Marsh is Kelsier’s brother in the Mistborn series, known best for infiltrating the Lord Ruler’s ministry and becoming a Steel Inquisitor. He loses his autonomy to Ruin, the god of chaos, and turns against his former crew members later in the series.
See below for a table of contents on Marsh’s character analysis:
Appearance
Marsh is a solemn and imposing figure. When Vin first sees him in Mistborn, she describes him in the following way:
“Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a statuesque rigidity. He wore modest clothing–a simple shirt and trousers with a loose ska jacket. His arms were folded in dissatisfaction, and he had a hard, square face that looked a bit familiar” (1.127).
Allomantic Abilities
Marsh is a misting Seeker, meaning he has the ability to burn bronze, allowing him to detect the presence of another allomancer nearby. He Snapped (gained his allomantic abilities) when the Steel Inquisitors took his and Keslier’s mother. This was when Marsh vowed to destroy the Final Empire. He joined the rebellion and started learning everything he could about Allomancy so he that could use it against the inquisitors (1.338).
Personality
In the first Mistborn novel, Marsh is commonly described as stern. At one point, Vin is watching him as the crew is discussing their plans, and she thinks:
“He looked so much like Kelsier. But he was…stern. He wasn’t angry, nor was he grumpy like Clubs. He just wasn’t happy. He sat in his chair, a neutral expression on his face” (1.200).
He is a more serious and brooding type, and he is a highly competent and capable person.
For example, when he infiltrates the ministry, the obligators he works with quickly promote him to their highest rank after seeing how competent he is. Even Breeze thinks of him as a genius (1.489).
However, even with all of this ability, Marsh never seems to have valued his life much.
When he is pretending to be an obligator, he has to get tattoos in order to successfully infiltrate the ministry. When Vin confronts him about the permanence of that decision – that people will either see him as an obligator or as a fraud from now on, Marsh shrugs it off, saying, “I didn’t have much of a life before this anyway” (1.453).
Relationship with Kelsier
When we are introduced to Marsh in Mistborn, we learn that he is the no-nonsense, disapproving older brother type that has to put up with Kelsier’s antics. When Kelsier first sees him again after three years, he thinks:
“He was still the stern, commanding person Kelsier had known since childhood. He had that same glint of disappointment in his eyes, and he spoke with the same air of disapproval” (1.128).
When they are reunited, Marsh immediately brings up the eleven noblemen Kelsier had murdered the night before as he stole away Straff Venture’s safe. Here, we can see that his sense of morality differs from Kelsier – even if men are nobleborn, Marsh still thinks they deserve to live. He describes the men Kelsier murdered as “people…who were trying to do the best with what life gave them” (1.129).
Still, despite his harsh judgments of hid brother, Marsh doesn’t hate Kelsier. He thinks of him as “frivolous and self-important,” but at the end of the day, he is still his brother (1.339).
Even so, Marsh harbors some envy towards his brother. While he had done the largely thankless and unnoticed hard work of overthrowing the Final Empire, for example, Kelsier had rebelled in a more extravagant way:
“I dedicated my life to overthrowing the Final Empire. While you and your thieving friends partied, I hid runaways. While you planned petty burglaries, I organized raids. While you lived in luxury, I watched brave people die of starvation” (1.129).
While Marsh is the responsible one, who built the rebellion instead of working with thieves, Kelsier is the one that everyone likes, largely due to his magnanimous, larger-than-life personality.
Regardless of their differences, Marsh ends up approving of Kelsier’s plan to overthrow the Final Empire when he sees something “reflected inside of Kelsier that must have finally met with his approval” (1.131).
In a lot of ways, their relationship is like Marsh being a parent or sibling of an addict, constantly wanting better for them, but being let down every time they go back to their old ways. However, at this moment in time, Kelsier is different, and his rebellion is different. Moreover, Marsh ends up making the ultimate sacrifice in becoming a Steel Inquisitor to infiltrate the ministry and ensure the success of his brother’s rebellion.
Kelsier’s Legacy
Even from beyond the grave, Kelsier’s memory still has an impact on Marsh. In The Hero of Ages, Marsh thinks back to the time when Kelsier had been captured by the Lord Ruler, and he tries to rationalize why he had given up on the rebellion:
“When Kelsier and Mare had been cast into the Pits of Hathsin, Marsh had left the rebellion. His rationale had been simple. If the Lord Ruler could catch Kelsier—the most brilliant thief of his time—then he would catch Marsh eventually too. It hadn’t been fear that had driven Marsh’s retirement, but plain realism. Marsh had always been practical. Fighting had proven useless. So why do it?” (3.128).
He then recalls how Kelsier had returned and done what a thousand years of rebellious skaa hadn’t been able to do: he’d overthrown the Final Empire and facilitated the death of the Lord Ruler.
“That should have been me, Marsh thought. I served the rebellion all my life, then gave up just before they finally won” (3.128).
He then thinks about how things are now, and how he has given up on the rebellion again, becoming an agent of Ruin. He is ashamed of himself for having given up the rebellion before, and he is ashamed of having given up on it now. His memory of Kelsier haunts him in this regard:
“Damn you, Kelsier! he thought with frustration. Can’t you leave me be even in death?” (3.128).
Even from beyond the grave, we can see that Kelsier has a strong effect on his brother. Their relationship was one of constant tension, but a deeper love underneath the surface, and it ultimately outlasted Kelsier’s physical presence.
Life as An Inquisitor
Growing up, Marsh had always had a fascination with the Ministry, and it’s for this reason he was best suited to imitate an obligator. He feels the same way about obligators as Kelsier does about the nobility, saying he would do anything to hurt them. After all, they are the ones who had taken his and Kelsier’s mother.
Marsh is able to successfully infiltrate the Ministry, and very quickly, he begins to suspect that the inquisitors are on to him. He knows he has been asking too many questions, and that they have sent at least one message to the corrupt obligator who was supposedly training him as an acolyte.
He is still trying to seek out secrets that the rebellion needed to know at the time of his “death,” like how the ministry recruited Mistborn to be inquisitors, why the inquisitors are more powerful than normal allomancers, and what their weaknesses were. He learned next to nothing about them, however.
However, he did learn that ordinary obligators don’t care about the world outside, aside from the prestige they could earn from being good obligators. He also learned the inquisitors were far different than ordinary obligators, and that they were more loyal to the Lord Ruler, and this is perhaps why there was dissension between the two groups.
He felt he was getting close to a secret or a weakness of the Inquisitors at the time of his “death,” saying that “the other obligators whisper of it, though none of them know it” (1.541).
It appears to us that he is brutally murdered by the Inquisitors, who apparently catch on to the fact that he is an infiltrator among the obligators.
“The corpse lay near the center of the chamber, flayed and dismembered, the head completely crushed. It was barely recognizable as human. The walls were sprayed red...Could one body really produce this much blood? It was exactly like before, in the basement of Camon’s lair—only with a single victim” (1.540).
However, Marsh didn’t actually die here. He becomes a Steel Inquisitor instead. The Ministry wasn’t investigating him because they suspected him, but because they had intended to recruit him.
Later, in The Hero of Ages, Marsh reflects on the brtual process they undertook in making him a Steel Inquisitor:
“The Inquisitors had come for him at night, while he’d waited nervously to meet with Kelsier and pass on what he assumed would be his final message to the rebellion. They’d burst through the door, moving more quickly than he could react. They gave him no option. They’d simply slammed him to the ground, then thrown a screaming woman on top of him. Then the Inquisitors had pounded a spike right through her heart and into Marsh’s eye. The pain was too great for him to recall. That moment was a hole in his memory, filled with vague images of the Inquisitors repeating this process, killing other unfortunate Allomancers and pounding their powers—their very souls, it seemed—into Marsh’s body. When it was finished, he lay groaning on the floor, a new flood of sensory information making it difficult for him to think. Around him, the other Inquisitors had danced about, cutting apart the other bodies with their axes, rejoicing in the addition of another member to their ranks” (3.389).
For some odd reason, Marsh had been given more spikes than the other Inquisitors, making him the most powerful among them:
“Of all the Inquisitors, Marsh had been given the largest number of new spikes—he had ten new ones planted at various places in his body. That ostensibly made him the most powerful of the Inquisitors” (3.127).
It’s because of these extra spikes that Ruin gains unparalleled access into Marsh’s mind, and for the remainder of the Mistborn series, he struggles mightily against Ruin’s control.
Struggle Against Ruin
Effects of Being an Inquisitor
In The Well of Ascension, we can see early on that Marsh has changed quite a bit. He has not yet been affected by Ruin, but his life as an Inquisitor has started to take a toll on him. When he returns from the Ministry to recruit Sazed, Sazed notes this change:
“The sound of his voice shocked Sazed. It had changed, becoming more grating, more gristly. It now had a grinding quality, like that of a man with a cough. Just like the other Inquisitors Sazed had heard” (2.76).
He also notes that Marsh doesn’t use body language as he speaks—there is no gesturing or any facial expressions, and even his profile looks unnatural and unnerving to Sazed (2.77).
Sazed also notes there is something harder about him, something “in the way he always seemed to be staring at things Sazed couldn’t see, something in his blunt responses and terse language” (2.91).
Ruin’s Control
From his first POV in The Hero of Ages, we witness Marsh struggling against Ruin and fighting for autonomy over his mind. As he is torturing a Terris prisoner, he has a lucid moment:
“Marsh fingered the brass spike, feeling its tip. There was work to do, but he hesitated, relishing the pain and terror in the man’s voice. Hesitated so that he could…Marsh grabbed command of his own mind. The room’s scents lost their sweetness, and instead reeked with the stench of blood and death. His joy turned to horror” (3.2).
It’s as if he is awakening from a dream, suddenly remembering who he is beneath Ruin.
“His prisoner was a Keeper of Terris—a man who had worked his entire life for the good of others. Killing him would be not only a crime, but a tragedy” (3.2).
This lucidity comes and goes in flashes throughout the novel, and he is able to gain his autonomy back when Ruin isn’t paying close enough attention.
“Lucidity came upon him suddenly, as it often did when Ruin wasn’t watching him closely. It was like waking from a nightmare, fully aware of what had been going on in the dream, yet confused as to the reasoning behind his actions” (3.68).
Despite his struggle against Ruin, the god’s control over him gives Marsh comfort and escape from his misery.
“He almost wished that Ruin would never let go of his mind. When his mind was his own, Marsh saw only pain and destruction. When Ruin controlled him, however, the falling ash was a thing of beauty, the red sun a marvelous triumph, the world a place of sweetness in its death…I need to go mad. Then I won’t have to deal with all of this” (3.69).
“When Ruin forced him to see things its way, the dying world seemed wonderful. That bliss was far superior to the dread he felt while sitting on the stump, slowly being buried in ash” (3.127).
Still, Marsh fights against this feeling of comfort and tries to regain control of himself.
“No. No, that’s not what I want! It was bliss, true, but it was false. As he had once struggled against Ruin, he now struggled against his own sense of inevitability” (3.127).
Because of Ruin’s limited attention span, he tries to trick the god by letting it think that the piece of him that is still free is asleep. He believes that Ruin needs to think he has given up:
“So Marsh held back only a tiny bit, and he did not fight. He let the ashen sky become a thing of bespeckled beauty, and treated the death of the world as a blessed event. Biding his time. Waiting” (3.317).
However, it’s clear that Ruin still has strong control over his mind, as the god’s love for cruelty and misery infiltrates Marsh’s thoughts. For example, Marsh takes pleasure in the misery around him as he visits a village in the Central Dominance:
“The village was an inspiring sight. The people were starving here, even though they were within the Central Dominance, Elend Venture’s “protected” area. They had the wonderful haunted expressions of those who were close to giving up hope. The streets were barely maintained, the homes—which had once been the dwellings of noblemen, but were now filled with hungry skaa-covered in ash, their gardens stripped and their structures cannibalized to feed fires during winter” (3.318).
Later, Ruin directs him to Luthadel to torture its leader, Penrod, and make him into a Steel Inquisitor. Ruin’s effects on his mind are still strong here, as Marsh gets annoyed that he finds Penrod in an intoxicated state, because this means “he wouldn’t be able to see the look of terror and surprise in the man’s eyes when he found an Inquisitor in his home. Marsh would miss out on the feat, the anticipation of death” (3.319).
Later, as he is traveling through Luthadel, he enjoys the disrepair of the city:
“There were far more trash heaps than before, and ash—which would have once been scrapped into the river that ran through the city—was now piled in alleys and against buildings. Marsh felt himself begin to smile at the beauty of the disrepair, and his tiny rebellious part withdrew and hid” (3.387).
Confrontation with Vin an Redemption
By the end of The Hero of Ages, it seems that Ruin has won complete control over Marsh, as he tells Vin that everyone belongs to Ruin:
“Your Elend belongs to Ruin, just as I do—just as you do. We all resist, but we all bow before him eventually. Only then do we understand the beauty there is in destruction” (3.597).
However, after his confrontation with Vin, his conscious self fights harder against Ruin:
“I was there, he thought. With Vin. Yet…I couldn’t speak to her. Couldn’t tell her anything” (3.630). He notes that even worse, he hadn’t wanted to tell her anything.
“During his entire conversation with her, his body and mind had belonged to Ruin completely. Marsh had been helpless to resist, hadn’t been able to do anything that might have let Vin kill him. Except for a moment. A moment near the end, when she’d almost taken control of him. A moment when he’d seen something within his master—his god, his self—that gave him hope. For in that moment, Ruin had feared her” (3.632).
The real Marsh is still in there, fighting to breathe, given new life by Vin’s appearance and powerful potential.
Finally, he starts to break free of Ruin’s control. As he is killing Goradel, Ruin is both exulting in the death, but is also frustrated, and tries to pull him away from the killing and make him grab the metal message he had been carrying, “but in the grip of the bloodlust, Marsh couldn’t be controlled Just like koloss. I can’t be controlled…” (3.634).
Later, as he is torturing Vin, Ruin is holding him back:
“Marsh watched her scream, listening to its sweetness. He smiled, then reached down for her unbroken leg. If only Ruin weren’t holding him back. Then he could kill her. He strained against his bonds, lusting to do her more harm” (3.659).
Ironically, Ruin is curbing his brutality, or so he seems to think, at least. He finally regains his conscious self as he is torturing Vin.
“Marsh awakened. Though his hands still moved as ordered, his mind rebelled. He took in the ash and the rain, the blood and the soot, and it disgusted him. Vin lay nearly dead” (3.660).
He thinks of how Kelsier had treated her like a daughter, the one he had never had with Mare. He chastises himself for giving up, just like he had with the rebellion, noting that he gave up leadership of the skaa rebellion the year before it overthrew the Final Empire.
“Marsh had been its leader, but had lost hope mere months before the victory” (3.660).
He sees Vin’s earring, and remembers how she had spoken of it to him before, telling him about her insane mother. He remembers Spook’s letter, about how the smallest bit of metal could taint a man, and rips the earring free. At this point, Ruin’s control was weaker on him than it had ever been (3.661).
However, Vin doesn’t see him as Marsh anymore; he is nothing but Ruin.
“This isn’t Marsh, she thought. Kelsier’s brother is long dead. This is something else. Ruin “(3.670).
Still, Marsh has triumphed over Ruin. As Vin begins to pull out his eye spikes, he thinks, “Finally… whatever I did…it worked. Somehow” (3.671). He feels Ruin’s rage, and realizes that in the end, he had mattered.
“In the end, Marsh hadn’t given up. He’d done Mare proud” (3.671).
