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Sult is a major antagonist of The First Law trilogy, a fantasy novel series written by Joe Abercrombie. He has the title of Arch Lector, meaning he is the head of the King's Inquisition, and he constantly uses his influence to expand his power and oppress those beneath him. He is Sand dan Glokta's superior in the first trilogy before the latter eventually overthrows him and becomes the new Arch Lector of the Inquisition.

His Evil Ranking[]

What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]

  • He has been the leader of the Inquisition for years and is responsible for the brutal torture of a lot of people. While the Inquisition is supposed to uphold order and law in the Union through torture, Arch Lector Sult is a corrupt politician who often has people whom he knows are innocent tortured just to further his own goals.
  • After the Inquisition extracts a confession of treason against the state from the person they have tortured, they either kill the person or send them and their entire family, down to the children, to the penal colonies in Angland where they are forced to live in miserable condition and do hard labor until they die. The fatality rate among the prisoners in the penal colonies is very high because there are constantly accidents during work or the prisoners die from freezing or bad conditions or they are killed by the people who supervise them.
  • He is an elitist who despises commoners and wants to prevent them from having any opportunities to rise in society and become more independant which is why he despises merchant guilds as they provide that opportunity. He uses his influence as a member of the Closed Council and as one of the most influencial people in the Union to make this happen.
    • Although he claims that he is protecting the Union by preventing people of the lower classes from ascending in society, he is just an elitist who despises poor people and thinks he is better than them and he himself is extremely corrupt and constantly has innocent people, tortured and framed for crimes they haven't committed just so he can advance himself which makes him an extreme hypocrite.
  • When he learns that one of his underlings, Sand dan Glokta, has arrested the merchant and member of Guild of Mercers Salem Rews for tax evasion and is torturing him despite how powerful the guild is, Sult decides to use the situation to his advantage. He orders Glokta to force Salem Rews to confess that Sepp dan Teufel, the Master of the Mints, is his accessory in the tax evasion scheme, even though Rews has never even met Teufel. The reason for this is because Sult wants to promote his ally, Halleck, as Master of the Mints and he needs an excuse to arrest Teufel.
    • He then orders Glokta to torture a confession out of Sepp dan Teufel which includes cutting off some of his fingers. When Teufel signs his confession, he is sent to a penal colony in Angland for the rest of his life and Sult's ally, Halleck, is promoted to his post.
  • He orders Glokta to conduct an investigation against the Guild of Mercers for tax evasion which involves several people being tortured, so he can disband them, gain their licence for free trade for himself and accomplish his goal of further preventing commoners from being able to rise in society. After the guild is disbanded, the Inquisition also has most of them arrested and tortured to extract confessions. While the Mercers are indeed guilty of tax evasion, Sult doesn't do it because they are breaking the law but because he wants to enrich himself.
  • When Glokta expresses suspicion that Superior Kalyne might be a spy of the Mercers in the Inquisition, Sult orders his death. Later, it's revealed that it's not Kalyne and Sult had known all along that Kalyne is not a traitor but he had simply ordered his death because he had wanted to promote Inquisitor Gyle to his post. This shows that Sult is extremely disloyal to his employees.
  • He has his secretary, who is the real spy, removed from his post and most likely brutally tortured and later killed because Sult mentions to Glokta that his punishment is severe.
  • When the First Magi Bayaz arrives in Adua along with Logen Ninefingers and his apprentice Malacus Quai, Sult is displeased because Bayaz demands a seat on the Closed Coucil which has been kept for him for centuries. Sult doesn't believe that he is the real Bayaz and thinks he is just a charlatan. For that reason, after Glokta finds out that the First Magi is supposed to carry with himself the key with which the House of the Maker could be unlocked, Sult challenges him to show it and use it to unlock the door. If Bayaz fails, which doesn't happen, Sult plans to have him arrested along with his companions and tortured to find out the truth behind his intentions.
  • He covers the fact that the heir to the throne, Prince Ladisla, is a serial rapist who constantly sexually assaults young women. Sult threatens the women about what the Inquisition would do to them if they ever talk to anyone about what Ladisla has done to them.
    • While he does express dislike for Ladisla and how stupid he is and is angry that he can't keep himself from raping women, it's not a moral standard as Sult is simply annoyed that Ladisla is creating work for him to track down the women he has raped and threaten them into silence. Sult wants to keep the Prince's image clean in front of the common people, because he wants the Union to be stable, so he could maintain his own power and authority as Arch Lector of the Inquisition and doesn't actually care about the women Ladisla has raped.
  • He orders Superior Goyle to arrest Ferro Maljinn, who has become a companion to Bayaz, and torture her for information on the First Magi. This is only stopped when Logen Ninefingers interferes, and saves her.
  • He acts very abusively towards his employees when they fail him. He insults and shouts at Goyle after he fails to arrest Ferro and tells him that he should be grateful that he is not begging him for forgiveness over a slow fire. He also constantly insults Glokta for his disabilities, threatens him about what would happen to him if he fails him and Glokta knows that he needs to be very careful because Sult would dispose of him the moment he needs a scapegoat or thinks Glokta is no longer useful.
  • After the city of Dagoska has been conquered by the Union, the local population has been horribly abused and discriminated against. They are not allowed to enter the center without a special pass, not allowed to pray in their own temple, driven to poverty and made slaves in all but name. Sult, as a member of the Closed Council and one of the most powerful people in the Union is one of the people who bear responsibility for this along with his fellow councilors and the Inquisition's branch in Dagoska ensures that the local population would not be able to rise against their conditions because if they do, they get murdered or tortured by the Inquisition's branch in Dagoska. However, it's not clear to what extent Sult is aware of the position of the people in Dagoska because he himself has never travelled there and the inquisitor in charge of Dagoska has his own agenda and is considered to be very brutal even by the standards of the Inquisition.
  • After Prince Ladisla is killed in the North and Prince Raynault is assasinated in the capital Adua, Sult orders Glokta to torture a confession out of the Gurkish ambassador in Adua that he was the one who murdered Prince Raynault. Even after Glokta informs him that he doesn't believe the ambassador was the one who has murdered the Prince, Sult still orders him to continue with the torture and says he doesn't care if the ambassador is innocent or not and all he cares about is to be able to brag about how the Inquisition has discovered the murderer of Prince Raynault in front of the other members of the Closed Council. The torture of the ambassador involves piercing his body with hot needles. After the confession, the ambassador is publicly executed in a brutal way for regicide by being hung, drawn and quartered in front of a large crowd.
  • After the King dies, there are elections for his position because both of his heirs are dead and the only ones allowed to vote are the nobles. Sult, who wants to win the elections and become the new King, orders Glokta and other subordinates to visit each of the nobles and either bribe them to vote for Sult or, if they have anything to use against them, blackmail them into doing it. On one occasion, Glokta threatens a noble who had been involved in criminal activities to get more money that the Inquisition knows about this and, if he doesn't vote for Sult during the elctions, they are going to send him and his entire family, including his three young daughters to a penal colony in Angland where they might get raped by the other inmates.
  • Even though he eventually comes to an agreement with Marovia to support King Jezal's candidacy and help him win the elections, it's not a redeeming quality because he only does it out of desperation because he knows he himself can't win and he doesn't want someone who is opposing him to become the next King and he supports Jezal because he has a lot of support due to Bayaz' lies that he is a bastard child of the former King and because of Jezal's supposed accomplishments which were also fabricated by Bayaz. Sult hopes to be able to control Jezal because he is young and he still has a rivalry with Marovia.
  • After King Jezal has an angry outburst at all of the members of the Closed Council during a meeting, Sult gets angry and tries to undermine Jezal and overthrow him in some way. He gets angry at Glokta because he was the one who recommended him to support Jezal's coronation and gives him 2 weeks to find some evidence that Jezal is not actually a bastard child of the former King or else he would have Glokta tortured to death to extract anything Glokta might be hiding from him.
  • As the Gurkish forces approach the capital, Sult, who wants to brag to the Closed Council about how much work the Inquisition is doing, starts a campaign of finding "spies" in the city. This means that his Inquisitors randomly arrest people simply for originating from the continent of Kanta and they get tortured into confessing that they are "spies" working for the Gurkish without actually caring if that's true or not. Then, before the prisoners are sent to penal colonies in Angland, they have to write a list with the names of several other people originating from Kanta who are also supposedly "spies" so the Inqusition could have an excuse to arrest even more people and do the same to them. Glokta, who volunteers to be part of this, has collected an entire bucket full of human teeth from all the people he has forced into confession.
  • During the chaos of the battle between the Union and the Gurkish forces, Sult sends assasins to either kill or capture Glokta for his failure to find any compromising information about King Jezal which doesn't pan out because Glokta has hired a gang of mercenaries who kill the assasins.
  • Even though by the end of the original trilogy it is revealed that Sult was trying to perform an ancient magical ritual to kill Bayaz and end his influence over the Union, Sult is not well-intentioned because he is only doing it for himself as he doesn't want to live under Bayaz's control and wants to have as much power as possible and doesn't care about the rest of the people of the Union.
  • It's mentioned that he favors one of his subordinates, Goyl, compared to Glokta. However, nothing indicates that Sult and Goyl are friends and Sult has threatened Goyl with torture whenever he fails and he doesn't react to Goyl's death in any way aside from being angry that Glokta is interrupting his ritual.
  • Although there are several moments in the books where he acts more affably to Glokta, praises him for how well he has done his job and, on one occasion, even gives him a cup of nice wine to drink after he is particularly pleased with him, he also acts very abusively towards Glokta whenever he isn't performing as well as Sult expects, insults him for being a cripple, threatens him with torture, and by the end of the trilogy even outright tries to have him killed or kidnapped and tortured to death when Sult is very angry at Glokta's inability to find any compromising information about King Jezal and thinks Glokta might have turned against him, thus it's not mitigating.
  • Although his final fate is indicated to be very brutal with him being arrested by Glokta and his mercenaries and thrown into a hidden cell beneath The House of Questions with the new Arch Lector Glokta intending to keep him alive and torture him for entertainment and for revenge about how Sult has treated him, it's not played for sympathy and Sult himself is responsible for the torture of many innocent people.

What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]

  • He slightly fails the Heinous Standards compared to Sand dan Glokta because, when Glokta becomes Arch Lector of the Inquisition, he does everything Sult himself has done as Arch Lector by constantly torturing many people and sending them to penal colonies in Angland, but, on top of that, Glokta has also orchestrated a devastating civil war throughout the Union which claims the lives of many people and has forced the lesbian Queen Terez to sleep with her husband, Jezal, and bear him heirs against her will, which is rape by proxy, by threatening that otherwise he would have her lover tortured and killed by his subordinates. Aside from that, the worst practices of the Inquisition, which is an institution that has existed for centuries, were not created by Sult and have been present long before he has taken the position of Arch Lector.

External Links[]

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