I agree with the folks saying Thaniel is a glorified plot device. Genuinely, if you turned him into an inanimate object, nothing substantive would change. He's not a character. Dame Aylin? She's a character. You have meaningful interactions with her, she makes choices that have impact upon the plot in some ways, she does things. You may not like her character, but she's a character. Thaniel isn't, and that's a problem because then all the stuff where we talk to him is pretty much a waste of time. He doesn't even reinforce the themes of the act, really.
