#Felassan being perminantly Cut Off From The Fade vs solas being The Thing Holding The Veil Together/The Fade Back is. ANOTHER THING

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

mentallyyyyy lately i keep coming back to Solas and Felassan.

like i know that their relationship is the way it is mostly because the writers came up with the end of The Masked Empire before they even considered the beginning/what happened in Arlathan. like... it was always doomed because the doom in fact came before the rest of the story. but beyond that if we actually LOOK at it all together like we can now to fill in those gaps...

From Felassan's perspective, he didn't know what exactly Solas was going to do, just that he was planning Something Big. when the Veil went up he didn't know what part of it was his generals intention or not, what even happened to him, and how they're going to deal with the result now. Only that in some way it worked (the gods are gone) but also clearly couldn't have gone exactly right, because they're cut off from the fade and Solas just never comes back--he fell into Uthenera after creating the prison/veil used up all his magic and strength. So Felassan as far as we know just... goes it alone? For thousands of years?? After shepherding the others in the rebellion out of the lighthouse and into the world it's possible he went into his own Uthenera at some point in the middle for part of the time that we don't hear about, but at least as of The Masked Empire he seemed pretty cognizant of all the politics, history, etc of Thedas. So he's either been personally around for all of it or enough of it to make sense + get caught up on whatever he missed. Probably a good chunk of those early years was spent looking for Solas' body or where he'd fallen into slumber... I imagine if he'd actually managed to find him during that time he would have done something to help him wake if possible. So probably he didn't, and eventually would have just... stopped looking probably. He spent his time existing in the world in a very real way, even if he kept some emotional/physical distance from it. Thousands of years growing and becoming a different person, not a general in a war but a bit of a loner who eats tree bark but nevertheless actually seems to have enjoyed the people he's gotten to know over the years, and found his own kind of peace.

And on Solas' end. He does this giant, cataclysmic thing, passes out, and when he wakes up the world is just utterly unrecognizable. He didn't get to see any of the in between, hence telling himself it wasn't (couldn't be) real, it didn't count, he could still fix it, etc. And so he starts desperately looking for ways to go back and who does he manage to find--Felassan. His second in command, his advisor, and from DAV clearly someone he trusted and relied on. And so he thinks ok, just like before, we can do this, we can make things right again. And for a little while it seems like that's how things are going.

Until... Felassan says no. He straight up tells him he's wrong about people and the world and just refuses to comply when Solas asks for the Eluvian password, the thing that would essentially let him "fix" it all. Despite EVERYTHING, all their history, all the work they'd done together--Felassan says "I will not do this for you." And i think that's how Solas can do it. The moment he lashes out, he's not seeing Felassan anymore, he's just seeing yet another stranger, and yet another thing his big mistake back then tore away from him. He kills Felassan becuase he's not the Felassan Solas knew. The world isn't real and neither is this mockery of his old friend and it's just one more thing he'd already lost eons ago. And it's worse to have to see this new version and reminder of everything he fucked up than it is to believe the real Felassan was gone the whole time. The real Felassan is something he could keep mourning in his memory versus having to confront all the changes they made and the fact that. He didn't have to see this new version of him, and then he could keep compartmentalizing how "this was NOT the Felassan I knew" the same way he does "modern elves are NOT my people".

and so of course he can't get to the actual grieving until he does accept that the world might be real. and another reason he pushes back so hard against this because it means admitting not just his ancient mistakes but the recent ones too. or at least this is how i've been able to mentally reconcile what we get about their history in DAV and the ending of The Masked Empire. ouurrgh. chewing on it.