#The dreadwolf | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vespaer77 · 5 months ago

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I have a hot take.

And I understand that a lot of it comes down to opinion and interpretation. The "official canon" for the game is your own damned canon, and I frankly love that for all of us. It's beautiful and freeing and sets us up to celebrate a variety of different worlds and that's pretty rad.

But (of course there's a "but") I'm coming to understand that…

…my canon interpretation of this line is very different from a large majority of this fandom.

And I guess it's not really a hot take. No one's interpretation is wrong, and I would never want someone to think that. No one should ever have their fun taken out of the game, it's a game. I think mostly I'm just looking for folks who read this the same way I do. Because to me?

Solas' greatest fear is not to literally die all alone.

Like, all by himself.

Not only do I believe that that's a large oversimplification of the meaning behind that statement, but I'd also argue that dying all by himself is precisely what Solas intends to do. He has had every opportunity to avoid it, especially in a Solavellan run, yet he's made zero moves to do so whatsoever.

At the end of Inquisition, he was still a member of the single most powerful and influential religious and paramilitary organization across the entire southern half of their continent. Aside from defeating a sea of demons and darkspawn horrors, and closing a breach in the sky between the Fade and the material world, they've also singlehandedly redesigned the flow of commerce between two nations, they've seated a ruler on the throne in Orlais, and chosen the next Divine to serve on the Sunburst Throne in the Chantry. They're responsible for shaping the future for the whole of southern Thedas, and the leader of that organization is potentially very sympathetic to Solas' beliefs and perspectives. There was much they could have accomplished together, and yet…

He left. Vanished into thin air, even, for two years. With no word.

And when we finally got the chance to confront him, and wrestle a larger kernel of truth out of the man, he told us that he walks the din'an shiral. A journey of death. And he made it unequivocally clear that he intends to walk it alone.

By himself.

There are a lot of ways to interpret what the din'an shiral even is, but the solemnity and weight he used when he referred to it carried a sense of finality. He intends to bring about the death of the world, that much we know is true, whether he sees it that way or not. But could his own life be the cost?

His ritual artifact is a blade, believed to have been fashioned from his red lyrium idol after having been recovered and cleansed. But it could've remained an idol, or it could've been made into an orb. It could've been a staff or a crown, or a necklace with the jawbone of some other critter. But it's a blade. Is it simply because rending the veil involves a certain act of piercing or tearing? Or is it still a weapon? An implement of violence or self-defense? Or even… of self-harm?

Regardless of the interpretation, there's nothing about Solas' future that suggests to me that he's safe. Or accompanied by anyone who intends to keep him safe. And there's nothing about Solas that suggests to me that he isn't acutely aware of all of this.

I don't think Solas has any fear whatsoever of literally dying all alone, at least according to my personal canon. To me, I think Solas views his death as his duty and he will not bring anyone down with him.

I believe that "dying alone" means something much bigger and deeper and more meaningful to Solas than it does to us, the player. And he goes to great lengths to identify and define what this fear means to him through a series of conversations he has with Varric during party banter.

There's quite a bit of self-discovery Solas conducts through this dialogue. It starts when tells Varric that he read Hard in Hightown. He then asks him if there are other trickster figures in dwarven literature, presumably because stories of Fen'Harel stated he walked as kin amongst both the Evanuris and the Forgotten Ones and there could could be some tie or some clue about that here, whatever that means. He goes on from there to begin asking pointed questions about Orzammar and what he perceives to be a lack of dwarven ambition. He makes remarks about how they could have a larger hand in shaping global affairs through their control of the lyrium trade and he seems genuinely confused why Orzammar would never consider reuniting with Kal-Sharok.

But he really circles down into the heart of the matter when he asks Varric if he ever misses a life beneath the stone. Varric responds by asking how he could miss something he'd never had, having been born a surface dwarf. And he tells Solas that even if the stone called to him in the manner he's describing, he's very happy with who he is and the life that he has, and he has no wish to change anything.

And from there, we watch Solas grapple with his answer. To him, Varric is someone who is just as sundered from his own identity, and he cannot fathom finding satisfaction in a life like that - a mundane life without magic or the song of the stone. He cannot rationalize it against his guilt and his regrets and his pride, and cannot let it go. So he then spins up an anecdote of a man he saw in the Fade.

He saw a man, alone on an island. His tribe had fallen to beasts and disease, and his wife had died in childbirth.

He was the only one left.

He could have left to find a new land or a new people. But instead he stayed. He spent his days catching fish in a little boat and he spent his nights watching the stars and drinking fermented fruit juice. (That's wine, Solas. That's called wine. You can just call it wine.)

To Solas, this man has surrendered to his defeat. And he gives us our first glimpse into what his fear might actually mean, right here.

"Knowing it will all end with you."

From there, Varric even asks him, "What's with you and all the fallen empire stuff, anyway?" And they go on to discuss what it means to give up and what it means to fight back, what costs are truly associated with each, and how those meanings can vary so widely between individuals whose lives have been so different. The analogy we didn't see at the time however, that we can now examine through hindsight, is that the man on the island wasn't just a representation of the old dwarven empire, but also of the Elvhen.

The man on the island was supposed to be representative of Solas himself.

(I also think it's cool that Varric mentions Orzammmar being too proud to ask for help.)

We are supposed to hear the anguish in his voice when he asks Varric whether he has any concept of what his capitulation to live as a surface dwarf has cost him.

Because Solas knows. For whatever reason (that we're about to discover in Veilguard), the remaining Evanuris were so horrific after the death of Mythal that the only solution he could devise that had any hope of protecting the world was to create the Veil and drive a wedge between the dreaming and waking worlds. To create a divide between magic and reality. To silence the song from the stone. To create a barrier that the blighted gods could never cross.

But one that also trapped the spirits.

And afterward, while he slept a dreaming sleep for centuries, the toll of creating the Veil having been so great, he watched as his people also began to quicken and die. He watched as their spirits also crossed the Veil to be trapped behind it forever. Everyone he ever knew and loved. All the chains of slaves he broke were for nothing. They simply traded one cage for another. Because of him.

And while Abelas and his company still guard the Well of Sorrows, they are bound to Mythal. (Also, I'm pretty sure you can make a choice to kill them? I never have, but I think you can?) They are still creatures that are beholden to her, and thus they are expendable. Mythal was even willing to sacrifice Flemeth to gift her power to Solas, to cure his weakened state after waking from uthenera, and hopefully prevent the risk of future mistakes being made. Like Corypheus.

Even Solas is expendable in the line of his duty, if it means he will succeed. He would gladly sacrifice himself to rectify his greatest mistake, and restore his people to themselves. Because they've been sundered for so long, they've forgotten who they are. And they are not his people anymore. He will make them remember.

He will restore their connection to the Fade, he will reveal lost paths to ancient libraries, and he will reawaken their relationships with their spirits - archivists, and spirits of purpose and wisdom and valor and faith and all of their ancestors that lived before them. He will make them what they were, as they were when he knew them. Because without that, they are incomplete. The spirits are incomplete. He is incomplete.

Our job in Veilguard will be to either help him find a better way to accomplish his goal, or help him find a way to find satisfaction and completion in this world. (Or, you know, kill him, but not in my canon, thanks.) Either way, we have to get him to accept help.

Because the burden that he carries within himself is the sole memory of a vast nation, and it is heavy. Far too heavy to bear alone. He is the last living key, a fragile remnant, a final, solitary link through dreams to the history, the knowledge, and the entire cultural identity of the Elvhen people. (The People people? Is that redundant?)

And without him, all of that is lost.

Forever.

To him, he is the last of the Elvhen.

So, my interpretation of Solas' greatest fear is not that he is afraid to die all by himself. It is something I feel is truly much more heartbreaking.

It is that he is afraid to die the last of his kind.

He is afraid to die alone.

#dragon age #dai #dragon age inquisition #dragon age trespasser #datv #datv spoilers #da4 #da4 spoilers #dragon age the veilguard #dragon age the veilguard spoilers #veilguard spoilers #fen'harel #the dreadwolf #what it really means to be afraid to die alone

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