in my headcanon, carver's a noir detective, garrett's a hematologist, bethany's a cynic, and marian's a one-time psychic who's been stressed ever since
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Leandra: I promise. If there's one thing I learned in Ferelden, it's that good people can be born in a hut as easily as a palace.
I have so many thoughts about Leandra and the way she raised her children and how she pulls one of the great immigrant parents classics "I have thought you exactly nothing about where I come from but it's your fault for not knowing about it and not living up to my idea of it" (with bonus "We came here to give you a better life but I still resent you for it") and how it intersects with frankly ALL possible layers of intersectionality depending on your Hawke
And yet I had entirely forgot (or just never gotten) this line and now I am speechless all over again.
Bcs as for Ferelden - Hawke is from Ferelden and they have lived there most of their life (you are an adult by the time da2 starts) they know Ferelden. It’s their home. She might blame you for how things went down, but not for not knowing your legacy, because… she just never does that.
As for Kirkwall - it was clear Leandra actually wanted to leave this chapter behind her and while she did feel homesick at times (reminiscing about her lost heritage at times) she didn’t really hold Hawke accountable for that, because she actually wanted to start a new life. She wanted to live as a Fereldan, until darkspawn brutally changed her plans.
You can accuse Leandra of many things but not that I think?
So, this is coming from a bigger thing I have been working on and off in my spare time for fun for years so I'll try to make it short and make it all make sense outside of my head
One thing that the game establishes fairly quickly is this dichotomy between Malcom and Leandra, and how Hawke is resolutely Malcom's before they are Leandra's - they are a Hawke and not an Amell, they are from Ferelden and not from Kirkwall, they are always like their father and never like their mother, Malcom is the head of the family and the caretaker and Leandra expects Hawke to step into their father's role when Malcom dies. All those things to me are indissolubly tangled together.
This is not a dynamic that happened by accident but it's a direct result of Leandra deciding to follow Malcom's to Ferelden, sacrificing her whole life in the name of love, and it's something that Leandra never truly forgets/forgives. You say that Leandra wanted to leave that chapter of her life behind, but from what we hear from Bethany there was more than homesickness and what happens in the game does seem to confirm it - as soon as Leandra has a chance to go back to her old life, she leaps to it, and she does it because she believes it. She has always seen herself as a Kirkwall noblewoman forced to put up with the circumstances of being a "peasant wife" in Ferelden, which is why when the circumstances change, it hits her so hard that she's not able to simply step back into her old life.
Her insistence in Act 1 that her children are nobility and they are Amell and how they should be living in a huge mansion in Hightown and her apparent refusal to work because they should be better and not like poor refugees is particularly noteworthy when you consider that her children are poor Ferelden refugees. Hawke goes out every day barely scraping by and getting called a dog lord straight to their face and being considered expendable because what's one Ferelden's life in the grand scheme of things and then goes home to their mother saying it's unfair not because it's unfair but because they are not one of those people. Which, they are. But now that the circumstances are over, Leandra wants to be a Kirkwall noblewoman again and expects her children to follow suit.
This becomes evident in early Act 2, when she acts as if Hawke naturally will simply become an Amell now that the situation has changed. We don't see much about it, but we do have a brief conversation about how apparently there has been a lot happening offscreen on that regard, because what we do get to see is Leandra accepting that Hawke will remain a Hawke.
I think it's already telling that they needed to have this conversation in the first place, as if Hawke could simply put away their identity and become someone else better suited to the new circumstances, but what really caught my attention is that Leandra accepts that this isn't going to happen because Hawke is just like their father. They can't be Leandra's because they are inherently Malcom's.
Somehow it's once again on Hawke's shoulders that they can never be Leandra's and Malcom's.
tl;dr I think it's related to Leandra's expectations of Hawke and how she reacts when these expectations aren't met. Once she's happy and secure as a noblewoman in Kirkwall she does accept that Hawke has no interest in being an Amell, but I found telling that she acts like Hawke simply can't do it because they were born that way and not because she has refused to say a word about it for most of Hawke's life (something I think is also somewhat confirmed by how it's always Carver and Bethany that are closer to Leandra and not Hawke, because Hawke is the head of the family first and one of her children second).
obsessed forever with leandra being called “the beauty, the scholar, the light of their lives” by gamlen and world of thedas calling her “the beautiful, accomplished leandra. leandra, the talented lute player, who mastered the intricate melodies of “the red-breasted robin” when she was eight. leandra, who could recite the names of the great orlesian houses and their histories without missing a beat.” she is INTELLIGENT and picks up skills quickly. dont forget this. do not.
Can we talk about how Malcolm, Leandra, and their eldest kid spent over a decade on the run from Templars AND Wardens?
Can we talk about how the so-called "darkspawn secrets" are bound to Hawke's blood and how with Malcolm having kids, the Wardens no longer needed him and Leandra alive in order to obtain it?
DAV: elven gods are trying to destroy the world with a really, really bad blight, there are darkspawn, venatori, antaam, and goddamn archdemons, and the south sounds pretty fucked too--
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the theme of a legacy that was ripped from you long ago and you can try to rebuild but it'll never be quite the same as it was before your time, the loyalty to your family above anything else and the resentment within it caused not in small part by a parent who was set in their ways of how the world for people like them worked and, even just subconsciously, played favorites because of it, the jumping headfirst into dealing with the merchants guild as soon as the opportunity arises for the chance of bettering your position, surface dwarf!hawke the cultural reset you would have been...
How to stop thinking about Malcolm naming one of the twins after the man who gave him the opportunity to start a family and live a somewhat normal life as a mage?
How to stop thinking about how, during that time, Malcolm and Leandra were still on the run from Templars and Wardens?
Did Malcolm name his son Carver to remind himself how far he had run from the Gallows, or to remind himself that there are still good people in this horrible world?
How bad were things going if he and Leandra needed that reminder, and how to stop thinking about this?
No, you guys don't understand how important this is.
Malcolm didn't name his first child Carver. This Templar gave him a new life and a new family. Hell, the only reason Leandra ever got pregnant was because of Maurevar Carver. Yet Malcolm named his first child Garrett or Marian. And then, six years later, Malcolm starts thinking about that guy again? Just because he and Leandra needed a name for their newborn son? But why wait six years? Why choose a Templar name if it wasn't significant to them at the time? Am I going insane or am I right?
favorite malcolm hawke fact ever is that when leandra's parents found out she was pregnant with hawke her father had her locked away in the mansion and banished her from ever leaving. to which malcolm's response was to show up one day with a bunch of fucking grey wardens so larius could abuse the rite of conscription and have her released into their custody
People talk about his massive balls in reblogs, and yeah, sure, Malcolm's balls had to be something else entirely, but I can't stop thinking about the fact that he's a Gallows mage. He literally named one of his kids after probably the only guy in the Circle who was kind to him and allowed him to have his secret meetings with Leandra.
I also can't stop thinking about how Larius threatened to kill pregnant Leandra if Malcolm didn't perform the blood rite for the Wardens. That whole scene wasn't cute. It was probably terrifying for both Malcolm and Leandra.
And after that whole mess, they had to be constantly on the move because of the Templars and because of the Wardens, and that no matter where Malcolm ran, his life was probably constantly accompanied by the fear that tomorrow someone might come knocking on his door, and just like he and that group of Wardens took Leandra, they will take him and his children. And the only way he can try to protect them is with blood magic again.
And then his family is forced to return to Kirkwall again. To the Gallows. To the Wardens.
Fucking hell, that whole city should burn. Wardens should burn. Templars should burn. But we can start with Elthina.
there are some dots in the quest dissent that i cannot stop thinking about ever since i connected them. ser alrik made karl tranquil. anders is aware of this and explicitly thinking about this at the start of the quest, because he mentions it to hawke at the start of the quest. and then when anders finds ser alrik, he is walking in on him literally saying that he turns mages tranquil for the purpose of raping them.
like, this connection is never made explicitly in the text but i do think the implication is that karl was sexually abused after being made tranquil. i think this got missed especially in 2011 because ella is a young girl and karl is a middle aged man and, idk, heteronormativity, but rape is, at the end of the day, about power and regardless of this background character’s hypothetical sexual orientation it’s quite likely, indeed reflected in reality, that ser alrik cared less about the physical characteristics of his victim than the absolute power that their tranquility granted him over them.
and i do think ser alrik’s actual motives for proposing the tranquil solution, or specifically the fact ser alrik is a rapist, may be new information to anders about alrik specifically, or he probably would have mentioned it to hawke at the start of the quest when explaining why alrik is so bad as a templar. instead, anders sticks to the information he has, which is that alrik tortures mages to “push them into the arms of demons.” i’m sure the likelihood crossed his mind at some point before dissent. i’m sure this information, when it comes, is not exactly a surprise. he knows this happens all the time. he’s seen it before.
but as i said, what happened to karl is still haunting anders 3 years later when hawke joints him on the dissent quest. and when he walks in on ser alrik and ella, the focus in that moment is on ella, making sure she is safe, and ultimately getting derailed from that aim when justice turns on her. but in the back of his mind anders has to also be connecting these dots, right.
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and if i said that the emasculation of the (mostly-male) templar order through being positioned as subservient to an all-female order of nonviolent chantry sisters in a setting in which men (and warrior men in particular) are otherwise expected to dominate the social hierarchy incentivises violence (including sexual violence) against the mages in their care, a class that is culturally seen as feminine and subservient through subjugation & the Only other kind of person a templar regularly sees, in order to reclaim dignity. which the non-violent order of chantry sisters is conditioned to disdain. which itself drives the need to reclaim dignity too. would that be something that made sense
ok hang on that’s not all though . because as a few people have mentioned (and a core idea behind this post) the relationship between templars and chantry sisters is actually like…. A Bit Complicated
because chantry sisters are positioned as hierarchically Superior to templars… the templar order answers to and exists to protect the clergy, and the knight commander outranks (and is directly within the chain of command of) the grand cleric. but outside of the chantry, andrastian nations are usually patriarchal, and andrastian men culturally understand themselves as Above the woman around them (and furthermore, templars are Warriors, and in many andrastian nations (think: battling for the throne in ferelden, tourneys in orlais) the Warrior role is also held in esteem; by comparison, the clergy is explicitly nonviolent and at least theoretically preaches peace and compassion). so that creates some dissonance in the chantry, where that dynamic is flipped and the new dynamic is strictly enforced, which might create resentment… which might lead a templar (who is likely to be a man) to want to put chantry sisters in their place. except that they Can’t. because chantry sisters are untouchable and violence against them will not be forgiven by the chantry.
but nobody cares what happens to a mage. and mages are completely under the templars’ power.
and from that perspective it’s understandable that chantry sisters and templars don’t always get on— templars because chantry sisters are symbols of their emasculation, their frustrated entitlement, their impotence (#lyriumimpotence mentioned)… and chantry sisters because as *women who are *specifically taught to see violence as sometimes necessary but also terrible… well. maybe they don’t always (or even usually) sympathise with mages, but it would be hard to watch the way templars treat them and not wonder if that violence is actually intended for You.
& this is like. text a bit also. i don’t have game screenshots but here’s some ambient dialogue from DAI:
and of course violence against mages as a way to reclaim dignity and gendered pride creates the implication that it is a mage’s responsibility to support that dignity and that pride to begin with; that a templar’s violence can be defused by a mage who is Meek enough, Subservient enough, Solicitous enough to soothe that injured pride.
which makes it the mage’s fault when it doesn’t work.
Bethany: So, Sebastian... you're a prince.
Sebastian: That is my lot, Lady Hawke.
Bethany: (Laughs) I'm a mage. I don't hear "Lady" very often.
Sebastian: You think there is shame in being in the Circle?
Bethany: Isn't there?
Sebastian: You were made as you are. I have yet to see evidence of the Maker's fallibility. I certainly don't see any in you.
Bethany: I... oh my.
i hate this fucking ship as it is presented in the dlcs, i.e. cutesy, and while i can get on board w it if it's toxic (and think that would be quite fun!), you don't actually get to tell someone that they're perfect just the way they are and then imply, even thoughtlessly, that that then means that they are supposed to be locked up forever. i get that this is in some ways sebastian's conception of himself. would be cool if he ever acknowledged it.
(If Bethany is a Grey Warden)
Bethany: So, Sebastian... you're a prince.
Sebastian: That is my lot, Lady Hawke.
Bethany: (Laughs) This life is not... supportive of delicate titles.
Sebastian: To have a second chance, and one with such purpose, it cannot be a curse.
Bethany: This wasn't my choice. If there's something good or beautiful in any of this, please, enlighten me.
Sebastian: Well, there's you.
Bethany: I... oh my.
Hawke: (Chuckles)
similarly, the BEST part abt warden!bethany is that she's finally allowed to be rly, rly angry, and here's mister 'i have to convince myself that the life choice i'm making is the correct one even if i'm starting to sweat' hearing her say this wasn't my choice (who else didn't get a choice??) and that she doesn't see anything good or beautiful in her circumstances. and he goes okay but have you thought abt it............this way? (: it can't be as bad as you're making it out to be! look on the bright side!
and in BOTH of these legacy dialogues, sebastian is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. he is hitting on her. he is not a sweet dopey baby, he has been in the trenches sucking and fucking, and deciding to pursue a chaste, religious life does not actually mean you zap your brain of all prior experiences. he knows what he's doing.
he also knows in both instances that it's safe for him to do so bc she's either going to go back to the torment nexus in kirkwall or the torment nexus that travels around. he's taken vows of chastity, flirting w bethany will not lead to any of those being broken. now i think it's fine to flirt for the sake of flirting — it's fun! but crucial to any ship i can get on board w in a positive way: both parties have to be vulnerable. this is not sebastian being vulnerable. this is the opposite.
bc this is p typical bethany, right? she's clearly abt to try to engage him in a conversation abt what it's like to be a prince. maybe she's idk curious abt him in the way she's been w every single companion. you know who else seems to do this w her? varric.
and then there's this:
Sebastian: It's our duty to tell the templars.
Fenris: Then why haven't you done it?
Sebastian: I guess I was hoping they'd come to it on their own.
Fenris: And then you wouldn't have to betray Hawke's friends, right?
Sebastian: That's not reason enough to allow a maleficar to walk free.
(If Anders is in the party)
Anders: You think the templars don't know I'm here? They just haven't caught me yet.
(If Merrill is in the party)
Merrill: Are you talking about me?
Sebastian: Which of us should do it? Shall we draw lots?
Fenris: Uh-uh. You want to turn them in, you work it out with Hawke.
look far be it from me to criticize someone for being wishy-washy. but it's act 3 and sebastian is still hoping that anders and merrill will Do The Right Thing and turn themselves in. and even fenris, who likes him and is in theory ideologically on his side, calls him on it. sebastian cannot commit.
i don't think bethany needs to be treated like glass; i think she'd hate that, actually. i think there are lots of ppl to ship w bethany who will condescend to her and avoid being emotionally vulnerable and hope someone else will solve their big ideological questions. but the thing is: i do not think those ppl will actually ask her to force herself back into the box that's killing her. they might be shocked to find her not quite the pedestal princess they've made her into! but they won't force her to be the version of herself that is simple so that they don't have to confront smth within themselves that she complicates.
more importantly: i do not believe bethany can meaningfully push back against this behavior when it's sebastian without the relationship collapsing.
she has a fucking backbone. are there any reasons why, when a handsome prince who's dedicated his life to an institution that constantly reinforces that her lot in life is to suffer, she gets tongue-tied? are there any reasons why bethany might rly love being in a relationship w someone who wouldn't be allowed to touch her?
bc i enjoy propaganda, but also bc fenris is the most staunchly anti-mage person in the party, compare the above w this act 1 dialogue:
Fenris: You know, you cannot wish the Templars away.
Bethany: I can try.
Fenris: Is the Circle here truly so terrible an option?
Bethany: Do you really have to ask that?
Fenris: You would be kept safe from others as well as yourself, and they would be kept safe from you.
Bethany: I... didn't ask for this.
Fenris: Nobody asks for their fate.
this is in fact fenris earnestly grappling w his own worldview. like sebastian, he doesn't want to actually engage w how bethany feels abt the circle. like sebastian, it's abundantly clear that he's actually working thru some feelings abt himself.
but bethany is able to stand up for herself a little bit here. she doesn't fold immediately or at all. and what's crucial here to ME is that this is not 'nobody asks for their fate so you might as well be happy abt it.' it's an uncomfortable acknowledgment that life is not fair. fenris didn't ask to be branded. he didn't choose to have his memories wiped. you don't have to reframe your situation as positive or what was meant to be to accept that it is your situation.
fenris also like. understands smth rly crucial abt what bethany is dealing w and is willing to address it, however warily. she is in danger from other ppl. she's also a danger to herself. he might be wrong abt the whys but idk man, maybe anders isn't the only one thinking abt suicide at 10am. maybe the reason fenris prompts this conversation at all is bc he's starting to have a rly hard time squaring his views of the circle w someone like bethany, whom he says he admires even as late in the game as act 3.
he's looking for an answer that will reassure him, yes.........................but i don't think he or bethany come to an easy conclusion here. and that's bc both of them know that there isn't an easy answer and it would be unbelievably cruel to pretend there is.
and he continues to grapple w these questions:
Fenris: So I hear you think mages should be free.
Isabela: Everyone should be free. Not just mages.
Fenris: Not everyone's dangerous.
Isabela: It's not about who's dangerous. It's about having choices made for you.
Isabela: Don't you wish you had the choice not to have lyrium stuck under your skin?
Fenris: I do.
Isabela: (Sighs) This is silly. I don't want to argue.
Fenris: Do you want to guess what color my underclothes are again?
Isabela: Oh, yes, that's much more fun.
and that's why, when sebastian in ACT 3 suggests they turn in hawke's loved ones, fenris explicitly tells him do not put that shit on me. if you're going to make a choice, you have to stand by it.
you said something somewhere about isabela and bethany having vastly different relationships with femininity and gendered trauma and i'm realising it's made me very curious: how do you see bethany's relationship with gender and womanhood, and do you think she considers that aspect of her identity as being related to her victimisation? because on the one hand, it does seem very gendered to me that she as little sister is being treated as this sort of precious but burdensome object to be protected within her family. but also how much of that is she associating with woman, and how much is she associating that with mage, or is it something else entirely?
i have to first acknowledge that i love @gyrovagi and @ikarons's dragon age gender discussion, namely these two posts. bc i am now i think irreversibly academia-brained, let me also say that while those two posts are rattling around in my brain currently, there is a whole ecosystem of mage-gender thought and more broadly, how misogyny/sexism functions in thedas as a setting that nominally venerates women due to the andraste of it all out there. and all of it makes me feel like a teakettle abt to explode.
jumping off that point, bc we're dealing w a type of misogyny that comes from the veneration of women (compelled to complain that that's actually p normal for misogyny as we know it), i gotta state that the type of womanhood/internalized misogyny bethany is dealing w has sooooooooooo much more to do suffering and impossible expectations than like. whew. okay. i thought this was going to be a normal answer, and i don't know why i thought that lmao.
1. andraste as non-mage but ideal woman; bethany as mage and aspiring woman
bethany is at least a little bit drawn to andrastianism. she enjoyed listening to leliana's stories in lothering. she goes to the chantry in kirkwall to light a candle for carver. maybe leliana was only ever telling secular stories. maybe she went to the kirkwall chantry out of guilt. i think it does a disservice to her whole deal to say she isn't religious, bc religiousity (read: andrastianism) is compulsory in thedas. v few things abt bethany's whole deal are abt agency in a positive way, at least initially. whether she likes it or not, she's suffused in andrastian patriarchy.
andraste is inescapable as the ideal of womanhood. andraste, as the daughter of an extremely influential alamarri leader, is of noble blood, and i have so much to say abt alamarri culture being superseded by andrastian interpretations of alamarri culture but this is going to be so long already a;sdljf;ldask
andraste also 'overcomes' infertility, and while that's a moral framing i personally find rly abhorrent, we all live in a society. she also 'overcomes' the chronic illness that causes her infertility: second verse, same as the first, etc. there's some shit there re: values surrounding procreation and being able-bodied that i think. are in the mix. even if again this is going to be so long already.
women are mothers, and if they're sick, it's bc you can suffer your way to goodness — sometimes as an ex-slave, and sometimes as a martyr. lol, lmao even.
i think it can be extrapolated that andraste demonstrates a fidelity and patience that are supposed to be venerated/emulated, esp in contrast to her husband, maferath. maferath has a concubine named gilivhan who bears him children long before andraste does, but nowhere in the mythology does there seem to be any cruelty or resentment on andraste's part — she raises gilivhan's three sons as her own after gilivhan's death. so part of womanhood is a sort of default maternal attitude.
i do not think the presence of concubines in this instance points to a thedas-wide acceptance of, say, polyamory or even communal child-rearing. isolde is pissed by the idea that alistair is the result of an extramarital affair and takes it out on alistair. i would argue that while andrastian mores would advise her to be more tolerant of and patience with her husband's other partners or children..........................clearly the chantry is more than capable of taking over the responsibilities of raising alistair while isolde and eamon get back to their marriage and connor.
so we've got andraste as wife and mother, and let's not skip over andraste being The Bride. the ur-bride. faithful to her mortal husband and yet also some other guy's wife. CLEARLY, at least to maferath and his contemporaries, wives being another man's concubine or participating in other relationships is sufficient cause to betray whole causes, much less the wife in question. wife, mother, bride. my take here boils down to the idea that andraste, despite being a mother and married to a mortal man, kind of gets to retain a spiritual virginity.
then you've got andraste as warrior and prophet. women who fight and women who are believed. LOADED!
intriguingly, tho it doesn't seem super emphasized, there is andraste as enslaved — and formerly-enslaved. I'm Every Woman. potential for some v conflicted and guilty feelings on bethany's part there as she ruminates on her lack of freedom and also relative freedom as compared to her brethren in the circles. is it blasphemy to hate her life? idk ask teenage bethany sitting in the lothering chantry listening to sermons abt how magic exists to serve man.
last but not least, there's andraste as sister. andraste as witness to whatever mysterious accident that claims the life of halliserre, the accident that causes her chronic illness that in turn causes infertility. much 2 think abt.
bethany's not a wife and a mother, and she's never been a bride. those are def things that i think she wants to be, bc those are things women are supposed to be. she knows she's of 'noble blood' and demonstrates a genuine interest in rediscovering and reclaiming leandra's history.
bethany is not a warrior, or at least her ability to protect herself and be violent to others is not integrated into her identity — or rather it's been forcibly integrated into her identity in such a way that viewing herself as inherently dangerous or as an unstable weapon in need of constant surveillance is like. idk if i'm articulating this well, but if you're constantly a threat, enacting violence on purpose might not register in the same way as it would for aveline, for example, who can more effectively categorize and maybe compartmentalize her own violence.
Aveline: You show admirable restraint, Bethany.
Bethany: For a mage, you mean.
Aveline: I could also say, "for a Hawke," but yes, for a mage.
Bethany: You have a sword. Why aren't you killing someone right now?
Aveline: Fair point, but I can put my sword down.
Bethany: Believe me, I have tried.
bethany would love to be able to put down her sword, but since she can't, she just does her best to pretend it's not there. kind of. that said, this battle cry: 'what are you, afraid? i'm not hiding anymore!' i think reveals a lot abt how she feels abt fear and when she's allowed to not be afraid.
bethany might feel like a prophet (and it wouldn't allay that feeling, i think, to be someone who does more observing than participating), but if she's a prophet, she's a cassandra, a cassandra who feels like smth is coming for her and once it does, if she gets taken by the templars, she's relieved it finally just happened.
in the circle, bethany becomes a teacher and at least one of her younger apprentices rly bonds w her. when immersed in an explicitly andrastian environment, she conforms, not unhappily, to the ideal of an andrastian woman as much as any mage can, by taking on a position that allows her to be maternal.
bethany and freedom is p fraught, kind of its own essay, but since this is going to be a monster already, let's focus on:
2. bethany as sister
that's like her whole identity to whole hawke family: baby sister. she has to be protected, she has to be curtailed, she has to be hidden. leandra says she never cried as a child — is this bc, as is true for many girls, she understood from an early age that her emotions created the need for attention and energy that she might have experienced as equal parts smothering and exposing? is it bc from a v early age, malcolm impressed upon her the importance of her keeping her emotions in check, bc they put both her and her family in danger of demons or templar attention? what abt the pressures that come from being raised in a family that seems to have struggled w money at least periodically?
like what's the difference between being a mage and being a girl for someone living in a body where they are one and the same? how do you separate your gender from your mage-gender? i think bethany shows signs of trying to a 'normal' woman in that she's demure, polite, pacifying, etc. those things are inevitably filtered thru her identity as an apostate mage, but if she performs them well enough, then maybe she can be mistaken for a well-behaved woman first, before she's a well-behaved mage, right?
babies who are 'easy' don't cry. children who are well-behaved are quiet. bethany is always the baby sister. like she just wants to be 'good,' whatever that means. a good woman is a good wife is a good mother is a good warrior (presumably a warrior who can put down their sword as well as wield it; read: discipline) is a good sister. i am being deliberately delicate abt the enslavement aspect bc yes, if you are enslaved, you are designated 'good' if you are quiet, obedient, competent — but not too competent. andraste did free herself. mages aren't supposed to do that. one must imagine sisyphus happy and dry heaving, etc.
she would have been praised consistently for her control, and she is, in the game, even by someone like fenris, praised in absentia for her self-control, phrased as a lack of weakness. do we think bethany was seen as mature for her age. do we think the neighbors told leandra and malcolm how lucky they were to have such a helpful and sweet little girl who stayed out of the way. even her childhood friend peaches chooses not to turn bethany into the templars bc she seemed, AND I FUCKING QUOTE, 'too nice to be magic.'
the big moment in her life when she stands her ground against a bully is the incident that precipitated the family's move to lothering. do we think she learned any unfortunate lessons abt what happens to mage girls who fight back. do we think we can infer that no amount of staying quiet and nice protected bethany from the kid who bullied her so badly she threw him across the field w her magic. do we think it's a coincidence that this bully was a boy.
when she fails! as a sister! her family suffers. it is never just abt bethany's wellbeing, tho clearly she's internalized that 'other ppl' are the ones 'taking the risks' on her behalf, as if she is not herself at risk. she doesn't get to feel her own feelings abt her life. she is the vessel for everyone else's anxiety and grief, and she doesn't even get to fucking cry.
she is, in this way, way closer to halliserre than andraste. does she think of herself as andraste-adjacent? does she have enough exposure, even, to andrastian texts on halliserre to identify w her? would she, too, love to die in a mysterious accident that unburdens her family from the burden of caring for her, one that leaves her unblemished and tragic but free from the obligation to be good? i think that's what she means when she says she tried to put her sword down, yeah.
3. how much of it is being a mage, and how much of it is being a woman
ig we can get into the weeds of suffering as worship and suffering as nonnegotiable here, but that feels too thorny to actually approach in a way that works. idk man. i do think 'mage' as a gender category positions 'mage' as a failed person in a way that feels analogous to a lot of misogyny/types of misogyny. what i'm going to skirt around here is that she mentions alrik, who is a rapist who (shoutout @recents) specifically targets mages w the threat of being made tranquil and also just straight up targets tranquil mages, period.
but while i agree that this can kind of be muddied by the gender dynamics between alrik and ella during dissent...................................i am also cognizant of the fact that a circle-route bethany mentions alrik by name in her letter and that ella is one of bethany's students, the one bethany mentions in that same letter as having gotten rly attached to bethany. that is a connection that has rly horrible implications. how much bethany can protect ella is directly contradicted by how much she can protect herself.
bethany is a failed woman bc she's a failed person as a result of being a mage. i think she still tries to 'good girl/woman' herself into being a person, or at least to cancel out her mageness. but as the dialogue w aveline shows, she rly resents it when other ppl compliment her on being a 'good' (read: unthreatening) mage.
but tbh i don't think bethany rly gets to decide for herself what's going on w all that until after the end of da2. the sheer amount of sexualization she experiences even from ppl who ostensibly respect and love her is like. she simply doesn't ask for any of it (except maybe w isabela and sebastian, and wrt latter don't piss me off). but i do think that varric rly takes the cake for me in terms of benevolent sexism.
Varric: So... Milady Sunshine, what's your first act as a noblewoman going to be?
Bethany: *giggles* A noblewoman with no fortune and no title? Looking for work, probably.
Varric: Practicality is for peasants, my lady. You need to do something frivolous to celebrate your birthright.
Bethany: Such as...?
Varric: Come up to the Hightown Market and complain bitterly that there's no Orlesian silk that matches your eyes.
Bethany: But what if something does match my eyes? What will I do, then?
Varric: Insist that they're blatantly copying you, and demand royalties. A good noble always has a complaint ready, Sunshine.
this is one of the most egregious examples of somebody interacting w bethany and completely failing to retain any knowledge of her personality or wants or needs or like. anything. i get that she's giggling. i get that it's all in good fun. i get that the joke is that bethany would never behave this way, and the comedy lies in the distance between the imagined noble lady and bethany. i get that.
however what varric is failing to acknowledge here is the elephant that's in every room ever: bethany is a mage. she doesn't get to complain. she doesn't get to be frivolous. she doesn't get to call attention to herself, period. varric is unintentionally underlining how much being a mage impacts bethany's womanhood, even a newly privileged womanhood.
and yeah, bethany enjoys this bc she enjoys imagining herself as normal. she enjoys the fantasy that she gets to be the type of woman who throws a fit over silk. but even varric's nickname for bethany — sunshine — implies a life of being visible that bethany has not lived and won't get to live until after da2 best case scenario, at least within the framework of freedom that varric has. being alive and visible as a mage means either her whole world becoming the circle or the wardens.
like she's barred from most womanhood. she wants pretty dresses, and she wants princes to call her beautiful, and she wants to be a daughter the way leandra was a daughter.
she wants to be uncomplicated! she wants to not be a problem! she doesn't want to need protection! but while all of those things are abt not being a mage, i think she'd be fine with being protected by a chivalrous prince — there is a fantasy there, for sure. a fantasy that requires her womanhood being prioritized over her being a mage.
milady sunshine. blech. nevertheless, while i think varric misunderstands her utterly, he does at least misunderstand her in the way she prefers to be misunderstood. varric can construct a fantasy-bit where bethany gets to just be a woman. but it is, ultimately, a fantasy.
andraste is wife-mother-bride-warrior-prophet-victim-saint. bethany doesn't have 'aspects' except in the realm of story; bethany fumbles personhood across the board thru absolutely no fault of her own.
i think that's why she gets squeezed into boxes that don't rly suit her. there's so much unwieldy stuff going on that it's easiest to slot her into a role that coincidentally!!!!!!! doesn't have agency. baby sister. crucially, she's not sexually agentive, she's vulnerable to corruption and in need of an older sibling or guardian to make sure the baby doesn't get into trouble, and this is an established enough dynamic that she will self-police. andraste as statue and icon, babyyyyy. emotionless, motionless, and emblematic of whatever you want to project onto her.
(but then da2 ends and actually she gets to spend her thirties being whatever type of woman she wants to be)
Throughout the history of Thedas, there had been multiple attempts to set the Litany of Adralla to music, both to serve as a memory aid and to have the melody provide a sense of comfort to the petitioner, in addition to the protection from demonic forces the litany itself provides.
None of these compositions have quite managed to rival the popularity of the rather controversial Mother Nicana version, which will be presented to you shortly.
Born in Jader in 7:56 Storm, Revered Mother Nicana was a figure as beloved by her faithful as she was inconvenient to her superiors.
Ever practical, as well as a fierce advocate for following the spirit of the Chant, regardless of the politics of the time, she faced criticism from peers in the Chantry for choosing the original Tevene text as the basis for her composition. When pressed, she simply answered that if she could find a single translation that fit the original's metre, she would consider it.
In spite of this short-lived controversy (or perhaps because of it), this version became popular especially among those who had need of the litany for practical uses, such as the Mourn Watchers of Nevarra.
The following are two performances of Mother Nicana's Litany of Adralla. One was performed by the lay sisters of the Tantervale Chantry. The other was heard sung in Kirkwall's Lowtown by an initial survivor (presumed to have been a minstrel employed in the Hanged Man tavern) of the catastrophic fallout of Anders' destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry in an attempt to protect himself and several others from the demons that surrounded them.
Lyrics (vowels in brackets are those that undergo elision; translation follows):
Auctor meus, miserere mihi,
Auctor mundi, avert(e) iram tuam.
Orig(o) omnis, miserere mihi,
Orig(o) animarum, avert(e) iram tuam.
Andraste, spons(a) Auctoris, audi me,
Andraste, sancta prophetis, audi me.
Redemptrix omnium, exaudi me,
Domina maeroris, exaudi me.
Ne patiamini animas piorum corrumpi,
in hor(a) aterrim(a) adiuvate servum vestrum humilem.
In nomin(e) Andrastes, fiat ita.
In nomin(e) Auctoris, fiat ita.
My Maker, have mercy on me,
Maker of the World, avert Thy wrath.
Origin of Everything, have mercy on me,
Wellspring of Souls, avert Thy wrath.
Andraste, Bride of the Maker, hear me,
Andraste, Holy Prophetess, hear me,
Redeemer of All, hear my prayer,
Lady of Sorrows, hear my prayer.
Let you not suffer the souls of the faithful to be corrupted,
in this darkest hour, aid your lowly servant.
In the name of Andraste, so let it be.
In the name of the Maker, so let it be.
Note: In the English version, "you" is used in the older sense of "you two" or "you all", while "thou" (or rather the possessive "thy") is used for the singular. Therefore, when asking for the Maker to avert His wrath, the penitent is addressing the Maker only. Later on, though, when asking for protection against corruption, they are addressing both the Maker and Andraste.
This distinction is also present in the Latin text.
I love to ponder how much Hawke hides from various companions. Like Aveline of course knows that Hawke is the head of a crime empire but what about the specifics? Does Hawke decline doing more work for the mercenaries/smugglers in front of Aveline and Carver then take it the job later? How much does she hide any anti Templar activities from Fenris.
Most interestingly, how much does she hide from Varric? He’s busy creating his hero and she’s playing into it and not telling him about the kids she let go hungry because she needed the work from Athenril. Refusing to help people unless they pay then spinning a story at the hanged man about her saving people out of the goodness of her heart. Love it. Very crunchy
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One of my big characterisation principles that I think holds true to life is that a characters flaws should be extensions of their best traits.
For example one of my best friends is a very straightforward and honest woman who I love because I can always trust her to be direct with me. I consider this to be one of her best traits but the flip side of this is that she can also be quite rude because she is blunt and speaks without thinking or adapting to the situation she is in. Her flaw (rudeness, being inconsiderate) is the flip side of one of her best traits (Directness, honesty).
I like to use this observation about people to make my OC’s feel more real to me as well! Marian Hawke is charismatic, persuasive and headstrong. When people are around her they get swept up in her energy and she can make them believe they are the best version of themselves. She doesn’t get overwhelmed by the details of a situation she just swoops in and pushed aside anything that doesn’t work for her. This also means she is an incredibly thoughtless and inconsiderate woman. Her charisma means she can get away with treating people badly and dismissing their feelings because she’s on the surface so fun to be around people don’t challenge her. She has such a strong personality she can just bulldoze over others objections to whatever she wants them to do (See: Taking characters that don’t want to go into the fade during Night Terrors, dragging Anders on pro Templar/Fenris on pro mage) quests. When the full power of Hawkes charm is turned on you, you feel like the centre of the universe. She is also used to being the centre of attention and on a semi subconscious level builds a social environment where the people around her are competing for her admiration.
This is a huge part of the tension between her and Carver because he feels like the only one who can see it. Everyone’s fallen for his sisters charm, why can’t they see how careless she is!!! She just says surface level funny or kind things and they all agree to take orders from her!!!
At her best, Hawke has an infectious energy that can hold together a team of people who should by all rights hate each other and turn them into people who enjoy drinking together. At her worst, she will lead you into a situation you can’t handle, get you killed, and never reflect on the influence she had on your death. ‘If they knew they couldn’t handle it they shouldn’t have followed me into that ancient ruin’ she shrugs, completely ignoring the desperation to impress her she fostered to boost her own ego.
I think we sometimes sleep on how impactful the year of indentured servitude in Kirkwall would have been for Hawke and Carver/Bethany, especially for the one who didn’t join the Fereldan army. Like, these guys grew up as peasants! They’re used to small, rural, high trust communities where the biggest challenge most people would have to deal with was rounding up a posse to see off some wolves or bandits getting too close to the village. Of course the Hawkes also had to worry about Templars but the answer to people getting suspicious of them was always to run, not to fight. It’s under Meeran or Athenril that they begin to learn that in Kirkwall, everyone has an ulterior motive, and if you don’t make yourself look strong people will crush you. The confidence the Hawkes have after a lifetime of practice understanding Fereldan village dynamics revealed to be naivety as they are first crushed under the weight of deceptive people (and a language barrier making it harder to read others!) before they rise again, meaner, less trusting. Broken down and reforged by Kirkwall before the game really even starts.
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