#regardless of the candidate's personal qualities but contrast with how it presents the orlesians

[s1ithers]

stolen throne screed. trying to reserve judgment in case this is going somewhere, but good god why'd they make maric such a dweeb. it's killing me. i have to talk shit.

this is such a bizarre character introduction, i can't tell how we're meant to take it. he's the son of a rebel queen growing up on the run with this guerilla army, but he treats it like his mom's boring job. he knows fuckall. when people declare fealty to him he doesn't know what to say. this guy who's been a prince all his life doesn't have (1) appropriate stock response drilled into him. he barely remembers how to knight a guy. he can't ride a horse. ask him anything about the war he's like wuhhh idk, mom does all that. sucks we have to march so much :(

like i hate him? his (mother's) followers are described as ragged & starving for this cause. our man cannot be bothered. i hate him so much

sure, 'hapless idiot = Relatable(tm)' is....a school....of protagonist design. 'naive young hero grows into leadership role' is a time-honored arc. but what hits so weird is the lack of splashover from this to the rest of the world, fine & good to make your protag a spoiled little shit but where's the in-universe logic for why he's like this?

moira is set up as a great queen and so far it seems like we're meant to take this description at face value. so this great ruler, whose goal is specifically the restoration of her bloodline to the throne, just couldn't be bothered to train her heir to even the most basic level. so the queen's characterization starts to fall apart. which makes the dedication of her followers less convincing. so you get this chain reaction of characterization issues that hollows out the whole thing

or maybe the queen intentionally sheltered her son to the point of uselessness for (???) reasons, which you'd think would take serious effort considering he grew up literally in army camps shoulder to shoulder with hardened guerrillas who're suffering all these hardships & risking their lives & apparently cool with the grownass adult prince mooning around just like, plugged into his gameboy in the back seat. which would set up an interesting dynamic! if it felt like the book was doing it on purpose. if that turns out to be the case i'll eat this post lol

but it's like, 'feckless princeling' is a type, and 'beloved warrior queen' is a type, and 'scrappy rebel army,' and they're all just sort of plucked out of the genre bag without much thought for how they interact or what meaning they create when juxtaposed yknow. and i feel like so often when the writing in DA falls down for me, it's because of this, the narrative locks into treating a character as the type or genre figure they represent, rather than respond to what they actually do or how they're situated in diegetic context

gamlen might be the ur-example of this to me. he absolutely got shafted by their parents. it's 100% fair to ask your relatives who've been crashing in your shitty apartment for a year to help out with rent and food. but he's designated Surly Deadbeat Uncle so he's not allowed to have a point. anders is the healer, what does he do in his free time? eh, he heals. running a nonprofit clinic for 7 years has no bearing on his role as the Preachy SJW Friend. it's writ large in da:i

it breaks the illusion of a living world bc background characters aren't allowed to react authentically. they have to look at this dipshit and be like ~ yay our beloved prince :) ~ they're just narrative puppets. it cheapens the MCs for obvious reasons

it's interesting bc da:o is so consciously built around inverting genre tropes and how that carries forward or doesn't as the series goes on. what gets identified as a Trope for that treatment and what seems to go unexamined

i think TST is suffering from the franchise's awkward genre transition. it sets up a story about rebellion & occupation, i went in wanting/expecting... obviously not realism, but at least as heavy stakes as da:o mostly tried to orient itself around. but maric (& rowan) feel more like characters from d&d-type light fantasy where that kind of thing really is meant to be a backdrop for the player characters to romp around in

AND. also from the series' long-running weirdness about what it is exactly the nobility are and do. but i think i've hit my daily word limit for bitching about DA lol