#seriously qunari shadow dragon rook is so ripe for complicated and fraught relationships with culture

[valiantvillain]

I like to headcanon that even though Asala has lived in Tevinter since she was eleven, she still often refers to Qunari and Qunari culture as "we" because on some level she still sees them as her people. Even though her father and Tevinter military picked her child's brain for any secrets on the Qunari to use against the people that turned her into a saarebas and put a collar on her. Even as she's terrified of the Antaam and the idea of the Qun taking over the rest of Thedas, part of her will still love the very people that rejected her, pity the Antaam because she knows nothing but battle and conquest for skills. Because at one time she was one of them, likely to be set on the path of either an ashkarii or a tamassran until her magic manifested. And she still sees them as the messy people they are and the imprint that will ever be left on her, especially when the rest of the world won't let her forget that she's an other. That it doesn't matter that the actual term for her is Tal-Vashoth, the world will only ever see her as Qunari because the horns are all the identification anyone else needs. So when conversation turns to the Qunari, she uses "we" and "they" pretty interchangeably because she no longer knows where exactly she drifts between the two anymore.