Malazan and Unwitnessed

The theme of Unwitnessed is something that I didn't truly understand when I first read it in Malazan's book 6 and not even when I finished reading book 10. Until, almost a full year after the close, I had an idea just now that at the very least gives the start of a plausible explanation. I didn't explore it fully and didn't actually search for anything online to back me up. But as I started to do my Best Books in 2017 post, I had to revisit the Crippled God for that and mull over how that its themes worked. I struck upon the idea and rather than just sit on it, and with not having even a single post in this blog specifically dedicated to Malazan, I thought I would be self-indulgent and just remedy that.

Obviously: Spoilers EVERYWHERE!





The elusive theme of Tavore's 'Unwitnessed' is begun to be made clear as we arrive on the previously unknown continent of Kolanse, where nobody knows the Malazans, or specifically; The Bonehunters, as we've come to know our army under Tavore.
As they finally pass from recognizance and renown into lands unknown it is but the first step, but the final step is when they separate from the armies of their peers and solitarily trek towards the hill where they will make their final, finally Unwitnessed, last stand. And how telling is it that of the battles in the final book, it is this one that takes place on a random hill, one without a name, then and thereafter. The battle of the hill instead of Hill.

Unwitnessed because if they had been known, they would have been reviled. To rid the world of this awesome source of power would have left them open to every sort of persecution, revenge and hatred this greedy world with all its divine monsters and monstrously divine beings was capable of.

Someone had to do it, because it was right to have it done, but everyone would have hated them for it, so, she hides the burden of knowing where their march will end and takes it up herself. She had known for years, but she could never tell a soul, because the risk that having the object/ the end goal of that journey would have become public knowledge, would, besides having immediately demanded a violent response from every powerful player willing to use Kaminsod as a power source, have endangered them all in that it would have been remembered even past a successful completion of the march. Tavore gave the men who fought for her and her goal, instead of accolades, the gift of anonymity, to be unwitnessed in this act, to be undogged by vengeful repercussions that it would otherwise have merited, and to be able to have the chance to grow into old age afterwards, in the full knowledge that what they did was right, as is fully demonstrated by the beautiful melancholy in the epilogue.