Fangirling through life

(big spoilers for Inquisition, also speculation) 

It’s very interesting, isn’t it? Solas’ kinship (or non-kinship) with other elves is something that he’s ultra contradictory about through the whole game. 

When he’s talking to the Inquisitor, he says over and over again that he doesn’t consider the elves of Thedas to be “his people.” At one point, he comes out and says that he considers mages to be more “his people” than elves. He can get really defensive about it. some examples:

“I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves.”

“I simply see no way to help the elves, oppressed as they are now.”

Yet, whenever he talks to Sera, IT’S EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE, and it’s weird!!! He seems struck by how negatively she speaks about elves, how she “eschews all things elven.” This is basically the only thing he talks to her about, it bothers him soooooooooo much. 

He tries to convince her that she’s an elf, that she’s “the furthest from what she was meant to be,” that she is “apart from herself.” When he talks to Sera, he talks about elves completely differently, not at arms-length, but with the plural possessive noun “we” and “our”: 

“Our people can sometimes understand the rhythm of the language…” 

“We’re not so very far apart, you and I…” 

“Our people used to be here.” 

“We lived at a pace that would sustain us for ages…” 

“You dislike your own kind so much…?”

He also talks about elves like there’s some natural Way For Them To Be, that anything else is going laughably contrary to their very nature, and that she should know that, even if only subconsciously.

After the Temple of Mythal, Sera tries to get Solas’ goat about how Elvhenan had dissolved into civil strife rather than being conquered like everyone had thought, but Solas just says:

“You cannot upset me with what we found there. My genuine sorrow for the tragedy of our history cannot be diminished for a single moment. That you do not feel this, well, you have my envy… and pity.”

some other weird elf stuff:

Solas’s manipulative complete reversal toward Lavellan directly after the avalanche (this scene is completely different with the non-elven Inquisitors): “The humans have not lifted one of our people so high for ages beyond counting. Her faith is hard-won, lethallin, worthy of pride…” “The orb is ours…” “The orb is of our people…” ETC ETC everything about that scene. (Compare how he talks in that scene to the scene after Halamshiral, and you’ll get whiplash.)

when walking around in the Dales (the second elven kingdom, the one Solas had nothing to do with), Solas will say, “My people built a life here. It must have been something to see.”

Solas calling Abelas “lethallin” and identifying himself as “Elvhen”

When Dorian asks Solas whether he wants to go look for more Ancient Elves like Abelas, Solas finally responds, “Perhaps Abelas will go look for them.” -> so Solas doesn’t seem to see even the remaining few Ancient Elves as His People, either. I mean, to the extent that he would want to go find them and try to start a new life with them as a real possibility. 

(also, when doing the Temple of Mythal quest, he will attack the Ancient Elves if that’s what the Inquisitor chooses to do. He won’t be happy AT ALL about it, but he’ll do it. So he is willing to sacrifice living Ancient Elves in order to defeat Corypheus/further his end goals.)

Again, when talking to Dorian: “Your nostalgia for the ancient elves, however romanticized, is pointless.”

Solas says he considers himself more a mage than an elf, but when Dorian tries to get along with Solas by virtue of them both being mages, Solas is like, “The differences between us are not technicalities to be discarded.” (specifically after Dorian had stuck his foot in his mouth about elves)

The only time that he truly sounds like he’s talking about His People is when he’s talking about Ancient Arlathan as it was, and how the world was without the Veil.

also, of course: “The People, they need me.”

Why solas acts like this is a very interesting question. I have some very strong suspicions, but I’m not sure there’s a cut-and-dried answer to it yet. 

(My suspicion? the formation of the Veil physically changed elves in a very real way (“imagine beings who lived forever, for whom magic was as natural as breathing… that is what was lost….”), and he can’t admit true kinship until both that mistake is fixed and “everything is exactly as it was” and “everything sings the same” again. So even the still existing Ancient Elves aren’t really kin to him, they’re so diminished, but all elves can possibly be his People again, if he plays his cards right. And he is canonically very, very good at cards.)

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The hostility between Hawke’s companions in Dragon Age 2 makes a bit more sense when you remember that the whole game is told from Varric’s perspective and he has to keep audiences engaged with juicy drama. 

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