A Story with More Teeth [Solas Meta]

*this contains endgame and some romance spoilers for Dragon Age: Inquisition*

I’ve been struggling with Solas’s place in the narrative and the importance put on him since finishing, and replaying, Inquisition. He occupies an uncomfortably ambiguous place in the arc of the story, which is only compounded by an endgame reveal. In trying to unravel them, I came to one conclusion:

Solas’s character, and the story itself, would have been better served if he was the primary antagonist of Inquisition.

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The thing with Solas is… he woke up from uthenera to a world that he does not recognize, a horrible world where everything is awful, where his people are suffering badly, where everything he knows is gone. To put the cherry on top, it’s a world that he deliberately brought about by his own hands.

It’s exactly the same situation for Solas as it was for the Inquisitor when they time-traveled into the horrible future where Corypheus ruled. The Inquisitor had few qualms about sacrificing people in that future because it “didn’t really matter or exist” - the only thing that mattered was going back to the past to prevent that horrible future from occurring.

The Dalish derided and hated? The city elves in alienages? This is Solas’ Bad End Future. Solas does not consider the world around him to be truly real or right. He doesn’t understand the Dalish, and can hardly recognize them or City Elves as elves. He does not want to understand or even think about modern elves because it’s Solas’ fault that they were killed, that they were enslaved, that they have to live the terrible lives they do. He spends as much time in the Fade as possible because of escapism, frankly. Because some of his oldest friends still live there, and because he can still walk lost Arlathan’s streets in his dreams… he wants to be in the past again, where he didn’t fuck everything up. 

He’s very much a lost, isolated character looking for guidance, a true hermit of the tarot. Every conversation he has with the other companions is him desperately sound-boarding off them, “What should I do? What would you do? What can I do?” His conversations with Varric about the Man On The Island haunt me, especially. ("How can you be happy, surrendering? Knowing it will all end with you? How can you not fight?")

So yeah, he is a bitter sleepwalker trying not to invest in anything around him… because of self-preservation. Because if he invests emotionally in it, it will make everything harder. If he was truly an asshole, and if people truly didn’t matter to him, this wouldn’t be a problem for him. 

The touching part about Lavellan is not that he treats her better than other people, because he doesn’t. It’s that his feelings for her force him to confront the future that he made, and see it as real. (“You’re real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can’t.”) This future is real, and it’s something he made, and its reality matters deeply.

It’s the story of a god who is estranged from his people (literally, statues of Fen’Harel are not allowed inside Dalish camps) and his relationship with Lavellan helps him reconcile the reality of the world and decide what to do about it. It’s a sleeping god finally answering the call of the Dalish, who never expected to be answered. It’s a mortal convincing a god that his people still need protecting.

The story is incredibly touching to me, especially how I experienced it.

damn

I’m happy about this. A romancedLavellan!centric view of Solas as a character tends to dominate in the Solas fandom. Is the romance beautiful, emotive and well-written? Yes (it’s my favorite one).

But it’s secondary to his overarching story, as it should be. The most important things - and most interesting/compelling things, for me - about Solas are his ties to the main plot/storyline and revelations in the game, and the things his character embodies thematically. What is the nature of his identity, exactly? Is he carrying a piece of Fen’Harel’s spirit, as Flemeth did for Mythal? Is he Fen’Harel himself, and if so, what does that even mean - what were the ancient elven “gods”? Mages? Nobles? Spirits? Something we’ve never seen? What happened in his past? What is he currently planning? What’s he going to do going forward? And thematically his story is one of tragedy, one of pride and wisdom, of loneliness, guilt, deception, rebellion, change. He’s flawed. He’s grey. Before the game came out the aspect of his character that I was most interested in were the potential elf-related lore truthbombs that he would be telling us. This still holds.

I think a heavily romancedLavellan!centric view of Solas does him a disservice. Does the romance provide further insight into his character and motivations? Absolutely (that’s actually the most important function of the romance, for me - nothing to do with my Lavellan). But it’s not all that there is. His disapproval path, for example, also provides great insight into his character. His relationships with other members of the Inquisition are also really important - not just Lavellan. Solas and Cole is an obvious one. Consider too Solas and Bull, Solas and Blackwall. Romanced!Lavellan or Befriended!Inquisitor aren’t the only ones who surprise Solas. He tells Cass, for example, that she continues to surprise him. Suffice it to say that it’s not just All About Lavellan.

I’m sure that however it’s resolved, the writers will handle it well and it’ll be good. I’m also not of the opinion that a happy ending for Solavellan would automatically ruin him as a character. Still, at the moment, my worst Solas-related nightmare is a happy ending for the romance being shoehorned in for fanservice reasons (I acknowledge that this is highly unlikely - I’m just discussing worst-case scenarios) at the expense (betrayal) of his plans and motivations, of him as a character. Right now his plans are more important to him than Lavellan, and that’s okay. Romantic entanglements are not Everything.

I think the reason why I’m so in love with Bull is because I find him a fascinating study of dichotomy. He’s a spy for the qunari and he’s a loud, brash, unforgiving sort of gent. He’s strong and bold but also loves nugs and pink. He’s confident and secure in his sexuality and person, but his sexuality revolves around giving others pleasure - which gives him pleasure in return. He prefers the simple, direct approach but he’s also very smart and good at strategy (he beats Solas in mental chess.) 

He’s so complex but it masquerades as simplicity, and my writer’s fingers just want to jump into his character and find his motivations because his entire nature is so full of chaos and contradictions - but it still works. There’s only one fault I’ve ever found with Bull and that was that one bit of dialogue between him and Cole but the rest of him is accepting, comfortable in his skin and his sexuality and genuinely fun, if a little crude. Underneath it all, though, is this other layer, this deeper layer where he is a spy and is spying on the Inq and also using the Chargers as a cover to make people in Thedas more willing to work with him so he can study their political workings. 

And it’s that last bit that fascinates me, and it’s part that you only find out if you actually side with the qunari in Bull’s mission, because afterwards he tells the Inq that his relationship with the Chargers was effectively a lie. Now, I don’t think that’s as true as Bull wants it to be, but I think he definitely wants it to be the truth. 

(More rambling under cut)

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All That Remains + things that cannot be unsaid

This is exactly how I see Leandra too. There’s an element in there, of course she doesn’t HATE her children, but there’s such an incredible amount of resentment between her and her eldest child that to write it off as simply grieving is a misnomer, I think. 

I think it’s fairly clear that she resents Hawke for a number of reasons: knowing Malcolm better than she does (implied at the end of Legacy), failing to save him/acting as the head of the family despite the fact that she’s clearly not stepping into the role or even trying, the dead twin, etc. Moreover, I think it’s fairly obvious that Leandra and Malcolm were very much what would have happened if Romeo and Juliet hadn’t had a typically tragic ending: they were young, impulsive, and in “love,” but once you’ve given up everything, what does that really leave you with? A partner you barely know, who you’ve put all your trust into despite that, and despite however much Leandra says she puts love above all-else, we see even in her conversations with Gamlen that this very much isn’t necessarily the case, and she carries a lot of her bitterness with her. She wasn’t ready for what running away really meant, she was young enough to have very likely acted impulsively on a romantic ideal that didn’t pan out in any way she’d actually hoped.

It’s a really dysfunctional, bittersweet relationship, and I can’t at all blame Hawke for thinking this. Hawke’s already got a guilt complex a mile wide, no matter how you really play it; there’s a reason they take on all this responsibility that isn’t even necessarily theirs. With Malcolm, it’s all responsibility, and honor, and doing the right thing no matter how hard it is, and with Leandra, it’s all guilt, residual affects of growing jaded with where unchecked romance really leads.

She can be a caring figure, certainly, when she feels like it, but finding her to be a truly supportive one it a little harder for me, when she relies on her eldest child the way her younger children do. There’s such a lack of responsibility on Leandra’s part: something must always be someone’s fault, because surely SURELY there must still be some good left to come out of a foolish decision she made as a teenager. Their status in Kirkwall is Gamlen’s fault (which is true enough, but he DOES have a point in that she’s been away from home for 25 years; anything he does to drag the “family name” into poverty and squalor is his own doing, and while it’s hard to support his methods, he’s at least grown up enough to recognize the reality of his situation. Is Leandra’s anger at her brother entirely unjustified? No, but at the same time, she continually fails to recognize that she gave up her status, her family name, and her inheritances, and this attitude doesn’t come out of nowhere, suddenly rekindled after two decades of “hiatus.” It’s a failure to take responsibility. 

TL;DR, I seriously appreciate just how incredibly fucked up and dysfunctional Hawke family dynamics really are. It’s a family full of love that Hawke would and continually does put their life on the line for, but it’s not a healthy one. It’s not a supportive one. And I find it really telling that despite Malcolm’s questionable allegiances as an apostate, it’s THIS name that Hawke chooses to symbolize and hang onto, despite the fact that Leandra is clearly very ready to step back into the role of a noble that she’d “left behind.” Is it any surprise that Hawke seems so used to the responsibility, so easily stepping into the role as head of household when their parents are so embittered, disillusioned, and in Malcolm’s case, paranoid and uncommunicative?

Hawke’s so used to being the parent, being the one to take up responsibility that of course it’s going to kill them when they fail; they’ve been conditioned to impossible responsibility and the constant looming threat of guilt.

This depth makes my heart hurt.

Wow, this is such an excellent take. This is not how I’ve usually seen or headcanoned Leandra, but all this insight is really making me want to take a long second look at their relationship. 

I love this. Because it’s not that Leandra doesn’t love her children — of course she does, she adores them — it’s that she’s not a perfect woman: She makes mistakes, jumps to hurtful assumptions, and thrusts too much responsibility on her children, particularly her eldest. Not to mention that she’s still struggling with profound grief, not just over losing her child and her home, but the life she sacrificed everything for. 

She’s not a bad mother (just look at how her children turned out) nor is she a bad person. She’s just a complicated human being, with warts and flaws. Sometimes it’s hard to see them because we self-insert as her child, and it’s always tough to see your parents as people, not ideas,  even when said parents are digital. But I think a read on her character that acknowledges said faults and mistakes is far more illuminating than the alternative.

Personally, I think you can see a lot of Leandra in Carver and vice versa; certainly they manifest their grief in similar (hurtful) ways. I’ve always headcanoned that the two of them were particularly close (and I think there’s some good evidence in-game to support the theory).

So one of the pairing headcanons I’m working on made me realize that I have no idea how languages work in Thedas. So I guess this is my post of Figuring Out How Languages Work In Thedas.

The Dragon Age setting had the advantages of a lot of fantasy settings that they made up a “common tongue”/King’s Tongue/trade tongue (in this case, the trade tongue of the dwarves) that allows pretty much everyone to talk to pretty much everyone else. Even the qunari and the Dalish, who don’t appear to interact with other cultures all that much, speak it proficiently. 

It’s canonical that the common tongue (hereafter CT) is essentially the only language spoken in Orzammar and the other existing subterranean dwarven communities. It also appears to be the native language of both Ferelden and the Free Marches. (I suppose you might argue that the “original” native language of Ferelden was the patchwork of Chasind languages/dialects before the Chasind were pushed south to the Kocari Wilds, and probably the Marches spoke Tevene at one point.) This all makes a certain amount of sense to me: both Ferelden and the Marches were presumably settled by heterogenous groups of people who displaced the local language (Chasind or Tevene, respectively) with the probably pidgin-like language that they used to communicate with one another, the CT.

Then we get to Orlais, and my head starts to hurt.

Is there any actual evidence that Orlesian, as a language, exists? I mean, I feel like when playing DA:O I assumed that Orlesian was a language because of the extremely clear Ferelden:Orlais::England:France parallels, and, well, French is a language so probably Orlesian is a language? But the more I think about it, the more I’m unsure. When you’re sneaking around Halamshiral in DA:I, even the people you eavesdrop on (ie, who have no reason whatever to try to make it easier for you to understand them) appear to be speaking CT. The DA wiki says basically that Orlesian exists, but that almost all Orlesians are bilingual and that the only people who speak it exclusively are isolated rural communities. Given that even when it would be a major advantage to speak Orlesian (in front of an Inquisitor who they want to keep secrets from, who presumably doens’t speak the language) they speak the CT, I’m dubious of the ‘bilingual’ thing. It seems more likely that the language has died among the upper- and middle-class, and they speak CT primarily or even exclusively (with a strong potential for loanwords and specific idioms/phrases retained from old Orlesian), with the language only in active use in those isolated communities.

Antivan is another matter. A romanced Zevran uses a few Antivan phrases, and since we haven’t been to Antiva and seen dozens of people conveninetly speaking the CT (:P) I’m willing to assume that Antivan is a living language, with many Antivans (especially in the middle/upper classes) also speaking the CT fluently. 

Tevene is clearly a thing, although equally clearly the CT is commonly spoken there (Dorian, Fenris, and Krem all speak it flawlessly and without accent—or rather, with the Ferelden/Free March accent). One uncomfortable possibility is that since the Tevinters seem to steal a fair number of slaves from lands south of them, they keep up knowledge of CT in order to communicate with them. (I’m willing to assume that Dorian and his father are actually speaking Tevene to one another when we see them and it’s just translated for our benefit, since it’s one time and not an entire convenient palace full of people.)

Qunlat is clearly a language; it has untranslated/untranslatable words, and the qunari we see speaking CT (Sten, the Arishok, Tallis, Bull, etc.) are in positions where it’s reasonable to assume that they would have learned CT fluency to benefit their stations.

It’s implied that elvish isn’t really spoken even by elves, but I find that a bit hard to believe. That the Dalish almost all speak both CT and elvish, in order to operate in the world, I find entirely plausible. That elvish itself isn’t spoken, not so much. I’m willing to contradict canon on this and say that Dalish are almost all fluent in elvish, and simply speak CT when shem are around, because it’s easier/safer. Of course, I also think that Dalish elvish and “old elvish” are probably significantly different due to language drift—possibly not even mutually intelligible.

Rivain and Nevarra—do we even hear anything about their languages? I’m willing to believe that either/both have their own languages (especially Rivain, which is clearly culturally distinct than the Andrastian southern countries), but I don’t know that we have any actual indication of it. Cassandra speaks with an accent, but that doesn’t mean anything (Southern and Northern and Western Americans all speak with different accents, but all speak English); Isabela doesn’t, but that also doesn’t mean anything (she was taken from Rivain young, and also is a master of appearing to be what she wants to be).

So, I guess, in summary: my Dragon Age/Thedas language headcanons:

Things you should do in the Magi Origin:

Talk to Mouse while he’s here. He’ll paint a clearer picture of the Fade than any other source in the game. I still don’t know if he was the one the Warden was supposed to face, or an intruder preying on the unsuspecting apprentices and using the lesser demons called there as a vetting process. Neither option is a pleasant one.

Speak to every mage, every apprentice. There’s quite a few. You could be here a while. Learn about the apprentice who disappeared last week, vanished into thin air, and none of their friends will ever learn why. No one is panicking over this. It’s useless to panic. They aren’t ever coming back. Hear about the templars who may or may not be watching apprentices in the bath - it’s all hearsay but it doesn’t sound impossible by any means. Understand that you should not be up and about at all, you should be huddled in a dark corner with a bucket waiting for the lyrium to work its way out of your system - generally, about a week. Is the Warden truly that great, or just standing strong for a friend who needs them more?

Visit Duncan in his room. After you speak to Jowan, before you get the Rod. Talk to him about mages. He has emotions beyond mild frustration, difficult though it may be to believe. 

Betray Jowan, but only hesitantly. Accuse Irving of being vicious, extreme in his vengeance. The difference between Kinloch Hold and the Gallows is not that the former is in any way less abusive so much as the former is better, marginally, at hiding how deep the resentment and fear runs.

Talk to Owain. Pick every dialogue option. Yes even that one. My capacity to feel differs from yours, but you also differ from all other beings. You are no more a person than others, and I am no less a person than you are. Am I to be denied personhood because I do not feel as you do? Stare. Blink. Breathe. Throw everything you thought you knew about the Tranquil in the trash and start over.

My Heart Goes out to Sera

The following post is pro-Sera, so if you don’t want to read then skip.  If you don’t want to see any interpretation of Sera as anything other than a self-hating racist abuser I also suggest you skip.

So I’ve been compiling a long ass rant about Sera, using facts you learn from various ingame sources.  I’ve pretty much started dragging her along to places I normally don’t - I even replayed the first part of the City Elf warden origin and watched gameplay videos of the alienage quests.

Honestly, I didn’t like Sera at first - I tend to play diplomatic, conciliatory characters which don’t mesh well with her personality .  But as I’ve dug more and more into her past and the environment that shaped her I truly feel I’ve gotten a better taste of the real meat and complexity of her character. (And for an idea of what I mean, I’m nearly 8 pages into my writeup with her and I’m maybe ~50% through of what I want to cover; possibly a little bit less).

But even with what I had my understanding of Sera always felt a little patchwork, like I had the pieces but not the core of what put it together.  So I rushed a female Dalish inquisitor through the game up to Skyhold to play with Sera’s flirts to see if I could glean anything from that.  And just like how Sera’s surprised comment over my human Inquisitor treating her with acceptance despite their disagreement over Verchiel sparked my interest in her as something other than a bratty character, her reaction to my Inquisitor’s interest in her suddenly snapped the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Sera into place.

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Carver Hawke was 18 years old when he needed to leave his home and run from Darkspawn into the middle of nowhere. 

Carver Hawke was 18 years old when he watched his sister get killed and his mother essentially favored her dead child over her living ones.

Carver Hawke was 18 years old when he moved to a new city and had to work as an indentured servant to live there.

Carver Hawke has been living under his older sibling’s shadow his whole life. He’s been asked to grow up fast, but still kept under his sibling’s wing. He has no personal freedom no friends, and no life beyond his older sibling.

I think any younger sibling can attest to being stifled under an older sibling’s shadow, even well into their adult life. Can you imagine having so much personal upheaval and turmoil and still not being allowed to be your own person?

I wish this fandom would stop reducing Carver to a whiny pissbaby and understand that his actions are not without external cause. I think lots of under appreciated and stifled 18 year old kids would act EXACTLY the way Carver does, and yet when he does it, it’s awful.

STOP SHITTING ON CARVER HAWKE 2K15

Adding on. A lot of these things actually require inference which I think is asking too much of half of tumblr, but really though what cheeses me the fuck off is that people would rather dismiss them out of sheer convenience and complete inability to sympathise which really sounds like another way to say “wah this npc won’t kiss my humongous ego, they are all horrible manchildren”

1. When you do his personal quest he says this. “Father actually thought there was worth to a swordsman.” Which leads to the question: Just how bad was Malcolm at parenting that he made Carver feel completely worthless? But of course Bethany and, presumably, Garrett/Marian remember him fondly because they’re mages. Also we get the impression  that Malcolm was pretty much pro mage rights from the dialogue with Anders from both Bethany and Carver. 

2. He fucking protects the family no matter whether you’re playing a male or female hawke, it’s not a matter of property but a matter of personal alliegence and familial ties, what more do you want

3. You know what’s the worst way to make people feel hopeless? that they can never amount to anything, not in the eyes of society or in the eyes of their family or anything. Like how the fuck can you blame him for that. It’s you who are the mage, but he’s willing to go to the gallows for you if you’d come down to it. BUT NO BETTER FUCKING KILL HIM OFF BECAUSE OH WOW MY EGO IS HURT HOW DARE HE WNAT ANY THING BETTER FOR HIMSELF ASIDE FROM JUST SITTING IN THE SHADE FROM MY HUGE ASS HEAD

Sometimes I think about the Origins LIs and I feel like crying

Alistair, who was brought up considered a mistake - the Kings bastard, nothing but a shameful accident jeopardising the true heir’s position and Maric’s reputation - made to sleep in the kennels with the dogs, cast aside and given to the Chantry where he can’t make trouble. Shunned by nobles, mocked by commoners. Nobody ever noticing him except when convenient - nobody except Duncan, and Duncan isn’t here anymore. Leliana, recovering from betrayal. The realisation that every loving smile, every kiss and soft touch traded between herself and the woman she loved with all her heart - the woman she dedicated her life to, the woman she would have killed for, died for - was nothing but a lie. That for all Marjolaine meant to her, to Marjolaine she meant nothing.

Morrigan who was raised to believe love and goodness to be pretty lies, to see deceit and hatred everywhere, in everyone. Never viewed with anything but suspicion, hostility and at best hollow, meaningless lust from shallow men. Love is a lie and a weakness, only survival matters. Only power matters. The loneliness she feels is a weakness she doesn’t need, and she’s learnt to ignore how it aches.

Zevran, raised in a brothel where love is an illusion sold for coin. Sold on the slave market at seven to a guild of assassins who spent the rest of his training trying to break whatever love was left in him. Never having true loves or friendships, because how can you love anybody when you’re waiting for them to plunge a knife into your back? The only woman who loved him is dead (his fault) and he’s left with the hollow truth - she meant nothing. He means nothing.

And then comes the Warden. And Alistair finally has somebody who values him as more than Maric’s bastard son, who values who he is and what he wants, a woman mad and wonderful enough to look at the goofy wise-cracking idiot and go “yep, I love him.” Leliana finally has somebody who will return the gentle words and gestures with everything they have, because finally she means as much to her love as they do to her. Morrigan finally meeting a person willing to accept her wholly and completely, not cowed or full of fear and hatred for her power, but somebody who respects her. A man who views her not as some object of lust he can tame, but something far more. Love can be a power too. Zevran finally has somebody he can trust completely, somebody he can be safe with (safe to love, he didn’t even know that was possible). He has somebody who looks at him like he’s worth something. As though in their eyes he’s worth the entire world.

I have feelings

Do Dalish elves live in Aravels, or do they live in tents?

This is important to me.

Aravels in Origins seem to have tent-like extensions:

So the answer is sort of both. The canvas presumably packs away into the aravel when the clan’s on the move, then opens out again when they stop. There’s a schematic here.

The redesigned aravels in DA2/DAI are harder to work out, mostly because they’re not really big enough for anything. My guess is that this is a game resource issue, the same way as Amaranthine is more the size of a tiny town than a bustling port city (even by medieval standards), and aravels are intended to be a bit bigger - roughly the size of a Rromani caravan on the inside. If you wanted extra space, you could presumably run canvas down from the masts in a cone, generating a tent like we saw in Origins.

Thank you~ The DA II redesign was what made me start questioning it, because they’re pretty but waaay too small.

I’d question whether they have enough aravels for the entire clan, but I guess most of them live in forests so yeah, they’re not going to run out of resources.

Yeah. You couldn’t even fit the contents of the camp into the DA2 aravels, much less the people.

I found some concept art which might help:

Assuming this is one clan we’re seeing and not an arlathvhen, it looks like what we’re supposed to be imagining is one massive aravel surrounded by a bunch of smaller ones? Which would imply that the elves live in the smaller ones and the large one is used to carry their communal stuff; considering they have to cart around things like an entire blacksmith’s forge and any bulky ancient relics they might have (such as Merrill’s eluvian), that would make a lot more sense than those tiny little handcarts we see in-game.

There are quite a lot of aravels in that concept as well as that damn huge one. Considering in Inquisition not only is the clan we meet pretty small, and that they’re also slightly scattered it’s possible they tend to conceal quite a bit of their camp from outsiders even when they allow them in. Hmm.

Thanks for the input, btw. It’s very helpful.

No worries!

There is no way in hell that Dalish clans are as small as we usually see: the one in Origins is maybe 30 or 40 people, and the one in DA2 is even less than that. I’d guess the actual average clan size, if Bioware had infinite memory and resources to dedicate to making it realistic, would be around 100-200? Enough for breeding, at least.

At the same time, though, the one in Inquisition is about five people, and the clan members we’re missing usually seem to be the elderly, infirm, children and other noncombatants. (Excepting, of course, the eight or so kids running around in Origins - again, there’s no way a clan of 30 people could have that many kids at once.) So yeah, it’s entirely possible (even likely) that the rest of the clan is concealed somewhere nearby.

Considering the Chantry’s (and Bioware’s) propensity for wiping out entire clans, it honestly would not surprise me if the standard Dalish ‘camp’ is actually a chain of several camps, with the living quarters and most vulnerable members usually sequestered deep behind line upon line of warriors and hunters and the outermost camp consisting of only the people who need to deal with outsiders - the craftsmaster, the Keeper, and whoever’s there to protect them today.

Which raises questions about the kids in Origins, but then again, that clan had been suffering losses from the werewolves, and there was a Blight on. Maybe Zathrian had pulled everyone back into the centre for safety.

Solas' Rebellion and the Fen'Harel Allegory

The god Fen’Harel was asked by a village to kill a great beast. He came to the beast at dawn, and saw its strength, and knew it would slay him if he fought it. So instead, he shot an arrow up into the sky. The villagers asked Fen’Harel how he would save them, and he said to them, ‘When did I say that I would save you?’ And he left, and the great beast came into the village that night and killed the warriors, and the women, and the elders. It came to the children and opened its great maw, but then the arrow that Fen’Harel had loosed fell from the sky into the great beast’s mouth, and killed it. The children of the village wept for their parents and elders, but still they made an offering to Fen’Harel of thanks, for he had done what the villagers had asked. He had killed the beast, with his cunning, and a slow arrow that the beast never noticed.

This is a story of Fen’Harel found within The Masked Empire. I believe that it is an allegory for Solas’ rebellion. Solas wanted to save the slaves, but he couldn’t do it all at once. He needed time to plan and build his rebellion. So he fired his arrow (the rebellion) into the sky. It would strike the beast (the elvhen pantheon) unaware, but it wouldn’t be immediate. Solas is pragmatic and fatalistic. He knew that in order to save future generations, there would have to be sacrifices.

In Inquisition, Solas often speaks of having to make difficult decisions for the betterment of the populace. He believed that his rebellion would only end in a better life for the slaves and servants of the Gods. However, once he wakes up and sees the squalor the elves have been living in, both Dalish and not, he second guesses himself.

This is especially clear in the fade at Adamant, as the terror demon draws on his deepest fears. My best interpretation of what it says to Solas goes as follows: “Tell me, rebel. Did your victory mean nothing? Pride does not exist.” Meaning, that by destroying the hierarchy of ancient elf society, he also stole from them their pride.

Long story short, Solas isn’t evil, nor is he necessarily benevolent. He wanted justice for his people and was willing to pay a high price for it. He simply failed in doing so the first time. Will he be any more successful on his second attempt? Who knows. He’s obviously learned a lot from his mistakes, but despite his arrogance he still doesn’t have perfect foresight—as evidenced by the events of DAI.

Leliana's Development & Why It Is Natural (DA:I spoilers)

Alright, fandom, we need to get square on the character development of Leliana, because an astounding amount seem shocked at how she is presented in Inquisition, when in fact hers is one of the most genuien and smoothest transformations I have seen in any character.

Now the most common reactions I see to Sister Nightingale are;

So neither of these are entirely wrong, but neither do her character justice.

I feel like I have to begin from scratch, meaning Leliana’s Song and up Inquisition for this to be conveyed understandably. So head’s up for spoilers on both (and Origins).

First and foremost; what we see in Leliana’s Song is the start. She is not innocent from the start (, in fact she’s never truly that). What you see in Origins is a result of everything that happened in Leliana’s Song, which although released after Origins was already a part of her character through an edited version of the events told by Leliana herself.

The ‘everything’ is important here, because Leliana’s lessons from LS was not only that the Grand Game is dangerous and hurts people (which notably was something she had carelessly ignored because she had fun tricking and killing people) and that Andraste will guide her. The probably most defining change in her character is from when she trusts Marjolaine to remove the incriminating documents that would pin them both as traitors to Orlais and potentially start a war, to Marjolaine instead stabbing her in the guts and leaving her and her friends to take the blame and (unecessary and excessive) punishment. Leliana has lived a careless life of adopted nobility most of her life up until now, and when the Game suddenly isn’t as fun as its name makes it out to be Leliana is shocked. She now realises she had been blindly trusting,putting not only her own life but also her friends’ lives and the stability of two nations in danger. The fact that this realisation shakes her is what splits her and Marjolaine apart in personalities. (In the last paragraph you will see how she learnt from this and does not trust blindly in even the Chantry’s teachings.)

Now after Dorothea gives Leliana the key to escape (which in Inquisition Leliana phrases something like ‘she showed me that I could save myself’) we see a beaten and apathic Leliana. She’s lost, she doesn’t have a purpose, she doesn’t even want vengeance on Marjolaine because she doesn’t know who she is anymore. A recurring theme for Leliana is doubting her identity. When she was young she sought fun and danger, now she feels guilty for ever having wanted that because the idols she had were people like Marjolaine who are ultimately egoistic and unsympathetic.

Leliana stubbornly refuses any similarities with Marjolaine, and leaves her for the new guidance of the Chantry. When Leliana is lost she goes from one guide to another, to reveal but not create her core. This is later seen as the Warden and Inquisitor can influence how she acts upon her morals. Back on topic, however; Leliana refuses Marjolaine’s comparison of them because they do not share the same purpose. Leliana’s Song concludes with Leliana reflecting how her finding purpose is the heart of her story. She has found what she truly wants to dedicate her life to — the greater good, not the Game’s egoistic agenda, showing a great divide between Leliana and Marjolaine’s otherwise similar characters.

(A fun addition to this is the psychologist Søren Kirkegaard’s interpretation of mental development, in which a human goes from being satisfied by a life of aesthetics to a life dedicated to (religious) purpose and service.)

She now spends the next five years being taught how to be idealistically good. Desperately, we see her cling to this ideal way to be when she joins the Warden. She acts overwhelmingly innocent despite her natural contradictions because she needs to convince both those around her and herself that she can. But what gives her away is when her grey morals show, as in a few out of many examples here;

Both in Origins and Inquisition we see her willing to be merciless if it benefits a greater cause. This is also why I believe that some/most of her positive attitude in Origins is genuine; she is happy that she can lead a life of both elements of what has defined her so far, and she belives she is utilizing that for everyone’s best. Leliana has both idealistic and pragmatic sides to her. (This is likely why your Warden will get negative reaction from her when they can be helpful, and why she didn’t react as strongly to choices in Redcliffe as Alistair did among other reasons).

What Origins and Inquisition does, however, is show the doubt even now (yes, with a ten years gap and further adjustment of her character to the dark side of good). As stated earlier we are able to guide Leliana in both games because she lives a life of such conflicting morals, and the fact that this is believable is what makes her a well-written and strong character. The fact that she is doubting herself is why the Warden and Inquisitor can influence her — and fear not, dear gamers! Both unhardening and hardening Leliana is true to her character;

Either path shows that ultimately, Leliana does not only believe in the Maker no matter what but also in herself, which convictions are now so intertwined it is hard to say where one begins and the other ends. This is why she does not hesitate to become the Left Hand of the Divine, knowing what shady work it entails but also that she is doing it for the people of Thedas. This is why she is shaken seemingly out of her faith after the Conclave, but bounces back soon after. This is why, when she realises her socially-imposed ignorance towards the oppression of elves and mages, that she takes a stand for them because she believes without being told so that it is right. This is why her goal as Divine, no matter what, will be for the betterment of the oppressed and the inclusion of the excluded. Even in Origins you hear her contradicting the Chantry with her own interpretations of what is important, and as Left Hand and Divine she continues on this path by working towards conversion. No matter what paths she takes, she stays true to herself.

Leliana’s strength lies in her faith and doubt in herself, in others, in the Maker and everything. With both factors the writer has made a balanced, believable and still surprising character, who can genuinely be both merciful and merciless.

"Sometimes it takes another to show us the truths we hide from ourselves."                                   - Leliana, Dragon Age: Origins.

Headcanon: You can tell what school of magic a mage uses by their hands.

Spirit Healers will always have soft and supple hands, using their staff very little to heal groups when one-on-one healing works so much better. Should they have callouses on their hands, they focus mainly on the fingertips and the dip of the palms, where pestles would he held to grind up ingredients, or where examinations would be performed touching as little of the sore spot as possible.

Blood mages have much rougher hands, littered with scars. They often cut the palm with a small blade to hide their blood magic until the last second, rather than use the open flesh and more flowing blood from the wrist. Their fingers often have a much more reddish tint to them, barely visible, stained with blood.

Entropy mages have much harder skin, changed to deal with the magic of death attempting to decay their skin. But Entropic magic is also about restoration, and thus they also have patches of much softer, newer skin in more sensitive areas of their hands, such as between each finger.

Creation mages have much softer skin, though not as soft as those of healers. There are scars on their hands, tiny little nicks from each spell gone wrong that has had the reverse effect to what they wanted, glyphs that have been turned against them by mistake. Their hands are often the most obvious to see, as Creation magic is hard to master, and thus accidents happen often.

Force mages have incredibly rough skin. Using such raw magic to aid them causes their skin to become rougher, the sheer power of the force spells toughening even their nails, making it almost impossible for them to gain any scars.

Elemental mages can have a variety of different hands, although it is very easy to catch them out; their palms will be too warm or too cold depending on the spells they use most, and their continuous use of a staff to aim such spells on a greater scale means that there are callouses on the bend of their fingers, where they grip the staff in their hands.

Primal mages have very strong hands, though their skin is often the weakest. They back up their flesh with rock armour and things from the world around them, leading the backs of their hands to be littered with scrapes where a Stone Fist has rubbed against the skin. 

Shapeshifters are harder to determine, but can always be found out depending on how they hold things in their hands; the ability to change between man and beast means that they tend to hold things a little differently to most people. A spider shapeshifter, for example, would hold most items in the tips of their fingers, while a bear shapeshifter would hold it in the flat of their hand, fingers curled just enough to keep it in place.

The Last Mural in Skyhold Interpretations + Post-Game Theories

This is a long and detailed response that has a good amount of Solas meta in it, so I’m putting it all under a read more. All painting extracts are from thedosianimports.

First, I want to break down the last panel of the mural, then discuss what this could imply or potentially mean for DLC and DA4 plot.

Read More

"Solas" means "pride" in elvish

Solas is wise and friends with spirits of Wisdom

Corrupted spirits of Wisdom are Pride demons

Pride demons have multiple eyes

The black wolf Solas is depicted with on his Tower card has multiple eyes

I don’t think these things are coincidences

Well, given that his reverse card is the Heirophant, which is said to represent understanding and wisdom (well, one of the many interpretations), I think that’s a pretty good path to go down.

Also interesting:

"In Native America, the mythological association [for the Heirophant] is with the Coyote or Trickster God, one who is a teacher, a benefactor for the spiritual student, but who is often playful or mischievous.”

OK THO I’ve really been thinking about this.

Let’s start with Blackwall, who tries to see the best in everyone; when you talk to him about Solas, he says “That Solas… he knows everything about everything.” This would be wisdom/knowledge, the positive trait.

Then you talk to Sera, who’s much more apt to see people’s faults, things she can exploit, or perhaps she just expects everyone to let her down (which is sad, but that’s a different discussion). Her talk about Solas can be summarized by “Too stuck on the past, too stuck on what elves were, too stuck up in general.” Pride, the negative trait.

If you take Solas and Cole around a lot and you’ve encouraged Cole to become more human, he and Solas eventually have a discussion where Solas says Cole might become fully human, something he never thought to see. Cole then asks “Who was the last one you saw?” and Solas responds, “I never said that” - to which Cole’s answer is “Yes, sometimes it’s harder to hear those thoughts.” 

Then you add in just how many times you have the chance to gain approval with Solas for saying that spirits are people too, or by treating them well or respectfully, along with his ability to fade/dream walk - which, granted, could be thanks to the Fen’Harel/deity aspect, but it’s a trait associated with spirits.

Now I just need to go back and play through with the express intent of finding more about this~

I think another thing to consider is that the portrayals of Fen’Harel tend to focus on a duality. What the Dalish know to be a Dread god is actually a god of rebellion. There’s even a shrine to Fen’Harel that depicts this duality in the Exalted Plains. One statue features a white wolf, the other a black wolf (or blackened/burned?).

This can sort of tie into his tarot cards depending on if you romanced him or not: 

However, it can also be argued that other elven gods feature this duality. When you talk to Morrigan at Mythal’s temple, she says this about Mythal:

Solas responds to this with some disagreement, and when prompted, says this:

So I was poking through the toolset to figure out what Zevran thinks of the Dalish. What I found was a bit weird. It turns out that he disapproves a bit of attacking the Lady outright, disapproves a TON about attacking the Dalish, and only can gain approval under two ridiculously specific (but not mutually exclusive) set of circumstances: Persuade Swiftrunner and the Lady to attack the Dalish, but back down when he asks you to, or bring Zathrian down to kill the Lady, kill her, then turn around and kill Zathrian afterwards. A smart PC (Cunning 30+) can correctly assert that Zathrian actually wants to die (thus prolonging his life really wasn’t part of his motivation - he wanted a cure for his people without letting the werewolves free and if that happened to result in him not dying then meh fine whatever).

In fact, Zevran is the only companion to not approve (no change) other than Oghren (who disapproves for no reason I can explain) if you break the curse. (Sten only approves if you trick Zathrian into showing up, but all the others approve outright - yes, even Morrigan).

So now I’m wondering how closely Zevran’s ideal scenario is aligned with Zathrian’s. He doesn’t seem to like jumping in without hearing both sides of the story (because he disapproves if you just kill the Lady the first tine you meet her). But he doesn’t really seem to care if the curse is broken or not, so long as you don’t try and kill the Dalish. And once he realizes Zathrian isn’t necessary, he approves quite strongly of killing the guy. I wonder if this is because Zathrian deceived the Warden and endangered his people for his petty revenge, or just because Zevran is almost certainly smart enough to figure out he’s not the only guy in this room who wants to die.

As a side note, I strongly recommend everyone get this mod and try a playthrough with 30+ Cunning from the start. There’s a decent bit of dialogue hidden behind the High Cunning flag.