The Lord Ruler is the antagonist of the first Mistborn novel. He rules the world with an iron fist, oppressing the lowly skaa as much as possible. The thieving crew’s main goal is to overthrow him in the beginning of the series.
See below for a table of contents on the Lord Ruler’s character analysis:
Appearance
In the first Mistborn novel, The Lord Ruler dresses in a black and white uniform, somewhat like a nobleman’s suit, but far more exaggerated. His coat reaches down to his feet and trails behind him as he walks. His vest is pure black, accented with brilliant white markings. And his fingers glitter with his rings, the symbols of his power.
Always he rides around in a black carriage drawn by a pair of massive white stallions, moving with a sense of inevitability.
There are two different versions of the Lord Ruler, based on his use of Feruchemy to indefinitely delay his aging process. There is the young version, and the old version.
The young version of himself is described as thus:
“He looked so strong, his torso erupting with muscles, his face handsome. She could feel the power of his Allomancy snapping at her emotions, barely held back by her copper” (1.625).
The old version of the Lord Ruler, when his Feruchemical metals are taken away, however, is much different:
“A pivoting chair stood by the hearth, and it spun slowly, revealing the wizened old man who sat in it. Bald, with liver-spotted skin, he appeared to be in his seventies. He wore rich, dark clothing, and he frowned angrily at Vin” (1.592).
Rumors & Mystique
In the beginning of the Mistborn series, not much is known about the Lord Ruler, and several rumors swirl around him and his awesome power.
For example, Dockson seems to think the Lord Ruler has a flawless memory. Several people think that he is omnipotent, but Kelsier knows better, claiming him to only be a powerful Allomancer. The Inquisitors, however, believe he is at least omniscient (all-knowing), even if he is not omnipotent (all-powerful).
For example, an inquisitor named Kar tells Vin that, “He has lived for centuries, and has learned to use Allomancy like no mortal man. He can see things in the way your heart beats, and can read your emotions in your eyes. He can sense the moment when you lie. He knows…oh yes. He knows” (1.603).
On top of his great power, the Lord Ruler rules a palace known as Kredik Shaw, or the “Hill of a Thousand Spires.” He also is rumored to have a massive cache of Atium, stashed away in his palace, making him unbelievably rich and powerful.
With all the rumors swirling around, what is the truth of the Lord Ruler? Who was this man, really?
History
Initially, many believed that the Lord Ruler was Alendi, a man several people thought to be the Hero of Ages during his time.
However, the Lord Ruler was actually a man named Rashek. He was a Terris packman, and he and several of his Terris friends—including Alendi—sought out the all-powerful Well of Ascension.
When they got to the well, Rashek killed Alendi and took up the power for himself. By doing this, Rashek was able to prevent Ruin, the god of destruction, from escaping his prison, created by Preservation, his opposite, the god of preserving life.
At the Well of Ascension, Rashek gained awesome powers, being granted the ability to recreate the world itself, albeit for only a limited time. He used his powers to move the planet closer to the sun and burn away the mists that had covered the world at Ruin’s behest. However, the planet became too hot, which forced Rashek to create the Ashmounts (volcanoes), to thicken the atmosphere with ash and cool it. He then had to alter everyone’s biology to give them the ability to breathe ash. This is what creates the Mistborn world as the characters know it in the novels.
Furthermore, at this time the Lord Ruler discovered Hemalurgy, and he made a deal with his Terris friends, granting them immortality in exchange for their Feruchemy. His friends accepted, becoming the first generation of the Kandra. The other Feruchemists of the world, the Lord Ruler turned into Mistwraiths.
The Lord Ruler further used Hemlaurgy to create tools to help keep himself in power, including the Koloss and the Steel Inquisitors. He then rearranged the planet’s geography to hide the Well of Ascension within Kredik Shaw.
“He had built the inquisitors, the kandra, and the koloss all with the same weakness—he had made them so that he could control them—he had given himself a way to keep them in check” (3.717).
Immortality
The Lord Ruler does not age in The Final Empire, and towards the end of the novel, he gets a spear rammed through his chest, and continues on as if nothing had ever happened. He claimed to have survived burnings and beheadings, and that he had been “stabbed and sliced, crushed and dismembered, and even flayed once, near the beginning” (1.626).
So, how does his immortality work?
Through his great Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities, he was able to survive a great deal of violence, likely through burning and storing metals like Pewter, which enhances physical strength and healing.
As far as the aging process goes, the Lord Ruler would use Feruchemy to store his “youth” in atium metalminds. This would cause him to age significantly; however, he was able to use his allomancy to counteract this, swallowing and burning atium at the same time, allowing him to “release” a great amount of youth, many times the amount that had originally been stored. He would then store this resulting youth in metalmind bracers, allowing him to slowly draw upon them and stay young for as long as he wished to.
“What the Lord Ruler did…was combine these two abilities. He used one of the attributes only available to Feruchemy—that of changing his age—but fueled it with Allomancy instead. By burning a new Allomantic metal for himself—one that made him younger when he burned it…he would have gained a limitless supply of youth, since he was drawing most of his power from the metal, rather than from his own body. All he would have to do was spend the occasional bit of time aged to give himself Feruchemical storages to burn and stay young” (1.634).
The Lord Ruler would store his “youth” in two metal bracers on his arms. As Vin puts it:
“He wears several bracelets of metal so that they can’t be affected by Allomancy. He supposedly wears these metals as a sign of bravado, and he wasn’t worried about people Pulling or Pushing against his metals. But in reality, the metals he wears—the rings, the bracelets, the fashion that had made its way to the nobility—was simply a distraction to keep people from focusing on one pair of bands twisting around his upper arms” (1.628).
The Deepness
In the first Mistborn novel, we learn that The Lord Ruler has overcome something called The Deepness to become emperor, or so his propaganda would say.
Vin is a little skeptical of this, thinking that the Lord Ruler had invented some terrible menace that he’d been able to destroy in the past, and therefore earn his place as the emperor.
However, the Deepness is not just propaganda. As it turns out, the Deepness is the combined effects of Ruin and Preservation upon the mists of the world. Ruin would cause the mists to come out in the daytime and destroy the plant life of the world, while Preservation would attack normal people in an attempt to Snap them into becoming allomancers, in order to fight against Ruin.
By taking up power at the Well of Ascension, The Lord Ruler did technically defeat the Deepness, as he was able to imprison Ruin back in his cage, which meant that Preservation no longer had to Snap allomancers to fight against Ruin. And so, the mists would only come out at night-time and would be largely harmless after he took up power.
Furthermore, the Lord Ruler had known that the day when the Deepness would return, when the “mists returned and food would be scarce” (2.60), and he kept several supplies and storage caches hidden all throughout the empire. These supplies are what Elend and Vin try to gather up as they fight Ruin in the last Mistborn novel.
Allomantic Power
The Lord Ruler was an incredibly gifted Mistborn allomancer, likely even before he took up the power at the Well of Ascension.
In particular, he is a very talented Soother. When the ministry stages their executions of the rebel army in the public square, for example, he is able to Soothe tens of thousands, or perhaps as much as a hundred thousand, men in the crowd at once, showing how immensely powerful he is (1.434). He leaves them with a feeling of awful depression, of soullessness and emptiness.
“Then it struck. Like a cloud moving before the sun, like a sudden storm on a quiet night, like a pair of fingers snuffing a candle. An oppressive hand stifled the budding skaa emotions. The people cringed, and their cries died out. The fire Kelsier had built within them was too new.” (1.270).
Relationship with the Keepers
The Lord Ruler had notoriously hated the Terris Keepers of the world. He had turned them into loyal servants and set up several breeding programs to breed their Feruchemical genes out of the population. He even had the desire to deny the Terrismen the right to touch metal – and so it had become an imperial fashion to accent one’s wardrobe with metal.
“Some legends claimed that the Ruler’s complete subjugation of the Terris people–including breeding and stewardship programs–was simply an outgrowth of his hatred for Keepers” (198)
Sazed maintains that Lord Ruler feared the Keepers more than he hated them, however, saying, “He fears the Keepers…definitely and inexplicably. Perhaps it is because of our powers. We are not Allomancers, but…something else. Something unknown to him” (1.198).
It is most likely the Lord Ruler feared the Terris Keepers because anyone who was both a Feruchemist and an Allomancer could’ve become “immortal” like him. Of this, Sazed notes:
“Perhaps that was why he feared Keepers so much. He hunted and killed Feruchemists, for he knew that the skill was hereditary, as Allomancy is. If the Terris lines ever mixed with those of the imperial nobility, the result could very well have been a child who could challenge him (1.636)
The Lord Ruler needed to make absolutely sure that the Terrismen weren’t allowed to mix with the rest of the populace, lest they pass on latent Feruchemical abilities. Furthermore, by destroying the Terris Keepers, he could destroy knowledge of the past, and better maintain his power over the world he ruled.
Oppression
The Aristocracy
The Lord Ruler used his obligators to monitor the freedom of the aristocracy—any inquisitor could essentially take away their freedom at any time.
He was smart and tactical, however, with how much he limited their freedom. For example, he didn’t necessarily allow the nobility to read controversial texts like False Dawn that criticized him, but he would sometimes ignore it when they did.
According to Kelsier, the more stink the Ministry made about a text, the more attention it would draw, and the more people would be tempted to read it. By not forbidding a book like False Dawn to be read, for example, the Ministry had “doomed it to obscurity” in his words (1.324).
Even with all of this tactical oppression and granting of freedoms, the Lord Ruler still found the plantation system of the dominances to be troubling, thinking it gave the aristocracy too much freedom.
The plantation system allowed for each provincial lord to take command of and responsibility for his skaa. It fostered a competitive environment where discipline was harshly enforced. This system hadn’t produced a major uprising within the Five Inner Dominances in the two hundred years it had been in place. Yet still, the Lord Ruler clung to and feared for losing his power.
He always wanted to keep the aristocracy in check, saying: “It is good for them to get purged every century or so. It fosters instability, keeps the aristocracy from growing too confident. Usually I let them kill each other in one of their foolish wars, but these riots will work” (1.602).
The Skaa
The Lord Ruler was more lenient with the nobility than he was with the skaa. After all, he had created the skaa in a way. They were bred by the Lord Ruler to be short, fertile, and physically strong, so that they would make good servants and workers. They were the descendants of the people who did not support him during his rise to power. As a result, he divided the population into the nobility (those who supported him) and the skaa (those who did not).
The Lord Ruler saw the nobility as the children of his long-dead friends and allies, the men who supposedly helped him defeat the Deepness. For that reason, he would occasionally let them get away with things like readying edgy texts or assassinating family members (1.324). The skaa, however, he ruled over with an iron fist, oppressing them as much as possible.
Vin sums up the machinations of his oppressive machine quite well, when she notes the following:
“Vin was beginning to understand that it wasn’t just Luthadel and its Soothing stations that made skaa subservient. It was everything—the obligators, the constant work in field and mill, the mind-set encouraged by a thousand years of oppression. There was a reason why skaa rebellions were always so small. The people knew—or thought they knew—that there was not fighting against the Final Empire” (1.534).
Real Personality
Behind this oppressive facade, underneath the veneer of power, who was Rashek, truly?
Murder of Alendi
We know he was a Terrisman by birth, and he killed the man who should have taken power at the Well of Ascension. However, he did not kill him out of his own desire for power.
Rashek was chosen by his uncle Kwaan to accompany Alendi to the Well of Ascension. When Kwaan realized that Alendi was not, in fact, the Hero of Ages, he feared Alendi might kill him if he found out his mistake. And so, Kwaan ordered Rashek to kill Alendi at the Well of Ascension.
So, while it wasn’t his original idea, Rashek had agreed to kill Alendi and take up power for himself at the Well of Ascension.
He had hated Alendi, and so that may have factored into his motivations for killing him; but the murder wasn’t his idea, it was his uncle’s. He was not so devious as to scheme for power, but he was willing to accept it if given to him.
The Well of Ascension
When he took power at the Well of Ascension, Rashek did something similar to Vin – he tried to fix the world, but ended up causing more havoc in the process:
“She could see the history of the power she held. She could see when Rashek had taken it, and she could see him, frustrated, trying to pull the planet into a proper orbit. Yet he pulled it too far, leaving the world cold and freezing. He pushed it back again, but his power was too vast—too terrible—for him to control properly at that time. So he again left the world too hot. All life would have perished. He opened the Ashmounts, clogging the atmosphere, turning the sun red. And in doing so he saved the planet–but doomed it as well” (3.690).
So, we know the Lord Ruler, when taking this power for himself, had tried to do some good with it. He had tried to fix the world and make it a better place. However, in the process, he left it the same, if not, worse, than before.
The Benevolent Dictator
I believe Rashek, in taking power for himself, did so out of noble aims, or what he believed to be noble aims. He fell for an idea that every autocrat or cruel dictator falls for at one point or another—the idea that his rule, that his ideas, are the best, and will produce the best world for the people he rules over. In essence, he believed himself to be the benevolent dictator.
Perhaps there was a time where he ruled fairly and justly, but it would have been short-lived. He quickly became cruel and oppressive. And despite his harsh rule, he justified it because he thought he had a “perfect system” of ruling in place:
“At times my empire seems a place of peace and justice. Yet if that is so, why can I not stop the rebellions? They cannot defeat me, and I must order them slaughtered each time they rise up. Can they not see the perfection of my system?” (2.451).
He had always been vulnerable, too. Sazed noticed cities like Urteau were forbidden to build walls in the Lord Ruler’s days, saying “After all, if the Lord Ruler was worried about rebellions and cities that could stand up to him, then perhaps he knew something that nobody else did: that he could be defeated” (2.255).
So now, the benevolent dictator had clung onto and become something else altogether—a cruel and oppressive dictator. But there was still yet another piece to this equation that has nothing to do with Rashek’s desire for power—and had everything to do with Ruin.
Ruin
In the last Mistborn novel, the characters develop a growing sympathy for the Lord Ruler, and this is because they learn that he was protecting the world from Ruin for so long.
“He was emperor,” Elend said. “We may not have liked his rule, but I can understand him somewhat. He wasn’t spiteful—nor was he evil, exactly. He simply…got carried away. Besides, he resisted this thing that we’re fighting” (3.117).
In fact, he had tricked Ruin and prevented the god of destruction from reuniting with his Atium body for thousands of years. Vin realizes just how smart and capable he was in doing this, noting:
“The depth of the Lord Ruler’s strategies amazed her. He had held on for a thousand years, maintaining such an amazing secret, keeping the atium sage. She imagined obligators communicating only on metal plates, giving instructions for the operations at the Pits. She imagined caravans traveling from the Pits, carrying atium mixed with gold and coins to hide where it was moving and what exactly was going on. You don’t know what I do for mankind, the Lord Ruler had said. And I didn’t, Vin thought. Thank you” (3.708).
So, the Lord Ruler had held onto power for so long to keep Ruin at bay. He was cruel and oppressive so that no one might defeat him and do what Vin had done—which was to let Ruin out of his cage.
Conclusion
So, what can ultimately be said of Rashek? I believe he was receptive to power, but like anyone who takes up power like he did, they are likely to get carried away and become oppressive and cruel in order to hold onto that power. He ruled with an iron fist so as to keep the people he ruled over safe from Ruin and inevitable destruction. However, in doing so, he created a hard life for the skaa and for people like Vin, and Kelsier, and the thieving crew who ultimately dethroned him.
