I really don’t understand why it’s so important to some Cullenites that he not be a virgin. There’s appeal in a partner who knows their way around pleasure and sexuality like Zevran, Blackwall, Bull and Sebastian (he may be in the Chantry when Hawke meets him but he spent a lot of time in brothels before then). I get that part, but not every character will be the same.

For the record, I don’t care one way or the other. I think Cullen is inexperienced but I don’t care if he is or isn’t still a virgin when he meets the Inquisitor.

Cassandra admits to having only one lover before the Inquisitor but she practically grabs her man by the lapels and flattens him. She may have had sex, possibly many times with her one lover, but not like the list above. I wouldn’t necessarily call her widely experienced but she goes after what she wants without hesitation.

So does Cullen. The infamous/famous desk scene shows confidence but being a virgin or inexperienced doesn’t mean a person necessarily lacks confidence when they’ve arrived at a place where they know what they want. Cullen is a seasoned solider who is around 30 years old by that time. He’s gone through hell and back in his few decades of life.

Alistair was a bashful virgin in Origins but he was also supposed to be 19. There’s 10 years of hard living between Alistair, Origins Cullen blushing and running away, and Inquisition Cullen. He broke away from the Templars, got off lyrium, and began leading an army. That self confidence doesn’t necessarily have to be earned from having sex.

Some people have reasonable meta and headcannons as to why Cullen could have lost his virginity. Other people… ? It feels a lot like hypocrisy and virgin shaming to me. It’s like the toxic idea that men aren’t supposed to be virgins after a certain age but it’s okay for women. Men who are “too old” to be a virgin are less desirable for some reason. Men have the right to wait if they want to no differently that women. It’s okay for either anyone be a virgin at any age. It’s okay for people not to be. It’s okay to have had some sexual experiences but not had sex yet. People are varied, and so are Bioware characters.

And I still don’t care one way or the other with Cullen. It just bothers me that people can get so hung up on it as if it’s a crime that he’s never slept with anyone before the Inquisitor.

drinkyourjuicerodriguez added some great tags to this:

and while it doesn’t excuse his actions we need to take into account that he was so young when uldred went mad his writer says hes ‘around 30’ in inquisition which means he would have been probably 18-19 at that time after undergoing torture and implied rape he probably suffered crippling ptsd his fear and his youth probably made meredith single him out as someone who was easy to manipulate how else could someone so young already become second in command? but he doesn’t want to be a pawn and he caught onto meredith’s shit and soon had all of the templars skirting meredith and reporting to him and while you may have hated him he hated himself more this does not excuse his actions but his character arc in inquisition gives us more context one of the biggest themes of dragon age is whether or not people deserve a second chance to single cullen out as someone who isn’t redeemable compared to everyone else doesn’t seem fairalso cole himself says that he’s a good person and are you seriously going to question cole?

(I am not questioning Cole, for one <3)   

and there’s been some great back and forth, with alierakieron and more-aoe (the last of which I’ll link here, if anyone wants some other thoughts and additions to peruse.)

This is already very long, but I have a final thought: something that makes me very uncomfortable is the notion that Cullen somehow asked for or deserved what happened to him at Uldred’s hands. He is a VICTIM of Uldred. Uldred planned and premeditated his actions, and those actions killed dozens and dozens of people on all sides. Not all templars are Bad and not all mages are Good. People on both sides make mistakes, and we, as the player, see those mistakes repeatedly. People on both sides do not automatically hate the other, either. We also get a lot of canonical examples of that. This is not black and white stuff here. The system may be flawed and very much in need of change, but I will maintain that Cullen did not join the Order to hurt or control mages. That much is evident well before it’s stated in Inquisition. If naivete is a crime worth the punishment of what Uldred did, I think Cullen paid for it several times over. (And no, I am not blindly excusing his action—or inaction—in Kirkwall. But as I said above: he doesn’t stay in that place. He is—miracle of miracles—a canonically stubborn man who actually sees the error of his ways and tries to change. Bioware may not have shown us that change explicitly, but I don’t think they completely left it out of the narrative, when you look for references.)

tarysande replied to your chat: Anders: So, you were invested as a brother in the…

I think that’s a definite possibility. Anders’ single-mindedness and Sebastian’s unwillingness to acknowledge his own privilege really worked against any kind of good relationship they might have had. Especially since Anders is probably the most Andrastian of them all aside from Sebastian (depending on whether or not Beth is around). He brings up the Maker a lot when talking to Merrill, and in Awakening he talks about being a good little Andrastian before being taken to the Circle. It’s not clear if he’s actually very devout, but he definitely has the background and it seems like he does believe on some level.

Gah, this makes me have so many thoughts. Like oh, let’s go through things banter-by-banter thoughts. O____O (Which I’m not going to do, but OH THE THOUGHTS.) I kind of think the idea of Anders as lapsed (or, more likely, disappointed) Andrastian is interesting. (As an aside, do you know who doesn’t talk about the Maker? Justice. Like, I just scanned through his Awakening dialogue, and he talks about spirits and demons and such, but not the Maker. So perhaps there’s something to that? Justice is Justice; there’s no room for outside agency, even from a divine being?) There’s so much room for questioning the difference between faith and the absolute cock-up organized religion can make of faith.

…too many thoughts! None of them very cohesive at the moment :D (I WANT TO FILL IN ALL THE BACKSTORIES.)

Ooooh I never noticed that about Justice, but you’re right. And that’s very interesting. Hmmmm.

Interjecting in my official capacity as Queen of All Things Justice.

Justice does talk briefly about the Maker in a trigger point scene outside the Chantry in Amaranthine. The conversation can be summed up by him saying he doesn’t know if there’s a Maker, that’s he’s never seen any evidence of one and (MY FAVOURITE CONSPIRACY THEORY) maybe spirits and demons only believe in the Maker because they have seen him in the dreams of mortals. 

He says that no spirits or demons go to the Black City, and none of them know what it is. Now, he’s clearly taking it upon himself to speak on behalf of all spirits forever everywhere (Oh Justice darling, you’re so full of yourself) but it’s interesting nonetheless. 

Yes! I did remember that one conversation with the Warden (and should have been more clear, I think; it's only that he never mentions the Maker with any of the companions in any of the banters, which was related to how much Anders talks about the Maker--to justify or to rage against--in his DA2 banters). Thank you for posting the audio file, because yes, I do think that's a fabulous conspiracy theory ;D (And what do spirits think of the pantheon of the elves? I wonder.)