Vir Lath Vir Suladin

you are the champion of kirkwall. you are a refugee, cold and hungry and sold into labour. your mother hates you, though she will never say it. it's your fault the ogre killed your sibling, your fault the taint took the other. but you are happy. you have everything, friends and family and status and riches. you defeat the people plaguing your glorious city, you are the people's hero. you will always know even as she came back, isabela left you to die. you are happy but you are alone. you have everything and then you are rocking back and forth begging please please please do not take my mother as well. you have nothing, but you for a single second, you had everything. you are the champion of kirkwall, and your ally has blown up the chantry. where is your home now that everything is your fault?

Posted a version with subtitles here

“In another world…”

“Why not this one?”

They set out to write a villain. To set up a villain for the next game. To betray us deeply, twist the knife. The mage that cannot be trusted in a world that first makes monsters of mages and then murders them.

But then they decided to let us romance him. To let us ask that question.

And we fell in love with him. We saw his spirit even before they told us he was one. We heard his heartbeat and said ours beat with his. They said he wants to change the world, and we said yes, it needs changing.

For ten years, we waited, learned, loved him. They considered every possibility of his tragedy a hundred worlds where he would suffer for eternity or meet his end by our hands. They considered paths through his villainy…and I think our love remade the world.

We’ve never wavered, Solavellans, in knowing he deserved us. We see ourselves in him, I think. Loving him helps us heal ourselves, the broken paths and the long-lingering pains. We gave him thousands of worlds in our stories and songs and paintings where he could be safe with us.

And we finally got to take him home where he belongs. Our love will make a prison into paradise.

Think how powerful that love is, when we offer it also to ourselves.