honestly the Chantry recruiting templars from their orphanages, WHERE THEY PUT THE CHILDREN THEY TAKE FROM MAGES, is so fucked up
what do you think the Chantry tells those kids tho
Child: What happened to my parents?
Sister/Brother : *noncomittal grunt* *vague hand gesture*
I mean, there’s really only two options here: either they tell them “your parents are monsters and we took you away from them because you’re a monster too and monsters don’t deserve parents,” or they lie through their teeth and tell them “your parents didn’t want you” or, perhaps more kindly, “your parents are dead”
Of the these options I’m inclined to believe “your parents didn’t want you” is the most oft-repeated, since of the two cases we’ve seen of women giving birth in the Circle and being forced to give up the child (Wynne and Fiona,) both came with a hefty dose of victim-blaming towards the mother. In both cases the mother is made to feel guilty for “choosing” to give up the child even though there was no choice whatsoever.
Would the kids of mages ever find out?
The Templars could eventually see babies being taken from mages. And they have to ask permission to get married. Mages blooded ones could get told no.
Would mage born templars be warned they stand a greater risk for having mage kids?
If the chantry wants to cut down on the number of mages then they want to stop mage blooded people from “breeding” like they do for mages right??
That is the beauty of taking mage orphans as Templar recruits: it keeps them under the Chantry’s eye. They stay in the same prison, albeit on the other side of the bars. The Chantry will be able to keep close track of them and if they or any of their family ever shows signs of mage talent, they can be put right back in the Circle immediately.
Also, it’s possible that mage-blooded Templars are actually more effective at Templar skills. Alistair doesn’t even need lyrium to use them. Meredith (whose sister was a mage) gets final boss powers simply from proximity exposure to red lyrium. So that’s likely another reason why the Chantry would recruit Templars that way. Lyrium is expensive, and you don’t need as much for the not-quite-a-mage recruits and they’re easier to train.
now, that’s an interesting theory
I wish there was a side quest or war table mission or even a full plot twist where the inquisitor would find the records of all these families who were essentially bred out of existence (because the key to this level of surveillance would be impeccable records) and have the choice to publish these records for the rebel mages to find their parents, their children, their siblings either within their own sides or out in the world or even on the other side. Templars would know why they were denied permission to marry. Both sides would have to reconcile this new layer to their identity: “My son is a templar in Kirkwall.” “I have siblings in the Montsimmard Circle.”
And when both sides have grieved and raged and reconnected they would look at the Chantry who did this to them—who pitted them against each other for no easily defensible reason—and burn it down.
Just overheard a girl say proudly and laughing like crazy “let’s get one thing straight! i am!!”. I hope she caught my gaze afterwards because my mere two pupils conveyed a sped-up powerpoint of all the reasons why straight people have been ruining jokes since 3000 BC.
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 