#they made Solas technically more sympathetic but also way less understandable

[octosan]

kcwriter-blog I agree. He wasn’t the same guy. Also while I believe Solas would kill a friend, I don’t think he would stab him the back. It’s just out of character. So a Felassan is just another way for the devs to say “no he really is a bad guy”

Well and the other thing is that Solas' reasons for killing Felassan don't even make sense to me now.

I know a lot of people go #JusticeForFelassan and point out that "Betrayal of Felassan" refers to Solas betraying Felassan and not the other way around and like, I do vibe with that? But by telling Solas that he was not going to take the eluvians and suggesting that they just give this world a chance, Felassan literally did betray him. He essentially told him, in couched language, that he was not going to prioritize the ancient elves over modern Thedosians anymore.

Obviously it is a good thing that Felassan did this and that's not something he needs to be criticized for (though I kind of wish we'd gotten confirmation that he feels this way about all elves and not just Briala's people, because whew the sheer contempt he had for the Dalish-) but in a version of the story where Solas believes he must destroy Thedas for the sake of his own people, it makes sense to me for him to have killed Felassan for this, because Felassan is literally a threat to his cause now. And furthermore, the vibe from that scene in the story was that Felassan knew very well that Solas would kill him for this. He chose to go there after considering hiding from him forever, the narrative says that he knew going in that nothing he said would be enough. So whether or not Solas literally stabbed him from behind is immaterial imo.

Killing him mid-sentence was to me also symptomatic to how Solas Cannot view modern Thedosians as people because of how much harder that would make what he feels he has to do. Not to keep pointing to that Solavellan evidence here but that's reflected in the Cole banter after the break-up. "You're real and so everyone could be, it changes everything but it can't." Solas will also admit to a friendly Inquisitor that having accepted that Thedosians are people will "not make what must come next any easier".

Briala CAN'T remind Felassan of him. Solas CAN'T find Briala's goals sympathetic. Because if he does, how is he supposed to be okay with destroying everything she's working for when he brings the Veil down? And yet he MUST bring the Veil down or he would be betraying his own people too.

Now that Veilguard has removed the ancient elves from the narrative entirely and retconned him into just blindly hoping that all modern elves benefit from the Veil coming down, he and Felassan want the exact same thing (for modern elves to have a chance.) So now his killing him has been reduced to (essentially) a petty disagreement on how to help modern elves, and Solas killing Felassan mid-sentence a symptom of him just... rashly killing people? Rather than him decisively doing what he feels he must for the sake of people who actually exist and need him.