Vin is the protagonist of the Mistborn series. She is a skaa living on the streets when she is taken into Kelsier’s crew. She is a highly gifted Mistborn allomancer, and she is instrumental in defeating The Lord Ruler, the armies besieging Luthadel, and Ruin, the god of destruction.
See below for a table of contents on Vin’s character analysis:
Appearance
Throughout the Mistborn series, Vin is commonly described as being small, thin, and with short, dark hair.
“Slight of frame and barely five feet tall, with dark hair and pale skin, she knew she had an almost frail look about her” (2.6).
We get a good understanding of her appearance in The Hero of Ages, as she thinks about how the koloss are surprised at her great strength, despite her small size:
“They associated large size with danger and had difficulty understanding how a small woman like Vin—nineteen years old, barely over five feet in height and slight as a willow—could pose a threat” (3.29).
Elend sums her up pretty well when he says, “Oh, come on. You have to admit that you’re unusual, Vin. You’re some strange mixture of a noblewoman, a street urchin, and a cat” (3.251).
Personality
Vin is small, but intense. Quiet and hidden, yet larger-than-life. She is a mousy little street rat, and she suffers from low self-esteem as well as trust and abandonment issues. But she has a strong determination about her, and she is the most naturally gifted allomancer in perhaps all of the Mistborn world. Moreover, she has the ability to overcome her ingrained flaws, showing herself to be an empathetic person and a good friend to those around her.
Avoidance & Introversion
When we first meet Vin, we find her in a melancholic mood, longing for freedom from the thieving life she has been forced to be a part of. She wants to escape.
“Vin watched the downy flakes drift through the air. Leisurely. Careless. Free. The puffs of soot fell like black snowflakes, descending upon the dark city of Luthadel. They drifted in corners, blowing in the breeze and curling in tiny whirlwinds over the cobblestones. They seemed so uncaring. What would that be like?” (1.19).
We also learn that she is more introverted, and that she likes solitude. She struggles to find the solitude she longs for when she works for Camon’s crew. When she is given her own, private room with Kelsier’s crew, it’s like a gift to her.
“She had always been forced to fight to find privacy. Being given it so easily seemed to devalue the years she had spent relishing her brief moments of solitude” (1.104).
Furthermore, Vin doesn’t just like solitude; she doesn’t want to be noticed. As they sit in a carriage on the way to the fake Lord Renoux’s manse, Kelsier thinks:
“She always does that…wherever she is, she tries to be as small and unnoticeable as possible. So tense. Vin didn’t sit, she crouched. She didn’t walk, she prowled. Even when she was sitting in the open, she seemed to be trying to hide” (1.155).
Despite her wishes to be invisible, her determination shines through. When she secretly follows Kelsier out of Camon’s lair after they discover her former crew has been massacred, he thinks of her:
“The girl was obviously trying to make herself invisible against the corner of the wall. She seemed so timid, yet he caught a hidden glimmer of determination in her eyes. This child had made an art of making herself seem harmless” (1.211)
This personality trait also shows in her allomantic training. For example, when Kelsier warns her not to attack someone head on because of her size, she thinks, “The alternative had always been her method anyway–to struggle quietly, to stay unseen” (1.175). She thinks that her success with allomancy proves that she belongs to the corners and the shadows and not the balls she is forced to attend as an undercover agent for Kelsier’s crew.
This motif of Vin hiding, being hidden, and staying out of sight plays itself over and over again throughout the Mistborn series.
At her first ball, she hides away on the upper balcony, where she could “watch the party without being seen” (1.226). She finds the area to be quiet, and feels practically alone here. Ironically, this is where she meets Elend Venture for the first time, someone who will make her feel more confident and want to hide less.
Caution & Paranoia
Vin is notably cautious and paranoid. She is constantly apprehensive and on the lookout for herself in the first Mistborn novel. Because of this, she doesn’t trust Kelsier at first.
“This Kelsier was a powerful man, and instinct told her that powerful men were dangerous” (1.53).
Due to her brother’s abuse, she sees all men and the world in a warped sort of way, constantly thinking that she is going to be used by them.
“How is this Kelsier going to try and use me? She thought, rubbing her arm where she’d hit the floor” (1.53)
Her warped sense of reality causes her to think some irrational things. For example, when Clubs leaves the crew in the beginning of the novel, she assumes that Kelsier already has assassins following him, when that was very much far from the truth.
In the second novel, her paranoia shifts from a means of protecting herself to a means of protecting Elend.
As she and Elend’s relationship progresses, he notices this paranoia more and more, and teases her about what he calls her “idiosyncrasies.” He notes that “half the time she visited his chambers she checked underneath his bed and in his closet. The other times, she held back—but Elend often caught her glancing distrustfully toward potential hiding places,” (2.28) where she would check for assassins.
She further shows this paranoia when Elend is holding weekly assemblies. Vin demands to have guards both in front of the stage and behind it (2.94).
Despite the intensity of this trait of hers, she is both grateful and self-aware of it. In the beginning of The Well of Ascension, for example, she thinks, “some called her paranoid. She thought herself prepared. Either way, the habit had saved her life on numerous occasions.” (2.5).
We learn that this caution and paranoia is ingrained with her from her upbringing, having lived a tough life on the streets as a skaa and in multiple thieving crews.
“She had lived with fear for so long that she had once seen it as something natural, like the ash, the sun, or the ground” (2.144).
Determination
Vin is a determined person, who has a quiet intensity about her.
“She was a quiet, small thing, but she hid an intensity that he found impressive. She was paranoid, true, but not timid” (1.90).
When she becomes a part of Kelsier’s crew, she works hard in her role for their success, training both to be a noble imposter and an allomancer. As she is training in allomancy with Kelsier, she trains fiercely, trying to become as skilled as she can as quickly as she can. At one point, she challenges Kelsier, thinking that she “will…not…be beaten!” (1.174).
Kelsier notices this quiet strength, thinking, “No, this one isn’t weak…No matter what she’d have you believe” (1.211).
She shows this determination many times throughout the novel, and it is on display the most when she is trying to save Elend from being assassinated. She must push an enormous rose glass window, and she thinks, “You…must…give!” (1.506). She flares her steel, chips of stone falling around the window. Nothing will stop her from saving Elend at this point, not even an enormous stained-glass window.
Later, in the The Well of Ascension, she shows her determined nature again as she is sparring with Ham. She not only is determined here, but competitive; she does not like to be beaten.
“Vin’s eyes narrowed, her innate stubbornness showing in the set of her jaw. She didn’t like being beaten—even when her opponent was obviously stronger than she was.” (1.266)
In all things Vin does, she does it with great focus and effort and is successful more often than not.
Cleverness & Intuition
Vin is clever and hardy. She has picked up a lot of survival skills living on the streets as a skaa, and she shows her cleverness and hardiness at several points throughout the Mistborn series.
One of the first instances we see of her cleverness happens when she is advising Camon in The Final Empire. She tells him to look more desperate before he presents his offer to Prelan Laird, and this would make their “deal” look less suspicious. She remarks that this deal wouldn’t normally be offered unless Camon’s persona had a house on the brink of financial collapse (1.27). Here, we are introduced to her shrewd nature, which she shows time and again throughout the Mistborn series.
We also find out that she is a quick learner, noted both by Kelsier and Sazed in their different trainings with her (Allomancy, and acting at court). Sazed says of her, “she is a particularly intelligent girl–perceptive and quick to memorize. I didn’t expect such skill from one who grew up in her circumstances” (1.182).
Moreover, her intelligence is one of intuition, not something picked up in books and scholarly works. She is an interesting foil to Elend and Sazed in this way.
“She wasn’t like Elend; she didn’t need a logical explanation for everything. For Vin, it was enough that when she swallowed bits of metal, she was able to draw upon their power.” (2.6).
Sazed notices her intuitive nature as they discuss the Deepness. He marvels at how certain she is about her theory that the Deepness is the same as the mists, wondering if she knows anything of proper research techniques, of questioning, of studying, of postulating or devising answers. He answers his own questions, thinking:
“Of course she doesn’t…she grew up on the streets—she doesn’t use research technique. She just uses instinct. And she’s usually right” (2.361).
Low Self Esteem & Abandonment Issues
Vin has very low self esteem and has developed abandonment and trust issues because of her past with Reen on the streets. She doesn’t think much of herself because of her past:
“And Kelsier says I–like he himself–am one of them. How could she be what he said? Child of a prostitute, she was nobody. She was nothing” (1.65).
She gains both trust and confidence in her experiences with Kelsier’s crew and becoming a symbol of the skaa revolution as part of her character arc.
Background
Reen
Vin grew up with her half-brother Reen. He was abusive to her, but he also taught her several survival skills. He trained her to steal by taking her on burglaries, while he had taken care of the killings. He had also taught Vin how to read so that she would be able to decipher contracts, write notes, and even fake being a noblewoman. They lived a rough life as urban skaa together.
Life on the Streets
Vin learns several survival skills from her brother, many of which she has to unlearn in order to grow as character. One thing she learns, for example, is that she must make herself indispensable.
“Reen had always said that the surest way to stay alive in the underworld was to make yourself indispensable” (1.25).
This idea plays into her low self-esteem, as she believes she needs to provide value to be worthy of things like friendship and love. However, it is a valuable tool for survival, as the world Vin had faced on the streets was quite harsh. For one thing,, she had grown accustomed to sleeping out in the cold with Reen:
“The crew’s general sleeping quarters consisted of a simple, elongated corridor lined with bedrolls. It was crowded and uncomfortable, but it was far better than the cold alleyways she’d slept in during her years traveling with Reen” (1.46).
She is also shocked to find basic comforts when she joins Kelsier’s crew – things like mattresses, plush blankets, and decorated rooms impress her:
“The room was empty. Not only was it empty, it was open. Uncrowded. And it was…comfortable. She lay on an actual mattress, raised on posts, with sheets and a plush quilt. The room was decorated with a sturdy wooden armoire, and even had a circular rug. Perhaps another might have found the room cramped and spartan, but to Vin it seemed lavish.”
Later, when she is in Renoux’s manse, she can only think about how clean it is, how pristine the white marble floors are, and that all the decorations “glistened, unmarred by soot, smudge, or fingerprint” (1.161).
Moreover, Vin was likely underfed. On the streets When Renoux’s servants bring out the food, she picked “at the food–her instincts wouldn’t let her pass up a free meal, even if it was prepared by unfamiliar hands” (1.162).
She notes how for most of her life she had starved, and that she couldn’t force herself to be wasteful. It’s so extreme that even tossing coins to jump make her uncomfortable (1.175).
Later in the novel, as she becomes more accustomed to the life of the nobility, she is able to skip meals when needed. Sazed even remarks, “I remember a time when you would never skip a meal, mistress” (1.496).
On top of a lack of food or shelter, Vin also witnessed acts of violence on the streets. She was a firsthand witness to the sheer depravity that poverty wreaks on human beings.
“She’d seen death before–seen it often, on the streets. Knifings in alleys. Beatings in lairs. Children dead of starvation. She had once seen an old woman’s neck snapped by the backhand of an annoyed lord. The body had lain in the street for three days before a skaa corpse crew had finally come for it” (1.204).
This tough life has hardened Vin, made her rough around the edges, just like Kelsier, but it also serves her well in her mission to defeat the Lord Ruler, the besieging armies of Luthadel, and, ultimately, Ruin.
Abuse
Vin was physically abused by Reen quite often, as she notes early on in the first Mistborn novel:
“The beatings almost didn’t hurt anymore, for Reen’s frequent abuses had left Vin resilient, while at the same time teaching her how to look pathetic and broken. In a way, the beatings were self-defeating. Bruises and welts mended, but each new lashing left Vin more hardened. Stronger” (1.34).
This abuse warps her view of reality, causing her to distrust everyone in Kelsier’s crew at first. A major part of her character arc is learning to overcome this distrust.
Despite all of his abuse, however, Vin still loved Reen:
“Reen. He beat me over, and over, and over. He swore at me, he yelled at me, he told me he’d betray me. Every day, I thought about how much I hated him…And I loved him. I still do. It hurst so much to think taht he’s gone, even though he always told me he would leave” (1.519).
Betrayal
First and foremost, Reen taught Vin that anyone can betray anyone. Life with him had accustomed Vin to a life of loneliness. She had learned that if you let someone get too close, it merely give them better opportunities to betray you. In fact, Vin thinks that Reen had betrayed her himself:
“Her brother had taught her so many things, then had reinforced them by doing what he’d always promised he would–by betraying her himself. It’s the only way you’ll learn. Anyone will betray you, Vin. Anyone” (1.19).
As it turns out, however, Reen had not betrayed her, but had died protecting her instead. One of the inquisitors closest to the Lord Ruler tells this to Vin when she attempts to assassinate Lord Ruler at the end of the first Mistborn novel:
“Sold you out?” Kar said. “He died promising us that you had starved to death years ago! He screamed it night and day beneath the hands of Ministry torturers. It is particularly difficult to hold out against the pains of an Inquisitor’s torture…something you shall soon discover” (1.609).
Vin’s Mother
Reen had always claimed that their mother was a whore, and this was not by choice. She was also mad, and apparently heard voices. It got so bad that her brother was afraid to leave Vin alone with her mother.
Killing Vin’s Sister
Vin’s mother had killed her baby sister when they were young. Her older brother Reen had come home to her covered in blood. But Vin, she didn’t touch, except to give her an earring. She was holding Vin on her lap, babbling and proclaiming her a queen, while her sister’s corpse rotted at her feet. Reen took her from her mother and fled, saving her life. And that’s why she stuck by him, even when things were bad (1.340).
“I can barely remember my mother. She tried to kill me, you know. She heard voices, in her head, and they made her kill my baby sister. She was probably going to kill me next, but Reen stopped her” (1.519).
Vin’s Earring
Vin’s mother had given her one of her own earrings when she killed her baby sister. She thinks that her mother gave it to her as a way of choosing her over her sister.
“A punishment for one, a twisted present for another” (2.560).
She rarely wears the earring, however. But still, she loves and forgives her mother, holding onto the earring as much as she can, even after it’s torn off of her in the Lord Ruler’s quarters in Kredik Shaw at the end of the first Mistborn novel.
“She wasn’t certain why she kept it. Perhaps because it was a link to Reen, and the mother who had tried to kill her. Or perhaps simply because it was a reminder of the things she shouldn’t have been able to do” (1.635).
We later learn that this earring was the link to Ruin being able to whisper in her head as Reen.
Vin’s Father
Vin’s father was a high prelan in the Steel Mininstry and worked as an obligator.
She actually sees him at the first ball she inflitrates as Valette in the first Mistborn novel. She apparently hasn’t talked to him, either. Reen had pointed him out once in Luthadel a year before the events of the first novel, as he was inspecting the workers at a local forge (1.225).
We later learn that he is the high prelan – a man named Tevidian – and he serves as the Lord Prelan, meaning he is the leader of the Ministry. He is the most important of the Lord Ruler’s obligators—technically, he ranks even higher than the Inquisitors (1.433).
Allomancy
Vin is a half-breed – part Skaa, and part nobility, which makes her a natural candidate for being a Mistborn allomancer. She shows that she has allomantic abilities in spades throughout the series.
When we are first introduced to her, she describes her allomancy as using “luck,” which she perceives as sort of telepathic power which allows her to convince people to do things she wants – it’s a sort of calming effect that can make one less suspicious, or perhaps less angry. Later, of course we learn she was Soothing and Rioting the whole time.
She Soothes Camon, for example, to prevent him from beating her, and she Riots Prelan Laird’s emotions to get him to agree to Camon’s offer. We learn that Soothing and Rioting is instinctive for her, “trained through years of subtle practice” (1.27).
We also learn that Vin had been ten years old when she realized that other people couldn’t do what she could do, showing she Snapped (gained her allomantic powers) well before this age.
Vin eventually learns from Kelsier that she is Mistborn, that she can burn more than one of the eight basic allomantic metals (we later find out there are 16 metals). Kelsier teaches Vin that she is rare, because she is a skaa Mistborn, which means she doesn’t have to play by the nobility’s rules, and that makes her all the more powerful (1.61).
Vin, however, doesn’t consider her abilities all that impressive.
“Her Luck…her Allomancy…was something small, something she used to survive, but something really quite unimportant” (1.63).
Even though Vin downplays her allomantic skills, she has a strong motivation and desire to learn allomancy. She prefers training with Kelsier over pretending to be a noblewoman at the nobility’s balls, even if Kelsier is a madman and they train at all kinds of strange hours.
As they train together, Vin becomes quite skilled in allomancy, and learns what Kelsier teaches her fast. He tells her that her progress is fantastic and that she was developing as an allomancer “amazingly fast.” He seems to think it’s his teaching, however, for Vin, allomancy just comes naturally to her; it’s instinctive.
“Kelsier kept saying that she was developing amazingly fast as an Allomancer. He seemed to think it was his teaching, but Vin felt it was something else. The mists…the night prowling…it all felt right to her” (1.175).
Furthermore, when she trains with Marsh, he remarks at how easily she is able to determine pulse origins, saying that it normally takes practice. Again, Vin claims that it comes naturally to her.
She further shows her Allomantic skills when taking on Shan Elariel, a fully trained Mistborn, and is able to defeat her after only eight months of training.
“You killed a fully-trained Mistborn?…You’ve practiced for barely eight months!” (1.515).
Vin also learns in The Well of Ascension that she can sense Allomancers who use metals inside a coopercloud, which other allomancers cannot do – not even Kelsier (2.24)
As she spars with Ham, Elend notes her skills:
“Vin gave Ham a good contest despite the ridiculous differences in strength, reach, and training…she was something special—Elend had realized that when he’d first seen her in the Venture ballroom a year and a half before. He was only now coming to realize how much of an understatement ‘special’ was” (2.63).
Ham also remarks that her abilities seem to even go beyond allomancy, saying:
“She packs all that strength into a small body, and doesn’t have to bother with the weight of massive muscles. She’s like…an insect. Far stronger than her mass or her body would indicate. So when she jumps, she can jump” (2.68).
Of course, a lot of Vin’s allomantic abilities are tied with her connection to Ruin and the earring Vin’s mother gave her, which acts like a hemalurgic spike. In a way, she was chosen by Ruin to bring about the destruction of the world. However, her sheer determination helps prevent this, and is also likely a good reason why she was such a skilled Mistborn allomancer in the first place.
Elend Relationship
The Final Empire
The House Balls
In the first Mistborn novel, Vin meets Elend as she is playing her role as Lady Valette, gaining intel on the noble houses of Luthadel as she attends various balls throughout the city. She quickly falls for Elend after meeting him, developing a quick rapport that blossoms into a full-blown romance.
She first meets him as she hides away from the crowds at her first ball. She finds Elend on an upper balcony, reading and choosing to ignore her. Finally, they talk a little bit, and she notices that Elend is different from the rest of the nobility. He despises his noble family and dresses more slovenly than the other nobles at court. She is clearly into Elend, right from the get-go.
Her feelings become apparent when the people around her downplay her interactions with Elend.
For example, she gets annoyed when Lord Renoux suggests that Elend has little real interest in her, and that he is simply known to be a court eccentric and is likely “just trying to heighten his reputation by doing the unexpected” (1.234).
She also gets annoyed later, when Sazed says that Elend is essentially scaring off her suitors (1.295).
After a few months of attending balls and recovering from some injuries she gets at Kredik Shaw, she also gets annoyed that Elend had been notably absent from several balls for the past few weeks, and had yet to “repeat his act of spending the entire evening with her” (1.327).
This annoyance shows there are some feelings for Elend present. But even more than annoyance, she notices that there is an immediate rapport between she and Elend. After she meets him at the first ball, she thinks to herself, “There had been something odd about him…she’d felt…comfortable with Elend” (1.232).
More importantly, Vin notices that Elend brings out her true self, and she feels as if she knew him, far better than she should after only a few brief encounters.
“For those few moments, she hadn’t really been lady Valette. Nor had she been Vin, for that part of her–the timid crew-member–was almost as fake as Valette was. No, she’d simply been…whoever she was” (1.232).
She remarks at how genuine he is, that “he felt like a real person, not a front or a face. And it did seem like he wanted her to talk to him” (1.293). She notes how he is different from the other noblemen, that none of them have the same depth as him, nor “his droll wit, or his honest, earnest eyes. The others didn’t feel real. Not like he did.” (1.327).
Her feelings become even more obvious as the second ball comes around, and she actively wonders if Elend will be there (1.282). She doesn’t like the idea of having to dance with one man the entire time, because that would limit her opportunity to talk with Elend. She inspects the room, looking for him, before he shows up.
When he comments that her dress is stunning, and almost as beautiful as she is, she freezes, her “jaw hanging open slightly” (1.291). She’s both annoyed and bemused at his behavior at this point. When she finds out that he is engaged, she’s exasperated. Great, she thinks sarcastically.
At this point, even Kelsier notices something is up:
“Elend had a stack of books with him,” Vin said. “First name, Kelsier thought with disapproval. She is falling for the boy” (1.323).
Romance vs. Vin’s Plot Goal
Vin’s romance with Elend comes at odds with her plot goal – to stop the Lord Ruler. In order to take down the Lord Ruler, the crew must first start a house war, and a key way to do this is to bring down one of the strongest houses in Luthadel – House Venture.
She resents being put into this position, but she understands, and is willing to play along. At this point in the novel, The Lord Ruler has executed several skaa in the town square of Luthadel, and these recent executions are still fresh in Vin’s mind (1.442).
She tries to rationalize that because Elend doesn’t like his father or his house very much, that maybe there is a way out of this in which her new romantic attraction doesn’t get hurt. Inside, she hopes that there is a way out for House Venture, that her plot goal won’t force her to have to bring them down:
“In a way, Venture’s stability was a good thing—for Vin at least. The house had no obvious weaknesses, so maybe the crew wouldn’t be too disappointed hwen she couldn’tn discover any way to bring it down. After all, they didn’t absolutely need to destroy House Venture; doing so would simply make the plan go more smoothly” (1.461).
She’s almost bargaining for her chance to save Elend from the crew’s scheme. She has to reassure herself that House Venture is strong, and that the crew’s plans likely won’t work to bring them down.:
“Elend is safe, she told herself. Despite what he thinks of his family, they’ve done a good job of maintaining their place in the Luthadel hierarchy. He’s the heir—they’ll protect him from assassins” (1.462).
Later, when Elend says he is leaving her, she is quite distraught, and she risks everything to protect him. Before she kills his would-be assassin, Shan Elariel, she thinks:
“What do I owe him? The answer came immediately. I love him” (1.505).
The Well of Ascension
Byt the second Mistborn novel, Vin and Elend are in a relationship, though this relationship isn’t clearly defined by either of them. In The Well of Ascension, this new relationship is tested to its breaking point. From the very beginning, there is conflict. Vin rejects Elend’s marriage proposal before the events of the novel even begin.
Relationship Issues
When Vin recalls the night Elend proposed, she remembers her terror. She recalls that she’d known where the relationship was going, and wonders why she had been so frightened by it.
Notably, this was also the day she stopped wearing dresses, symbolizing her shift away from Elend and towards her street urchin, Mistborn self; she is conflicted between these two personas throughout the rest of the series.
After the events of the first novel, Elend and Vin don’t truly understand where they stand in terms of having a relationship to one another, and marriage was Elend’s way to resolve this. Vin, however, is still unsure of the relationship because she believes Elend fell in love with Valette, her persona at court, and not her. She also doesn’t think she deserves Elend.
The Kingship
Elend’s role as ruler of Luthadel puts further strain on their relationship.
It seems that Vin likes the original verson of Elend she met best – the disheveled boy who read books, and not the kingly version of him.
When he gets deposed by the assembly, she feels sorrowful for him and his misfortune, but “a different piece of her was rebelliously happy. He wasn’t king anymore. Now maybe people wouldn’t work so hard to kill him. Maybe he could just be Elend again, and they could leave. Go somewhere. A place where things weren’t so complicated” (2.338).
As her feelings for Elend are wavering, she begins to feel more strongly for him when he stands up for what he believes in, and she realizes his morals and principles are what separates him from Kelsier, what makes him a better man:
“Part of what she loved about Elend was his sincerity. His simple love for the people of Luthadel—his determination to do what was right for them—was what separated him from Kelsier. Even in martyrdom, Kelsier had displayed a hint of arrogance. He’d made certain that he would be remembered like few men who had ever lived. But Elend—to him, ruling the Central Dominance wasn’t about fame or glory. For the first time, completely and honestly, she decided something. Elend was a far better king than Kelsier would ever have been” (2.334).
After this, she thinks more favorably on him, and she notes that he is the same man as when they first met. “And that man is the one who loved me before he knew I was Mistborn. He loved me even after he discovered I was a thief, and thought I was trying to rob him. I need to remember that” (2.345).
She further notes that she loved Elend’s goodness and his simple honesty.
“That was what she loved: his goodness, his simple honesty…Even among all the good men of Kelsier’s crew, even amid the best of the nobility, she had never found another man like Elend Venture. A man who would rather believe that the people who had dethroned him were simply trying to do the right thing” (2.492).
She notes how lucky she was to have found him:
“At times, she had felt a fool for falling in love with the first nobleman whom she grew to know. But now she realized that her love of Elend had not come about because of simple convenience or proximity. It had come because of who Elend was. The fact that she had found him first was an event of incredible fortune” (2.492).
However, despite her gratitude for Elend, their differences will play a big role in the success of their relationship.
Communication
Later, Vin feels betrayed when Elend sneaks out into the koloss camp and confronts Jastes and kills one of them.
“Yet Elend could take risks—insane risks like traveling into an army of koloss on his own. It almost felt like betrayal. She had worked so hard to protect him, straining herself, exposing herself. Then a few days later, he wandered alone into a camp full of monsters” (2.542).
Sometimes, it seems or feels as if they don’t know each other. When Vin attacks Cett’s army with Zanehttps://readingseconds.com/tindwyl-mistborn-character-analysis/ and they don’t know where she is, Elend thinks “I’ve been ignoring her lately. I’ve helped the city…but what good will it do to save Luthadel if I lose her? It’s almost like I don’t know her anymore. Or did I ever know her in the first place?” (555)
Deservingness
Furthermore, Vin has this recurring belief that she doesn’t deserve Elend.
“I need to stay away from him, Saze—for his own good. That way, he can fall in love with someone else. Someone who is a better match for him. Someone who doesn’t go kill a hundred people when she gets frustrated. Someone who deserves his love” (2.571).
Later, she tells Zane that she was never worthy of him, and that Elend deserved someone better, someone who shared his ideals and thinks it was his right to give up his throne. Someone who sees more honor and less foolishness in that (2.599).
Finally, as they are spending time together in their tent when they are sent away from Luthadel towards the end of the novel, Vin realizes that she could no longer think that she wasn’t worthy of him.
“She’d given herself to him—not just her body, and not just her heart. She’d abandoned her rationalizations, given away her reservations, all for him. She could no longer afford to think that she wasn’t worthy of him, no longer give herself the false comfort of believing they couldn’t ever be together.” (665)
Vin and Elend’s Differences
Vin and Elend are quite different people. She is a survivor of the streets, a fighter, and an allomancer. Elend, however, is a nobleman, a scholar, and has no allomantic abilities. This becomes something of a problem for them – something which Zane, Elend’s half-brother, exploits to form a wedge between them.
When Vin first meets Zane, she becomes conflicted about her feelings for Elend, and, possibly, her feelings for Zane.
Zane represents the skaa parts of her – the raw, surivor that existed before she met Kelsier or his crew or she ever donned a dress at a ball. At many points, Vin feels that she is more like Zane and less like Elend and the others because he is Mistborn and he understands what it’s like to have the raw, allomantic power that she has.
She begins her relationship with Zane by sparring with him in the streets of Luthadel, knowing him informally as “The Watcher.” When he finally talks to her, she thinks, “He’s so strong…so sure of himself. So different from…She stopped herself” (2.280).
Elend was implied to be at the end of this quote, and she is actively stopping herself from even having the thought. She is attracted to Zane’s confidence over Elend’s meandering uncertainty at this point in the novel.
As the novel progresses, Vin wants to speak with Zane more and more because it’s been so long since she’s spoken with another Mistborn, “one who understood her powers, someone who was like her” (2.282). This is something Zane can give her that Elend can’t.
At one point, Vin reflects on their differences, and wonders if she and Elend can really understand each other the way she and Zane understand each other. She notes how Elend’s world “is of papers, books, laws, and philosophies…He rides the words of his theories like I ride the mists. I always worry that he can’t understand me…but can I really understand him?” (2.352).
Her feelings start to grow for Zane as the novel progresses, and the things he tells her forms a rift between she and Elend.
For example, Zane constantly tells her that Elend is just using her, that she is nothing more than the Empire’s knife, a tool to be used for their aims. After this happens, She and Elend parley with Elend’s father, and Vin is able to get the better of Straff Veture by Soothing and Rioting his emotions. As they’re leaving the parlay, Elend celebrates her powerful nature, and Vin gets upset, feeling like she really is just a tool to be used by Elend for the empire’s aims.
Later, when she finds out that Elend has joined the Church of the Survivor in an effort to associate himself closer with Kelsier, she starts to think of herself as this tool in Elend’s effort to win power and protect the city.
“It was as Zane had said. She was the knife—a different kind of knife, but still a tool. The means by which Elend would protect the city” (2.467).
Furthermore, Zane constantly points out how they are different from Elend. After she kills all of the assassins at the assembly’s gathering to vote for a new king, he comments on Elend’s reaction.
“It’s not his fault that he is what he is,” Zane said. “As I said, he’s pure. But that makes him different from us. I’ve tried to explain it to you. I wish you could have seen that look in his eyes.” (2.498).
Vin reflects on this, thinking of the look in Elends eyes, that look of horror, a reaction “to something terrible and alien, something beyond understanding.”
Zane goes on to tell her that he can’t be Elend, but that she doesn’t want him to be Elend anyways. He is showing her how he can understand her in a way that Elend never truly could. And the things he tells her clearly has an effect on her.
After Elend is deposed as king, for example, he tries to focus on he and Vin’s relationship and spend more time with her; but he notices that something seems different about her lately. Naturally, Elend thinks it’s because he is no longer king. However, it’s because she is thinking that she, as a mistborn, is just too different from him and that she doesn’t deserve him because of her skaa/street urchin nature, and her nature to kill.
She begins to think that Zane is the better match for her, and she tells Sazed that even though Elend is the first man that she’s ever loved, she wonders how she knows if it’s right. She asks him, “Shouldn’t I pay more attention to the man who is a better match for me?” (2.572).
Not long after this, Elend seeks advice from Sazed on their relationship as well, and he sums up their contrasting nature quite well, saying, “she’s Mistborn; I’m an ordinary man. She grew up on the streets; I grew up in a mansion. She is wily and clever; I’m book-learned” (2.574).
To this, however, Sazed points out their similarities, saying, “She is extremely competent…and so are you…she was oppressed by her brother, you by your father. Both of you hated the Final Empire and fought it. And both of you think far too much about what should be, rather than what is” (2.574).
Sazed goes on to say that he thinks the two of them are right for each other.
Reconciliation
After Vin destroys much of Cett’s army and Luthadel is facing a possible last stand, she realizes she has to decide between Elend and Zane.
“Elend was the one she wanted to be with. He represented peace. Happiness. On the other hand, Zane represented what she felt she had to become. For the good of everyone involved.” (2.592).
At one point, she chooses Zane, and as she is about to leave with him on their own journey together, she takes out a metal vial, and Zane spins around suspicously, reacting to her defensively.
Here, she realizes that Elend wouldn’t have jumped like that when she took out the vial. More importantly, she realizes that Zane doesn’t really trust her, while Elend has always trusted her. She recalls when she had told Elend that she wanted to leave Luthadel (and therefore leave him), he had been supportive of her decision.
She then refuses to go with Zane, and Zane asks her what it is about him that binds Vin to Elend. “He isn’t a great leader,” he says. “He’s not a warrior. He’s no Allomancer or general. What is it about him?”
The answer comes to Vin simple and easy. “He trusts me,” she whispers to Zane. Then, she further elaborates, saying:
“When I attacked Cett…the others thought I was acting irrationally—and they were right. But Elend told them I had a good reason, even if he didn’t know what it was…when we spoke later…I was cold to him. I think he knew that I was trying to decide whether to stay with him. And…he told me that he trusted my judgment. He’d support if I chose to leave him.”
Now that she has chosen Elend, she realizes that even if she can’t share his ideals, she can respect them. Even if she doesn’t deserve him, she can be near him (2.601).
After this turning point, Vin chooses to get married to Elend, representing her officially choosing him, choosing to go with this side of herself, and trusting that it’s right (2.616). Once she does this she changes as a person as well, feeling more in control and sure of herself.
“I’m more in control than I have been for months. It’s time for me to stop hesitating, Sazed—time to stop worrying, time to accept my place in this crew. I know what I want now. I love Elend. I don’t know what kind of time we’ll have together, but I want some at least” (2.617).
Spook notices the difference in her, too. He says “you’re different than you were.” Vin asks him how. And he says that she doesn’t seem frightened all the time. Vin considers this, then responds:
“I’ve made some decisions. About who I am, and who I will be. About what I want” (2.665).
The Hero of Ages
By the third Mistborn novel, Vin and Elend’s relationship has evolved to a point where they deeply understand and trust one another.
In the beginning of the novel, Vin has grown to understand that she doesn’t—and shouldn’t—want to protect Elend from everything:
“Yet he still lived. Every breath was unexpected, perhaps underserved. Once, she’d been terrified that she would fail him. But she had somehow found peace in understanding that she couldn’t keep him from risking his life. In understanding that she didn’t want to keep him from risking his life” (3.30).
Elend understands this about her as well:
“She still worried about him, though she no longer tried to protect him from all danger. Both her worry and her willingness to let him take risks were part of her love for him. And he sincerely appreciated both” (3.54).
She is not reproachful, even if Elend does wrong; she only harbors concern for her husband when safety is involved. When Elend starts the battle with the koloss in the beginning of the novel without her, Vin says:
“I worry about you…did you have to start the battle without me?” Elend glanced over at her, noting that there was no reproach in her voice, only concern (3.54).
Regardless of their differences, Vin is learning how to to deal with and accept the places where she differs from Elend, after a year of marriage.
For example, she still can’t believe that Elend has joined the Church of the Survivor; the thought of being its religious symbol makes her uncomfortable. Although she knows Elend’s intentions are political, as they are a means for him to forge a link with the common people, the move still makes her uncomfortable. But, she notes:
“A year of marriage had taught her, however, that there were some things one simply had to ignore. She could love Elend for his desire to do the right thing, including when she thought he’d done the opposite” (3.85).
She also seems to understand his idiosyncrasies pretty well by this novel. At one point, she notices that something is bothering Elend, but she didn’t need to press on it now, because he would eventually talk to her, as ”he always did” (3.192).
Along with their deep understanding of each other, the most important aspect to success in their relationship revolves around trust. At one point, Vin asks Elend why she finally agreed to marry him. She tells him that it’s because she realizes he trusted her.
“I realized that you trusted me,” Vin said. “Trusted me as nobody ever has before. On that night when I fought Zane, I decided I had to give my trust to you. This force that’s destroying the world, we have something it can never understand. I don’t necessarily need your help; I need your trust. Your hope. It’s something I’ve never had of myself, and I rely on yours” (3.251).
This deep trust is their best weapon in fighting Ruin, in fact. As Vin is making a ruse to try and throw off Ruin by pretending to go get their nonexistent atium, she notes she and Elend’s shared trust:
“The ruse felt flimsy to her. Yet she knew that was because she could see Elend’s confusion, could read his lies in his eyes. She understood him, as he understood her. It was an understanding that required love. And she suspected that was something that Ruin would never be able to comprehend” (3.623).
By the end of the novel, when Elend dies, she is more at peace than anything else. She considers their relationship as having been a blessing. She will carry on even after he dies, showing that their relationship was founded on a healthy love, rather than a dependent one.
“She didn’t feel the pain or terror that she had known before, when she’d thought him dead. Now she felt only peace. These last few years had been a blessing—an extension. She’d given Elend up to be his own man, to risk himself as he wished, and perhaps to die. She would always love him. But she would not cease to function because he was gone” (3.738).
Kelsier Relationship
The Final Empire
When Vin first meets Kelsier, she is apprehensive of him, and her instincts tell her that powerful men like him are dangerous. She wonders how Kelsier is going to try and use her. When he first teaches her about metals and allomancy, she questions why he is telling her all of these things, and she thinks that he is giving his secrets away too easily.
She finally starts to trust Kelsier towards the end of the first part of The Final Empire, however. She is starting to realize that Kelsier is, in fact, a good man. She even grows to find comfort in the thought that Kelsier is looking out for her as she sits at her first ball.
“Not alone, she thought. Kelsier’s out there somewhere watching in the night. The thought comforted her” (1.224).
Another important aspect of their relationship is that Kelsier, like the others, teaches her how to believe in something. Before she met Kelsier, Vin’s only motivation was to survive. He, however, is able to get her to believe in building a better world.
As Kelsier looks out on a balcony with her, he asks if it ever looks wrong to her, commenting on the dry plants, the angry sun, and the smoky black sky (1.284). Vin asks him how these things can be right or wrong – they are simply the way things are. Kelsier tells her that the world shouldn’t look like this, and this confuses her.
It’s not until later in the novel, as Kelsier makes his speech to the crew while the Lord Ruler executes Skaa in the town square, that she starts to believe in their cause. She thinks:
“That’s our real foe…not the missing garrison, not the Inquisitors with their axes. That man. The one from the logbook. We’ll have to find a way to defeat him, otherwise everything else we do will be pointless” (1.440).
Kelsier has taught her how not to just survive, but to believe in a cause. So, not only has he taught her to trust and enjoy the crew, wholeheartedly bought into their mission and goal, in large part thanks to Kelsier’s leadership
Kelsier also seems to be a good force for her self-confidence, if not a foil of her lack of confidence. When Kelsier tells her she is a strong mistborn after she kills Shan Elariel, she plays down her allomancy skills, to which Kelsier says:
“You’re still too self-effacing. You’re good at this—that much is obvious…learn to take a little pride in yourself, kid! If there’s anything I can teach you, it’s how to be self-confident” (1.523).
Lastly, Kelsier teaches Vin about friendship.
At the end of the novel, she is tempted to leave the Lord Ruler’s palace, Kredik shaw, as her natural inclination is to leave, to escape, to save herself. However, when Sazed is able to save her from her imprisonment, she chooses to stay, hearing Kelsier’s voice whisper in her mind:
“You still have some things to learn about friendship, Vin. I hope someday you realize what they are…” (1.613).
After this, she decides that she can’t leave Sazed, that she will go back to save him.
The Well of Ascension
Like the other characters in the Mistborn world, Kelsier’s shadow looms over Vin in the later novels of the series. In fact, she feels blind without Kelsier in the beginning of The Well of Ascension.
“She and the other leaders of Elend’s fledgling kingdom tried their best, but without Kelsier to guide them, Vin felt blind. Plans, successes, and even goals were like shadowy figures in the mist, formless and indistinct” (2.25).
Vin’s “Romance” with Kelsier
At one point in the second novel, Vin clarifies her relationship with Kelsier to Elend, telling him that she never loved Kelsier romantically, not in the way that she loves him. For one thing, Kelsier was old. For another, he was “intense, reckless, even a bit cruel. Unforgiving” (2.55).
She notes that Kelsier would slaughter people without guilt or concern, simply because they upheld the Final Emprie or worked for the Lord Ruler. Despite his brutish nature, Vin still loved Kelsier as a teacher and as a friend.
In the end, however, he was just too similar to her. He was of the streets, like her. She notes that when you struggle so hard in life, you grow strong, but harsh, too. Keslier reminded her too much of men she grew up with. He was far kinder, but still hard.
For her romantic interest, it seems that Vin truly needs a foil, rather than someone like her. She needs someone to take care of her with love, compassion, and a kinder, gentler and more tender touch, like what Elend has. She does not need the harsh edges that someone like Kelsier has.
Furthermore, she and Kelsier’s relationship was more like that of a father and daughter than that of a couple, as Kelsier often saw her as the long lost daughter he never had.
Contrast with Kelsier: Negative Traits
There are several negative traits Kelsier has which Vin must consciously choose to differentiate herself from.
At first, Vin is trying to decide if it’s a good thing that she is unlike Kelsier. She compares herself to him after she kills off eight assassins in the beggining of the novel, thinking, “She’d killed them, eight men, with the cruel efficiency that Kelsier had trained in her” (2.19).
Later, when she saves Breeze from the mounted archers chasing him as he returns to Luthadel, she has a moment where she thinks she should finish off the archers she just saved Breeze from. “Kelsier probably would have attacked,” she thinks (2.109). However, she has to remind herself that she was not Kelsier, that delaying the riders for long enough for Breeze to escape was enough.
Then, when she ponders at assassinating the kings/generals of the armies besieging Luthadel, she stops herself, noting that it’s not her way, that she doesn’t have to be like Kelsier was. She tells herself that she can be something better, something “that trusts in Elend’s way” (2.262).
She then decides to go with Zane to destroy Cett and his army. She wonders whether or not she should be doing this, and Zane asks her what Keslier would have told her to do. She thinks:
“The answer was simple. Kelsier would never have gotten into this situation. He had been a hard man, a man with little tolerance for any who threatened those he loved. Cett and Straff wouldn’t have lasted a single night at Luthadel without feeling Kelsier’s knife” (2.542).
Here, she acts like Kelsier, helping Zane to destroy most of Cett’s army. However, she shows she is different from Kelsier after the fact. She describes the massacre as being like “a child in a room full of bugs” (2.560), and she iis clearly disturbed by the sheer death and destruction she’s caused, despite it being to an enemy force, which Elend tries to remind her of.
When Elend reminds her it’s the enemy soldiers that she killed, that they were men protecting a tyrant who oppresses his people, she responds, “That’s the same rationale Kelsier used…when he killed noblemen and their guards. He said they were upholding the Final Empire, so they deserved to die. He frightened me” (2.561).
At this point, she admits to Elend that Kelsier thought of himself as a god, taking and giving life where he saw fit. She tells him that she does not want to be like him, but everything is pushing her in that direction (2.561). Later, a part of her is not even bothered by how many people she had killed. However, “that very indifference terrified her” (2.596).
When she pays a visit to Kredik Shaw towards the end of the novel, she thinks back to how she had entered before; rather than killing the guards, she had talked them into leaving and joining the rebellion. One of those very men, Goradel, had led Elend to the palace dungeons to help rescue her. If he hadn’t done this, she wouldn’t have been able to kill the Lord Ruler.
She notes that Kelsier would’ve outright juist killed them. “In a way, the Final Emprie ahd been overthrown because she hadn’t acted like Kelsier” (2.589).
She still thinks of herself as falling short of Kelsier, however.
She notes that he was bold, even excited, when he executed those in his path. That he was ruthless, and always looked toward the greater good. That he’d always had his eyes focused on the fall of the empire, and the eventual rise of a kingdom like Elend’s.
“He had succeeded. Why couldn’t she kill as he had, knowing she was doing her duty, never feeling guilt? She’d always been frightened by the edge of danger Kelsier had displayed. Yet wasn’t that very edge the thing that had let him succeed?” (2.590).
Then, after killing a few hundred koloss, she is beginning to tire, and realizes there is no way she can kill all twenty thousand of them. She chastises herself for expecting she could have ever stopped them all and killed every koloss in the army. She remembers how she had once held Kelsier back from rushing an army by himself. Wisely, she realizes that she was right for doing that:
“He had been a great man, but still just one person. He couldn’t have stopped an entire army, no more than she could” (2.714).
Positive Traits Kelsier Has Given to Vin
Freedom
Kelsier has given Vin several things, including a sense of freedom.
In the beginning of The Well of Ascension, as she is mist jumping around, Vin notes that Kelsier had given her this sense of freedom. That she was able to first feel this way under his relaxed, yet watchful, tutelage. She notes that she had never lost the sense of intoxicating wonder as she soared through the mists (2.79). The imprint from Kelsier is still there, and Vin shows gratitude for it here.
Protection
Kelsier has also given Vin a sense of protection. When Elend asks her who watches over her in the beginning of The Well of Ascension, Vin’s immediate reaction is Kelsier. She notes that although she’d known him for less than a year, that year had been the first in her life when she had felt protected (2.53).
Standing up for Yourself
Kelsier also seems to have taught Vin how to stand up for herself.
When she and Elend are talking about the plan to defeat the two armies besieging Luthadel (Cett’s and his father’s), he asks her if she stood up to the bigger, stronger thieving crews. Vin notes that she hadn’t then, and memories flash in her mind of hiding, of keeping her eyes down, of weakness.
But she tells Elend that “you can’t let others beat on you forever. That’s what Kelsier taught me—that’s why we fought the Lord Ruler. That’s why the skaa rebellion gout the Final Empire all those years, even when there was no chance of winning. Reen taught me that the rebels were fools. But Reen is dead now—and so is the Final Empire” (2.163).
This is also symbolic – her breaking away from Reen, from the mindset he’s instilled in her – is symbolic in his death. Meanwhile, Kelsier’s death has freed her, and his ideas, rather than Reen’s ideas, live on in her, rather than die in her. After this, she tells Elend that he can’t give up the city.
Towards the end of the novel, as she is running on pewter back to Luthadel, she stops by a skaa village, and notices that children are laughing, men are speaking with gusto, and they are cooking an evening meal.
She “drank in the sounds of laughter” and she notes that “Kelsier wouldn’t have given up. He had faced the Lord ruler himself, and his last words had been defiant. Even when his plans had seemed hopeless, his own corpse lying in the street, he had secretly been Victorious.” (2.690). Vin thinks, “I refuse to give up…I refuse to accept their deaths until I hold their corpses in my arms” (2.690).
Trust
Most importantly, Kelsier gives Vin a sense of trust.
In the novel, she tells OreSeur that one thing she loves is the mists, because they give her power and freedom (2.144) She knows that others think of her as fearful and paranoid, but it is something ingrained in her, something she grew up with, living on the streets with Reen. And, notably, she thinks to herself that “Kelsier had taken that fear away. She was still careful, but she didn’t feel a constant sense of terror. The Survivor had given her a life where the ones she loved didn’t beat her, had shown her something better than fear. Trust.” (2.144).
At the turning point of her arc, Vin finally recognizes what Kelsier’s true strengths really were. She tells Elend, “I always focus on the wrong things, when it comes to him…it wasn’t his ability to fight that made him great—it wasn’t his harshness or brutality, or even his srength or instincts…it was his ability to trust…it was the way that he made good people into better people, the way that he inspired them. His crew worked because he had confidence in them—because he respected them. And in return, they respected each other. Men like Breeze and Clubs became heroes because Kelsier had faith in them” (2.616).
The Hero of Ages
By the third Mistborn novel, Vin is able to grow into herself and become more like Kelsier in all of his positive traits, rather than the negative ones.
Becoming Like Kelsier
Acting like Kelsier serves Vin’s goals well in defeating Ruin.
For example, as she is trying to learn what the Deepness truly is, she takes a page out of Kelsier’s book, and remembers how, when they were planning on taking the Lord Ruler down, he had written up the teams goals and plans on a small board, and how “possible he had made an impossible task seem” (3.194). Kelsier’s words ring in her head:
“We know how to take an incredibly large task and break it down into manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces” (3.194).
So, she approaches the task like Kelsier.
“All right, Vin thought. I’ll begin like Kelsier did, by listing the things that I know for certain” (3.194).
This ultimately helps her discover that the Deepness, or rather, Ruin, acts like more like a person than a force, and that it wants things. She exploits this weakness to trick Ruin about the atium caches and ultimately prevent Ruin from getting a hold of it.
By the middle of the third novel, many, like Elend, can see Kelsier, the survivor in her. When she convinces Elend to attend one of the balls in Fadrex, a city they are besieging, Elend sees the Kelsier in her.
“Elend blinked. At first he assumed that he must have misunderstood her. But the look in her eyes—that wild determination—persuaded him otherwise. Sometimes he saw a touch of the Survivor in her, or at least of the man the stories claimed Kelsier had been. Bold to the point of recklessness. Brave and brash. He’d rubbed off on Vin more than she cared to admit” (3.254).
Kelsier has had a major impact on Vin throughout the Mistborn series, giving her confidence, trust, and something to believe in.
Zane Relationship
The thing that draws Vin to Zane in The Well of Ascension is the fact that he is another Mistborn. It’s a big deal for Vin to be able to connect with someone who is like her in this respect. She misses that connection she had once had with Kelsier. This connection that she forms with “the Watcher” in the novel is not understood well by those around her.
“Yet it had been over a year since she’d spoken with another Mistborn. There were conflicts within her that she couldn’t explain to the others. Even Mistings, like Ham and Breeze, couldn’t understand the strange dual life of a Mistborn. Part assassin, part bodyguard, part noblewoman…part confused, quiet girl. Did this man have similar troubles with his identity?” (2.89).
Everytime he visits her in the streets of Luthadel, she becomes eager to spar with him, eager for the “thrill of another fight in the mists” (2.196) and another chance to test her abilities against a Mistborn.
OreSeur warns her of Zane, saying that there is a possibility that he has ulterior motives, that he isn’t as he semes. But Vin thinks that OreSeur couldn’t have known Zane; that, like Elend, he didn’t understand because he wasn’t an allomancer. She thinks, “Neither of them could understand what it was to soar on a Push of steel, to flare tin and experienc the sudden shock of five heightened senses. They couldn’t know. They coudln’t understand” (2.351).
As they spend more time together, Zane pushes a wedge between her and Elend, constantly telling her that Elend, and the others around her, are simply using her for her powers. He tries to convince Vin to run off with him, and to take power for themselves. He seems to think that Vin can save him.
Vin is tempted by Zane and the things he tells her, and even he notices something in the way he looks at her. When she tells him that she loved Elend, he thinks, “And you think that means you can’t feel anything for me?…What of that look I’ve seen in your eyes, that longing? No, it isn’t as easy as you imply, is it?” (2.416).
Zane is a bad influence on Vin, and he helps to release some of her worst instincts. Before they go and attack Cett and his forces in The Well of Ascension, she feels as though the energy in her limb’s were crying for release. That she had waited, remaining coiled, for far too long. That she was tired of weakness and being restrained and spending so many months as a knife held immobile at an enemy’s throat. She thinks, “it was time to cut” (2.544).
Here, she starts to realize what a true force of nature she actually is:
“Men screamed and fell, Vin ripping through their ranks with only the buckle as a weapon. Before the force of her pewter, tin, steel, and iron, the possible use of atium seemed an incredible waste. Without it she was a terrible weapon—one that until this moment she hadn’t truly understood. Mistborn.” (2.549).
Ultimately, however, she chooses Elend over Zane, because Elend trusts her, while Zane doesn’t. She ends up killing Zane as well. Thankfully, Vin decides to turn her back on being a powerful, uninhibited Mistborn weapon; she turns her back on becoming reckless like Zane or Kelsier, and in the end, she chooses what’s best for the crew and the world at large.
OreSeur / TenSoon Relationship
Initial Prejudice
By the events of The Well of Ascension, Vin has developed a prejudice against the kandras. She looks down upon the practice of them eating human bodies, and has her servant, OreSeur, take up the body of a wolf instead (2.19). This prejudice puts a strain on she and OreSeur’s relationship.
She further resents OreSeur specifically because he was the only one on the crew who knew Kelsier was going to die. She is frustrated that he never said anything, that it never crossed his mind to stop him, that three might have been another way. Of course, OreSeur responds to this later in the novel by saying the contract is what prevented him from doing this (2.255).
Just as Vin is beginning to think that OreSeur could be useful, and she is even sympathizing with him, she notices that he is breathing hard from exertion, and she reminds herself poignantly that “he ate Kelsier” (2.82), and that seems to stop that train of thought.
Empathy
It takes Vin a while to finally attempt to empathize with OreSeur. She finds a way to do this when she asks him what his loves and hatreds are. OreSeur says he does not want to answer this, but he has to answer it if commanded. She almost commands him to do so, but hesitates, noting “something in those eyes—inhuman though they were. Something familiar” (2.143)
She goes on to think that “she’d known resentment like that. She’d felt it often during her youth, when she’d served crewleaders who had lorded over their followers. In the crews, one did what one was commanded—especially if one was a small waif of a girl, without rank or means of intimidation” (2.143).
She has a moment of personal growth when she realizes she’s only treated OreSeur poorly since she has known him. She never like his haughty nature as Renoux, but she realizes that that wasn’t his fault. And she’s only avoided him as OreSeur, having hated him for letting Kelsier die. Additioanlly, she has forced him into an animal’s body. She realizes she has hardly asked about his past, and only did so to get more information out of him to meet her own ends (2.256).
This kind of self-reflection shows Vin has a lot of depth as a person and as a friend. She is quite good at empathizing and putting herself in someone else’s shoes.
She notes that OreSeur had 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).
She remembers here what Kelsier had told her, that she had a lot to learn about friendship. She applies his lesson here, and they are able to connect on not being like other people – that having these strange, supernatural powers alienates them from others.
“They hate you,” Vin said quietly. “They hate you beacuse of your powers, becuase they can’t make you break your word, or because they worry that you are too strong to control” (2.257).
When OreSeur asks him how she knows of these things, she says it’s the same way a crewleader treats a young girl, an anomaly, a child who has strange abilities – she is both a tool and a threat (2.257).
They also bond over what it’s like to be beaten. However, OreSeur points out that as a kandra, he can be beaten over and over again and not succumb to his injuries in death, and that makes it worse for him.
Change
With this newfound empathy, Vin starts to treat OreSuer much better. At one point, OreSeur tells her that she doesn’t need to apologize to her, that he is only kandra, to which Vin responds, “Still a person” (2.391).
Later, when she worries about his status after the assassins attack Elend at the assembly vote for king, Elend tells her that he is fine, that he is only a kandra, that broken bones mean nothing to him. She asks where he is, and he says that he’s digesting a new body. Then, Elend says, “I’ve never heard someone express that much concern for a knadra before.” To which Vin responds, “Well, I don’t see why not…OreSeur risked his life for me.”
Elend tells her again that he is only a kandra, that no man or a Mistborn could likely kill him. To which she says, “Regardless…he feels pain. He took two serious blows on my behalf” (2.493).
Intimacy
Vin’s relationship with OreSeur is intimate. It becomes even more intimate when she is able to take control of him to fend of Zane at the end of the novel. She learns OreSeur’s secret, and the deeply held secret of all of the kandra – they can be controlled by allomancers.
Of course, it is later revealed that OreSeur was TenSoon, the House Venture kandra, all along. TenSoon had killed OreSeur and taken over his likeness, imitating the kandra on Zane’s command. He had turned on Zane, however, defending Vin because of her kindness and empathy.
This relationship, more than anything, represents Vin’s ability to empathize and grow as a person.
Motivations
The Final Empire
In the first Mistborn novel, Vin’s only goal is survival, to “simply stay alive.” She displays this motivation at several points throughout The Final Empire.
For example, after having been a slave to Reen and Camon, she claims that she would be a slave to Kelsier too when she first meets him, so long as it would lead to her eventual freedom. Survival, as we can see, is a key theme to her character, and that includes not only physical survival, but emotional survival as well.
When she’s learning about burning copper with Kelsier for the first time, she is most interested in copper’s ability to protect her emotions. She “would need to locate enough of it to keep it burning all the time” (1.142).
As a survivor, it’s apparent that Vin has never had the time nor space to examine her own beliefs. When Sazed meets her for the first time, he asks her what she believes in, and she says she doesn’t know. And, she’s apparently never thought about her belief in Lord Ruler, nor has she questioned if, in Sazed’s words, that he is truly “the Ascended Avatar of God” or a “Sliver of Infinity” (1.164).
When Ham brings up the question of whether what they’re doing (overthrowing Lord Ruler) is good or bad, she responds “Does it matter?” (1.190) and isn’t sure if it’s worth thinking about.
However, Kelsier is able to get her to believe in something more. He is able to get her to believe in the importance of stopping the Lord Ruler and in creating a better world for the skaa. His influence on her, as well as the others in the crew, is strong, for they carry on his mission even after death, fighting Luthadel’s besieging army and the god of destruction, Ruin.
The Well of Ascension
In The Well of Ascension, Vin is driven primarily by a need to protect Elend. This is a big reason that she is so cautious and paranoid. She worries about failing to protect him. After she defeats the assassins in the beginning of the novel, she thinks that despite winning again, it was close.
“What would happen when she failed? When she didn’t watch carefully enough, or fight skillfully enough? Elend would die” (2.18).
Eventually, as she and Elend’s relationship falters, and the mists continue to act more and more strangely, Vins motivations begin to twist and turn. Zane asks her what she would do if she didn’t have any constraints, not repercussions for her actions, and she immediately thinks she would go north, and find out what was causing the “thumping noise,” which is The Deepness, or Ruin, calling out to her (2.281).
She is driven more and more by this motivation to learn more about this mysterious Deepness and the Well of Ascension as the novel progresses. She isn’t driven, however, by any sort of motivation to be a leader. To her, it’s a responsibility rather than a goal. In her position as the Hero of Ages, she treats it more like a duty than anything else.
“Another person in her place might have asked why they had been chosen…Vin didn’t consider herself to be either self-assured or self-motivated. Still she saw no point in asking why. Life had taught her that sometimes things simply happened.” (2.663).
She thinks about how there hadn’t been any reason for Reen to beat her or that Kelsier had needed to die. She thinks: “She had a job to do. The fact that she didn’t understand it didn’t stop her from acknowleding that she had to try to accomplish it. She simply hoped that she’d know what to do when the time came” (2.663).
Later, after she releases Ruin to the world at the Well of Ascension, her new goal becomes defeating Ruin in order to save the world.
The Hero of Ages
Vin’s new plot goal in the Hero of Ages is to defeat Ruin. About a third of the way into the novel, Vin decides that she must better understand the thing that she is fighting—the Deepness—in order to defeat it.
“She had to discover the laws relating to the thing she was fighting. That would tell her how to beat it” (3.196).
The mists become an antagonist for Vin. She feels that they have changed; where they were once her ally, they had now “started to feel alien to her, hiding shadowed ghosts and murderous intent” (3.76).
Eventually, she declares the mists as her enemy.
“What of the hesitance she felt toward the mists, and how they pulled away from her? The way theys tayed out of buildings, the way they killed. It all pointed to what Human had said. The mists—the Deepness—hated her. Finally she acknowledged what she had been resisting for so long. The mists were her enemy” (3.150).
For the rest of the novel, she is determined to defeat Ruin and the mists. While she still finds it important to help Elend secure the Lord Ruler’s caches throughout various cities in the Final Empire, her ultimate goal is to defeat Ruin, who threatens all of the world’s demise. While Elend is treating the symptoms of Ruin’s disease (finding food and shelter for his people), Vin is treating the cause (Ruin itself).
Later in the novel, when she is imprisoned in Fadrex, Ruin takes on the appearance of Reen, and she realizes that Ruin was Reen’s voice all along. This is a turning point for Vin’s plot goal, as she realizes for the first time that Ruin is defeatable.
After it floats to her, wanting her to understand what it has accomplished, Vin realizes that Ruin is feeling human emotions, like pride and victory.
“At that moment, Ruin stopped being an it in her mind, and instead became a he” (3.530).
It’s at this point that “Vin began to think—for the first time—that she could find a way to beat Ruin. He was powerful, perhaps even incomprehensible. But she had seen humanity in him, and that humanity could be deceived, manipulated, and broken” (3.530).
Eventually, Vin is able to gain power over the mists. At the end of the novel, she takes up the power of the mists, and enters into a godhood like state with Ruin, and causes chaos as she tries to fix things in the world.
“She rose above the city, knowing that the power spinning throug her—the core of her existence—was simply a hub. A focus for power that stretched across the entire world. She could be anywhere she wished. Indeed, a part of her was in all places at once. She could see the world as a whole” (3.689).
There is a final turning point for Vin at the end of the novel, when Elend dies. She thinks about everyone who had died, and wonders, “Did Ruin think she would let their sacrifices be for nothing? She rose, gathering her power. She forced it against the power of Ruin, as she had the other times. Yet this time was different. When Ruin pushed back, she didn’t retreat. She didn’t preserve herself. She drove onward” (3.738).
Tragically, Ruin has taken away the last reason Vin has had to live. Having nothing to lose, she is able to sacrifice herself in order to defeat the god of chaos.
“You created the thing that can kill you, Ruin. And you just made one huge final mistake. You shouldn’t have killed Elend. You see, he was the only reason I had left to live” (3.739).
Character Arc #1: Gaining Trust
Reen’s Lessons
Vin’s half-brother Reen has led her to believe that anyone can betray her and that she should expect it. She is still working through this trauma in the beginning of the first Mistborn novel.
“It’s just another betrayal, she thought sickly. Why does it still bother me so? Everyone betrays everyone else. That’s the way life is” (1.37).
Life with Reen accustoms her to loneliness and a suspicion for betrayal.
“Life with Reen had accustomed her to loneliness–if you let someone get too close, it would merely give them better opportunities to betray you” (1.62).
Reen also tells her that the man who wants you to trust him is the one you should fear most. This causes her to distrust Kelsier at first, leading her to wonder why he would teach her all the things he knows about allomancy, and that he was giving his secrets away too easily.
Life with Thieving Crews
Vin’s life with thieving crews causes her to think that all men just want to use her and that they are all hungry for power. She has never formed a true friendship with anyone, and she is naturally suspicious of anyone who could possibly be her friend.
For example, she questions the motivations of one of Camon’s crew members, Ulef, in the beginning of the first novel. She wonders if he is actually her friend, thinking, “Had Ulef ever really been her friend? He’d certainly sold her out quickly enough…” (1.62).
Her view of reality is warped from her life on the streets with skaa thieving crews. This plays itself over and over again early on in the first Mistborn novel.
For example, when at first Keslier doesn’t explain what a “Smoker” is, she thinks that “a powerful man like Kelsier would withhold knowledge from her as long as he could, stringing her along with occasional tidbits. His knowledge was what bound her to him–it would be unwise to give away too much too quickly” (1.105). She sees all men as abusive people who hold their power over her in various ways, like with knowledge, for example.
We see this again when she is learning about Soothing with Breeze, saying if she didn’t have power over the effects of Soothers, then “others would gain power over her through it” (1.189) – she sees the world as a place where people are constantly trying to gain power over one another. She’s not entirely wrong, but her view of reality is genuinely warped in this sense.
Then, when the fake Renoux encounters her for the first time, he studies her, and she doesn’t like the way he looks at her, thinking, “she didn’t like it when people looked at her that way–it made her wonder how they were going to try and use her” (1.160).
Her previous life before Kelsier’s crew causes her meet everyone with suspicion and distrust, and it takes a lot of goodwill from Kelsier and the team he has assembled before she can begin to trust again and form true friendships.
Trusting the Crew
Kelsier
Finally, Vin is starting to trust Kelsier at the end of the first part of The Final Empire.
When Kelsier leaves her to discuss matters of their plan with the fake Renoux in private, he apologizes to her. She says there is no reason for her to know all of Kelsier’s plans, but Kelsier disagrees – he reassures her that she is as much a part of the team with anyone else, and that nothing he discussed with Renoux had anything to do with her part of the plan.
Vin, shockingly, says “I…believe you,” to this (1.167).
For her to even utter these words is a big deal, because she has been naturally inclined to never believe anyone about anything this whole time. She’s finally dropped her suspicion, and Kelsier’s genuine, authentic nature, despite being a thief, has played a big role in this. It’s sort of her first step in undoing Reen’s lie to her that “no one is to be trusted” and that “everyone will betray you.”
Kelsier’s Crew
Vin learns to trust not just Kelsier, but a whole group of people – his thieving crew. As her trust grows, she begins to consider the crewmembers as friends. This is a lot for Vin to overcome, considering her past.
She has a moment where she thinks that it’s not the wealth or the job’s thrill that makes her stay, but “the shadowed prospect–unlikely and unreasonable, but still seductive–of a group whose members actually trusted one another” (1.214). She essentially sticks around because she wants to wait and see if it’s for real, or if it’s a lie. Otherwise, her old self would’ve run off by now.
After she is injured at Kredik Shaw, she notes that the crew “hadn’t exploited her weakened state, but had caread for her, each one spending time at her bedside” (1.269).
She is starting to unlearn everything Reen taught her as she trusts – and likes – this crew more and more. She is getting more confident, too:
“She was getting past the point where she questioned herself. She knew the reason she stayed in the crew. It wasn’t the plan; it was the people. She liked Kelsier. She liked Dockson, Breeze, and Hame. She even liked the strange little Spook and his crotchety uncle. This was a crew unlike any other she’d worked with” (1.334).
After their army and employer (yeden) are gone, the crew is discussing the status of their plan, and she is surprised to find that they value her opinion, and want to hear what she thinks (1.428). She genuinely starts to not only like the crew, but her life.
“Well, I actually like my life now, Sazed. I like spending time with the crew, and I liek training with Kelsier. I love going to balls with Elend on the weekends, love walking in these gardens with you. I don’t want these things to change. I don’t want my life to go back to the way it was a year ago” (1.484).
Reflection
Later, Vin reflects on her old nature. As the crew jokes around about Spook’s accent, she has a moment where she imagines her old self, the one who would hide in the shadows, “a frightened wisp of a girl, untrusting, suspicious, untucked dirty shirt and a pair of brown trousers” (1.399).
She remembers her second night in Club’s shop, when she had stood out in a dark workroom, and watched the crew share late-night conversation, and has a hard time believing she used to be this girl that would hide from them, watching them with a hidden envy, never daring to join in.
She starts to understand, in this moment, why Kelsier thinks a crew that trusts one another is better than one that doesn’t.
“You’re right, Kelsier, Vin thought with a smile. This is better” (1.399).
However, Vin still isn’t fully like them, not completely. She thinks, in this moment, that she still can’t completely silence Reen’s whispers, nor being as trusting as Kelsier was, but, “she could finally understand, at least a little bit, why he worked the way he did” (1.399).
Buying into the Mission
Not only does she trust and enjoy the crew, but she is wholeheartedly bought into their mission/goal, in large part thanks to Kelsier’s leadership.
For example, when she follows Kelsier on his trip to Kredik Shaw and nearly gets killed, he asks why she is following him. She says it’s because she wants to help. She doesn’t want the crew to do the dangerous work while she sits, eats dinner and watches people dance.
“She was beginning to feel a camaraderie for this crew, and it was like nothing she had ever known. She wanted to be a part of what it was doing; she wanted to help” (1.240).
Later, when they are at the last Venture ball, she starts to notice that something is off. Sazed says they should leave, but she elects to stay, because she needs to find out what is going on with the noble houses—in the past, she surely would have left the moment there was a sign of trouble—now, she risks everything to help the crew out (1.499).
Furthermore, Vin realizes the far reaching impact of what she and the crew are doing. She notes that even if they are unable to stop the final empire, their efforts would be useful to the rebellion moving forward:
“With Marsh’s intelligence about the Ministry and Sazed’s translation of the logbook, the rebellion would have new and useful information for future resistance” (1.534).
She understand that their efforts could impact the morale of the rebellion, and serve as a jumping off point, a catalyst for future efforts, and she feels proud to have been a part of that, a part of something bigger than herself:
“Vin realized that she felt proud to have been a part of it. Perhaps in the future she could help start a real rebellion—one in a place where the skaa weren’t quite so beaten down” (1.534).
Her arc with becoming trusting is nearly complete when she is able to define trust herself as she is talking to Kelsier towards the end of the novel:
“Once maybe I would have thought you a fool, but…well, that’s kind of what trust is, isn’t it? A willful self-delusion? You have to shut out that voice that whispers about betrayal, and just hope that your friends aren’t going to hurt you” (1.537).
Turning Point
Her abandonment issues comes back when Kelsier sacrifices himself and dies at the end of The Final Empire. She hears Reen’s voice again, saying:
“See. I told you he would leave you. I warned you. I promised you…” (1.574).
She is finally able to overcome her natural inclination to leave, escape and save herself in a major turning point at the end of novel. Sazed is able to save her from her imprisonment in the Lord Ruler’s palace, and she has the option to escape. However she hear’s Kelsier’s voice whisper in her mind, rather than Reen’s, telling her that, “You still have some things to learn about friendship, Vin. I hope someday you realize what they are…” (1.613).
After this, she decides that she can’t leave Sazed, that she will go back to save him.
At the very end of the novel, she has one more temptation to escape. She wonders if she is Vin or Valette, and questions whether or not she truly is the person that could be with Elend. She chides herself, saying it was an illusion, a dream that she’s always been “that child who grew up in the shadows, the girl who should be alone.” She thinks she doesn’t deserve this, that she doesn’t deserve Elend.
But then she remembers Reen’s sacrifice to save her, and that he hadn’t abandoned her, all along. He’d been captured by the Inquisitors looking for Vin, and they’d tortured him. He never betrayed her after all. She hears Reen’s voice whispering, but this time it’s telling her to go back.
In the end, she realizes all she’s ever wanted was “simply feeling the warmth of being held.” (1.643).
Vin’s Newfound Trust
Even after she overcomes her trust issues in the first Mistborn novel, Vin still struggles with abandonment in The Well of Ascension. Early in the novel, Ham jokes that the Lord Ruler only knows what Vin would do if Elend tried to leave her. At this, Elend notices that “Vin stiffened immediately, pulling him a little tighter. She’d been abandoned far too many times. Even after what they’d been through, even after his proposal of marriage, Elend had to keep promising Vin he wasn’t going to leave her” (2.70).
This shows that Vin is still afraid of being abandoned. Later on, she also worries that Tindwyl will change Elend too much, and that he might stop needing her, and leave her because of this. She further worries that Elend is going to leave her after she kills his assassins at the assembly he holds, after seeing her brutish nature.
She shows her trust issues at several other points in the novel as well. For example, when she is debating on whether or not to engage with the Watcher, she notes that she had only recently learned to trust her friends, and that she “wasn’t about to offer the same privilege to a man she had met in the night” (2.89).
Later on, she is suspicious of OreSuer, and thinks that anyone can claim loyalty, and that even if someone has a “contract” for loyalty, they can still turn on you, and that it “makes the surprise more poignant when they do turn on you” (2.71). Ironically, Vin is correct in this instance, foreshadowing that OreSeur is not actually who he says he is.In fact, she keeps OreSeur (in his wolfound form) a secret from the other members of the crew.
However, Vin also has a moment where she remembers how much she is changed, and that she is more trusting than she once was:
“Kelsier had taken that fear away. She was still careful, but she didn’t feel a constant sense of terror. The Survivor had given her a life where the ones she loved didn’t beat her, had shown her something better than fear. Trust.” (2.144).
The Imposter
When it is discovered there is an imposter among the crew in The Well of Ascension, this is the ultimate test of trust for Vin.
First, she shows how much more trusting she is by not questioning if Elend is the imposter. She is somehow able to stop herself from using Allomancy on him to find out if he is, in fact, the imposter, as she could test him to see if he reacts to her Pushes and Pulls (an imposter kandra would not react to this, for example).
“She stopped herself. This one man she would trust. The others she would test, but she would not question Elend. In a way, she’d rather trust him and be wrong than deal with the worry of mistrust” (2.166).
This shows that she is valuing love, companionship, and intimacy over her trust issues, which is a big step in terms of progress for Vin.
She also delays finding out who the imposter is at first, because it’s just too upsetting to her:
“The truth was that she was distracting herself because the thought of one of the crew—one of her first group of friends—being a traitor was too upsetting” (2.235).
She is reluctant to distrust anyone within the crew, in fact, showing that she has really done a 180 in terms of her trusting people – in the past, she would’ve been ready to distrust any one of them:
“This…distrust,” she said. “I hate being suspicious of my friends. I thought I was through mistrusting those around me. I feel like a knife is twisting in my gut, and it cuts deeper every time I confront one of the crew” (2.401).
Her inclination towards trust becomes even more obvious as she tries to find out who the imposter is. As she is investigating Demoux, she is ready to attack, but she stops herself.
“Vin paused, daggers out, ready to spring. But…she still didn’t have any real proof. The part of her that Kelsier had transformed, the part that had come to trust, thought of the Demoux she knew. Do I really believe he’s the kandra?…Or do I simply want him to be the Kandra, so I don’t have to suspect my real friends?” (2.444).
Completing Vin’s Arc of Trust
Vin shows how far she’s come along with being trusting she is relating with OreSeur for the first time. She tells him that nobody in their crew had betrayed them, that the men in their crew were good people. And that “even if one of them were to betray me, I’d still rather have trusted them. I can sleep at night, OreSeur. I can feel peace, I can laugh. Life is different. Better” (2.259).
Later on, she tells Zane that he’s been playing with her, trying to drive a wedge between her and Elend, that he made her think that Elend feared her and that he was using her, Zane says that he was using her. To this, Vin says:
“Yes…but it doesn’t matter—not the way you made it seem. Elend uses me. Kelsier used me. We use each other, for love, for support, for trust” (2.609). This is the turning point in her character arc.
Vin learns that part of trust, and friendship, for that matter, is leaning on each other and using one another when we need it most. She learns that it is better to trust and be betrayed or abandoned than to have never trusted or had a friend at all.
Character Arc #2: Becoming a Noblewoman
Becoming Lady Valette
In The Final Empire, Vin has to learn the skill of pretending to be a noblewoman and act more proper, which she is not naturally good at. She is good at allomancy, and likes training those skills. But she is not good at acting, and dreads that part of the plan she has to carry out.
“Camon had been good at imitating noblemen because of his self-confidence, and that was one attribute Vin knew she didn’t have. Her success with Allomancy only proved that her place was in corners and shadows, not striding around in pretty dresses at courtly balls” (1.175).
Transition
In the first Mistborn novel, Vin is assigned the task of pretending to be a noblewoman in order to infiltrate the house politics of Luthadel and ultimately bring their demise. Her guise is Lady Valette, a noblewoman from an obscure house in the outer dominances.
In order to disguise Vin as a noblewoman, the crew must help her to look more proper and feminine. To do this, they cut her hair and dress her up differently.
A symbolic point in Vin’s transition to becoming a noblewoman is when she has to get her hair cut. Cosahn, the servant cutting her hair, hands her a mirror, and, “Vin held it up, and what she saw made her breath catch in her throat. She looked…like a girl” (1.181).
This also symbolizes her beginning to disconnect from the things Reen had taught her:
“You don’t want them to think of you as a girl, Reen’s voice warned. Yet for once, she found herself wanting to ignore that voice” (1.181).
This momenty also shows a key piece of her character arc moving forward: undoing the things Reen had previously taught her.
Later, when she is getting ready for the Venture family ball, her physical transformation seems to precede her personal transformation:
“Still, she had to admit that the gown caused quite a transformation. The girl who stood in the mirror before her was a strange, foreign creature. The light blue dress, with its white ruffles and lace, matched the sapphire barrettes in her hair. Sazed claimed he wouldn’t be happy until her hair was at least shoulder-length, but he had still suggested that she purchase the broochlike barrettes and put them above each ear” (1.212).
Clothing is a motif Sanderson uses with both Vin and Elend to show how both of them change and gain more confidence. Vin’s new physical appearance is her first step in gaining this confidence.
However, she is still has a lot to learn, as her immediate reaction when going to her first ball is to “Hide! Find a corner! Shadows, mists, anything!” (1.218).
But she is forced to continue forward, quite literally, one step after another, and face the discomfort of being this new persona, of being seen, (quite literally her task) at one of these balls.
Gaining Confidence as Lady Valette
Vin is able to hide herself underneath the persona of Lady Valette, and it’s through this persona that she gains a newfound confidence. When she first enters the Venture ball, she’s only able to feel comfortable when this persona takes over:
“None of them could see Vin, they could only see the face she had put on–the face she wanted them to see. They saw Lady Valette. It was as if Vin weren’t there. As if…she were hiding, hiding right in front of their eyes” (1.219).
Through this persona, Vin is able to hide herself, which is a flaw she must overcome in her character development. In a way, she moves backwards in her development in this regard. At the same time, her guise helps her to gain more confidence and be more comfortable with being seen, so it also helps to move her forward with her development at the same time. It’s a force for good more than anything else.
For example, this persona helps her deal with other nobles without hiding herself away, like Lord Renoux. When Lord Renoux asks her to lunch as she is recovering from Kredik Shaw, she realizes that before, she had found his “noble bearing” intimidating. But when she slipped into the persona of Lady Valette, she was calm. Vin the thief was nothing to a man like Renoux, but Valette the socialite was another matter (1.270).
The more she pretends to be Lady Valette, the more Vin discovers a different side of herself: her noblewoman side.
“You do it,” Vin reminded herself. When you become Lady Valette, you show a completely different side of yourself (1.271).
Moreover, the character of Lady Valette allows Vin to become bolder:
“She decided to wear the red dress. It was definitely the boldest choice, but that felt right. After all, she hid her true self behind an aristocratic appearance; the more visible that appearance was, the easier it would be for her to hide” (1.289).
This persona helps her to get away from her habit of hiding, and into a habit of being bold, confrontational, even. When she first sees Elend at one of the balls after he’d been absent for some time, she confronts him about the fact that all noblemen sleep with skaa women, knowing they’d be killed after the deed.
Here, her initial instinct was to hide – i.e., the “Vin” side of her wanted to come out. But she finds the Valette side of her to be stronger in this instance, and decides to talk to Elend about it:
“I have to talk to him, she thought…I have to find out the truth…When had she grown so confrontational? As she stood, Vin was amazed at her firm resolve” (1.384).
Later, as she is moving through Luthadel with Ham to inspect the skaa barracks, she remarks how unusual it is for her now to be invisible, as she is not her Lady Valette persona, but, rather, disguised as an ordinary skaa
“I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be invisible” (1.402).
Here, we see Vin begin to overcome her inclination to hide herself away and gain confidence in herself.
Change
As Vin plays the role of Lady Valette and gets more accustomed to the life of the nobility and being well-taken care of by Kelsier’s crew, she begins to change. She has a taste for finer things now, and she comes to understand why the nobility like the things they do.
House Balls & Dresses
Vin comes to understand why the noblemen and women like balls so much. She is taken aback by their splendor, by the fancy decorations, by the fine clothing, and the dancing. She finds that there is something intoxicating about high society.
By the time her second ball comes around, she is eager to go. Even the dresses that noblewomen wear are becoming more comfortable to her (1.282). After her second ball, she leaves the dress on for sometime, and even Kelsier notices:
“A few weeks ago she would have changed out of that gown as soon as she got back. We’ll turn her into a lady yet” (1.320).
Kelsier also notes her growing comfort with being a noblewoman and being comfortable in her dresses:
“He could remember a time when Vin had looked frighteningly awkward in a dress, but she seemed to have taken an increasing liking to them. She was graceful—but it was the dexterous grace of a predator, not the deliberate grace of a courtly lady. Still, the gown seemed to fit Vin now—in a way that had nothing at all to do with the tailoring” (1.490).
At one point, Vin can no longer train with allomancy because she is attacked by inquisitors at Kredik Shaw. Three months into her recovery, she grows frustrated about being unable to do anything extreme in her training with allomancy, but she is coming to enjoy going to the balls more and more:
“At least I can still go to balls, she thought. Despite her annoyance at the contant traveling, Vin was coming to enjoy her duties” (1.327).
She is starting to realize that her role as Lady Valette is far less tense than standard thieving work. She thinks of it as a good life, albeit a bit unexciting.
A Finer Taste
As Vin grows accustomed to the life of a noblewoman, she develops a taste for finer things that her previous skaa self would’ve scoffed at. Things like ornamental plants, which had once seemed frivolous to her, she now pays attention to. She gets to the point where she finds “anything that isn’t cultivated to be inferior” (1.333).
Vin also gets accustomed to baths and perfumes. Before her role as Lady Valette, she was not used to the perfumes from her bath, and she had worried that it would distinguish her from other skaa (1.105). Eventually, she gets to the point where she doesn’t even realize she is not wearing perfume anymore, and she finds it preferable to bathe in scented water each day (1.283). Later on, she can’t imagine not bathing, thinking to herself, “had she ever really found those scents obnoxious? The smell would make her less inconspicuous, true, but that seemed a slim price for ridding herself of the dirt and grime she’d picked up while traveling” (1.428).
Her transformation into a noblewoman starts to become even more evident as the story progresses. She is getting used to luxury – fancy dresses, ballrooms, and all the symbols of wealth start to become familiar to her:
“She’d seen so many stained-glass windows over the last few months that she was beginning to take them for granted” (1.458).
She gets to the point that she notices when gardens aren’t lavish:
“The eastern gardens weren’t as lavish as the ones Vin frequented, and were instead made up of smooth brown grass and the occasional shrub” (1.482).
By the end of the first Mistborn novel, Vin has “visited so many keeps that she had begun to grow desensitized to the splendor” (1.495).
She even misses this splendor when she is at inferior balls – once House Venture throws another ball, she is reminded of “what true majesty was” (1.495).
Clearly, the life of the Nobility has taken a hold of Vin. But this will come into direct conflict with the ideas and beliefs of her mostly skaa thieving crew.
Inner Conflict: Nobility vs. Skaa
One of the broader themes in Sanderson’s Mistborn novels concerns the plight of the commoners vs. the nobility. It’s an idea as old as time, and he explores this theme through Vin’s character, as she must navigate between the skaa, Mistborn side of herself and the new noblewoman persona she has discovered.
As Vin becomes more ingrained with noble society, she is at odds with herself, constantly fighting the sort of wool they pull over her eyes – she has to remind herself of the evil acts they commit upon society, and upon the skaa, despite their lavishness:
“This is the Final Empire, Vin, she told herself as the carriage rolled away. Don’t forget the ash because you see a little silk. If those people in there knew you were skaa, they’d have you slaughtered as easily as they did that poor boy” (1.310).
She is coming to side with the nobility more and more as the story goes on, and she seems to be the only voice within the crew that would defend them. When Docckson tells her about his old plantation skaa lord Devinshae, and how he killed his wife, she tries to tell him that not all the nobility are like that:
“The people at the balls, they aren’t like that. I’ve met them, danced with them. Dox, a lot of them are good people. I don’t think they realize how terrible things are for the skaa” (1.375).
This shows that the rich are guilty of being ignorant, rather than malicious, in Vin’s mind. She seems to think that their only crime is being out of touch.
However, Vin starts to question this notion after she finds out from Dockson that all of the nobility sleep with skaa women, knowing that they will be killed afterwards. As she is gossiping with the nobility at one of the balls, a noblemen asks if someone who has been killed, Ardous, was a good dancer:
“That’s all you can ask, Milen? A man is dead, and you just want to know if I liked him more than you?” (1.378).
Despite her growing fondness of the nobility, she begins to see what the others in her crew sees – their vain, flippant cruelty, and disregard for others. As she thinks more about Dockson’s words, she begins to dislike the nobility more and more:
“Now, every nobleman’s arms around her waist made her cringe–as if she could feel the rot within their hearts. How many skaa had Milen killed?” (1.378).
Even what she wears symbolizes this about-turn on the nobility. Whereas before, she wore a flashy, red dress to the balls, now, “she had finally worn her black gown this evening, somehow feeling the need to set herself aprat form the other women with their bright colors and often brighter smiles” (1.379).
However, she turns back to the side of the nobility after Elend tells her perhaps a third of the nobility sleep with Skaa women, rather than all of them. This seems to settle her antagonism against the nobles, however, it begs the question: what difference does a third vs. all actually make? Killing the skaa in this manner is still a cruel act, and Vin’s feelings for Elend seem to blind her to this fact. We can how she sides more with the nobility after Elend tells her this in how she treats her dress:
“She’d brushed off the front of her dress, and it didn’t look half as bad as she’d feared. The black ash still showed up a bit against the dark fabric, and the fibers were rough where she’d rubbed against stone, but both were barely noticeable” (1.396).
Here, she is worried again about ash, the symbol of the skaa, staining her fine dress, a symbol of the nobility.
Despite her favorable views of the nobility, Vin is still charged with the task of helping the crew start a house war in Luthadel. She struggles with the thought of losing out on this new lifestyle, and when she attends the Venture’s second ball – the last one before the house wars begin – she has this moment where she knows she is going to miss these balls, where she clings onto this newfound life of hers:
“Would she ever attend balls like these again? What would happen to Valette the noblewoman? Would she have to put away her dresses and makeup, and return to simply being Vin the street thief? There probably wouldn’t be room for things like grand balls in Kelsier’s new kingdom, and that might not be a bad thing—what right did she have to dance while other skaa starved? Yet…it seemed like the world would be missing something beautiful without the keeps and dances, the dresses and festivities” (1.500).
Here, we can see her struggle between the two sides of herself – this newfound noblewoman persona, and her previous life as a skaa street urchin. These two versions of Vin are the basis of her series arc and Vin’s internal conflict throughout the rest of the novels.
The Two Versions of Vin
The Final Empire
Vin confronts the two versions of herself – skaa vs. nobility – at the end of the first novel.
When she burns gold for the first time, Vin sees two distinct versions of herself, and I think this is telling of the two polar opposites of who she is at the beginning of the book, and who she could be, by the end, if she continues down this path. This vision represents the two sides of what she’s been, and what she could become, and I believe the best version of herself actually lies somewhere in the middle:
“One of her was a strange woman, changed and transformed form the girl she had always been. That girl had been careful and cautious—a girl who would neve burn an unfamiliar metal based solely on the wod of one man. This woman was foolish; she had forgotten many of the things that ahd let her survive so long. She drank from cups rpepared by others. She graternized with strangers. She didn’t keep track of the people around her. She was still far more careful than most people, but she had lost so much.”
“The other her was something that she had always secretly loathed. A child, really. Thin to the point of scrawniness, she was lonely, hateful, and untrusting. She loved no one, and no one loved her. She always told ehrself quietly that she didn’t care. Was there something worth living for? Tehre had to be. Life couldn’t be as pathetic as it seemed. Yet it had to be. There wasn’t anything else.” (1.451)
The Well of Ascension
Inner Conflict
After Vin has made the transformation into becoming more of a noblewoman, or at least learning how to play that role, she still struggles between these two different sides of her personality: the skaa, mistborn side, who is rough around the edges and wants to hide from everybody, and the confident noblewoman side, who has learned how to trust people and form friendships.
As the second Mistborn novel begins, we find out that Vin still loves wearing scents, and gets mad if Elend doesn’t notice a new one that she tries on. However, she is no longer wearing gowns and dresses. Elend notes that, “For some reason, she had stopped wearing those. She hadn’t ever explained why” (2.32). We later find out she has stopped wearing dresses because she has rejected Elend’s marriage proposal. She has tried to reject her noblewoman persona, but at the same time, the scents of her old guise still linger on.
Later, she walks the streets of Luthadel, looking into a shop that contains ball gowns, and finds herself fantasizing about being at a ball. She wonders at her split identity:
“Is that what I am now?…am I a noblewoman? It could be argued that she was a noble simply by association. The king loved her—asked her to marry him—and she had been trained by the Survivor of Hathsin. Indeed, her father had been noble, though her mother had been skaa. Looking ather reflection in the shop’s glass, Vin reached up and fingered the simple bronze earring that was the only thing she had a memento of Mother” (2.43).
At this point, she decides that she has more in common with the skaa, more in common with her insane mother, than she ever had with the aristocracy of Elend’s world. She tells herself that, “The balls and parties she had attended before the Collapse—they had been a charade. A dreamlike memory. They had no place in this world of crumbling governments and nightly assassinations. Plus, Vin’s part in the balls—pretending to be the girl Valette Renoux—had always been a sham” (2.43).
So, in the beginning of the novel, Vin rejects this “noble” side of herself in favor of what she knows best – her skaa, street urchin side.
Dress Shopping with Tindwyl
Vin’s internal conflict presents itself again when Tindwyl pushes her to dress nice, to become more like a noblewoman, in order to help create a better image for Elend as the king of Luthadel. Tindwyl takes her shopping, and Vin tells her that she doesn’t wear dresses anymore. She doesn’t want to go (2.283).
However, she is forced along, and as she shops with Tindwyll, her youth and her previous thieving crews are on her mind, as well as Zane’s recent comment to her. She wonders if she belonged at Keep Venture, noting that she has a great many skills, but they weren’t “beautiful hallway” types of skills, but rather, “Ash-stained allewyay types” (2.284).
As she is dress shopping, Allriane brings up memories of the haughty noblewomen at court for Vin. She remembers the bad things, like the spite she faced from these ladies, and her own discomfort. But she notes that there had also been good things. That Elend was one of them. And that the balls were good—she had loved the colors, their music, their gowns, and their “transfixing charm” (2.287.) She loved the graceful dancing, the careful interactions, the perfectly decorated rooms.
But just as she is remembering these things, she tells herself forcefully that these things are gone now, that she doesn’t have time for silly balls and gatherings, not when the dominance was on the verge of collapse (2.287).
There is this see-saw, back and forth, within her about her identity—is she a skaa street urchin, or noblewoman who goes to colorful balls?
When she finally finds a dress she likes, at first she notes how impractical it is, showing her street urchin side. But then, she notes how it’s beautiful, how it makes her feel beautiful, and that “she almost expected a band to start playing” (2.292), showing her noblewoman side.
Again, we see the sway from one side of her persona to the other. She steps over to Tindwyl, and holds her hands to her sides, “trying not to let the traitorous dress take control of her again” (2.293), showing she is actively resisting this noblewoman side of her.
Finally, Tindwyl suggests the dressmaker alter the dress, removing some of the petticoats and raising the hem, so that Vin can move around more freely. This would make the dress both beautiful and functional. It can represent both the noblewoman and skaa parts of Vin. The dress is a metaphor which says that Vin can be both parts of herself, that these two facets of her persona are not mutually exclusive.
“Vin stretched a bit, jumping, twisting. She was surprised at how light the dress felt, and how well she moved in it. Of course, any skirt would be hardly ideal for fighting—but this one would be an enormous improvement over the bulky creations she had worn to the parties a year before.” (304)
This gets at a great character theme in this book – not everyone is who they appear to be. Tindwyl is especially keen on noticing this, saying that Elend is a humble shcolar and thinker, but he was the will of a warrior, the nerve to fight. She says that Breeze is cynical, mocking, until he looks at young Allrianne. Then he softens, adn one wonders how much of his harsh unconcern is an act. She points out that Vin is also so much more than she is willing to accept. So why should she only focus on one side of herself? (2.291).
Later, as Vin is about to attend the dinner Cett is hosting with Elend’s army, she wears the altered dress, and she hinks of what it might be like to wear the dress to a real ball as herself—not “Valette the uncomfortable country noblewoman. Not even Vin the skaa thief. To be herself” (2.419).
This is the first we see of her defining herself as being in between these two extremes—her more solidified sense of identity comes into play here.
“Or at least as she could imagine herself. Confident because she accepted her place as a Mistborn. Confident because she accepted her place as the one who had struck down the Lord Ruler. Confident because she knew the king loved her. Maybe I could be both, Vin thought” (2.419).
Finally, Vin has begun to realize that she can be somewhere in between these two personas, that her true self llies in between her past self and her persona of Lady Valette. She is the conflict of the nobility vs. the skaa internalized. After all, she had a skaa mother and a noble father. She was part of Kelsier’s skaa crew and Elend’s wife. She was both Lady Valette and an allomancer on the streets. She shows that both the skaa and the nobility can live together in harmony.
