Kingkiller Chronicle Speculation

This bit of speculation is centered around events described in The Wise Man’s Fear, the contents of this post could be regarded as spoilers so you’ve been warned.

The Kingkiller Chronicle series is by far the most interesting book series I’ve read in a while.  Patrick Rothfuss does an extremely well job of folding in layer upon layer of detail.  These books are worth rereading several times.

Like a lot of other people that read these books I do like speculation.  This bit of speculation regards one of the book titles that Elodin gives to his class for them to find in the Archives in The Wise Man’s Fear.  This occurs on page 120 of the kindle edition.  The book title of interest is En Temerant Voistra.  Elodin makes a special case of it and then says he doesn’t know if the Archives has it.  Following that on pages 125 and 126, Kvothe mentions that neither he nor anyone else found the book or any reference too it.

Before I go further I believe there are some important points to make:

  • The number three, doing things three times, saying things three times carries significance in this series.
  • There is significance to “Things that are lacking.”
  • Names and the ability to Name things is very significant.
  • Is Kvothe building in clues into his story like he says are hidden in other stories?

So back to the book title: En Temerant Voistra.  It sounds very interesting, almost Latin.  That drove me to run it through a Latin anagram generator.  I’ve included some of the better ones below, I think the results are significant and most definitely interesting.

En Temerant Voistra: Anagram -> Translation

  • Vestra At Nomine Ter -> But Your Name Thrice
  • Veritas Name Ter Not -> Truth Not Name Thrice
  • Vestra Ait Nomen Ter -> Your name says it thrice
  • A Vita Nomen Tres Ter -> A Life’s name three times
  • Atra Nomen Ter Te Vis -> You want the name of the dark times
  • Vita An Tener Te Mors -> Life Or Death holds you

What does all this mean?  Maybe nothing.  Maybe its a hint dropped either by Kvothe or by Rothfuss giving us hints about something to come later.  One way or another Doors of Stone will be a fantastic conclusion to this series.

 

(Edit:  I’ve generated about 10,000 of these….  I can post more.)

 

Posted by Chad Dotson

A small town Computer Scientist / Software Engineer. Chad enjoys writing Python and JavaScript as well as tinkering with his Raspberry Pi and Arduino. When not programming, he enjoys Photography (especially lightning) and Sci-Fi.

2 comments

Andrew Lorente

For what it’s worth, it looks like you’re on the right track: https://twitter.com/PatrickRothfuss/status/510545943159394304

Damned if I know where it leads, though.

I just saw that, that’s awesome.

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