#those howling statues “guarding and attending” has sent me down the biggest anger spiral about Second to Mythal solas

[hoboblaidd]

Solas recognizes the injustice and abuse suffered by everyone else, but can’t let himself accept it in himself. It all begins and ends with Mythal, and while the circumstances are mythological and world-shaking, the core of that belief is tragically “mundane” (meaning here "of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one", not that it's trivial).

It’s the same thing we see in real life when you love someone unconditionally who doesn’t return it without conditions. You want to believe they love you the same way, and sometimes you’re blinded (either wholly or willfully) to the hard fact that they don’t.

I don’t think Solas accepted that he was a slave (he knew it deep down), because he couldn't accept that Mythal didn’t love him as an equal rather than as an “insubordinate and unmanageable” “lapdog” who is in her “service.” He was branded with a vallaslin, and knew “those cruel markings” were slave markings, but he couldn’t accept that Mythal would consider him a subservient. He has her on a pedestal because it's too painful to admit she's down in the mud with the other Evanuris.

ANFH, Subjected to His Will, and his reaction to the geas are these moments where Solas projects the truth of himself onto the situation and speaks or acts out what he can't otherwise say/do with respect to himself. He knows Mythal strong-armed him into a body and used him against his purpose, but he can only safely give that thought voice when it's related to someone else. He kills the mages (again on this blog, he does it regardless of what you want) and encourages Cole to hold onto being a spirit because that’s what he wishes he’d done as much as those were things he could never do. He bluntly calls the geas slavery and that it makes the bearer "Mythal's creature," but he can't admit that Mythal twisted him into the same.