#citizens of elvhenan which if solas ever found out he'd pop a vein but that's from the tabletop rpg

[theharellan]

I played Here Lies the Abyss the other week and I wanted to write something about Solas’ feelings regarding the Wardens, and how I approach it in roleplay. When I first played the game they were probably the place where my opinions diverged most from his, DA:O was my first game and my feelings about the Wardens were overall positive and uncritical. Replaying the series thinking about and reexamining their actions throughout made me much more sympathetic to his perspective, even though I still believe allying with them is better for the Inquisition and especially the Order itself.

The root of Solas’ anger seems to involve information we’re not privy to. He believes that using demons to destroy the slumbering Archdemons may lead to more trouble, which is something most companions seem to be in agreement on even without the extra context of Erimond’s deception. But there’s a little more to it than that. Solas doesn’t seem to think Archdemons are the root of the Blight, nor that destroying them will solve the problem. Solas isn’t the first person with this opinion, off the top of my head there is a dwarf in Origins (I believe it’s a Legionnaire, although it may also be from a codex) who believes that when the last Archdemon is destroyed the darkspawn will just cover the land in Blight and dwarves in general write about how humans misunderstand the Darkspawn threat. But so far as Solas is concerned these banters I think allude to this most clearly:

Solas: The Wardens see themselves as the world's defense against the Blight, do they not? Blackwall: Yes... why do you sound so skeptical? Doesn't everyone know this? Solas: When an Archdemon rises, they slay it. What will they do when all the Archdemons are slain? Blackwall: Retire? Solas: Without Archdemons, there can be no Blights. Is that the reasoning? Blackwall: Right. Where are you going with this? Solas: Nowhere. I hope they are correct.

And in this Varric banter:

Solas: The Grey Wardens allow elves and dwarves into their ranks? Varric: Qunari too I imagine. They don't care about titles or blood, just stopping the Blight. Solas: A pity they do it so badly then. (Post-Revelations with Blackwall in the party) Blackwall: Would you care to repeat that? Solas: I would be happy to argue the point with an actual Grey Warden. Solas: Argue if you like, your fight against the darkspawn is noble, but what progress have you made? (Otherwise) Varric: Give them some credit, it's not like you can study the Blight safely. I may not like everything they've done, but without the wardens, we'd all be blighted by now. Solas: They've bought us some time, I will grant them that.

Now, I could get into theories about the Blight, the connections to Andruil, the connections to Ghilan’nain, hints that Solas’ apocalypse is in part to subvert another, greater apocalypse potentially at the hands of the Blight rather than a simple return to a pre-Veil world. But a) that would take me a while to get into and b) for the purposes of rp I try to keep away from leaning on theories that I’m not super committed to, and for the moment I’m content with Solas’ knowledge of the Blight’s origins remaining a nebulous thing that hangs over all his feelings about the Wardens and the Blight, heaping upon what I talk about in this post.

Solas is highly critical of orders, believing that even when begun with noble purpose they inevitably fall from them or that the purpose is somehow corrupted. When it concerns Wardens he will concede on occasion that they possess admirable qualities, such as during Jana’s recruitment, but ultimately feels that their purpose is so singular that it blinds them to a larger picture. You can see this in bits and pieces throughout the series, barely lifting a hand to stop a qunari invasion of Kirkwall to instead turn their attention to some future threat, unleashing Corypheus in hopes of being able to control the Blight, but it’s most on display during Here Lies the Abyss.

There is an insidious nature to the Warden’s recruitment process that doesn’t sit right with Solas, and while he isn’t privy to all the information we are as players of Origins, even going off what he does know he doesn’t like what he sees. As Fen’Harel, recruitment was a voluntary process and not necessary to earn the revolution’s protection: “Rest, knowing the Dread Wolf guards you and his people guard this valley...  He leads only those who would help willingly. Let none be beholden but by choice.” (x) Freedom is important to him during the recruitment process, and something that’s underrepresented in the Wardens. Even those who choose to be Wardens do not do so with a full understanding of what a Warden is and the consequences of recruitment, and many more are forcibly recruited criminals. As I said, Solas doesn’t necessarily know all the details of what Wardens are nor what the process of becoming one entails, so it’s this latter detail (one which is public knowledge) that he takes issue with. We see it in Origins with Duncan taking advantage of HoF’s precarious position to earn another recruit, potentially exploiting their status as a marginalised class/race/etc. It runs counter to how Solas believes just organisations should operate.

The demon army. A lot of attention in-game is paid to the horror of Wardens killing their own men and turning the mages into thralls, and rightfully so, that is indeed terrible. From Solas’ perspective the crime is twofold. It seems unlikely that the spirits summoned by Erimond and the Wardens were recruits, and even if some were their free will was also lost in the process. Replay Here Lies the Abyss keeping in mind that spirits are people and it’s a lot easier to understand Solas’ sigh if you decide to ally with them. For my Solas’ part, there is a significant part of him that wonders if the Inquisitor would make the same choice to forgive were it human civilians who were to act as cannon fodder for the Darkspawn rather than spirits.

The Wardens avoiding politics isn’t something that sits well with my Solas specifically. By making that choice, they are in essence choosing to uphold Thedas as it currently exists, and coincidentally also allowing recruitment for poor elves or imprisoned mages seem like a way out of their helpless situations. While the Wardens are by no means to blame for the Chantry or the Circle, by not taking a stance as an order they do unofficially stand beside them.

Despite all of this, however, he’s much more capable of respecting individual Wardens than he is, say, individual Templars (although he speaks highly of Ser Barris, indicating that even then it’s a system vs individual). A Warden’s purpose isn’t to act as a jailer to innocent mages, to children. Wardens who diverge from this single-minded path, who help innocents, who look for ways to help solve the Blight in ways more nuanced than throwing bodies at it, he can easily respect despite his issues with their order. Blackwall is one such Warden, or he is so far as Solas is aware. The Hero of Ferelden is potentially another, given that he has travelled Ferelden where there may be no shortage of tales where the Warden didn’t act as a neutral party, but tried to help people in a similar manner to the Inquisitor. His issues with the Wardens as an order doesn’t necessarily translate to issues with Wardens as people.