people here like “the inquisition risked their lives to end the war anders started” and i’m like???? um hello??? anders gave up his life — offered his neck on a silver platter — for this. anders didn’t risk his life, he walked into that fight believing he was a dead man. no chance of survival.
he did that because he knew there was no alternative. not to start a war, but to finally put it out in the open, to give mages a fighting chance. those are his words. mages were being systemically massacred, raped, turned tranquil to make them easier to abuse, killing themselves in droves because there was no escaping the templars, no escaping the chantry, no escaping the thedosian everyman’s mass disgust and fear of mages.
the chantry was in charge of the templars. it is not some innocent charitable organization, but a military one, wielding the sword of divine right to abuse mages to their breaking point, and then driving the sword home when the mages finally fight back. for years anders did everything humanly possible to end this war peacefully. he blew up the chantry because he was being ignored by everyone — by those in power, by his friends, even by his potential lover. he blew up the chantry because mages were already suffering and had been suffering for 1000+ years, not to pick a fight.
if you think anders started a war, you haven’t been paying attention.
Cassandra: What the templars did to you, to the real Cole… I knew the treatment was harsh, but…
Cole: Yes. Beatings, worse. “Do you remember telling me no? You can’t do that now. The Tranquil don’t say no to anything.”
#this is literally one of the most important pieces of dialogue to me#literally one of the most important in the game#not just because it’s cole who can’t really lie#but because cassandra didn’t know#cassandra was a seeker. she was responsible for overseeing the templars. and she had no idea.#dragon age inquisition
I’ve just started Act III of DA2, and am kind of flabbergasted by the way the conflict is being framed on the Chantry side. I was looking forward for an opportunity to see Leiliana again, and hopeful that the presence of a Seeker in the city meant that the Divine was prepared to intervene, she being the only one capable of taking Meredith out of power, since Elthina consistently refused to take action.
Instead, literally the only intent anyone involved with the Chantry ever voices – – Sebastian, Elthina, Leiliana – is suppression. There’s not even the slightest spark of interest in finding out why the mages are acting up, despite Orsino (and, hypothetically, Anders, given his comment after ‘Dissent’ about how he’ll try talking to the Grand Cleric in hopes of getting her to see his concerns) yelling them at the top of their lungs to anyone who will listen. There’s not even a modicum of interest in investigating the Templars’ blatantly illegal actions, or consideration of reprimand or replacement for Meredith, who as Anders puts it, “even her own people admit that she’s gone over the edge.”
Leiliana, in her role as seeker, has exactly one binary question that she poses: Does the Chantry massacre the city, or does the Chantry do nothing? Literally no other options are ever considered, or even presented.
Yet fast-forward a few years to the beginning of Inquisition, and apparently Divine Justiana has changed her tune: she’s actually willing to mediate the conflict to try to end the Mage/Templar war. Now she’s willing to listen. Now she’s willing to take diplomatic action.
Apparently to get the Chantry to listen, you have to speak to them in the only language they understand: Violence.
…Kind of sounds like Anders knew what he was about.
Ah yeah, there’s the Cole dialogue I was looking for a while back. I was under the impression he said it to the Inquisitor; now that I know it was to Cassandra, I went and found the other variant (as he says different things depending on how his personal quest was resolved):
- Cole: There were beatings, worse than beatings. “If you tell anyone, I’ll say you used blood magic.”
Which pretty much confirms what pro-mage people have been saying all this time – that the whole system was rigged against mages, that Templars abused their position of power and the legitimate fear of blood magic to get what they wanted from innocents and, when the mages still resisted, had them lobotomized.
Also worth noting from a storytelling standpoint: Anders can be killed in DA2, but to my knowledge no member of the Inquisition can die by the end of the game. Arguably, Vivienne as Divine without the Inquisition’s support won’t live long, but the fact remains that she lives to the credits. So from a metatextual angle, the Inquisition characters are never at risk at all, whereas the best outcome Anders can get is life on the run. Ergo: anyone who says the Inquisition’s sacrifice is greater than his is full of shit.
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