TenSoon is House Venture’s kandra in the Mistborn series. He imitates another kandra, OreSeur, to infilitrate Kelsier’s crew, but ultimately turns on his master, Straff Venture. He then plays in integral role in rallying the kandra to his cause and helping the crew to defeat Ruin.
See below for a table of contents on TenSoon’s character analysis:
Background
When we first meet TenSoon in Mistborn, we learn that he is the kandra of House Venture. All we’re told is that he is some sort of creature and that his body had once belonged to a servant in the Hasting household. We later learn that kandra are beings with the ability to mold their bodies to the form of other people and animals, thereby imitating them and making them highly useful as spies.
We also learn that kandra are beings created by the Lord Ruler, and that there are several generations of them. TenSoon belongs to the Third generation, which “was old even for a kandra” (3.19). He had been born seven centuries before the events of the Mistborn series, around the time of the Ascension, back when the kandra were still new. By that time, the First Generation had already given over the raising of new kandra to the Second Generation.
Because of his great age, he is highly skilled and experienced in the art of imitation.
“Few kandra had as much experience with the outside world as Tensoon” (3.72).
Skills as a Kandra
TenSoon is quite skilled at the art of imitation. In the beginning of The Hero of Ages, he spends his time in a cell, imprisoned by his fellow kandra for his transgressions against their kind.
At this point, he doesn’t have any eyes, but he notes that he could have created a set because “he had digested enough corpses that he had learned how to create sensory organs intuitively without a model to copy” (3.19).
He also has no skull at this point, and his body was “little more than a grouping of translucent muscles—like a mass of large snails or slugs, all connected, somewhat more malleable than the body of a mollusk” (3.19).
However, his ability to quickly form a body with very few tools at his disposal takes his fellow kandra by surprise:
“They didn’t realize how quickly TenSoon could work. Few kandra had spent as much time on Contracts as he had—all of the Second Generation, and most of the Third, had long ago retired from service. They led easy lives here in the Homeland. An easy life taught one very little. Most kandra took hours to form a body—some younger ones needed days. TenSoon had a rudimentary tongue in seconds” (3.22).
TenSoon uses these skills in order to form a mouth and tongue quickly enough to ask for a trial, which his imprisoners begrudgingly have to grant.
Relationship with Vin
In The Well of Ascension, TenSoon kills Kelsier’s old kandra, OreSeur, who was serving Vin at the time. He imitates his likeness at Zane Venture’s request in order to spy on Vin and the rest of the crew. However, his growing relationship with Vin ultimately causes him to turn on his master, Straff Venture, and escape instead.
Note: for this section, the book quotes still reference TenSoon as OreSeur, as Vin still believes this is who he is at this point in time. We have left the quotes unaltered.
Early on, we learn that TenSoon’s tone is respectful with Vin, yet always a little hostile (2.7) and that he only does what he is expressly told (2.12).
He is annoyed by Vin, because Vin doesn’t give him any directions; rarely does she command him to do something, which is what the kandra wants, after all. He is also annoyed by Vin’s unusual request to have him take over a dog’s body (2.140).
Vin, on her part, has a prejudice against kandras, and this is part of the reason she has him take up the body of a wolf instead of a human, as she looks down on the practice of kandra eating human bodies. More specifically, she resents TenSoon (known to her as OreSeur at this point), because “he ate Kelsier” (2.82).
She is also aware that TenSoon resents her, too, and it’s likely because of her own hatred of him:
“He’d helped as much as anyone on the crew, and while the rest of them had titles, friendships, and duties,” the only thing OreSeur had gained from overthrowing the final empire was another master. One who hated him” (2.256).
However, they start to connect over the abuse they have received in their past from their previous masters or crew leaders.
However, TenSoon knows a different kind of pain than Vin, or pain on a different level, at least. When they talk of being beaten, he says:
“With you, at least they had to hold back for fear they’d kill you. Have you ever been beaten by a master who knows that no matter how hard he hits, you won’t die? All he has to do is get you a new set of bones, and you’ll be ready to serve again the next day. We are the ultimate servant—you can beat us to death in the morning, then have us serve you dinner that night. All the sadism, none of the cost” (2.259).
This perspective makes Vin (and the reader, for that matter) appreciate the limitations of humans and their fragile conditions for life. After all, humans can only endure so much torture before they are killed. A kandra, however, does not have this limitation.
Eventually, TenSoon starts taking a likeness to Vin after she has extends the olive branch, so to speak, in order to connect with and understand him.
For example, at one point in The Well of Ascension, Vin notices how he warns her of footsteps coming, when normally he wouldn’t have taken the initiative to do something like this. Normally, he would have only alerted her if he had specifically been ordered to listen (2.263). TenSoon’s relationship with Vin is changing at this point, and he is starting to look out for her.
Their relationship grows over the course of the novel, and eventually, he reaches the point where he nearly breaks his contract (or, rather it is a gray area), when he attacks a human to protect Vin (2.493).
“He attacked a man, but didn’t kill him, so it is still within the Contract. However, by attacking a man, it did risk that man getting killed; if this happened OreSuer would have to return to his kind for execution” (2.501).
TenSoon’s fondness for Vin has grown so much at this point that he risked his life for her.
Later, in The Hero of Ages, he reflects on this relationship with Vin. Notably, he doesn’t feel any remorse for how he had saved Vin and betrayed his own kind. He thinks about the secret he told Vin (that allomancers can control them) and how his fellow kandra couldn’t execute him until they knew who he had told that secret to. At first, he worries that he had doomed all of the kandra:
“I’ve doomed us all. My entire people. We’ll be slaves again. No, we’re already slaves. We’ll become something else—automatons, our minds controlled by others. Captured and used, our bodies no longer our own” (3.21).
However, he still feels that he had done the right thing in telling Vin the secrets of the kandra:
“This was what he had done—what he had potentially set in motion. The reason he deserved imprisonment and death. Yet he wished to live. He should despise himself. But for some reason, he still felt he had done the right thing” (3.21).
As we can see, Vin plays a crucial role in setting TenSoon’s character arc in motion. He goes from despising all of humankind to betraying his own people to save them. And, even when he reflects on this very idea, he still believes it to be the right course of action.
Character Arc
TenSoon’s Relationship with Humankind
After developing a close relationship with Vin, TenSoon goes from hating the human race to putting everything at risk in order to save them.
For example, by choosing to have a trial instead of a quick death, he risks an eternity of punishment. He knows that he has no hope of vindication in a trial, either, and that if he speaks, it wouldn’t be to defend himself, but “for other reasons entirely” (2.23).
Here, TenSoon risks an extreme punishment so that he can try to persuade his fellow kandra to help defeat the Deepness at his trial.
However, despite this extreme risk, TenSoon is still ambivalent about his relationship with humans, or perhaps ashamed of his fondness for them:
“I made my body opaque, TenSoon realized. Like that of a human, with tan skin to obscure the muscles beneath. Why had that come so naturally to him? Once he had cursed the years he spent among the humans, using their bones instead of a True Body. Perhaps he had fallen to that same old default because his captors hadn’t given him a True Body. Human bones. An insult of sorts” (3.71).
Later, however, we see TenSoon come to the understanding that at least some humans are different, and this is because of Vin.
At his trial, he defends himself by talking of the nature of the man he was assigned to: Straff Venture. One of the Second Generation points out that Straff is no different than any other man—that they’re all the same. However, TenSoon disagrees:
“Once, TenSoon would have agreed. But he now knew that there were at least some humans who were different. He had betrayed Vin, yet she hadn’t hated him for it. She had understood, and had felt mercy. Even if they hadn’t already become friends, even if he hadn’t grown to respect her greatly, that one moment would have earned her his devoted loyalty” (3.104).
Not only does TenSoon recognize that Vin is different than other humans, but he regrets having ever left her. At the end of The Hero of Ages, he reflects on this:
“I should have never left her, TenSoon through, feeling a stab of anxiety. My foolish kandra sense of duty. I should have stayed here, and told her what I know, little though it is” (3.483).
At this point, he realizes that Vin was able to do something nearly impossible for him at that time: that she had helped him overcome his hatred of humans.
When he had had to torture OreSeur for information and kill him at Straff’s orders, TenSoon notes that on that day, his “hatred of humans—and of himself for serving them—had burned more deeply than ever before. How Vin had overcome that, he still didn’t know” (3.485).
So, we can see that TenSoon’s relationship with humans drastically changes throughout the course of the Mistborn series. He goes from hating them to risking everything to save them, and it is all because of his relationship with Vin.
TenSoon’s Rebelliousness
As TenSoon sits in his prison cell awaiting his trial, he reflects on how he was before the events of the novels:
“Up until his return, TenSoon had generally been considered one of the least troublesome of the Thirds. He’d been known as a kandra who cared little for Homeland politics” (3.87).
He was known as one who served out his Contracts faithfully, content to keep as far away from the seconds and their machinations as possible. No one could have predicted that he would end up on trial for such heinous crimes (3.87).
“Until recently, I was the most orthodox of my generation, a conservative distinguished solely by my hatred of humans. Now I’ve become the greatest criminal in the history of our people, but I did so mostly by accident. That isn’t greatness. That’s just foolishness” (3.190).
However, he realizes that the lives of the kandra are in need of drastic change. As he is reflecting on the speech he gave at his trial, he actually thinks he hasn’t communicated his point properly enough:
“He hadn’t given it it very well. How could he explain to the people what he felt? That their traditions were coming to a focus, that their lives—which had been stable for so long—were in drastic need of change?” (3.186).
Still, at this point, he won’t go so far as a full-blown revolution. When his friend MeLaan suggests the idea to him as he is imprisoned and awaiting his sentencing, he thinks:
“He had not come to bring revolution. He had come to explain, to serve the interests of his people. He would do that by accepting his punishment, as a kandra should” (3.190).
However, the idea of escaping tempts him:
“There was a chance. A slim one. He wasn’t certain whether he wanted to escape, but if there was an opportunity…” (3.190).
Finally, TenSoon’s motivations shift from simply bringing this big issue of Vin, the Deepness, and the crumbling world around them, to the other kandra, to really doing something about it—to leading a full-scale rebellion among the kandra to fight for the fate of the world. This starts with MeLaan putting the idea of escape and rebellion into his head:
“Days later, Melaan’s words still pricked TenSoon’s conscience. You come, proclaim dread news, then leave us to solve the problems on our own? During his year of imprisonment, it had seemed simple. He would make his accusations, deliver his information, then accept the punishment he deserved. But now, strangely, that felt like the easy way out. If he let himself be taken in such a manner, how was he better than the First Generation? He would be avoiding the issues, content to be locked away, knowing that the outside world was no longer his problem” (3.212).
Still, he struggles internally with this, and he oscillates between being more conservative and being more rebellious. When he considers going the route of full-blown revolution, he chastises himself, telling himself he will be imprisoned for eternity, or at least until the kandra are destroyed and he dies of starvation, and that this is the honorable, orderly thing to do (3.212).
However, he notes that he would be leaving MeLaan and the others to be destroyed if the kandra leaders take no action. He would also be leaving Vin without the information she needed. He struggles with what he needs to tell Vin versus betraying his people even further.
“The end could be nearing. If it was, then Vin needed to know the truths about the kandra. Their origins, their beliefs. Perhaps she could use the Trust. Yet if he told Vin anything more, it would mean an even greater betrayal of his people.” (3.212)
He notes that so far, he’s been impulsive, only later rationalizing what he’d done. But now, if he does decide to fight his way free of prison, he makes a choice that it will be “willful and deliberate” (3.212).
Finally, he does make the decision to escape, and it is truly willful and deliberate.
Full Transformation
In the end, TenSoon fully embraces his own rebellion and escape, and it’s symbolically represented with how he wears his canine bones once again. The other kandra see this as a great insult and a way to humiliate TenSoon. However, for TenSoon, it seals his ability to escape, and it represents him choosing Vin and humankind over the kandra who will not listen to him.
In fact, wearing the canine bones ends up feeling more comfortable to TenSoon and more in line with who he has become.
As he is being walked out to his trial for his sentencing, “he bore the stares and the scorn with a raised head, padding through the corridor in a dog’s body. It was strange to him, how natural the bones felt. He’d spent mere months wearing them, but putting them on again—discarding the scrawny, naked human body—felt more like coming home than returning to the Homeland had a year before” (3.310).
Moreover, “the wolfhound’s body felt good on him. There was such a power in it—a capacity for movement—that no human body could match. It was almost as if this were the form he always should have worn. What better body for a kandra with an incurable wanderlust? A kandra who had left his Homeland behind more often than any other, serving under the hated hands of human masters, all because of his fear of complacency?” (3.361).
After he escapes his sentencing trial, his transformation is complete when he takes the spikes from OreSeur’s body:
“He now had four spikes, two Blessings, and was one of the most powerful kandra alive” (363) At this point, he now has the Blessing of Potency, which is like burning pewter, in addition to the Blessing of Presence that he already has (3.363).
As he walks through the streets in Urteau, he relishes in his rebelliousness:
“It was a strange concept—the weight of which, undoubtedly, the guard could never grasp. TenSoon, a kandra, was outside the Homeland without a Contract. As far as he knew, he was the first of his people to do such a thing in seven hundred years. It felt oddly…satisfying” (3.555).
The Resolution
In his mission to help Vin fulfill the prophecies of the Hero of Ages, TenSoon runs into Sazed and takes him to the homeland of the kandra. When he fails to make it back to Luthadel, he returns to help free Sazed from the Second Generation of kandra who have him imprisoned there.
However, Ruin takes control of his body and with it, begins to choke Sazed to death. This is when TenSoon is forced to carry out the Resolution, which stipulates that the kandra must remove their blessings and kill themselves, essentially returning to being mistwraiths.
This final sacrifice, to defeat Ruin and save humankind, shows just how selfless TenSoon is and how far he has come in regard to his relationship with the human race.
