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anneapocalypse · 2 years

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Meredith's Mistakes: A Study in Power

The full-scale rebellion of mages across Thedas against the Circle system of the Andrastian Chantry officially begins in 9:40 Dragon, with the uprising at the White Spire and a vote by the College of Enchanters to separate from the Chantry. But the seeds of the rebellion are planted years earlier in Kirkwall, where the extreme Circle policies of Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard lead to the destruction of the city’s Chantry by apostate mage activist Anders.

Knight-Commander Meredith’s reign of terror over her Circle and over Kirkwall itself is abruptly ended during her battle with Hawke when the sword forged from a red lyrium idol found in the Deep Roads corrupts her totally, turning her to a frozen lyrium statue herself (though as we have more recently learned, it did not destroy her completely). This was catalyzed by the destruction of the Chantry, Meredith’s invocation of the Right of Annulment, and the mages’ subsequent resistance. But had all that not happened the way it did, I believe that an end to Meredith’s rule had already become inevitable. The Knight-Commander makes several grave mistakes in maintaining her power, some of which begin years before she acquires the idol, but are dramatically escalated by her exposure to red lyrium.

And it’s because of those mistakes that the mage rebellion truly has its roots in Kirkwall.

Circle Dispensation

Throughout the Dragon Age universe we meet mages like Wilhelm Sulzbacher, Ines Arancia, Severan, Vivienne, Finn, and Wynne: Circle mages given special dispensation to travel, work, and even live outside the Circle proper.

This privilege proves to be a highly effective tool of Circle control, and a critical part of the Chantry's strategy for keep mages contained.

Prior to the the destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry, it seems that this sort of thing is quite commonplace in most Circles. Not for most mages, of course. But for well-established Enchanters who have proven their magical competency, and most importantly their loyalty, certain privileges may be afforded. Thus, compliance is incentivized for any mages who might aspire to some limited but additional freedoms and are willing to toe the line to get them.

In most cases, these mages are still denied the rights of non-mages: to own property, to hold a title, to marry and raise a family. (Wilhelm is a notable exception to the latter, but this seems rare.) But a mage like Ines Arancia might be afforded the opportunity for field research and publication. A mage like Wynne or Finn might gain the prestige of traveling at the side of a hero. And a mage of ambition such as Severan, Wilhelm, or Vivienne might even attain the title of Court Enchanter, serving at the side of a King or an Empress (even if the title is in many cases purely ceremonial) and mingling with the court.

Here's a basic principle that is critical to understanding politics, real or fictional: most people are primarily concerned with the material wellbeing of themselves and their immediate loved ones. Many people will engage in various forms of activism in the hopes of improving conditions for themselves and others, but truly revolutionary activity is an extremely unappealing prospect for the average person most of the time. And it's not because they're callous or apathetic. It's because they have too much to lose. Revolution is bloody and horrific and sometimes necessary, but there are always heavy costs to be weighed against the potential (and by no means guaranteed) gains.

It is no accident that of the mages we meet and get to know personally, the ones with the most to say in support of the Circle are also the ones who have gained significant privileges within that system—and who therefore have the most to lose from an attempted rebellion which may not succeed. I have written before about the conversation between Wynne and the Warden in Awakening, in which Wynne expresses concerns about the College of Enchanters potentially voting to break away from the Circle. "The mages will never be free," she says. "The Chantry would never allow it. Our only hope for survival is to show them we can be trusted."

Notably, at this point in time, even Anders will agree that this is "madness" and "a recipe for disaster." Why would Anders, of all people, say this, given how adamant he is about his own freedom? Awakening Anders sums up what he wants out of life pretty well when he says, "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." He's being glib here, of course, and there's probably a lot more going on under the surface (we're given to understand later that Anders has always had a lot of anger at the Circle), but I do think it's accurate to say that at the moment he's mainly concerned with maintaining his own freedom. And while he and Wynne have very different opinions of the Circle generally, I think Anders doesn't at this time relish the thought of a full-scale war, with Templars roaming the land hunting renegade mages. You can see how that might actually make it harder for him to fly under the radar as an apostate.

Nearly a decade later, Vivienne will express her own opinions on the mage rebellion that is already well underway, calling it "A failure of perspective that infected Circle leadership." Unlike Wynne, Vivienne's objections are less about the unstoppable power of the Chantry and more about the attitudes the general population holds toward magic. "Kirkwall gave the world a reason to remember its fear of magic," she says. "A mage killed hundreds with a snap of their fingers. …By voting when they did, my colleagues all but declared war upon the ordinary people of Thedas, a war in which we are outnumbered a hundred to one." Vivienne's argument (if you take it at face value) is that the rebellion was poorly timed and generally unwise. "By all means, protest abuses by templars," she says. "Just don't do it in a way that suggests mages support wholesale murder."

Notice that Wynne does not say that mages shouldn't be free but that they won't be free. She does not say that bowing to Chantry oversight is the right thing to do but that it is mages' only hope for survival. Vivienne's objection (as stated, anyway; Vivienne’s motives are complicated and another post for another day) is not that the vote for independence supported murder but that it appeared to support murder. In these conversations, the argument is never really that mage rebellion is immoral, but that it is unwise, impolitic, bad optics, bad public relations, not smart.

A point on which even Anders once agreed.

And why would a full-scale mage rebellion look like the best option to Wynne and to Vivienne—to mages who have spent years and decades working to gain the respect and trust required to be granted the maximum amount of lenience the Circle allows? Why would they throw away what they have gained for a war they don't believe they can win?

If enough mages believe that compliance is a more reliable strategy than resistance, you won’t get the critical mass for a rebellion.

But even Wynne fights back when the Right of Annulment is invoked upon her Circle.

One of the most foolish things a ruler can do in terms of maintaining their own power is to allow conditions to deteriorate to the point where their subjects feel they have little or nothing left to lose. And that's exactly what happens in Kirkwall.

This is Knight-Commander Meredith's first mistake: she fails to positively reinforce compliance.

We get the sense that the Gallows was always a strict Circle. There's talk of the Knight-Commander's severity when Hawke first arrives, long before Meredith gets her hands on red lyrium. The kind of special dispensation that Wynne and Finn enjoy from the Fereldan Circle is likely far less common here.

There is some evidence that such things occur under Meredith, even post-lyrium-sword, however rare it may have been. Notably, if Bethany Hawke goes to the Circle, she is given permission to go with Hawke to the Vimmark Mountains, and to Chateau Haine. In terms of game mechanics, this is obviously done so that the player can have a bit more time with their sibling as a companion, and for the Legacy DLC specifically, the Carta has actually been breaking into the Circle trying to capture Bethany, so it does make some sense that Meredith would want that dealt with, enough to let Bethany go with Hawke to deal with it.

But Chateau Haine is purely a pleasure trip, and Bethany is still allowed not only to leave the Gallows, but to travel outside Kirkwall with her sibling. It would be very easy for her to run away if she chose, and she would have a solid head start on the templars pursuing her. Bethany has demonstrated herself a loyal Circle mage at this point, with no intention of escaping, but I think that's not all that's going on here.

Let's talk about Emile de Launcet.

In Act III, Hawke is given the task—or has their arm twisted, depending on how you're playing—of tracking down three runaway mages. The first two, Huon and Evelina, are a blood mage and an abomination respectively and attack, leaving Hawke no choice but to kill them. The third, however, is a man named Emile de Launcet, who reveals that having been in the Circle since he was six years old, he simply wanted to live a little. He also reveals that he himself spread the rumor that he is a blood mage, hoping that it would make him seem "dangerous" and therefore more attractive to women.

It's easy to write off Emile as simply a fool, but I think there's more going on here.

How does a man who has spent almost his entire life in the Gallows, who is well-acquainted with the Knight-Commander's policies, think that telling people he's a blood mage is a good idea? In Act III? By this point in the game, it is well known that Meredith is accusing anyone who sneezes of being a maleficar; most of the Circle mages live in terror of just such an accusation. What in the Maker's name could possibly make this man believe that labeling himself a blood mage wouldn't get him killed, or made Tranquil, never mind caught?

Unless Emile de Launcet, the son of rich Orlesian expats (the Comte and Comtess Guillaume and Dulci de Launcet) has always received more leniency in the Circle than the average mage.

Bethany Hawke, daughter of Lady Leandra Amell who has come home to reclaim her family estate, sister of the Champion who saved Kirkwall from Qunari invasion, seems to quickly decide that life in the Circle isn't so bad. Undoubtedly, a large amount of Bethany's relief is she doesn't have to hide anymore and be constantly protected by everyone around her, and she appreciates the opportunity to be around other mages. But she also says in party banter that "The idea of the Circle is much more terrifying than the reality of it." She frustrates Anders with her acceptance of her new life, and judging by Ella's words, Bethany seems to encourage the apprentices she mentors to accept theirs as well.

Bethany and Emile's experiences with the Circle do not fully reflect what we know of the Gallows, and I think that's because they're both from noble families. This is important for other reasons too, and we'll come back to it.

But for now, what's worth noting is that the only examples we have of Meredith's leniency are for political expediency and accidents of birth rather than actively rewarding compliance.

I think it’s safe to say that even before things escalate to all mages confined to their quarters, not a lot of mages in the Kirkwall Circle are going out on leave for botanical studies. But as her paranoia deepens due to her exposure to red lyrium, as she begins to see blood magic and demons around every corner and in every person, Meredith stops rewarding compliance at all. There are no “good mages” and “bad mages”; there are only mages, not a one of whom can be trusted. Fewer and fewer privileges are afford to any mages in the Gallows, until eventually it is clear that all mages will be punished simply for being mages. There is no incentive for "good" behavior.

That's how you brew a rebellion, kids!

And when she invokes the Right of Annulment, not one of those mages has anything left to lose.

I am far from the first person to point out that Anders spends his first seven years in Kirkwall attempting to change things for the mages by relatively nonviolent means. He wins massive goodwill from Kirkwall’s lower classes with his medical clinic in Darktown. He appeals to the upper classes the only way he can reach them, through his impassioned writings on mage freedom. (And the upper class is a critical piece of the puzzle here, but we’ll come back to that.) He works with an organized Mage Underground to rescue as many individual mages from the Circle as possible.

But by Act III, the Mage Underground has been completely dismantled, and ambient dialogue in the Gallows tells us that Meredith has confined all mages to their quarters and has already sent for the Right of Annulment, well before Anders takes his final action. She has yet to actually receive permission, and we cannot know whether she actually would have, but given that Divine Justinia has already threatened an Exalted March on Kirkwall through her Left Hand, it doesn't seem out of the question that Meredith's request would be granted so long as she provided the Divine with a plausible excuse. It is also very possible that in the absence of a reply, Meredith simply would have invented an excuse to invoke the Right without waiting for permission (given that she does exactly that after the Chantry explosion), and it's likely that is exactly what Anders—and every mage in the Circle—fears will happen.

And had that happened, every mage in the Gallows would have been locked in their quarters, alone, when templars came to their door to kill them.

By destroying the Chantry when he does, Anders provokes Meredith to invoke the Right of Annulment without waiting for Chantry permission, but critically he also does so in such a way that the mages have advance warning of their sentence. They have time to gather and organize, to fight back, to allow at least some of them to survive. Anders has broader goals for a mage rebellion, absolutely—goals which may or may not be met. But his immediate goal is to give the mages in the Gallows a chance to survive. And he does succeed in giving them that chance, regardless of what happens after. He also kills hundreds of people, many of them not templars or clerics but simply citizens of Kirkwall caught in the fallout—many of them undoubtedly lower-class citizens of Lowtown, including elves in the alienage. (The collateral damage is canon, and not just per dialogue in Inquisition; you can see flaming debris raining down over the place where Hawke is standing in Lowtown after Anders sets off the explosion, and Lowtown is on fire as you make your way to the docks, so this really isn't a point I'm interested in arguing.)

Whether Anders’ actions are morally justified, what kind of collateral damage is justifiable in the process of liberating an oppressed people, ultimately comes down to a trolley problem; I’m not going to get into that here and I’d appreciate it if people would refrain from having that argument on this post. What I do hope to demonstrate here is that something like what Anders does is the predictable and inevitable outcome of conditions deteriorating and abuses escalating for a subjugated people until there is quite literally nothing left for them to lose.

That is, in my opinion, Meredith's biggest and most obvious mistake. But there are two other failures that contribute to her downfall, and which I believe would eventually have led to her being removed from power.

The Absent Puppet

Following the failed Qunari invasion, Meredith increasingly alienates the nobility of Kirkwall.

There is an excellent post by @mllemaenad analyzing Elthina’s strategy for “mediating” the mage-templar crisis in Kirkwall and maintaining her own power. This post touches on Meredith’s second and third mistakes in several facets and it's also a fantastic analysis of Elthina's character that really helped me to understand her; I'd highly recommend reading it.

I have on occasion sees the nobles' opposition to Meredith read as support for mage freedom. I strongly disagree; that is not what’s going on here. This is apparent if you’ve played both the templar and the mage endings of DA2 and paid attention to the epilogue slides. Hawke can actually become the next viscount of Kirkwall—but only if Hawke sides with the templars.

The nobility on the whole do not want the Circle abolished. They are not interested in opposing the Chantry outright; when Elthina "gently" sends them home after Orsino's speech, they all comply. They were even willing to tolerate blatant Chantry puppet Marlowe Dumar as Viscount. Let's be clear here, the Chantry has ruled Kirkwall in all but name since the deposition of Perrin Threnhold. The nobles know this. (Even the random nobody city guard Hawke speaks to at the beginning of the game knows this; it's the worst-kept secret in Kirkwall.) So long as there is a noble ass on the throne, the Chantry maintains at least the appearance of a "proper" social order, and the nobles are willing to live with that because it does not overly inconvenience their lives, and as established previously, their own mage children will receive some leniency in the otherwise strict Circle.

Meredith openly seizing control of the city is a bridge too far. The Knight-Commander cannot rule the city outright; this is not how things are done. The nobles want to unseat Meredith, but they do not want a rearranging of the social order as they know it. That means a functioning Circle of Magi that keeps the mages contained over there, where they don't have to think about them, and a proper noble ruling the city at least in name. They do not want a coup by an anti-Circle radical. If Hawke fights with the mages, the nobles will not support Hawke as Viscount. But a pro-templar Hawke by the end of the game has accomplished what the nobles want. They have removed Meredith from power, while demonstrating to a city that still fears magic that they will continue to keep mages subjugated.

The Chantry and the nobility are always deeply intertwined, but the Chantry in Kirkwall has a particular stranglehold on the city’s civil government, more so than in other nations. That the nobility have been pushed to the point of opposing Meredith at all speaks to how gravely she has fucked up.

Chantry Authority

And finally, as MlleMaenad aptly explains in the post linked above, Meredith has alienated her superior in the Chantry, Grand Cleric Elthina—in part because she has stopped playing the game they both once implicitly agreed to. Her abuses of power have become too public. She has agitated the mages to the point that her First Enchanter is out protesting in the streets. In Hightown. She has alienated the nobility and turned public opinion against her. And that makes the Chantry look bad in turn. It makes Elthina look bad. If nothing else, it makes Elthina look like she (and by extension the Chantry) no longer has control over the Circle, and that’s a big problem. Elthina deftly distracts everyone from this problem by pretending to be a third-party mediator between the mages and templars instead of the person holding jurisdiction over all of them. But the conflict spilling into the streets of Hightown is a big problem for her.

As detailed by MlleMaenad, Elthina has no problem with what Meredith has been doing to the mages. She does have a problem with Meredith ranting and raving about how mages should be made an example in public, in front of the nobility—some of whom have family members in the Circle. (Again, this is why Hawke meeting Emile de Launcet is so important. This is why you have to talk to his parents, so that there can be no mistake about who he is.)

My one quibble with the excellent post linked above (and it’s largely a semantic quibble and not a practical one) is the statement that Elthina has no morals. I would argue that from Elthina’s perspective she has a very strong moral code—one that demands she defend the authority of the Chantry against all threats and at any cost, including the cost of her own life. Which is exactly what she does.

Multiple times, Elthina can be warned of the danger to her life if she stays in Kirkwall (once in Sebastian’s DLC sidequest “Faith,” and once if Hawke chooses to warn her about whatever Anders is planning). In both cases, she refuses to leave. “I am Grand Cleric,” she says. “Who would dare attack me?”

It’s easy to look at Elthina as simply overconfident, and I certainly agree that there’s an arrogance to her personality and the way she handles things in Kirkwall. But I’m not actually sure that her death is a political failure. I don’t mean that she wants to die, or that somehow she plans to. But to leave Kirkwall to protect herself would show weakness—not only in herself as an individual, but in the institution she represents. In refusing to flee from danger, and in dying for that decision, Elthina makes herself a martyr for the faithful. And in doing so, she probably sways a few people who might have at least sympathized with the mages to oppose the rebellion more harshly than they might otherwise have done.

That death, that martyrdom, serves as a pretty effective distraction from the fact that Meredith, whose actions made something like Anders’ actions inevitable, is Elthina’s problem to begin with. Indirectly, Meredith has become a threat to the Chantry’s power over Kirkwall, and she cannot be easily replaced without a tacit admission that Elthina has already failed to maintain control of her own Knight-Commander. If Elthina’s end goal is to maintain the power of the Chantry over Kirkwall at any cost, standing her ground to the point of martyrdom isn’t a bad gambit. It’s bad for Elthina herself, of course, but for the Chantry? Grief over her loss brings sympathy for her side and aid from Starkhaven by Sebastian’s hand, thus maintaining a Chantry presence in Kirkwall after the disaster and reinforcing the very useful image of the Chantry as a charitable organization, cruelly destroyed by a madman.

That’s a powerful narrative, and Elthina’s choices help create it.

But it only becomes necessary in the first place because Meredith, after years of success, is failing to maintain her power—in part, thanks to the arrival of an outside variable that no one could have foreseen, the red lyrium that pushed her existing paranoia to the breaking point.

Had Anders not destroyed the Chantry, the Meredith Problem would only have continued to escalate. At some point Elthina would have had no choice but to remove her from power, because the damage to Chantry authority of allowing her to continue would outweigh the damage of removing her. There are conceivably ways Elthina could go about this indirectly, giving the appearance that the Knight-Commander had been killed by a rebellious noble or even a blood mage, thereby avoiding any official admission of failure by the Chantry. Her priority would not be to replace Meredith with someone more lenient, but rather with someone able and willing to play the game, the same one she and Meredith played so well together before Meredith went off the rails. Keep the nobility complacent and the underclasses powerless. Maintain the balance. Protect the Chantry’s authority at all costs.

It would likely be quite troublesome to arrange, and Elthina thus far has been loathe to do it, but I don’t doubt that she would do it if she had no choice. And given what we have seen of Divine Justina and how she operates (see also: @v-arbellanaris’s excellent meta series on Justinia and particularly part 3) I feel confident saying that Justinia’s message to Elthina in “Faith” is both a warning and a threat: Get your city and your Circle under control or I will do it for you.

I also think that Sebastian, whose entire character exists at the intersection of Chantry and noble politics, realizes this, hence his urging Hawke to downplay the situation in Kirkwall to convince the Divine that her intervention is not necessary. For all Sebastian’s faults, at this point in his arc he really is concerned with preventing needless bloodshed, but he also cares very much about Elthina, whom he sees as kind of a mother figure. Sebastian is no fool; he can read between the lines and understand that if Justinia feels compelled to intervene against Elthina’s wishes, there will be no protection for Elthina.

Justinia’s suggestion that Elthina leave Kirkwall isn’t simply concern for her life should open war break out in the city; it’s also giving her a kind of third option, an "out”: if Elthina leaves Kirkwall of her own free will, she is signaling to the Divine that she does not have things under control and is willingly accepting Justinia’s intervention. This will irreparably damage Elthina’s reputation politically but it might save her life. In refusing to leave, Elthina is also declaring to her superior, “Your intervention is not necessary. I have this under control.”

She does not have it under control, and at some point she’s going to have to deal with that. As she answers to the Divine, Meredith answers to her. Elthina will not maintain her own power if she cannot maintain control of those under her and keep the support of those above her. Meredith is in the same position, just one step down. Neither of them are actually succeeding. This wing of the house of cards is set to collapse, one way or another. (And it’s arguable that Justinia isn’t actually succeeding either, but that is, again, another post.) All that remains to be seen is who will survive the collapse.

Conclusions

This is why Knight-Commander Meredith's actions lead to Kirkwall being the first Circle to fall. She fails to reward compliance and allows conditions to deteriorate too far; she oversteps her bounds and alienates the nobility; and she is even beginning to run afoul of Chantry authority itself. By Act III, Meredith’s regime is doomed.

Which is not to say that I think a mage rebellion actually getting off the ground is inevitable. On the contrary—even given Meredith’s downfall, things could have gone very differently had certain characters acted differently at various points. Had Elthina actually chosen to leave Kirkwall, tacitly inviting an Exalted March on the city, I think things would have gone very differently. Had the conspiring nobles managed to remove Meredith from power before things came to head as they did, things might have gone very differently. And had Anders not chosen that desperate yet still strategic moment to attack the Chantry, thus setting off not only the Kirkwall annulment and rebellion, and subsequently the locking down of Circles all over Thedas, thus pushing more and more mages toward open defiance, things might have gone very differently. Had Justinia herself taken different actions, not taken others, responded differently to the escalating tensions, things might have gone very differently.

Meredith’s actions, however, make some kind of dramatic shake-up of Chantry power inevitable. I think it’s even possible to see this collapse as the long-term result of previous Divine Beatrix III overstepping her bounds, upsetting the careful political balance between Chantry and nobility when she effectively engineered a Chantry takeover of a major city-state; that situation was likely unsustainable in the long term, and we are now seeing the fallout of it. What form this inevitable shake-up takes, and its ultimate outcome, depends on the actions of many other characters.

So why write all of this? Because I think Meredith’s rule and her downfall is a fascinating study in power. Beneath the fantasy elements, there’s an understanding in her narrative of how tyrants and autocrats rule, how they maintain power and also how they lose it. And these stories about power and power dynamics are some of my favorite elements of the Dragon Age series.

The same principles also apply to various other rulers in Dragon Age… but that’s another post for another day.

#meredith stannard #elthina #dragon age meta #dragon age 2 #justinia v #dorothea #dragon age #blunders of thedas #knight commander meredith #grand cleric elthina #divine justinia #chantry explosion #chantry politics #thedas politics

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ruushes · 10 days

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11 and 14 for pax? :3

11. what are their religious beliefs, if any?

the hawke kids were raised in a sort of critical andrastianism that followed the core tenets but diverged from the chantry on some major points for obvious reasons lol. pax purposefully gives off an impression of being a Big No Thoughts Bruiser type but she's quietly pretty philosophical and spent a lot of growing up thinking about her faith, trying to make the mismatched pieces of the chant and the chantry's teachings and her family fit in some way

that said while she believed in andrastianism, she was never especially devout, and only really prayed in truly shit-hit-the-fan 'i'll go to church every day for the rest of my life if i survive this' scenarios lmao, she stops doing that after having her prayers 'answered' in the deep roads by bethany joining the wardens and loses any remaining interest in religion after that

14. who are they closest to from their family?

up until the deep roads incident it was bethany. pax was very protective of both twins but especially bethany after 1) she developed magic and 2) carver started not so much appreciating the overbearing big sister thing lol. she'd put up with 'girly' things ONLY if bethany wanted to do them with her, and beth was the only person she really confided in abt vulnerable subjects or rly anything feelings-related

that said while she loved bethany she also ig underestimated her? that's not exactly the right word but the way a lot of people both in game and as players do, like she's only sweet and good and needs to be protected from everything even if it means making her decisions for her. after beth has to join the wardens to survive being tainted she pretty much stops speaking to pax

#pax hawke #my ocs #talkin #asks #dragon age #in the original draft i wrote 'in the practice of practicing' like yea sounds good hit post

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rosella-writes · 9 months

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Happy Friday Ro! For Virelan x Solas - hiding their relationship from other friends because they know the reaction they’ll get - from enemies to friends to lovers?? 👀

Thank you!! For @dadrunkwriting

~~~

"I don't know about you, but I can't go on like this."

Solas's brow furrowed as he peered even closer at his book. Virelan wondered if he'd pretend he hadn't heard.

"How do you mean, Inquisitor?"

Virelan scoffed, then tossed her notes and charcoal to the end of the chaise. Solas did not look up from where he sat at her desk. "Keeping mum. Not touching you around the others. Letting you call me Inquisitor instead of your heart. We're alone anyway, so what's the problem?"

Solas turned a page. The furrow between his brows had not lessened, but there was a little twitch at the corner of his mouth that possibly hid a smile. "At first I understood your statement to be about the nature of our connection, not how we appear to the others. I realise now I was mistaken."

"About a few things, I'd say. But don't mind me. Keep avoiding the question, I dare you."

Finally, Solas lowered his book to the desktop and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. He then leaned his cheek in his palm and regarded her with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"You are a Dalish elf in an Andrastian organisation, subject to extreme scrutiny and criticism," he began, as if explaining something simple to a child. "I am an apostate, one with whom you have had little more than an antagonistic relationship since the moment we met. How do you believe the Inquisition will react to us being open about our desire for one another?"

Virelan could feel the petulant scowl spreading across her face, but did nothing to prevent it. He deserved to see her irritation. "Oh no," she drawled, "not desire. How dare we?"

"Simply be prepared for... confusion, perhaps. And other consequences."

She rolled her eyes — her false one, still unfamiliar and new, did not move easily in its socket. "They'll live. And so will we."

He rose — her eye flicked back towards him to watch as he approached her on bare feet. He put out a hand to carefully cup her cheek, then tip up her chin with the very tips of his fingers so he could look down upon her face. She only gazed back for a moment. She had to close her eyes, and leaned into his touch to show her thanks for this brief intimacy.

"I just don't want to make you uncomfortable, I guess," she finally grumbled, eyes still closed. "You know, if you'd rather it not be known that you're cavorting about with me."

Solas made an undignified sort of chortling noise at that. His other hand joined the first in cupping her face. "I would like nothing more. I only keep your image in mind, should you care to safeguard it. If not, I would gladly love you out loud."

Virelan's eyes blinked open, slowly. One of her slow, fond smiles began spreading over her face, lifting his palms on the apples of her cheeks with the intensity of it.

"Love me out loud, hmm?" she whispered, as if to herself. She shifted just far enough to kiss the tip of his thumb. "Imagine that."

#solavellan #virelan x solas #virelan lavellan #solas #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dadwc #my writing

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a-drama-addict · 1 month

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dont know if my ask got eaten again but JUST IN CASE i will resend it. If it didnt and you were just keeping it for a later moment instead imagine me posing a little fruitily in your inbox and leaving or something. Emira for the worldstate ask game with 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26!!!!

it didn't get eaten! But i will answer this one. YEAH EMIRA TIME!!!!!! [ask game]

2. are they skilled in The Grand Game?

NOPE! this girl has 0 political skill, it's a wonder she had allies at all during the Blight. She is a good smooth talker but GODS THE GAME WOULD KILL HER!!!

5. attitude towards the Chantry?

Positive-ish. She respects the chantry, she was raised Andrastian and has spent time reading every book on the subject. She's more critical of the chantry at time, but overall thinks it can serve a good purpose.

7. if they had to choose one person most important to them, who would that be?

Oh Leliana for sure. Emira 'Not to be a lesbian but oh my god' Tabris loves her wife to death. They are extremely fucking insufferable and i love them. Leli and Em have a really really strong bond, neither of them do relationships casually. And while Emira definitely has friends that mean a shit ton to her as well, no one really tops Leliana. (Leliana tops Emira if anything-- [gets shot])

8. who do they hate the most, and do they have an arch-nemesis?

Loghain was definitely her arch-nemesis, but the person she hates the most even far long after the fact is Vaughan. Don't think that needs an explanation. She'd kill him ten times over if she could.

9. what is their love language?

Hmmm she is a sucker for physical touch. Casually leaning on someone, hugs, kisses, sex, she's pretty big on it. She likes being physically close to those she loves.

12. attitude towards Mabari?

BEST DOG BREED EVER FERELDEN FOREVER RAHHHH

13. their thoughts on the Grey Warden order?

Meh. It's fine, she doesn't like being a Warden, but she does feel good about what she's doing. She thinks it's a good order, just wishes she didn't have to be part of it.

14. who are they closest to from their family?

Shianni!!!!! The cousin ever!! they've been close since they were kids, and even get matching tattoos when older. they're very close. And they definitely are one of each other's best friends.

15. preferred weapon of choice?

DAGGERS!! SWISH SWISH KACHOW

17. what were they like as a child?

Pretty calm and well-behaved generally, but she definitely had a snark. She also really liked scrapping, she used to wrestle with Adaia a whole lot, and she definitely enjoyed being active. Active and calm kid generally

19. are they afraid of death?

No, but she is afraid of how she'd die. The calling terrifies her, the act of dying in battle terrifies her. Dying scares her, death itself doesn't.

21. what is their biggest regret?

Hm. Probably not being able to live the life she wanted to live. Part of her regrets the mere fact that she had to become a Warden, even if it ended up being a choice that led to meeting the best people she knows. She can't shake the feeling of wrongness from it at times.

25. what did they plan for their life to look like before the events of the game happened?

Emira thought she'd get married off to Nelaros, maybe have a child or two. (She's a lesbian but.. well she can do that if she must.) She'd probably just stay in the alienage with her family, raise a couple of kids, and just... live a pretty mundane life. She would've loved to get a dog though.

26. do they get a happy ending?

MAYBE. If she's found a cure to the calling, then yes. She'd live in lesbian heaven with her pope wife. Otherwise she's definitely dead in like DA:TV. OOPSIES

#THANKS FOR THE ASK GHOST!!!#i got to ramble about all THREE of my bastards. amazing #i hope emira gets a happy ending so bad. She deserves it #but also. doomed character ily #we WILL see #a-drama-addict speaks #oc: emira tabris

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queenaeducan · 26 days

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Questions for Thora: 4- attitude towards Andrastianism? 18- do they have any irrational fears?

Questions for your Hawke: 6- attitude towards the Qun? 16- do they get sentimental about their weapons or armour?

Questions for your Warden: 13- their thoughts on the Grey Warden order? 23- do they have, or want to have, children? 23-a: if they want to have children, what do you do with the obscure lore that wardens have impaired fertility? (obviously "I ignore it as the Maker intended" is a valid response according to me)

DA Worldstate Questions!

Thora Cadash

4. attitude towards Andrastianism?

Thora is Andrastian- or rather, she believes in both the Stone and the Maker. This is based on some lore that I believe is from Orzammar discussing how the two don't contradict each other (so really Cass should be asking Cadash if there's not room for the Maker in their lives rather than Lavellan).

Her attitude towards Andrastianism is different from her attitude towards the Chantry. She believes in and finds strength in Andraste and her story, perhaps in many ways more than in the Maker. The Chant gives her strength and she loves to sing it. When it comes to the Chantry, she has always felt excluded from it. She might have joined it had she been allowed (and in her companion verses if Leliana is Divine she may serve her), but over time she comes to be more critical of it. Kirkwall taught her to question the Circle, and Inquisition drives those questions to the root of the problem. She does want to believe it can change and supports Leliana in pursuit of that change.

18. do they have any irrational fears?

Not really. She's afraid of deep water and dogs. In the Nightmare she doesn't see spiders, but her companions as they appeared in the Red Lyrium future. All of those fears have some pretty solid basis. Her biggest thing that impacts her day-to-day is that blood/corpses make her ill despite death being part of her job, but again I can't really call that irrational, just unusual for adventuring fantasy protagonists.

Sylvia Hawke

6. attitude towards the Qun?

Definitely not for her. She is more or less the Arishok's foil, undisciplined and chaotic to his control and order.

Her attitude to it at large is less negative than you might expect, in part due to the grudging respect she comes to hold for the Arishok. She also can't say she's a fan of the natural conclusion of its enforcement, which is to say: the conquering of the south. While she had sympathy for the situation of the qunari, after she discovers why they really stuck around so long she found them a little pitiable. She'd fled her home because of the Blight, they were in exile over a book.

16. do they get sentimental about their weapons or armour?

Not at all. She likes to add little touches that she carries from one piece to the next, but isn't attached to any kind. Ironically, in her playthrough I do end up having the same robes through most of act 2 and 3 (robes of the notorious pirate) because there are only a handful of pants for mages in DA2 and Sylvia just isn't a dressy robe person. So she isn't sentimental, but she is picky.

Tamar Aeducan

(Tamar isn't my OC, but my spouse's, but she is my worldstate Warden and the one I'm carrying to DA4).

13. their thoughts on the Grey Warden order?

Tamar is realistic about it. She takes her duties seriously, but finds a lot about the Order to criticise. She had a poor relationship with Clarel when they were both still alive, and is more likely to grant Solas his due in his criticisms than Ian, who holds the Order up on a pedestal. Tamar also is willing to play a little loose with the rules- for example, during Ian's recruitment in DA:O she "recruits" him with no intention of having him Join, letting him go back to his clan after the Archdemon's defeat.

23. do they have, or want to have, children?

She doesn't have any. Tamar has issues conceiving even in verses where she isn't a Warden, like our Modern Thedas verse. She does want them, as does Gorim, but there isn't room for one in her life as Warden-Commander. In Modern Thedas they do adopt, though!

#thora cadash #sylvia hawke #tamar aeducan #tas talks

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milesmentis · 1 month

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Hey so uhhh... What's Daren's opinion on Anders and Justice and their work in Kirkwall? (feel free to wait until your poll is over to answer this if it'll spoil the result)

Whaaaat ... nooooo ... my baaaaait ... it's been taaaaaaken (a thousand times, thank you 💚)

King-Consort Daren Cousland is generally considered a reasonable, fair-minded, diplomatic man by his peers (... marriage was really good for him lmao). He is devout, well-spoken, sometimes stodgy or bull-headed, but overall a model Andrastian ruler. Everyone knows he has a "weakness" when it comes to the "plight of mages" but he speaks respectfully of the Templar order and acknowledges the Chantry's sovereignty. (It would be laughable if someone tried to say how accepting he was about blood magic, for example ... right up until the Mage Rebellion, when he offers sanctuary to every Makerdamned apostate and bloodmage in the entire south of Thedas!)

Because Daren Cousland is the only OC who fully and unequivocally believes that Anders Did Nothing Wrong. Not because they hooked up that one time, or because they were both Wardens ... but because Daren knows that if Justice had picked him as a host ... the Kirkwall streets would have run fucking red.

There's a scene I've had rattling around in my head for a few months where he speaks to Anora about offering that refuge and she tries to talk him out of it, only to realize that this is one of the rare instances that her husband simply Will Not Budge about and that, apparently, she's been married to a closet mage libertarian this whole time who just knew better than to open his mouth in public. He tells her he's been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years, and when she asks if he means since the Chantry explosion ... or the invasion of Kirkwall, he says, "Neither. This all goes back to Kinloch. We've been waiting nine years for the fall out, and now it's here." Because he and Heulwen have been watching the tension between the Chantry and the mages creep closer and closer to critical and laying their own contingency plans since the day the Circle tried to drag Anders back.

All of this to say that he would never ever EVER under pain of death air that opinion to either Hawke or Heulwen, because they are both mages, know/knew Anders/Justice personally, and feel crushing guilt about not being able to stop him. He has the luxury of not being a mage, so his opinions are just theoretical: he's never been at any personal risk. Least he can do now is protect the people who are.

#deep lore hours tee hee #although it's technically non-canonical #the fact that his spec in Awakening is 'Spirit Warrior' definitely adds a certain extra ... something to things like #his opinions about ... blood magic and ... abominations ... for example :))#also hit up my DMs if you want the Secret Lore about an AU where Daren did get possessed ... but not by Justice :)))

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ustalav · 2 months

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anyway it does make me think about fandom discourse around my own ocs if they were in game which is always a fun time, i recommend it fjsdaklf

gideon is obvious....... i have Actually fr had people upset about him in my notes LMAO (not in a long time tho but before i'd blocked a lot of annoying people). people would hate him for being andrastian and pro-circle and supportive of the Templar Order (in the beginning that support is completely unconditional but it becomes more critical as he goes on). he is my lawful good boy with a worldstate people call "evil" lol

grant is actually the same with the pro-templar choices although the drama would be about whether it matters that he isn't *actually* supportive of the templar order, he was just trying to keep them off his hide (even if that meant sending other mages to the gallows)

cyril is like... literally chaotic evil and p/wotr fans, while less weird about evil men than they are evil women... would still probably say they don't recruit him. i do think him being romantic though would mean there would be an awful group that bends over backwards to justify romancing him while killing camellia

and severin is too new for in depth analysis but i think people would say she's annoying! or boring bc she's an afab nonbinary character and that tends to be the big criticism of most afab characters

#lmao

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v-arbellanaris · 2 years

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Once Again, I Am Dissatisfied With DAI. which! yknow. in other news. water is wet. but like. a lot of the arguments -- both in-world (e.g. from vivienne, wynne, etc,) and from the fans -- for keeping the circles as a system, even with reform, seems to revolve around the idea that mages need some kind of magic school to learn how to control their magic. i don’t disagree that mages need to learn how to control their magic, but i disagree that they need a place for it, or some kind of magic school, for it, and i definitely vehemently disagree that the circle is that kind of place, in the past or the future.

there are canonically other ways, other than the circle -- ways that aren’t formal education systems -- for mages to be educated, with as little risk to themselves, spirits or others, as possible. ways that don’t involve chantry oversight, templar guards, or segregation from the rest of society while they “train”. and, in truth, the circles weren’t created to protect mages or to educate them in the first place -- it’s an incidental feature, not an intentional feature.

like... let’s dig into the history of the circle for a second. because the circle hasn’t been around since the beginning of time, and surely, whatever the mages were doing before to learn to control their magic was working, seeing as how there’s nothing to indicate mages or anyone else was dying en masse from an inability to control their magic. the southern thedosian circle system was "adopted" from the tevinter circle system, with a critical difference -- where the tevinter circle system was a formal schooling system, the southern thedosian circle system was not.

drakon used mages against the darkspawn in the second blight (which started ~1:5 divine). by that point, the first inquisition was already a functioning organisation -- the inquisition itself predates the chantry (the inq starting around -100 ancient and the orlesian chantry established by drakon in -3 ancient), and hunted down dangerous mages and demons (the original inquisition is EXPLICITLY mentioned to be andrastian hardliners who also hunted “cultists and heretics” but this makes no sense as the inquisition predates the chantry. i can only imagine then that this was twisted/added later on, after the nevarran accord, as the seekers’ role became to hunt down cultists and heretics, to act as though that had always been their job/purpose). under inquisitor ameridan, and during the blight, in 1:20 divine (the second blight ends in 1:95 divine, seventy-five years later) the inquisition signs the nevarran accord and become the seekers and the templars, the latter of which exists to hunt down mages to drag them to the circle, which is also established at this time, in an agreement between the inquisition and the andrastian chantry/orlesian empire. the templars are explicitly created to capture mages unwilling to submit to the circle and bring them in. that’s why templars are also referred to in-game as “magehunters”.

i want to note that there’s no indication here that the circles were set up for the protection of mages from the public -- mages had been living in society openly before this. mages themselves (as far as we can tell; maybe bioware will retcon this later and say mages in the first inquisition pushed for this... ) did not push for the creation of the circle; it was created under drakon’s chantry, in conjunction with the inquisition, which contained mages but at this point, the inquisition’s (mostly as a result of ameridan) main priority had shifted from dealing with magic -- it was supporting orlais against the blight. (which further establishes the very roots of the templars and the seekers as the chantry’s army by the time of dai.)

the inquisition’s whole purpose was to hunt down dangerous mages. they then transitioned into... essentially, what they are now. magehunters. but why hunt mages in the first place? orsino asks at the end of da2 why the chantry doesn't just drown mages at birth -- why lock them up in the circle? from a colder standpoint, why aren't mages just made tranquil the moment they're taken into the circle? it's certainly more profitable for the chantry, who can use the tranquil for enchantments, and it would entirely eliminate the so-called danger that mages pose to themselves and others simply by existing. presumably, it might even serve as a “punishment” for the magisters sidereal who were mages that unleashed the blight on the world (according to the chantry). why put them into a "magical boarding school" (again! it’s not a school, it’s a prison. the circles are a prison) in the first place if the very existence of mages is such a danger?

& i think the answer to that question lies in the relationship between the leaders of a nation and the chantry/the templars. the way it seems to work is that chantry law supercedes sovereign law (evidence: loghain's use of apostates against the wardens is labelled a crime by representatives of the chantry during the landsmeet; later in da2 alistair claims he can’t free the ferelden circle as the chantry opposed it) BUT the grey warden treaties supercede even chantry law (duncan is able to conscript amell/surana/tabris (the alienage, of course, is a chantry invention), the warden is able to conscript anders). when you play the mage origin in dao, you're immediately alerted to the fact that greagoir is agitated by duncan's presence, because duncan is recruiting mages for the grey wardens and he has no right to deny duncan that recruitment. this is explicitly exacerbated by the fact that cailan has been demanding mages for the battlefront for the king's army (confirmed by duncan & irving (in the circle tower) and alistair (in ostagar) separately) -- that's why wynne, uldred, and the group of circle mages were present at ostagar.

according to chantry law, which supercedes any ruling cailan could pass, mages belong in and to the circle. so how come cailan legally has the right to demand mages for the battlefront? why can’t greagoir -- the knight-commander of the tower -- simply say no? unless... you know. that was the real purpose of the circle’s creation. not for education. not for the protection of mages. but so that, as emperor, drakon would always have easy access to mages to supplement his army. he “utilised” mages during the blight (again! there’s no explanation of what the hell that means. did mages sign up willingly to fight for drakon? did he force them to work for orlais whenever/wherever he found one??) and splitting the inquisition (ameridan implies the inquisition were actively supporting orlais/drakon during the second blight) between hunting down mages and fighting the darkspawn seems like a waste of resources. but maybe that’s why the division between seekers and templars exist in the first place -- seekers were sent to the battlefront whilst templars, lesser in number maybe at the time, ran the circles as a source of mages. (over time, maybe, the numbers balance between seekers and templars reverse -- templars are easier to control, once the chantry monopolises the lyrium trade, compared to the seekers?) now that would be justification for shoving all these mages into a circle together, rather than just eradicating them on sight.

(it might even explain why meredith/elthina rejected alrik's tranquil solution in da2 on paper; they still needed the mages to fight against the qunari at the time, if they were ever to attack kirkwall. you can kind of see it during the battle in hightown -- meredith sent the mages ahead of her to deal with the qunari. mages are weapons to them. the circle exists to support the military endeavours of the chantry or of the leader of the nation.)

it would also explain why there’s some instances where sovereign law does seem to supercede the chantry law. on the one hand, templars are under the chantry’s control and nations could be convinced to allow the (orlesian) chantry to train templars in their lands to bring mages to the circle and combat dangerous magic (and of course the orlesian chantry monopolises lyrium trade with orzammar so presumably other countries can’t get their hands on it for themselves which yknow! what do people like to say about how the chantry is neutral or helping people again? monopolising the anti-magic serum so no one else can have it sure is very helpful and altruistic...). but why allow the circles to exist, under the power of a foreign-based system (the seat of power for the chantry, who controls the templars, is in orlais after all)? it could so easily be used against you... unless you were convinced that you could also utilise these mages during war.

so, considering this as the central reason for the establishment of the circle, does it mean the circle can't become a school? irl, as far as i know, formal schools started off as a way to educate the military, later to educate the workforce, and schools in colonised nations often served as a vehicle for cultural and religious assimilation. i don't think the circles, as they are, are exempt from this. we already know that the circles approach magic from an andrastian perspective -- it's most clearly highlighted in conversations between anders and merrill in da2, and vivienne and solas in dai. but we see it in how much keili is taught to hate herself in the magi origin in dao, the way magic is taught to be some unforgivable curse and sin. we know (some of) the circles teach mages battle magic (within reason; i always wonder if being set on fire or hit with lightning or whatever else is more than just a game mechanic and reflective of some kind of underpowering of spells so that mages can’t turn against their oppressors easily) probably specifically for the reason i outlined above -- you see mages being taught how to fight in the circle in dao during the magi origin alongside all of the lessons about how they must only ever use their magic to serve. already inherently, circle education functions to supplement the military and to serve as a vehicle for cultural & religious assimilation.

so... even if you were to "reform" the circle -- by removing templars, or removing it as an institution from chantry purview... or whatever vague "reforms" are actually implemented in dai...is the circle, itself, even as a "magical boarding school" necessary? is the circle actually necessary for mages to learn how to control their magic? and tbh the answer is no <3

like you see it time and time again, that you don’t need to go to magic school to learn how to use your magic. you meet so many talented mages who don't succumb to demonic possession or struggle with controlling their magic who didn't receive any education in the circle -- merrill, morrigan, zathrian, lanaya, aneirin, velanna, the hawkes (pc mage hawke, bethany).

later, you learn of the dairsmuid circle, where mages continued the same teachings that have been passed down to them for generations, with no sign that the city has been overrun by abominations or was threatened by uncontrollable magic. you learn of the avvar who willingly become “abominations” and unbecome them, with no loss of life on either side, or threat to the rest of their people.

the reason behind the establishment of the circle has nothing to do with education. any education that results from the circle is incidental to the main purpose -- which is to supply armies with magical power.

#i think there's a... trend sometimes to assign value to a formal education over other forms of education #but education itself is incredibly related to privilege STILL #tevinter essentially having a ruling mage class and the circles there being an elite education system like real-life universities...#it's not a coincidence lol #idk! i just really don't think a formal education system for magic should exist in the first place #it's not necessary???#mages in thedas do absolutely fine without needing some paper qualification saying they're now a qualified mage #my da meta #vee.txt #anti chantry #vee rewrites da

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hal-assan · 2 months

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Muse List

featured on hal-assan

Yvair Viriselan, of Clan Lavellan

Dalish rogue, skilled particularly in archery and tracking. While known to be sarcastic and rather flirtatious, Yvair genuinely is bighearted deep down and prone to self-sacrificial tendencies. Despite being overall a 'proud' Dalish, his beliefs could be considered more agnostic than faithful. While not blindly trusting of humans, Yvair is more willing than some Dalish to allow every human to make their own impression instead of outright assuming ill intent. Canon world state features him as Inquisitor, but a companion verse can be requested.

Sebastian Vael, Prince of Starkhaven

Devote Andrastian who despite his strong faith may be considered openminded, or critical of how the Chantry functions at times. He wants to be able to help those in need of it, and can struggle against making rash decisions. Defaults to friendship path, request if intended rivaled.

Elgaris Viriselan, of Clan Lavellan

Born initially to Clan Viriselan, after her magical capabilities unlocked Elgaris moved to Clan Lavellan alongside her older brother to take on the responsibility of learning to one day become a Keeper. Unlike her brother, Elgaris genuinely believes in the Evanuris. She is lighthearted and optimistic to the point some people may consider her to be naive. Defaults to First of Clan Lavellan, willing to play as Second to another Lavellan.

featured on splinteredglass

Tamlen, of Clan Sabrae

Raised a proud Dalish, Tamlen is wary of every human until given a good reason not to be. Doomed by his curious nature, the warrior ended up Blighted and conscripted to take on the Blight despite his protests. While he fought against the idea up until his Joining, Tamlen proves to be a great addition to the Warden's ranks. Canon worldstate has him stubbornly become the Hero of Ferelden due to delivering the killing blow to the Archdemon-- if his life is spared in the act, he is out of the loop as to how.

Fejin Mahariel, of Clan Sabrae

Fejin is morally grey-- someone who isn't concerned if they need to spill blood to get their job done. However as long as it is in their abilities, they will do their best to aid those less fortunate than them. Unfortunately for anyone who is better off, especially if they prove a terrible person, Fejin is not above thievery or other criminal activities. Usually an alternative to Tamlen, but happy to write it where both had survived.

Merrill Alerion, of Clan Sabrae

Despite turning to blood magic in an attempt to fix the eluvian that cost her the lives of her closest friends (be they dead or simply taken from the Clan), Merrill is nice to nearly everyone unless given a very good reason not to be. She seeks knowledge of her people's past and many may consider her naive or stupid, views she doesn't always try to correct. In some cases she'll lean into that belief and use it as an opportunity to troll or otherwise mess with those around her.

featured on asala-shokrakar

Archex, Tal-Vashoth

When it became clear that Archex was going to face re-education due to not quite conforming to what the Qun wanted of him, he took off despite having no idea of what to do with himself after gaining his freedom. In due time, the Qunari happens across a merchant under attack by bandits and steps in to save his life. The human befriends him, even taking him in as family and helps Archex eventually adjust to life as a Ferelden. Verse set for Inquisition, but happy to work out something for any other timeframe.

#ooc — 🔪 menace #picture heavy #long post #muse list #one day i need to log onto el and get the darker skintone mod working for her too actually cuz oof wait #but this works for now #me doing this dizzy and coming off a sickness is probably #the stupidest thing iv done in awhile #buuut! these things can be edited #and if i dont do it now i fear ill never do it later

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the-cryptographer · 1 year

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Friend told me that the things I like about Anders are the things that other fans dislike about him. And that's definitely true given I'll go off gleefully about how he's such a compelling and upsetting portrayal of racism in white leftists. But I think if I had to summarise, the thing I like best about Anders as a character is that all his best qualities are also his worst.

Like the fact that he is so stubborn and absolutely unwilling to take criticism from anyone (constructive or otherwise) (at least not insofar as it can't be used to throw self aggrandising and self destructive pity parties that result in no net changes to his behaviour) is simultaneously what makes him so absolutely insufferable with characters like Fenris and Merrill, and what makes him so resilient and amazing and able to weather years of being gaslit both within the Circle and by Andrastian society at large and still come out the other end with the unbroken conviction that the Circles are wrong and all mages deserve better.

#lork dragon age opinions

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anneapocalypse · 1 year

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It's really fascinating, looking back at my first impressions of Inquisition.

(Long rambling reflections follow!)

For one thing I had forgotten just how much trouble I had initially with the combat mechanics, with how different they were from the first two games. I was really struggling, and I think that had to have affected how the early game hit for me--it's difficult to take in a lot of the details when you're just trying to get a handle on the controls. It's always a challenge for me re-training my brain and muscle memory for a new game, but I think I'm much better at it now--these days I'm pretty frequently hopping back and forth between Dragon Age and FFXIV, very different games, without more than some hiccups.

I was playing exclusively on console at the time, and despite Inquisition's control scheme skewing heavily toward console, I much prefer it on PC. But I prefer basically everything on PC these days if I can get it. And still, the first time I played Inquisition on PC, I had to plug in a controller. Now I'm quite comfortable keyboard-and-mousing it, but it was a more difficult adjustment for DAI than for the previous two games, which I picked up pretty quickly.

It's genuinely funny reading my frustrated old liveblogs about TPKing in the Hinterlands, because... I've just reached that area in my replay, I'm playing the same character at the same difficulty level, I haven't even touched the companions' tactics yet, and I'm having no trouble taking down enemies. Even back then, I was like "This is just me being Bad at Games," and well, it was. :P I kinda have to conclude that I'm just plain Better at Games now! (The fact that on this playthrough I immediately crafted my own armor and weapons, which even with the most basic of materials still well outstrip the default kit, might also have something to do with it.)

One thing that has not changed: I hated the tac cam then and I hate it now. :P I still basically never use it in Inquisition.

Another thing that was clearly a big adjustment for me was just... this updated, higher-res vision of the world. In one of my early liveblogs I described it as feeling like "a weird fever dream about Thedas" rather than Thedas. Eight years and five playthroughs later, Inquisition is now fully integrated into my mental landscape of Thedas and I don't feel that way at all. Inquisition added a lot of new stuff, and it certainly recontextualized a lot of things we knew about the universe, but it doesn't on the whole feel like a departure from some pure vision to me; it's just a part of it.

I see a lot of criticisms and complaints in my early liveblogs. There are some that I still agree with. There are a lot of things that would be addressed, explained, or otherwise resolved later in the game. Like early on I talked about not being a big fan of "Chosen One" narratives, and in fact it turns out that the Inquisitor isn't a Chosen One at all, or at least it feels to me very intentionally written so that you can reject that reading, and the whole concept of Chosenness gets pretty thoroughly deconstructed later on. I made a crack about Haven having all these rough-hewn single-room cottages with fancy gilt-framed portraits on the wall--but even that starts to make more sense when I am reminded that Haven has been under the control of an Orlesian nobleman who married the Fereldan lady who owned the land, and in the intervening ten years it has become a pilgrimage destination for Andrastians with the means to make the trip--many of them likely Orlesian. That just wasn't something I was going to put together on my first clumsy playthrough, but now I see it. I do still have some lingering dislike for the word "Inquisition" being used for this organization and the whole game--I still kinda think it has a bit too much real-world baggage attached to it--but I've softened a little on that since playing Trespasser because I do think the game itself is meant to be subtly critical of the Inquisition as an institution. I was put off by how Leliana had grown away from her Origins self, but I've really completely come around on that since coming to better understand the things she's experienced in the intervening years. I read certain things as narrative framing the audience was meant to agree with which I now read as simply subjective in-character opinions (and which sometimes even have pushback from other characters.) I was really harsh on "The Dawn Will Come," which I read a lot differently now than I did then. I even unthinkingly repeated that now-extremely-tired joke about how there are barely any dragons in Dragon Age, which, embarrassing. :P (To be fair I didn't know about all the high dragons yet, but uh, still.)

I can confidently say today that the hair options are indeed bad--but also that they looked way worse on console. I stand behind wishing female dwarves were a bit broader and stockier, and I know I'm not alone in that. I was also mad about the continuing lack of dwarf romances, on which point I do have to concede that 2014!Anne was extremely valid. (I hadn't yet discovered the Harding mini-mance at the time, but that's still not a full romance).

I also said this:

For real though unless Skyhold has been protected by some kind of ancient elven magic, I can’t believe this game seriously expects me to believe this enormous and highly defensible fortress that is strategically placed near the Orlesian border has just lain empty for decades--

lol.

Going in, I see that I had pretty low expectations for the story but was really excited about the characters. Which isn't a bad approach to take necessarily (the characters are indeed great) but I also think I let a lot of the fandom climate at the time really... poison the well for me. When everyone's experiencing new canon for the first time, criticisms are inevitable and normal, but they can also get amplified and then sort of codified by that amplification and consensus to the point where, when the thing is actually addressed or resolved later in the story, it has an uphill battle to shake that already-crystallized idea that Thing Bad. (And that's to say nothing of the collective effect of so many people going in already having decided before the game came out that it would be Bad.) There are Thing Bad takes about Inquisition that are still common to this day, which I would have agreed with on that first playthrough, but no longer do because I've come to read them in a different light. More than anything, I regret being swayed by all the Sera hate I saw on my dash at the time to the point that I was honestly kind of afraid to give myself a chance to like her. When I finally did give Sera a chance I fell completely in love with her and she's ended up being one of my all-time faves.

Apart from that though, I was really loving the characters. I loved Cassandra, I loved Vivienne, I was digging the Josephine romance hard (and I'm so excited to finally finish it).

I actually put out a post asking followers to tell me if it was safe to proceed to close the Breach without finishing the Hinterlands because it seemed way too early to be endgame and I didn't want to lose any quests!

I wandered away from my first playthrough (and kinda from Dragon Age overall) somewhere mid-game, after "Here Lies the Abyss" but before "Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts." Looking at my old liveblogs I see that I was really loving my character, Calla Cadash; I made a lot of enthusiastic posts about her and her romance and friendships and I was even writing a ficlet series, and yet I do think that I was struggling a bit with her motivation to be in the Inquisition. Now that I've brought her back for a do-over, I think Calla is a great character that I'm going to love playing; she just wasn't a great first character for this game. Eleanor Trevelyan was the kind of character I needed to get me through my first playthrough: faithful but baffled, terrified but compassionate, a character who meshed easily with the plot and was motivated to do all the sidequests and most importantly had nowhere else to go. She was a perfect First Character. And once I knew the game and the story, it was easy enough to make up reasons why my other Inquisitors would stick around and become invested, and I got to start exploring other perspectives--but I needed that kind of First Character to get to know the story first. (Being a multi-world-state mess does work out well for me here. 😉)

As a part of this playthrough, I recreated my very first Warden, Jolene Cousland, and replayed her on PC. She is probably one of the more boring Wardens I've created, but it was fun to revisit her all the same, and more importantly she was a perfectly good First Character to introduce me to the game and the world. She worked. I still like her. I never really had a First Hawke, exactly, since I played Default Hawke the first time (super out of character for me but a friend at the time talked me into it; "Default Male Hawke is the best Hawke" was very much a Thing at the time 🙄). So I went ahead and made myself a new Hawke, Mallory, to fit into what is now my Rogues Gallery world state, and had a blast with her. And now, I'm back to Calla to finally give her the full story she deserves.

I've read through my old Calla posts, and some thing about her are definitely going to change, because I no longer have that First Playthrough pressure to see everything sitting on me. I get to focus on building the character, and seeing new things, and having fun with her.

It's been fun, if surreal and weird in some ways, to revisit that first playthrough and what my first thoughts on the game were, and how much my view of it has changed. I will certainly have all of this in mind when Dreadwolf comes out, and I have it in my hands and am experiencing it (and probably trying to learn a new combat system) for the first time.

#anne plays dai #many thoughts

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lukedanger · 1 year

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Ashley Williams Appreciation - Background Theme

Let’s kick this Appreciation Week by @cannot-rest off with something spicy… How about Ashley being religious?

Or more specifically, we should ask what we mean when we say Ashley is religious. The way it is usually bandied about, Ashley is portrayed as your standard issue (Christian) fundamentalist evangelical or a Sister of Battle born thirty-eight millennia too soon. However, this doesn’t actually line up with her characterization. If anything, I would posit that while Ashley is a believer, she is more of a ‘Sunday churchgoer’, and even that term gives off the wrong vibe. For her, it is a personal thing rather than a belonging in a community as the Abrahamic religions usually emphasize.

Ashley’s belief is not that of someone who is performing to identify her tribal group, that must be loudly professed and those willing to join evangelized. Ashley will even explicitly refute the idea that she would want to preach in the CiC if Shepard gets in her grill about it. So, that right there tells us that she is not an evangelical who thinks that everyone needs to worship the same way… yet it also does not mean that Ashley is not religious. After all, not every faith sends out missionaries to convert the other, even among the Abrahamic religions.

So, does she overtly practice any common rites that we might identify? Well, no. In fact, if not for Ashley explicitly confirming that she believes, would we from her dialogue even be able to ascertain it? I would say “yes” because of scenes such as mentioning her belief that Kaidan has to be in Heaven and the discussion about her father being dead, but those are singular scenes. Does this invalidate her being religious? Not at all - consider people you know who are religious but you do not interact with much outside of work. Would you say they are not religious because you don’t see them doing certain actions? Or, for that matter, do you even know what those practices are?

In fact, let’s compare her to Samara as I think this makes the difference telling. Samara’s idle animation on the SR-2 is practicing mediation, she explicitly discusses the Justicar Code as it applies to her and the mission. She is unquestionably a religious squadmate, and we don’t even know if she follows the Athame Doctrine or is a siarist - or maybe believes in both?

Ashley? She does none of this, and again we don’t even know if Ashley is Christian - we only assume it because that’s our ‘default’ for vaguely monotheistic IRL religions in the Anglosphere. Here, we hit the core of where religion factors into Ashley’s character. Namely, it is a facet of her but it is not and never was her defining feature. If anything, it is a part of herself that Ashley suppresses to fit in better given that she explicitly mentions that people considered her weird for it.

So, does this make Ashley a “bad” religious character? To that I ask what defines a “good” religious character? What must a character do to be a “good” religious character? And, perhaps, we should ask how religious a character needs to be. Look at Dragon Age, specifically the Andrastian companions. How many of them like Sera, Varric, Aveline, Alistair, or Wynne would you consider to be “bad religious characters” because it is not as important to their identity than it is for Cassandra, Sebastian, or Leliana? All those named DA characters are firmly Andrastian, yet only the latter three have it as critical to their identity as a character. And the last three don’t praise Andraste every time Henry Hawke comes to see them.

If you have been paying attention to the comparisons, you might notice that the ones that are hardcore about making their religion a part of their identity are those who are explicitly of religious vocation. Ashley is not. Given this and how rarely it comes up, how can we in good faith* say that Ashley being faithful means it has to be core to her the way it is for a Paladin in Dungeons and Dragons? *pun unintended

Does this mean that being religious is entirely unimportant to Ashley’s character and should have been left off? No, absolutely not. It actually tells us quite a bit about her - it tells us that Ashley believes in there being some order to the world, some rightness to it even if we cannot see it. “Everything happens for a reason, Shepard.” A way for Ashley to rationalize the undue hate she gets for events that happened before she was even conceived. A way to view an unfair world, to give her some element of certainty even if it cannot give her a direct hand in bettering herself. And in that, she is also humble: she explicitly denies the idea of humanity having any sort of divine destiny.

And Shepard recognizes what this points to - that for all the armor of cynicism she wears to protect herself, Ashley ultimately wants the galaxy to be a better place. So what does he do with that? He uses it to present to Ashley a different way of thinking: if the galaxy is meant to be a survival of the fittest where everyone looks out for number one, why even bother with this kind of diversity? And with that, Ashley is able to refocus the lenses she views the galaxy with and begins to comprehend that humanity can save itself by saving everyone - and to consider that the Council may also be viewing things in the same light.

It is an utterly beautiful sequence because in the end Ashley’s core motives all remain the same, but the difference it causes is profound. And even if Shepard does not romance* her and so does not put her on that path, Ashley still shifts her opinions to be more big picture rather than a narrow focus on what the Systems Alliance needed. Would it not make sense that after the experiences she finally gained in the first game, Ashley considered it herself and found a similar conclusion? Shepard can just kickstart it so it’s seen earlier, but in the end Ashely makes that leap of faith herself. *Why, Bioware, why would you lock this behind a romance?

TL;DR - Ashley is not an evangelical character, but she is a religious one. It’s just that to Ashley, religion is a very personal matter rather than one she needs to parade about to show as her tribal signifier or to win brownie points with the big G. Assuming that she has to is to reduce Ashley to a stereotype.

#my post #mass effect #meta #ashley williams #character analysis #AshleyWeek2023

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