Unite them.

“Unite them.” is one of the central imperatives governing Dalinar Kholin’s transformation. Repeated as a voice from his visions and as a phrase he recalls in moments of political crisis, it demands more than a temporary alliance: it asks Dalinar to turn Alethkar’s divided princedoms and competing armies into a single force capable of resisting the disasters he believes are approaching. The expression therefore links supernatural warning, Gavilar Kholin’s unfinished political dream, and Dalinar’s increasingly radical program of national and military reorganization.

Origin in Vision and Warning

The command first reaches Dalinar as an experience that resists ordinary explanation. While riding Gallant across the Shattered Plains, he cannot rid himself of the words; they consume his attention as he moves through the rocky landscape. He recognizes the formation around him from the first of his visions, and the remembered message is expansive: he must unite his people, prepare them, build a fortress of strength and peace, and cease their squabbling because the Everstorm is coming. The imperative is thus presented not as advice about one negotiation but as part of a larger emergency.

Dalinar’s difficulty is not simply deciding how to act. He must also decide what authority the words possess. He considers telling Elhokar Kholin that he has been seeing visions, that they may come from the Almighty despite doctrine and common sense, and that the armies might need to withdraw from the battlefield and return to Alethkar. He rejects the idea as foolishness. The phrase consequently begins in a state of uncertainty: it sounds like a command, but Dalinar cannot yet establish whether its source is divine, supernatural, psychological, or bound to his own guilt.

The warning grows more severe as the visions continue. Dalinar associates the command with the Everstorm, the True Desolation, and the Night of Sorrows, and he senses that there may be little time to prepare. The urgency changes the political meaning of unity. Cooperation is no longer merely a desirable form of kingship or a way to make military administration more efficient; it becomes a possible condition of collective survival.

From Gavilar’s Dream to Political Program

The phrase gains a second source in Dalinar’s memory of Gavilar’s ambition. When Dalinar confronts the problem of Sadeas, he recognizes that “Unite them.” is not only a supernatural instruction. It was also Gavilar’s dream of a unified Alethkar, and Dalinar must ask whether guilt over failing his brother has led him to construct supernatural rationalizations for carrying out Gavilar’s will. This doubt prevents the command from becoming an uncomplicated revelation. Its force comes partly from the visions and partly from a personal inheritance that Dalinar may be interpreting too conveniently.

That tension becomes visible in Dalinar’s changing view of Alethkar’s political order. Elhokar permits the highprinces to jostle for status and influence, believing that competition makes them stronger. Dalinar increasingly disagrees. When he and Sadeas exchange a curt nod and agree not to let their mutual hatred endanger the king, the moment offers a small, temporary enactment of the command: rivalry is contained because the larger political body is at risk. Yet the recurrence of the phrase immediately exposes the limits of such restraint. A single agreement not to duel cannot produce the unity Dalinar believes the approaching catastrophe requires.

Dalinar recalls an older system in which each of Alethkar’s ten highprinces possessed a specific responsibility for governing the kingdom. One highprince had ultimate authority over merchants and sent troops along the roads of all ten princedoms; another administered judges and magistrates. Gavilar admired this arrangement because it had once forced the highprinces to submit to one another’s authority. It had disappeared after Alethkar fragmented into ten autonomous princedoms. Dalinar treats its memory as evidence that unity is not an alien ideal but a lost political structure that might be reconstructed.

His proposal is therefore institutional rather than sentimental. He plans to make the highprinces regard the ten armies as one national war effort, to use royal authority over the gemhearts, and to transform the Shattered Plains from a contest among princes into a real war. The command becomes a theory of state formation: unity must be produced through shared obligations, coordinated command, common rules, and a redistribution of military spoils rather than left to the goodwill of rival rulers.

Speech, Resistance, and Enforcement

Dalinar’s attempt to enact the command repeatedly collides with the logic of vengeance. He tells Elhokar that gemhearts are meaningless if the highprinces continue to squabble while neglecting the true purpose of the campaign. When he asks whether they are willing to give up everything Gavilar worked for in order to obtain revenge, Elhokar’s answer is “Anything.” The response exposes the danger against which the command is directed: vengeance has become powerful enough to consume the kingdom whose honor it claims to defend.

Dalinar answers that Gavilar’s memory cannot be honored by undermining Gavilar’s vision for Alethkar. In this exchange, “Unite them.” operates as an ethical test. It asks whether loyalty to the dead means repeating their anger or preserving their larger political purpose. The expression turns mourning into responsibility, demanding that Dalinar and Elhokar distinguish the symbolic satisfaction of revenge from the material survival of their people.

Later, Dalinar gives his plan a concrete chain of consequences. After being named Highprince of War, he intends to enforce the Codes in all ten camps and coordinate the war effort directly, deciding which armies attack which plateaus. All gemhearts will be won by the Throne and distributed as spoils by Elhokar. The armies will cease functioning as separate competitors and their leaders will be trained into real soldiers. Elhokar immediately fears that the highprinces will kill them, revolt, and remove him within a week. The command thus entails a deliberate confrontation with entrenched power: unity requires taking away the incentives that sustain fragmentation.

Dalinar’s program also includes administrative persuasion. He orders a missive in the king’s name that will reduce Soulcasting costs for those who have paid on time, hoping the practical reward will awaken the remaining princedoms to cooperation. The measure shows that “Unite them.” is not expressed only through battlefield command or moral exhortation. It also appears as policy, using economic relief and royal administration to make collective participation more attractive than continued isolation.

Doubt, Betrayal, and Recommitment

The phrase becomes most painful after Dalinar’s trust in Sadeas is tested. Dalinar wonders whether his faith in the visions has helped create the conditions for betrayal, and he hates the uncertainty this produces. Nevertheless, he authorizes preparations for the worst: officers are readied, companies patrolling for bandits are recalled, and the warcamp is prepared for lockdown if Sadeas denounces him as having tried to kill Elhokar. The command does not remove political danger or guarantee that apparent allies will remain loyal. Instead, it forces Dalinar to pursue unity while acknowledging that the people he seeks to unite may betray one another.

Dalinar later refuses to treat Sadeas as a uniquely monstrous exception. Sadeas saw an opportunity to withdraw and allow the Parshendi to destroy Dalinar’s forces, and Dalinar describes that act as a ruthless but recognizably Alethi form of betrayal. He tells Elhokar that Sadeas is neither worse nor better than the other highprinces, because any of them might betray their fellows if they could do so without endangering themselves. This judgment gives the phrase its bleakest political implication. Unity cannot be founded on the assumption that individual rulers will become virtuous; it must be designed to restrain the incentives that make betrayal rational.

The command is also placed beside a harsher calculus of sacrifice. In another context, Taravangian tells Szeth-son-son-Vallano that it is better for one man to sin than for a people to be destroyed. The dying speak of visions, and their words may save the living. Although the phrase is not spoken in that exchange, the scene clarifies the emergency logic surrounding it: approaching catastrophe can make extraordinary actions appear necessary, while leaving open the question of who has the authority to decide what unity and protection require.

The Command Accepted as Vow

In Dalinar’s later vision, the expression returns with greater clarity and greater accusation. He remembers the voice telling him that he must unite them and demands to know why he was lied to, insisting that he followed the instruction and was betrayed. The question reveals that Dalinar has treated the command as an obligation for which someone else may be held accountable. If unity was commanded, betrayal appears not merely as political misfortune but as a violation of the structure promised by the vision.

The vision then recasts the imperative through a sequence of tasks. A mysterious figure speaks of leaving behind a hope and a chance that someone will discover what must be done, and asks whether Dalinar wishes to fight the unknown enemy. Dalinar agrees even though he knows his willingness may not change the outcome. The figure says that someone must lead them; Dalinar answers that he will do it. The figure then says that someone must unite them, and Dalinar gives the same answer: he will do it.

This repetition marks the decisive change in the expression’s status. Earlier, “Unite them.” is an external command that Dalinar struggles to interpret. By the end, it becomes a self-assigned undertaking. He does not receive certainty about the voice, the enemy, or the eventual success of his effort. He accepts responsibility despite that uncertainty, converting an enigmatic phrase into a commitment to lead and protect.

Meaning and Narrative Function

“Unite them.” joins sacred warning to profane administration. Its supernatural setting gives political consolidation an aura of destiny, but its practical fulfillment depends on policies, military coordination, restraint, economic incentives, and the difficult management of rival highprinces. The phrase therefore refuses a simple division between divine command and worldly politics: the vision can only be answered through institutions, and the institutions gain urgency because the vision announces a threat beyond ordinary warfare.

The surrounding examples of other societies sharpen this problem of political design. In Shinovar, warriors are treated as the lowest men, while farmers receive respect and attention; in Babatharnam, authority is assigned through age, with the oldest person becoming the Most Ancient. These systems differ from Alethkar’s hierarchy and from one another, showing that rule is not naturally determined by a single standard. Against that variety, Dalinar’s call to unite the ten Alethi armies is a historical and constructed project, not an inevitable return to political order.

As a recurring expression, the command also measures Dalinar’s development. It begins as a voice he fears to report, passes through memories of Gavilar and arguments with Elhokar, becomes a program for reorganizing war, survives the possibility that the visions have misled him, and ends as a promise spoken by Dalinar himself. Its decisive significance lies in that movement from revelation to responsibility: the phrase does not merely tell him what the future demands; it compels him to become the person who will attempt to make collective survival possible.