Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Kingkiller Chronicles Speculation: Denna and Her Patron


This is the first in what may be a series of posts speculating on characters and events in the Kingkiller Chronicles.

SPOILER DENSE!  Contains tons of things from the first two books in the series.  Please don't read unless you've read both books carefully yourself.

As has been noted, the Kingkiller Chronicles leave open the unique opportunity of an unfinished epic fantasy series with a solid and fixed resolution.  We know that whatever happens in the third book will bring us to the Waystone Inn.  We know that Kvothe will trick a demon and kill an angel, and then kill a king, and somehow start the entire war with the Penitent King.  We know that something is going to happen to unleash fairy creatures in to the world.  The whole series has already been written (and is just being revised), so there are definite hints and foreshadows and the material can be trusted to lead somewhere. It's like a murder mystery in that regard.

Seeing the unique opportunity, I decided to wildly speculate, as have so many other fans.

In this post, I will focus on Denna.  It is long.


Denna is clearly very important to Kvothe and occupies a huge amount of his thinking and action in the story, and yet I think most would agree that she is the least interesting to the reader.  Obviously her character is told the way it is because it is Kvothe telling the story; she is literally a Mary Sue in that sense.  However, we do know that she apparently plays a central role in the events that lead to the world being as it is in the frame of the story; she is the Lyra to Kvothe's Lanre.  She is likely the object of desire for which Kvothe tricks a demon and kills an angel, as mentioned by Chronicler.  While most of what we know of her is that Kvothe moons after her constantly, she must at some point become actually important.

Before I do anything else, let's talk about her backstory.

In Wise Man's Fear, while in Severen, we have a scene where Kvothe follows her to an alley, where he is surprised to see her attacking a man at knife point who was apparently in the middle of raping a young woman.  Afterwards, the two women go to a tavern and discuss what the assailed should do.  Options are laid out, and Denna suggests becoming a "courtesan", a job which she describes as being basically how Denna's character was behaving through the entire book; getting close to rich men, having them give you gifts, going to fancy restaurants with them, etc.

Throughout the overheard conversation, it seems rather obvious (implicitly ad explicitly) that Denna is helping the young woman out of sympathy, having been in a similar position herself.  Denna seems familiar with the story; a rich young noble came to the country girl's village and seduced her.  He brought her with him to the city, and now acts as though he completely owns her and can have sex with her whenever and however he wishes, apparently up to the point of violence.  Denna guesses this, and the young lady confirms it.  That is when Denna lays out the options.

The young lady could go back home, but she will be surrounded by rumors and will not be able to have her old life back.

The young lady could go and become a prostitute, which Denna warns will lead to the same problem; men will think they have bought her like packaged goods.

She presents the courtesan option instead, because then men will have to think they are wooing her and trying to earn her.

When asked by the young woman if being a courtesan will keep her from having to have sex with the men, Denna replies that of course it won't, but it will be gentler and on her terms, not in dirty alleys where he thinks he can beat you if he wants.  When then asked if she refuses sex with courters, Denna tells her if she wants to refuse, then she'll have to leave the town at night when no one is watching and lay low and change her name before coming back.

All this fits exactly with how Denna is known to behave back in Imre.

This backstory is also exactly what Deoch tells Kvothe about her when the two commiserate in NotW.  Further, it seems corroborated by the later scene at the river, where Denna speaks of a boy who teaches a girl to throw stones; the girl falls in love with the boy and gives herself to him, and then he throws her away, too.  Some readers have connected this to Kvothe when he first meets Denna on the road and their scene by the lake at the inn, and that may be the true application, but it doesn't seem to fit as well as the idea of some past suitor winning her heart and then abandoning/abusing her, in light of the scene in Severen.

At any rate, Denna has been hurt in the past by men and now walks a slippery line of getting close enough to get stuff but not close enough to be abused by them, with terrible social consequences.  That is established.

Having touched on where she came from, then I think it is profitable to look at the other major mystery surrounding her, and that is her patron, Master Ash.  When I first read this, it was so obvious that it was Cinder.  I mean, he's called Master Ash, he's mysterious and secretive, he has white hair.  Come on!  I believed this right up to the point where I learned that the bandit leader was Cinder.  See, at first I thought the bandit leader was Bredon (I guess because of his "pagan frolics" in the woods?), but when that was shot down, I knew Bredon's character had still been given way too much detail for him to just be some guy in Severen, and that is when it connected.

I know Cinder is a popular choice, and an obvious choice, but with some reflection it doesn't quite add up.  Cinder is inherently magical; he has matte black eyes and causes the air around him to become cold.  He does have white hair, but also porcelain white skin.  Desriptions of him don't seem to make him seem either old or gentlemanly, but strong, young, cruel, and also otherworldly.  Denna seems to find her patron almost silly with his level of secrecy, describing him as bored and dramatic - you wouldn't say that about one of the Chandrian, even if you didn't know what they were.  One of the Chandrian wouldn't walk into your bar asking for a woman you used to love, and you'd point to her and casually bring it up later.

"Hello, I am looking for a young lady to-" "AGH!  NO!!! NOOOO!!!!"
The three popular arguments for Cinder as patron are the name Kvothe gives him ("Master Ash"), the cruelty described by the Cthaeh, and the song made by Denna that portrays Lanre as a sympathetic hero.

Boring photo of ash bark
First, "Master Ash" is something Kvothe makes up when a leaf flies in to his mouth.  Yes, it's fiction and convenient things happen in fiction, but convenient things also don't happen in this series (Elodin isn't a mad monk in the woods and doesn't immediately teach Kvothe naming so he can avenge his parents).  Kvothe does seem to have an innate ability to call things by names that fit (i.e. Auri, One-Sock, Nelly, Nina, etc.), so I do think it likely this name has meaning, but I don't think it good to fit an entire theory upon that single aspect.  Secondly, I have heard that in translations of the book, the name given Master Ash is explicitly in reference to the tree, not the fire byproduct.  I don't know what that means, except that the ash=cinder connection was not supposed to be as strong as it comes out in the English language where "ash" is both the tree and soot.  In English, the Ash tree is called that because of the silver-gray color of its bark.  Thirdly, ash grey is one of Bredon's house colors, so this name could as easily apply to him.

More significantly is the cruelty described by the Cthaeh, that Master Ash beats Denna and thinks it's some kind of game.

We know the Cthaeh is malicious and evil and seeks only to destroy as much as possible, yet we also know that the Cthaeh only tells the truth.  I believe the Cthaeh only tells the truth, because that makes a sort of weird, storybook sense.  If the Cthaeh was known to have ever once lied, it would vastly diminish its sway over people and diminish how dangerous it could be - truth is always more powerful.  It would not be as terrible a monster if it might have lied.

Because the Cthaeh is telling the truth, however, does not mean that the Cthaeh is telling the entire truth or telling it in a way that the hearer will understand.  In fact, we know that it only presents those portions of the truth that it chooses, and it chooses based on what will cause the listener to do the most possible harm.  If Denna's patron is one of the Chandrian and actually physically abusing her as a leisure activity, then leading the 'big damn hero' right to the door of one of the more notorious forces of evil to save his girlfriend isn't sinister; it's actually noble.  However, if Denna's patron is actually helping her in some way and is not the cruel brute he is made out to be, the Cthaeh's words have gone to convince Kvothe, who seemed already to suspect this anyway, and now imagine the harm that can be done from this.  Alerting to real threats is not malicious, but tricking people based on their prejudices to attack fake threats is very malicious.

Moreover, if Master Ash were Cinder and the Cthaeh wanted Kvothe to attack Master Ash for some reason forseeable only to it, the Cthaeh would have just said that Master Ash is Cinder.  Tehlu and all his angels could not have stopped Kvothe from attacking Denna's patron if Kvothe had known that it was Cinder.  But the Cthaeh did not say it was Cinder, and the Cthaeh only ever tells true things.

I think there might be another way to read the Cthaeh's words, then, in light of all that.  I'll get to that later.

Lastly to the arguments for why Cinder is Master Ash, is the song.  Surely, if not Cinder, then at least one of the Chandrian is behind this.  We know the Chandrian are evil; they killed Kvothe's entire troupe just for singing songs about them.  We have heard two different and re-enforcing versions of the fall of Lanre, both from "good guys", and he was certainly a traitor.  The song then is clearly propaganda sent out by the Chandrian, and Master Ash is coaching Denna in making this song

 However, we don't actually know any of that.  Master Ash didn't write the song or even hear the song; he's been helping her find historical information, but that doesn't mean he approves of Denna's spin of the song.  Denna seems to have come to that interpretation all on her own.  For all we know, as soon as he hears it he sadly lets her know of how wrong she has gotten everything and tells her the true story; or maybe he has no reaction because he's some guy who knows nothing about the Chandrian at all.  By the time we join back up with Denna after her fight over it, she hasn't sung the song and seems to have forgiven Kvothe for contradicting her on the song.  Now, she may have forgiven Kvothe because time had passed and she realized she cared too much about him to stay angry over a song - but she hasn't sung the song yet.  If she had it finished and her patron was hoping it to be a song sung for a hundred years, why hasn't it gone on yet?

To be clear, I don't understand the song.  It throws a monkey wrench in what would otherwise be a very smooth theory.  But it is not proof-positive that Master Ash is Chandrian.

I do, however, think that Master Ash is Bredon.  I will try to treat the two characters separately and then show that it makes sense to connect them.

To start then, Bredon is plot significant.  Obviously.  If his only job is to explain rings and say "beautiful game", anyone in court (like random gossipers) could have explained rings, and the Adem or Felurian or someone could have said "beautiful game" to him.  He takes up way too much space in the story to just drive the plot along through Severen.  Remember: there is an entire story arc of Kvothe escaping from treachery and pirates and shipwreck and other dangers at sea, getting washed up penniless on the shore of an island and begging his way to Severen that didn't get included in the final cut.  I think "tak" and some cryptic advice about how to play a beautiful game could probably have been cut, too (great as these scenes were, when books get cut it is usually publishers and publishers know I'd rather read about pirates than board games if it's all the same).  Whoever Bredon is, he is important to Kvothe's story of how the entire world got broken.

Having established that Bredon is significant somehow, let's look at what we know about him.

He is old, has white hair, and is a gentleman to his bones.  We know that he is rich and a noble.  He is also eccentric, preferring to play board games than get involved in court politics.  He walks around with a wolf's head walking stick and has other attentions to physical appearance that suggest eccentricity.  He is relatively unknown and secretive.  He doesn't tell Kvothe who he is, really, or his title, or what he's doing, or any of that sort of thing.  He is currently out of favor in the court, though he hopes to ride on Kvothe's coattails (or so he says) to get back in the Maer's good graces.  Bredon has at least two servants who carry his tak table around, and humors them by leaving it in Kvothe's room when the servants complain about lugging it around everywhere.  We know there are rumors that he is involved in pagan frolics out in the woods (which when I read it made me think of the greystones and doors to the Fae) - but then not all rumors are true.  Certainly he is mysterious, eccentric, intelligent, wealthy, and likely involved in some sort of deeper and subtler power that comes across as pagan rituals to superstitious Vintans.

What about Master Ash?

He is older, has white hair, and comes across immediately as a noble.  He is described as "the noble type" by pretty much everyone who sees him.  Master Ash is overly secretive; it comes across to Kvothe (who is a hormonal male in love) as a cloak-and-dagger sort of thing, but it comes across to others (Denna and Deoch, for example) as him being bored and/or eccentric and pretending to have things to hide. That Denna finds him eccentric rather than sinister (especially with the beatings) suggests that he might be kind rather than cruel.  It is suspected that "Ash" is a fitting name for him due to Kvothe's naming abilities and Denna's reaction to the moniker.  Further, Denna tells Kvothe that her patron is in the Maer's court in Severen and that Kvothe has actually probably met him already (do you really think a Chandrian is strolling around the Maer's court and no one, least not Kvothe, has noticed?).
"Hello, your grace, I wanted to dis-" "AGH! NO!!!  NOOOOO!!!!"

We also know Master Ash is attached, somehow, to the Chandrian.  We do know, positively, that Master Ash had Denna attend a wedding where an ancient vase depicting the Chandrian was to be given as a gift, that he sent her there to scope out the joint, that he called her out from the wedding to the woods right as the fire started, that he physically injured her on purpose so that it would not be suspicious that she lived.  We then know that when Cinder is in the Eld north of Severen, Master Ash is also in Severen at about the same time (which is also why Denna is in Severen at that time).

We know from the Cthaeh that Master Ash beats Denna, thinking it a kind of game, and that he uses his walking stick to do so.

It also seems Master Ash, whoever he is, is very likely teaching Denna more than music, in particular the history of the Chandrian and writing-magic.  Denna asks about the latter at the Eolian and is disappointed to see it is false; she is later brought by her patron to Yll where she learns the knot language, and then starts tying those knots in to her hair.  The first knot we know of is "lovely" (on her date with Kvothe, which seems to work) and the second one is "don't speak to me" (during her fight with Kvote, which also works).  The writing magic is explained by Denna (in the form of a question) as being something you write down, and if anyone reads it later, even if they can't read the language, it comes true for them.  I initially thought this was some story from Denna's past that had been guiding her or scaring her somehow, but it seems now this was something her patron was promising her and she was testing with "real" magicians to see how real it was, and was disappointed to learn it was false. Now she knows how to use it in Yllish knots and is taking every opportunity to do so.  And as stated, Denna's patron has access to information about the Chandrian.  He has old books and histories that aren't even in the Archives that talk about the Seven.

One last thing, is we are given an illustration by Manet about how patronage works in the world, and Master Ash is asking for literally none of these things, in fact refusing them by demanding secrecy; whatever his motivations for sponsoring her, they have a much deeper implication than is typical.

Does Bredon sound like he might fit the bill for Master Ash?  Yes.  They're both old, white-haired gentlemen who carry walking sticks, they are both eccentric and secretive, and they are both in at least one place at the same time (the Maer's court).  Bredon's house colors being black and grey; "Master Ash" would make a suiting name for him (even if it would also fit Cinder).  Bredon's "pagan rituals" might be connected to his knowledge of the Chandrian, and it might also be connected to the writing-magic that Denna has picked up.  More importantly, both are important characters and it is good storytelling for two characters, one introduced as a cruel and brutal antagonist and another as a kind and helpful wisdomly figure, to turn out to be the same after the hero has dashed off on revenge against the first.  It's common storytelling for the same bad guys to be behind every single bad thing that ever happens, but it's also sloppy and kind of silly.  (If you dislike Doylist reasoning, then Kvothe would have passed over the Bredon interactions just like all the others if they weren't important.)

The things about Bredon that do not seem to fit are the descriptions of his interactions with Denna.  I will try to enunciate these.

Denna's patron is described in a way that makes him seem abusive.  For instance, beating Denna after the wedding so that others won't question why she was alive.  This sounds like an extremely Amyrish thing to do - "for the greater good".  Denna defends him on this (the townsfolk were already suspicious with the bruises).  The idea of hitting a woman repulses me, but if it is to save her from being lynched as a mass murderess, I could see how someone might find it justified, with her consent (personally I'd have run off with her and avoided town, but I'm not an Amyr).  Whatever you think about it, Denna herself said it was right and that it probably saved her life.

source
The other description of the abuse comes from the Cthaeh, who plays Kvothe's irrational and natural suspicion and jealously so perfectly with it.  We do not know what the Cthaeh's words mean, except that the only reason they were said is with the hope of destroying as much as possible, such as when the previous figures of Jax and Lanre.

What the Cthaeh says exactly is as follows:
Her patron beats her.  Not all the time, but often.
Sometimes he beats her in a temper, but mostly it's a game.
Her patron wonders how far he can push Denna before she tries to leave and he has to lure her back - but it's nothing grotesque; it doesn't involve scarring or burning.
At one point he used his walking stick, which left welts.
Denna thinks of Kvothe during these times.
Denna is tied in tightly to her patron and thinks it is all she is good for, and wouldn't leave if Kvothe asked.

Here's the thing; Denna is not an abuse victim.

I put the speculation about her patron after speculation about her backstory on purpose.  The only things we know about her past is that she was apparently abused physically and sexually by a trusted male in the past, that she ran away from it, and that she now lives a tumultuous and ill-balanced lifestyle as a courtesan just to keep men from exerting power over her.  We know that she has no problem putting on trousers and walking in to an alley in the bad side of town to perform acts of vigilante justice on rapists, protecting other women from male abuse and setting them on the right path to defend themselves from abusive men.

She is not the sort of woman to let a rich man beat her because he gives her money and then claim she fell off a horse.  She is explicitly not that sort of woman.  Her entire character - everything in Imre with the men and the changing names and vanishing suddenly and fighting back when being pushed - everything about her character would make zero sense if Master Ash was abusive to her.

"Hello, I'm looking for a place to da-" "AGH! NO!!!"
I think it makes much more sense that Master Ash is training her, in fighting as well as magic.  The training is secretive, which is why Denna doesn't say what the bruises are from.  She does say she was "dancing" with her patron, which might be literal dancing (which is also something Bredon reports doing, for the record), but is also a very common metaphor for fighting.  The Cthaeh says that Master Ash thinks the beating is a game, and maybe they do make a game of it.  The game is seeing how far he can push her before he has to lure her back - if you are training a student in fighting, you want to push them so they get better, but balance it so they don't get discouraged. The Cthaeh also says Denna thinks she doesn't deserve any better; maybe she thinks that because she knows her weaknesses in fighting and why she lost and wants to improve them.  (Think of a parallel to Kvothe training with the Adem). It explains where she found the gall to attack a dangerous rapist in the bad part of town.  It also explains why the Cthaeh told Kvothe about Master Ash in the way that it did - Master Ash is helping Denna to take on some larger goal, and now the Cthaeh has sent Kvothe to stop that goal.  Rather than sending Kvothe to kill one of the Chandrian who was abusing a young woman.  I also find this explaining his motivations in taking a patron without getting the fame and respect of a patron.

Also, the exact words that "he beats her" and "thinks its a game" and tries to "lure her back" could all just as easily apply to tak.  The Cthaeh doesn't lie, but it chooses its words carefully to have the most possible damage.

And think about this: why does Denna go back to Trebon?  It's not to find Master Ash, or not really.  Denna is investigating the Chandrian, too, and her patron is helping her to do this (like with historical references).  She goes back to see what the Chandrian have done, and that is why she is every bit as intrigued as Kvothe in the rust and decay.

So my thesis on Denna's patron is that Master Ash is Bredon from Severen, that he has some unknown interest in the Chandrian (likely to stop them), that he knows some form of martial arts and writing-magic that he is teaching Denna, and that Denna is not just a singer he is employing, but some sort of apprentice to whatever larger order he belongs to.

It is possible that Bredon is one of the Amyr, but he might not be.

That theory then expands Denna's character tremendously.  She isn't some aggravating Mary Sue who goes from guy to guy and yet strings Kvothe along the whole time with "enchanting beauty" and "mystery" - she only comes across that way because of the aggravating circles the narrator takes around getting to know and trust her.  Rather, Denna is from a broken past working towards some greater goal, maybe of revenge.  Kvothe's story is about the Chandrian and the Amyr, and it turns out Denna's story is directly intertwined with his own, more deeply than either of them can guess at due to their refusal to communicate openly.  Denna is working to become as powerful a figure as Kvothe, and seems to have succeeded where he has failed in finding information on the Chandrian and the power to stop them, sacrificing much to get there.

Or her patron is the same bad guy behind everything else who is really just cruelly abusing her and she inexplicably lets him in total defiance of everything else established about her character, and the Cthaeh saw fit to kindly guide the hero to her rescue.

You can take your pick of theories there, I know which one I'll go with.

16 comments:

M said...

Excellent thought process. Makes me hungry for the 3rd book.

LN said...

This is amazingly insightful. I hadn't thought of Bredon being Master Ash, but now it really makes sense. I was mostly really skeptical about Master Ash being an abuser and Denna just putting up with it -- it seems odd when you consider her character. And then the Cthaeh just decides to confirm Kvothe's suspicions, yet we know everything the Cthaeh does is destructive, which leads me to believe that the initial reaction (omg Master Ash is EVIL) is false.

Anonymous said...

When kvothe is trying to guess master ash's name he says tell me when I hit one you like... frank feran forue fordale. Starting from the first two letters of feran, the third and fourth from forue and the last two from fordale. FERULE. Could be a coincidence but I doubt It. Them all starting with F is slightly suspicious too

Anonymous said...

In my opinion the song about Lanre directly contradicts the theory of Master Ash being Cinder. The argument the the song is meant to be positive propaganda for Lanre is false thinking. The Chandrian are about for 5000 years, surely if they were into propaganda buisiness there would exist a couple of positive songs about them, but there aren't. In fact there are no songs at all except a childrens chant and we know that they are thouroughly trying to wipe out all knowlege of their existance. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that one of the Chandrian would encourage someone make a song about Lanre, they would rather kill Denna for digging up this story, if they had any knowlege about it.

Anonymous said...

The writing-magic makes sense with Yllish story knots. Denna explicitly says to Kvothe in Tarbean "you're supposed to read them by touching them, not looking at them" or something along those lines. This could be due to the fact that if you looked at them, then the magic would work, but if you simply felt them to read, you could tell what the "spell" actually did without it coming true.

Unknown said...

The problem with your theory is that it's so good that a month from now my mind will accept it as the truth(which it is) and I will not be surprised from anything in book 3

Xtx said...

Thank you for taking the time to write this

Unknown said...

I still belive denna is actually geisha the angel who had a hundred suiters and was the first to know the unwanted touch of a man ...

Unknown said...

I agree that Master Ash is most likely Braden. I also like your take on why Denna is bruised, the "beatings" etc...
However-- to say that Denna wouldn't stand for real abuse is false.
All the men she runs from are clingy, want to put her on a pedestal, etc.
The surest way to keep an abused woman around is to treat her exactly as she thinks she deserves-- continued abuse.
Unfortunately I have seen this many times in my life.
I do hope your explanation is correct, but Denna being drawn in by something she wants so much and being bound tighter to her patron through abuse would make sense as well.

Anonymous said...

There are a few things I came across after a re-read:
1) In Ademre he's called "Maedre" which means "destroyer of trees" - while this could obviously refer to the sword-tree, it could also mean he manages at some point to destroy the Ctaeh.
2) There's four people in the whole book series, who use an outrageous amount of rhyming, being Felurian, Denna, Kvothe and Bast. Thus, it seems to me that rhyming has to do with being Fae, and that Denna and Kvothe are actually Fae.(Maybe brother and sister?)
3) In my opinion you are very right to see the parallels. As Kvothe goes through a lot to get the knowledge he so desperately needs, so does Denna. Both research the Chandrian. Master Bredon does most likely have important knowledge and also a strong interest not only in the Chandrian or the Amyr but also in Kvothe. Master Bredon being an Amyr however doesn't make sense at all. An Amyr would NEVER approve of a song, where Lanre is the hero of the story. This is also supported by the fact, that in no way she is punished for her song, while we know that Kvothe's parents died for singing theirs.

Reece said...

" In Ademre he's called "Maedre" which means "destroyer of trees" - while this could obviously refer to the sword-tree, it could also mean he manages at some point to destroy the Ctaeh."

Does it mean destroyer of trees, or blasted tree?

"There's four people in the whole book series, who use an outrageous amount of rhyming, being Felurian, Denna, Kvothe and Bast."

If you go back, actually, a fair amount of dialog between Kvothe and Denna is in iambic pentameter. It just isn't blocked off in sonnet form so it's harder to tell.

"An Amyr would NEVER approve of a song, where Lanre is the hero of the story. "

I agree. I don't think Bredon approved of the song, hence why Denna never sang it.

Also... it is 2018, and I wrote this post back in 2012. WHERE THE HECK IS DOORS OF STONE!!!???

Kurt Osis said...

Hold on a second... on what planet is Denna a Mary Sue? I mean, don't be me wrong, I can't stand her so that part checks out. But... a Mary Sue is a character that is overly virtuous... what virtues does Denna have?

Unknown said...

But also sometimes he beats her and it's a game refers to Bredons love of Tak doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the great betrayal that we are waiting for is in fact Kvothe betraying Denna and killing Bredon? I think the real question should be... who is Skarpi?

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant. A few things:

"Her patron beats her. Not all the time, but often.
Sometimes he beats her in a temper, but mostly it's a game."

They're playing tak! He's showing her "a beautiful game". He beats her at tak like he does with Kvothe.

"Her patron wonders how far he can push Denna before she tries to leave and he has to lure her back - but it's nothing grotesque; it doesn't involve scarring or burning.
At one point he used his walking stick, which left welts."

The one time was at the wedding when she said it was to protect her.


I'm not sure about this, but when Bredon leaves the tak board in Kvothe's rooms for the first time, isn't this when Denna disappears in Severen? He was bringing it back and forth to play against her before that.

The bruises Denna has in Severen aren't from her patron as Kvothe assumes, but from doling out vigilante justice in alleys, which we know she was doing.

Anonymous said...

Also, an important point I haven't seen mentioned is that Cinder being Denna's Patron is out of character for Cinder.
Haliax obviously has control over Cinder by using his Name. We see this when Kvothe's troupe is killed. Cinder is clearly not pleased, yet he has no choice but to follow Haliax's wishes.
Therefore, if Cinder is Master Ash, we must assume one of three scenarios:
1. Haliax knows and has ordered Cinder to be Denna's patron for reasons we don't fully know yet.
2. Haliax doesn't know, and Cinder is risking the use of his True Name to do this -- again, for reasons.
3. Cinder is no longer threatened by Haliax and the use of his Name.

All of these seem unlikely to me.