The first time I did the fade portion of Here Lies the Abyss I was intrigued by this line and the idea that emotions had arose over time. I wondered what the implications of that could be.
Apparently there have also been emotions that have disappeared, that are no longer experienced by people in modern Thedas:
Inquisitor: Tell me about a spirit you encountered.
Solas: I found an ancient spirit who had once been undisputed king of almost every land I had discovered. Like pride or rage, it was the Fade’s reflection of a feeling. When I asked which one it was, the spirit faltered. “They’ve forgotten,” said the spirit. “There remains no word for what I was.”
So whatever the emotion that spirit represented was something felt in almost every land Solas is aware of and now it is utterly forgotten. That feelings loss effects both the fade and the waking world. Since if embodied people are no longer experiencing a feeling, spirits will no longer be able to reflect it. Leaving that spirit unable to describe to Solas what it represents.
The first quote suggests that the more complex emotions that arguably give life a higher meaning came into being after the primal emotions that are necessary for survival. Because of this I think perhaps that the first emotions to be destroyed would also be the more complex emotions.
I haven’t seen any explanation as to how the process of creation and destruction of emotions work. But I realized that if the veil somehow destroyed some of the emotions that people perceive and those missing emotions where akin to the emotions that Solas mentions like love and compassion that has some chilling repercussions.
It would add a lot of context I think to why Solas describes modern people as tranquil like as well as Abelas’ belief that modern elves are shadow like and unable to conceive of what was lost.
If you encountered people who didn’t experience emotions like love and compassion they would seem sociopathic at worst, and emotionally stunted at best. Even if we are talking about a slightly less noble emotion such as pride, I think a person who was missing it entirely would seem strange.
So far every Ancient elf we know of has described modern people in similar unflattering terms. It would makes sense if that response was a reaction to modern people missing some emotions, especially keeping in mind that the Elvhen would have never encountered people like that in their time.
I’m gonna venture an alternative interpretation, which is not so much that emotions have been lost over time, but that the methods of expressing and processing them have changed drastically.
The spirit Solas describes still exists. It just can’t articulate its nature in a way he understands.
That, to me, says that what it represents also still exists – but not in a way that it can articulate to Solas, with his frame of reference. Meaning, the issue is not that people are no longer feeling more complex emotions, but that Solas’ means of comprehending such things and people’s methods of expressing them are no longer in sync.
Emotions which have changed in this sense are probably feelings that are strongly tied to magic, and expressions of individual will via magic. Considering magic is a manifestation of personal intent or perception, and that in pre-Veil times it was ubiquitous, there were probably all kinds of specific ways in which ancient elves expressed certain emotions with magic. Maybe even exclusively with magic. Ways which would have been as natural as laughing or crying. But when the Veil went up, even mages couldn’t just thoughtlessly express everything in magical terms, because magic was behind a barrier. Rather than being ambient and, y’know, ever-present.
So to Solas, it would seem – metaphorically – like people have lost the ability to be genuinely sad. But in reality, they have only lost the ability to cry.
(This still fits perfectly with his Tranquil metaphor, though, because there is also evidence to suggest that the Tranquil do still feel emotion, but have only lost the ability to express, articulate, or act upon their feelings in the same way that other people do.)
funeral-biscuit 