RoW Act II Shallan theory

SpoilerRhythm of War spoilers

Heyo, so I'm early into act 2 (Chapter 24) and I'm like 90% sure Veil is the spy. Her sudden stunt to forcibly take control a few chapters ago really put me on edge. Combined with her being the best for espionage and the most "lone wolf" of the personas it just makes sense that she's the one who tampered with Mraize's communication device. The only two points I have against this are that.

  1. Veil is a lone wolf but she does care about and want to protect Shallan
  • the thing with this is that Veil 100% would act in what she believes to be Shallan's best interest in the long run even if it causes short term pain. From what we've read so far Radiant and Veil both are concerned that Shallan isn't confronting the memories she's hidden so it'd make sense to me that Veil would take matters into her own hands.
  1. Veil knows about Shallan's Memory ability and wouldn't misplace the device in a way she could notice.
  • for this all I can think to say is that while she knows about the Memory ability its not something she fully understands. I remember in Act 1 Shallan took control for a brief moment to take a memory of the Mraize's "chicken" before returning the reins to Veil. This means Veil cannot use the Memory ability and likely cannot reference them either, so she could likely believe that replacing the device near perfectly was enough to fool Shallan.

The only thing I'm not sure of is when/how Veil is taking control with neither of them noticing. Shallan is understandably distracted but I'm not sure how Radiant doesn't take notice. I'll just have to RAFO

Anywho this has been consuming me so I needed to get it out of my head so I can better focus on the book. Many thanks!

Posted Apr 10, 2026, 12:56 AM UTC

128
Loading comments…