one of the reasons shuos jedao has stuck with me as a character is the feeling through the entire series that the characters are chasing him, but he’s always just out of reach.
in book 1, one of the core draws is the mystery of jedao: why did he do what he did? what does he want now? who was he, really? we get a picture of him, and even literal flashback fragments at the end that try to piece him back together, but in doing so, he is obliterated. those glass shards and the fleeting time Cheris had with him are all we have to go on.
book 2 is also about chasing jedao, from a different perspective— brezan and khiruev meet Cheris-jedao and forced to interpret them. the reader also has to navigate the boundaries between the characters, but it’s impossible. we will never know a jedao that isn’t Cheris during this time. we can’t find him here either, but we can sketch and guess and extrapolate. But still. Out of reach.
book 3 is where this theme gets crazy. you are a teenager in a 40 year old body and they’re telling you that it’s yours and this is who you became and what you did when you grew up. you don’t recognize him, but you’re supposed to follow in his footsteps and do what you’re fated to do. but the people trying to shape you into him have their own ideas of he was, and you don’t really get it either way.
one of the scenes from book 3 that I remember most vividly is when jedos tries to figure out jedao like everyone else, and watches both a historical drama about his life (absolutely awful but so true that they’d romanticize his relationship with khiaz…. and when jedos remarks on it without Understanding but the audience does?? dramatic irony at its most painful) and the archival footage of hellspin fortress… he’s chasing jedao too, but all he has to go off of are kujen’s vision for him, the vast breadth of history and entertainment about his complicated legacy, and a few meetings with someone who is only somewhat him.
if you read Hexarchate Stories, you catch even more fleeting glimpses of who jedao was— snapshots of his family life, his adventures, his hobbies. but still, it feels to me, beautifully incomplete. to me he’s all about the distance and the mystery, someone whose story is always viewed through his legacy and other people.
