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“I cannot ask your forgiveness, but I hope you come to understand.”

“I could have simply stayed with you as Solas… as I wanted.”

“What I feel for you will never change.”

I think every word is sincere. But it is also a letter from the one acting selfishly, doing as he pleases, asking her to understand his own inner conflict too. Including the way he writes, “Once the world is restored, you’ll understand why all of this was necessary.”

When I first read it, I cried and laughed, thinking, “This man truly hasn’t changed at all in any way—for better or worse!! 🤣😭🥺😠”

Hit the Dalish Camp last night and had a few good laughs.

Andruil facing Sylaise in the Dalish camp -

Sylaise on the opposite side -

Fen'Harel - positioned along the back edge of the camp, facing outward. I'm convinced it's meant to serve as a ward against malevolent spirits and, you know... a handy reminder to watch your backs. /snorts

Also there are mentions of the forgotten ones. The "gods of terror and malice, spite and pestilence": Geldauran, Daern'thal and Anaris.

Solas's little wolf statue looks like a slightly angrier mabari.

Solas always revealing himself throughout DAI. Just the rebellion leader taking charge. Just this simple apostate barking orders while Cassandra lets him. That's how commanding he is.

For the two of them, it is the moment Lavellan chooses, of her own will, to stand beside Solas and go with him. But to the people watching from the outside, it might become a very different story.

Rook’s party and Morrigan, who were there, would know that she chose it herself. But for ordinary people, or for those who hear the story generations later, all that remains is the fact that the Inquisitor who led the South, the Herald of Andraste, disappeared into the Fade with the Dread Wolf.

And from there, I think the story would split in two very different directions.

One version would be: “The Herald of Andraste was taken into the Fade by the Dread Wolf.”

The other would be: “The Herald of Andraste guided the Dread Wolf into the Fade.”

In the first version, Lavellan would be remembered almost like a saint or a bride stolen away by a god. In the second, she would become someone who calmed a god, guided him, and crossed the boundary of the world with him. Almost a figure from myth.

But in reality, she was not stolen by a god. She was not deceived, nor was she offered up as a sacrifice. She chose Solas of her own will.

That is the part I find so fascinating.

In mythology, women who become the wives of gods are often abducted or deceived. But maybe, somewhere among those stories, there were women who truly chose to stand beside a god of their own will.

The thing is, stories passed down through history do not always preserve that kind of will.

People want stories they can understand.

The human world might want to say she was taken.

The Chantry might want to say she was martyred.

The elves might say she forgave Fen’Harel, or that she was chosen by him.

Those who hate Solas might say she betrayed them.

Those who see Solas as a god might say she became the Wolf’s bride.

Those who come to revere Lavellan might say she was the one who calmed the Wolf.

“The woman who was stolen away.”

“The woman chosen by a god.”

“The saint who guided the Dread Wolf.”

“The leader who betrayed the world.”

“The Wolf’s bride.”

In that way, a deeply personal choice might slowly become something else entirely.

For Lavellan, perhaps it was simply this:

“I want to be with you.”

Solas has always rejected being seen as a “god.” And yet, in the very end, he might turn even her choice into part of a myth.

A she-wolf who reigned the Amaranthine sea.

Serena x Solas

"You change...everything."

Solas/Dread Wolf from Dragon Age Origins

(Please do not take, save, use for AI training or repost- Thank you! Reblogs are fine ♥ )

In this case hurt = anger. But why is that? Anger is not always hurt. We see his anger prominent in the romanced version, leading me to the conclusion that he is angry (bitter?) about Lavellan, specifically. She is the independent variable here. 

Anger is often a secondary emotion that occurs when someone refuses to or is incapable of showing vulnerability. For Solas this makes enormous sense as he is a man who has spent thousands of years emotionally isolated, caarries guilt on a civilizational scale, and is deeply committed to a course of action he believes wholly necessary and unchangeable, albeit not necessarily right. Grief and longing threaten his duty. Anger is safer because it creates distance and allows him to maintain control. I wonder if it isn’t like rationalizing away pain to keep from crying when you’ve started to tear up. It's not that he isn’t sad or guilty or heartbroken, it's that those feelings would paralyze him.

So who is he angry at? This is where it gets really interesting, I think. Almost certainly himself, primarily, but Lavellan becomes the focal point of that self-directed anger because she is the physical manifestation of what he's chosen to sacrifice. Does is it even feel like a choice at all? Does he pity himself for having to make it, then hate himself when he relizes he's doing it? We know he's adpet at brooding. And allthewhile she’s standing there, making it harder for him to carry on in that moment. 

His anger at her, if you choose to interpret it as such, is more complicated and perhaps more real than his deflected self-blame. He tried to end things with her, he took distance from her, and he gave her every reason to move on. For a Lavellan that chose to “lock-in” and affirm the romance in Trespasser, she's still there. Worst of all, she is still the person he fell in love with. And it isn’t as though she’s done somehting wrong in that moment to actively work against his resolve. He can't be angry at his plan, because he believes it is nescessary. He can't be angry at the world, because the world is the reason the plan exists. But he can be angry at her for making this specific moment harder. She is physically present and his plan is abstract. Anger follows.

Being seen when you are doing something you know is monstrous is excruciating. Her love doesn't feel like a comfort to him in that moment, it must be more like an indictment. Because she loves someone she believes is good, even still, and she believes in him.

“I never thought of you as someone who could do that, Solas.”“...Thank you.”

So her love becomes evidence of his failure to do the right thing within the wrong thing. It is a record of every moment he didn't stop sooner. Every conversation he let go too long, every wall he let down, every moment he chose being with her instead of ending it eariler. She loved him because he let her. And he let her because he wanted her to love him back. He can frame his actions as necessary, but he cannot justify allowing her fall in love with him too as anything other than selfish, knowing what the ending would have be. Her continued love in Trespasser is the consequence of that selfishness, to which he responds with anger and frustration. 

She makes the cost of his plan real and personal in a way that friendship doesn't. A befriended Inquisitor is someone he respects and must oppose. A romanced Lavellan is someone he adores and is actively choosing to destroy (insofar as we know at the time of Trespasser). She would grieve him, maybe even fight to stop him (depending on your choices). That's pretty fucking unbearable. Lavellan represents, then, the specific things that make his plan feel like a betrayal. Is this why she becomes the independent variable that intensifies the anger? She trusted him completely. That intimacy now makes him a liar in a more personal, devastating way. It makes him sick, I imagine, especially because she loves an idea of him that isn't wrong, exactly, but is incomplete. 

Part of what continues to lead me back to Solavellan year after year is the grand, mythic scale of their romance. It’s tragic and star-crossed and fated and impossible and necessary all at the same time. It’s messy in a way that real life cannot be, and indulgent in a way that I crave from literature. I remember playing Inquisition at 15(?) when it first came out and being heartbroken over Solavellan for MONTHS because it’s just so captivating. The reveal added so much pain and greif to the relationship, becuase we don't truly understand why he leaves until the scene with Flemeth.

So what does it even mean?

It means that Lavellan mattered in a way nothing else did. She saw something more unguarded, more real. and his anger at her is really the shape of You made me want something I cannot have, and I cannot even fully blame you for it, and I hate that, and I hate myself. But not you.

It's also possibly tinged with something close to resentment that she even exists, the fact that the consequences of his own mistakes handed him something of a double-edged sword pointed directly at his heart. His anger is love with no expression, no resolution. With a friend, he can be cold and resolved. With Lavellan, his composure keeps almost slipping, and anger is how he keeps it in place. I wonder what might have happened if it had slipped farther down? 

Full Solas character sheet. I have been absolutely enjoying myself with this new, simplified design. I was worried Solas wouldn't translate, but I guess it all worked out 😅

So. Solas used to be Wisdom, until Mythal convinced (coerced?) him into taking a physical body. He tells us he was Solas first, before Fen'Harel. The name Solas means Pride, and it is pretty hard to argue that would be a coincidence. His name isn't random. It must have been the name he took (or was given) as soon as he took physical form. So.. was it the act of becoming a physical being that broke him?

And another question. Do spirits exist as a two sided coin, so to speak? Wisdom-Pride, Purpose-Desire, etc. Or do both aspects exist in them at the same time? Are the aspects that we consider "bad" actually bad? One could argue that the Fear demon in the Fade in Inquisition was doing something good before it was corrupted, taking people's fear to ease it. Likewise with Cole, releasing those who were suffering to death. He considered himself a demon/bad for his actions at that time. Not every aspect of Pride or Desire are bad either. Only when they are the only thing in control. Clearly Solas is not driven only by Pride. Is that because of his physical body?

How many times did Solas hear spirits crying out to him for help? Especially after the veil went up.

I can easily imagine these spirits bound by Tevinter mages calling out to him to save them, and Solas answering those cries with fury. It makes me think about all the legends of the Dread Wolf where he would "gleefully patrol the Fade, feasting on the souls of the dead." How many of those stories were actually Solas responding to spirits in pain or enslaved? And feasting on the souls of the dead? They weren't dead when the Dread Wolf found them, but they certainly were dead after he dealt with them for harming spirits.

“But whatever fear the name of the Dread Wolf carries, he has earned. While we might visit the Fade, it is his natural home, and the spirits there serve him gladly."

The spirits serve him gladly - I like how this Mortalitasi (one who supports binding spirits "as is only right and natural" by the way), presents this as though Solas owns the spirits (that's their perspective and bias), but they serve him gladly and Emmrich confirms that spirits think highly of Solas, Spirit Speaker - so much so that he was surprised by it.