The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

The magic system in The Emperor's Soul contains life lessons and Platonic ideas.

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Context

Shai is a Forger, a magician who can change objects into different versions of what they are by using a soulstamp she specially crafts for the purpose. She transforms an old, battered table into a beautifully polished one with inlays of silver. She takes a blank canvas and makes it a perfect copy of the work of a master painter she’d studied under. She turns a cracked, badly repaired window into a stunning stained glass masterpiece. Other Forgers specialize in recreating the art of past eras, turning plain pots into priceless vases and ordinary tapestries into perfect replicas of historical ones. Some turn their art to healing, becoming “resealers” who rewrite the history of people’s bodies so that they were never injured or ill. They do this by understanding the soul of the object.

After being caught trying to steal from the imperial palace, Shai is recruited for a Forgery so difficult she’s not even sure it’s possible: Re-Forging Emperor Ashravan’s soul. He was gravely injured in an assassination attempt, and though resealers have healed him physically, he’s unresponsive and nonverbal. Shai’s task is to learn his soul well enough to be able to Forge it. She spends the bulk of the novel torn between her desire to do her task well—aided by the most honest of the emperor’s advisors, Gaotona—and her desire to escape before the other advisors kill her.

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Main Ideas

• To improve something, you have to fully understand it.

• Understanding includes physical, cognitive, and spiritual aspects.

• To handle new situations, you have to change yourself.

To improve something, you have to fully understand it.

Gaotona, a wise man, is curious about Shai’s art, though disapproving (he thinks she’s wasting her intelligence and artistic ability on Forging, which he regards as dishonest). He asks her to explain many aspects of it to him. She explains that, in order to coax an object to be something it’s not, she has to first understand what it is—its origins, composition, and history. To understand the emperor, she needs to know not only how he was, but why he was that way. As an example, she tells Gaotona that the emperor’s favorite color was green, then asks the advisor why this was so. He doesn’t know; Shai replies that she’s not sure yet, but thinks “it was because his brother, who died when Ashravan was six, had always been fond of it. The emperor latched on to it, as it reminds him of his dead sibling. There might be a touch of nationalism to it as well, as he was born in Ukurgi, where the provincial flag is predominantly green” (33).

This is essential in Shai’s art because, for a Forgery to stick, it needs to be convincing both to the subject and the viewer. If the new version of the emperor had a favorite color but no associations with that color—of home, of his brother—then he’d be missing a key part of his personality. The Forgery, if it took, would be shallow and unconvincing (of course, not having known the emperor, it will be impossible for the Forgery to be perfect, but she must create one that is as convincing as possible). Similarly, in the real world, effectively changing things requires a thorough understanding of them. Francis Bacon has been credited with writing that “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”¹ For example, to grow and breed crops, we need at least an elementary understanding of how plants grow and how their traits are passed down. In other words, Forgery, though it depends on magic, works on a real-life principle.

Understanding includes physical, cognitive, and spiritual aspects.

Shai also explains to Gaotona that objects exist in three realms and she needs to understand each realm before she can create a Forgery. She describes the realms thus: “The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul—its essence—as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it (32).” (The realms don’t seem to be literal places one can physically go, though it’s not totally clear from Shai’s description.²) These three parts loosely correspond to the common idea that each of us has a body, mind, and spirit—which in turn derives from Plato’s idea of a tripartite soul: the appetitive part, concerned with physical needs; the mind or reason, which thinks; and the spirited part, which deals with emotions and passion.³

In reality, reason and emotion are both faculties within our minds; both are nonphysical and relate to our feelings, our core values, and the choices we make.* Yet the idea of regarding them separately has persisted: People often view emotional and spiritual matters as ineffable, but logic and reason as open to human understanding. Plato uses the three parts to argue that, in his view, though all are necessary for life, they can conflict, so reason should rule if we are to have healthy souls and healthy politics. 

But just because reason and emotions can conflict doesn’t mean they necessarily must—and indeed, treating reason and emotions as necessarily conflicting makes it difficult to find the serenity that comes from having them in harmony. Emotions, reason, and physical health all matter to our wellbeing in different ways, but that doesn’t mean our souls are actually divided into three distinct parts. To whatever extent they do have those aspects, they influence one another (your mental health affects your physical health, for example). 

In The Emperor’s Soul, Shai’s goal is to fully understand objects and people (she points out that because many objects are man-made, understanding people is sometimes essential to understanding objects). Setting up a clear set of aspects she needs to grasp works in service of that goal in the context of this universe—but that doesn’t mean it is true of the real world.

To handle new situations, you have to change yourself.

Shai’s most prized possessions are her “Essence Marks.” These are soulstamps she’s created to transform into a slightly changed version of herself at will. One stamp makes her a scholar, with deep knowledge of languages, history, and politics. Another creates a warrior trained in martial arts for fifteen years (Shai only trained for one year). She uses these soulstamps to enable her to thrive in a variety of scenarios. She also uses this method on a smaller scale to enable her emotionally to deal with difficult situations. After finding herself imprisoned, Shai thinks to herself, “Become someone who can deal with this.” Then, “She took a deep breath and let herself become someone else. An imitation of herself who was calm, even in a situation like this. It was a crude forgery, just a trick of the mind, but it worked (26).”

In real life, most of us don’t need to constantly transform our identities. However, when we find ourselves in new situations—new jobs, new relationships, new familial roles, new places—we need to be able to adapt our skills and ways of thinking if we want to thrive. And there’s a sense in which changing our actions and thinking, even subtly, does shift our identities. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, teaches that, “The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).”⁴ Though we don’t have Shai’s Forging abilities at our disposal, we do have the ability to shift how we see ourselves, and then to start shifting our behaviors and our identities accordingly.

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Fun Fact

In his postscript, Sanderson shared his inspiration for soulstamps. He visited a museum in Taiwan, where he noticed a great many stamps on the artwork. Having previously lived in Korea, he knew that in Asian countries these stamps (called yìnjiàn in Mandarin) were often used as signatures. So some of the stamps were the signatures of the artists, as is typical in the West. But some artworks had a great many stamps. Sanderson learned that “ancient Chinese scholars and nobility, if they liked a work of art, would sometimes stamp it with their stamp too (132).” Great art leaves a mark on our souls; how fascinating to think that some people marked the art that marked them.

• [Update added August 26, after a clarifying discussion on this topic with my colleagues]: It may be more helpful to frame thinking and feeling as functions or activities of the soul, rather than as parts of it. Having parts implies that the soul metaphysically exists and is divided (indeed, Plato describes people having different “amounts” of each part of the soul, which suggests he viewed it this way), but there is no evidence that this is true. It is, however, introspectively obvious that we think and feel, that these functions are different but related, and that they are part of our spirtitual (nonphysical) selves.

1. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, translation published by the University of Oregon, https://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Bacon.htm. Note that other translations use different wording; the version edited by Joseph Devey and published by The Gutenberg Press translates the phrase as “for nature is only subdued by submission." [Many thanks to Dr. Carrie-Ann Biondi for sharing these links.]

2. The Emperor’s Soul is set in the same world as one of Sanderson’s earlier novels, Elantris, which I have not read; it may be that more explanation is given there.

3. Adrian Camilleri, “Plato: A Soul in Three Parts, and the City-state as a Large Soul,” PhilosophyMT, October 23, 2021, https://philosophymt.com/plato-a-soul-in-three-parts-and-the-city-state-as-a-large-soul/.

4. James Clear, “Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year,”  https://jamesclear.com/identity-based-habits.