#Solas’ quest title is an ANAGRAM?

[w1nged-v1ctory]

Oooooh okay. I’ve reached the point in Inquisition where I’ve begun (and completed) some of the first companion-associated quests and I am Not Doing Well.

So far they’ve been easy (honestly, the toughest part of Varric’s “destroy red lyrium” quest has been getting to the locked portion of the Storm Coast) but I do Worry for how my decisions here will screw me over later.

[arlathvhenan]

What Exactly Is Fen’Harel?

Something I think about a lot is a quote from Weekes about their writing process, particularly when it comes to twists and foreshadowing. It basically went like this:

“The best twist is one that was staring you in the face the whole time.”

Pretty much every thing we know about Solas so far—his dialogue, his abilities, his knowledge of The Fade and Spirits, that Fen’Harel’s ‘natural home’ is said to be The Fade, Cole’s comments about him, his relationship with Cole in general, that he values Wisdom above all else—points to the fact that he was most likely a Spirit once.

All of that has been staring us in the face. But that’s not the end of it. Because do you know what else has been staring us in the face.

A big ass mutant wolf monster with six eyes.

I’ve spoken on my old blog about this theory, but I think it’s pretty damn likely that Solas is a Demon. We got a lot of new information in Inquisition about what Demons really are and how they become demons.

There’s Cole, who was a Spirit of Compassion until a deeply traumatic experience warped him into a wrong version of himself.

Then of course there was the Spirit from Faded For Her. That was a Wisdom Spirit which, like Cole, became a demon when something so horrific and awful happened to it and left it broken. That’s when it became a demon.

Again, regardless of your feelings towards the character, you can’t deny that Solas isn’t supremely fucked up on the inside by literal centuries of trauma and pain. There’s no telling what the catalyst was, but at some point very long ago, something broke him so profoundly that it left him fundamentally changed, and that’s when he became what he is now, or at the very least it’s where the change began.

That brings me back to Faded For Her. You may or may not already know, but the full title of Solas’ personal quest is an anagram of ‘Dreadwolf Fen’Harel.’ Considering Weekes loves them some foreshadowing—and is damn good at it—I think it was more than just a cheeky Easter egg. Maybe this is reaching by I think Faded For Her doesn’t just points to his identity as Fen’Harel, I think it may be the story of how he became Fen’Harel.

If that’s the case than his story essentially goes like this:

In ancient times, there was an exceptionally powerful Spirit of Wisdom. One day that Spirit was summoned and bound by someone who commanded it to do things that so traumatized it, it was corrupted into a Demon. When corrupted, Spirits of Wisdom become Pride Demons, and so this event is when the Spirit took the name Solas—literally the Elvhen word for Pride.

All of this took place long before the Veil. We know that The Evanuris were not gods, but mages who rose to the status of godhood after victory in some monumental war. This was likely the war with The Forgotten Ones.

We don’t know much about The Forgotten Ones, but there’s been fragments of information that form the outline of an interesting picture:

1–They we’re opposed and eventually defeated by The Evanuris

2–Fan’Harel is included among the ranks of both The Evanuris and The Forgotten Ones.

3–There are exactly eight Evanuris if you exclude Fen’Harel, and exactly eight Forgotten Ones if you include him.

4–The tale ‘Fen’Harel And The Tree’ features The Forgotten One called Anaris, who wants revenge for some kind of betrayal.

So with all this in mind, let’s look at Fen’Harel’s story again:

He was one of The Forgotten Ones, a pantheon that predated The Evanuris. These Forgotten Ones were ancient and powerful Spirits who ruled over and protected The Fade. When The Evanuris waged war on them, one of them summoned the spirit who would later become Fen’Harel, enslaved him, and forced him to betray his own kind. His people. He was given a rank among their armies and told to destroy everyone and everything he’d once existed to protect. This was the great trauma that twisted him into the demonic figure known as Fen’Harel.

Solas doesn’t consider himself to have much in common with The Elves because he never truly was one. He doesn’t consider them his people because they aren’t. And he isn’t trying to restore their world, because that isn’t the one worth saving.

His people are Spirits, and it’s their world he means to restore. The world of his time wasn’t Arlathan or Elvhenan or anything the Elves built. Their world was Thedas—all of Thedas—before the Veil split it in two.

[alliluyevas]

my fellow solas fans do we think his relationship with the wisdom spirit from “all new, faded for her” was more than platonic in nature? ‘cause i do.