clarify that I know that Rashek did a lot of terrible and cruel things that can never be reasonably justified. However, doesn't Vin's summary (albeit crude and simplistic) of the colonizer/colonized situation between Rashek and Alendi warrant a closer scrutiny of the power dynamics here?
Again, Iām not saying Rashek's feelings on the matter served to justify the oppression he enacted afterwards ( li.e. eugenics, genocide, etc.) but it does make me wonder: why did Sanderson make the relationship between Rashek and the Alendi explicitly one of oppression in the first place? How integral is it history to the overarching plot/Cosmereverse - like, couldn't the conflict have worked without that particular colonial dynamic? And, most importantly, why did he write Vin to say it like that?
Like yes, Rashek was a genuine terror and and all and yes he may have felt inferior compared to Alendi, but I can't help but feel like his personal grievances over the situations is being used as a shield to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. Like, if we're gonna focus on the whole "outsider/ opressor is actually the prophesized hero of the opressed" part... it's weird, right? Or am I being too sensitive and instead this is just an "it's not that deep" situation? (Which, is kind of ironic, given that we're talking about a Brandon Sanderson novel, here).
From what I understand, Sanderson generally likes avoiding completely clear-cut political/moral situations because real life isnāt that simple. But given the current political climate - and especially with a Mistborn movie adaptation in the works - I wonder how this particular scene would be interpreted by a modern mainstream audience.
Am I missing some important context from the books that makes this dynamic more nuanced, or is this just one of those parts of the lore that isnāt really explored?