#descendant of the people solas vowed to protect raised by the people he chose to abandon

[ice-feast]

It wasn't one Dalish clan. It was every Dalish clan.

(Note: this is not uncritical Solas defence. I do think Solas is a fascinating character, but I am not at all interested in defending his shittiness.)

The story goes: the Dread Wolf imprisoned the gods and ran to the Fade to revel in his glee, and all elves are warned that he continually stalks them in their dreams. Listen not the Dread Wolf. He will trick you with his lies.

Solas, we learn, woke up about a year before the events in Inquisition, after millennia of slumber. All his stories about traveling the length and breadth of Thedas, of what he saw in the Fade: he saw because he was in the Fade. The entire history of Thedas seen through others' impressions in their dreams, acted out by spirits.

(it's kind of like using tumblr as your only source of news.)

He probably did reach out to those he met in dreams. But why would they listen? The Dread Wolf lies.

It's implied that the surviving elves are largely descendants of the ancient slave case. Everyone upper-class was either murdered, or died when their floating homes crashed. The academics? Largely gone with the libraries. It's the slaves on the ground who lived, and passed on stories about the man who ruined everything. Fen'harel, the one who got rid of the gods and made our existence bad.

And then? At night, when you dream - now the only means of accessing the Beyond - you meet the Dread Wolf. He tries to explain what he did, his motivations, why the Evanuris were the villains, actually. Why would you listen? He's the bad! He's the one who took away magic! He's the reason you are now at the mercy of the humans from the north!

So you tell your descendants: beware the Dread Wolf. He stalks our dreams. Be vigilant. He is our eternal enemy.

And from Solas' point of view, several thousand years of this gets old fast. Why should he bother explaining anything to these elves? They refuse to listen. When the Dales were created perhaps he reached out, tried to help, tried to instruct and aid as the elves pieced together their history and their culture - but they spurned him. They prefer to cling to the half-remembered lies of the Evanuris, the stories they have passed on from parent to child. So why should Solas bother? They only ever reject his words.

Consider: Dalish clans call their leader their Keeper. In the Temple of Dirthamen, they call him - their god, their master - their Keeper. Half-remembered vocabulary, facial tattoos, bits and pieces clung to taken and spun into culture: the elves are building themselves back up from nothing. And then some bald guy turns up in your dreams and tells you you're wrong? These things you have turned into pride are actually marks of shame? Fuck off, you bald weirdo! Ah wait shit it was the Dread Wolf, well that explains why he said that stuff. The Dread Wolf lies!

So Solas gave up.

And there's something genuinely tragic in that. The people Solas dedicated himself to helping, now the subject of his bitterness, because they didn't listen the way he wanted them to. He dismisses them out of turn. He has abandoned the descendants of the very people he took up arms for.

every so often i think about whatever dalish elf clan gave solas such a bad impression. whatever happened i bet they had a really weird day or two that they still talk about