I'm running around Tumblr to ask some questions I'm curious about from fellow Solavellan lovers. Answer all or one, up to you!
What does your Lavellan understand about Solas that makes forgiveness possible without excusing what heâs done?
Is there something your Lavellan fundamentally misunderstands about Solas, and that Solas fundamentally misunderstands about your Lavellan? What finally allows them to understand each other more clearly and how does that understanding come?
What is the dynamic between your Lavellan and your Rook?
If your Rook comes to know Solas primarily as an adversary, while your Lavellanâs experience is coloured by their love and history together, where do their interpretations of him overlap - and where do they differ?
(rubs hands together) I love these, these are fun. Behold my massively long answers, because I have thought about all of these a lot.
1. Mostly, it's that she doesn't see there is anything to forgive; she is aware she would likely have made the same decisions on the same information and wouldn't have felt bad about it. Except Rook. That was messed up, but that was Rook's place to forgive that. But the steps of the Archon's Palace was not the time to get into a discussion about whether he had done anything to her that she felt he needed to be forgiven for. They disagree on this matter. Solas is slightly concerned about it, but also finds her ruthlessness quite attractive, if baffling.
From Salvation, Chapter 4: I Suspect You Have Questions
She giggled. âTechnically, Solas, when you said that you saw it in the Fade and you saw it, oh, personally, I suppose, everything was âin the Fadeâ.  Before you created the Veil. Wasnât it?â That certainly seemed like a logical conclusion to her, in any case. âYou never really lied. You selectively told the truth,âshe finished triumphantly.
âVhenan,â Solas intoned reproachfully, looking down at her in solemn reproof, âwhile that is, I suppose, not entirely inaccurate when viewed from a certain perspective, to claim that I was being honest in saying so is to stretch the definition of honesty to the point of absurdity.â
âI never said you were being honest, Solas,â she quibbled, â I said that you werenât lying.â She smiled at him fondly. âYouâre a terrible liar. Youâre excellent at telling the truth in a remarkably misleading manner which directs people to draw entirely the wrong conclusions. Itâs really quite impressive, and I find it delightful, if incredibly exasperating at times. I do it too. Everyone always forgets I was sent to the Conclave as a spy. I donât actually think you really betrayed me either. You left instead, and then you warned me what you were going to do anyway. Everyone has things that they want to keep for themselves, and you never hid who you are.â
âI took your hand, vhenan.â Solas stated flatly, nonplussed. âI removed your hand and part of your forearm in part to determine if I could cleanse the lyrium dagger in the same way that I removed the anchor. I concealed the fact that I was the Dread Wolf of your peopleâs darkest legends.â
She raised an eyebrow. âYes, and? It was trying to kill me at the time. It wasnât for your own personal benefit, and you felt it necessary for your duty, so itâs fine. It wasnât personal.â She shrugged dismissively.
And Written in Red, Chapter 5: The Dawn Will Come
âI would have killed you,â she said. âI thought you should know for certain. I thought I was going to have to kill you, on the steps of the Archonâs Palace.â
He looked at her, the weight of ages upon him.
âWhy, then did you join me?â he asked.
âEither you were a god, in which case I thought you you needed to be put down and would rather have been dead if you had been in your right mind, anyway,â she said. âOr they were going to bind you to the Veil by force, and I couldnât bear that you would have been bound against your will. It would have been wrong. It would have been the only way I could protect you.â
He laughed, sharp, unexpected.
âYou had said that you walked the dinâanshiral with me. I had wondered. And you took no thought for the falling of the Veil?â
âThe world had existed without the Veil before, it could figure it out again,â she said. âIt would have been difficult, but the South was destroyed anyway at that point. The places, not the people. Like a wildfire. I didnât think it would make that much of a difference in rebuilding. And you did something to it, I thought, spirits were coming through more easily. The only thing I was really worried about was how it would affect the People, but I thought it wasnât likely to go well for us regardless at that point.â
âIâm still afraid they might get hurt,â she said quietly, âour people, at least in the South. Maybe I should have stayed, used whatever influence I had left⊠but I thought that might only make us more of a target.â
âIt is especially fortunate now, I think, that my agents were disbanded,â he admitted. People respond poorly in the wake of fear. A scapegoat is always the easiest option. And the elves are an easy target, regardless of how they were also targeted by the Evanuris. No matter that elves fought against them; that you led the fight in the South and Rook struck the blow that killed Elgarânan. You did now as you did when you disbanded the Inquisition: removing yourself to protect the People. You were not worried for your own life if you had struck against me?â
âWell, my luck was bound to run out eventually,â she said, âand I should have died three times over now, at least. Iâve been on borrowed time since the Conclave, really, so it wasnât a concern. And I thought I could get you first, because I wouldnât have hesitated, and I thought you would have.â
2. Oooh, okay, the big fundamental misunderstanding was about the nature of their relationship. Lavellan is aro ace and did not figure this out until after stepping into the Fade, which has been an Issue. I see Solas as demisexual, and having had experiences where he was having sex because he felt it was expected of him in Arlathan, so he understands very well to a great extent what she is going through and she did not realize this until kink therapy with Bull in Restraint when Solas mentioned it.
But this is from a piece for Queer Solas Inky Week, when they really sorted themselves out.
âAnd what about love?â she asked tentatively, curling into herself a little more, pressing her left arm against herself.
He smiled. She loved. She loved fiercely, but did not press her love on him. She simply saw no difference between the love of friends and that of a lover, and she did not feel the need of another person to share her life. She saw him with her eyes open and unclouded by romance or desire, and still found in him someone worthy of her love, and offered it open handed.
âI have been needed,â he said. âAnd you do not need me. You want my presence for the joy of my company. I find that I prefer being wanted to being needed. Does it bother you that I love you romantically, that I desire you?â
âIt did,â she said. âNot you, just knowing that you loved me differently. I worried I didnât love you enough, not the way you needed. I know I didn't handle it well. If we hadnât been in the Fade when I really realized that we didnât feel the same⊠I donât know what I would have done. Probably the same things; Iâd already made up my mind at that point and Iâm too stubborn to back down.â
He laughed, and she finally uncurled.
âYou do have a tendency to attempt to solve problems by going through them until either they or you break,â he said. âBut does it trouble you now?â
âNot anymore,â she said. âIt did for quite a while. I worried I was disappointing you, I worried I wasnât doing things right, I worried that you said it was fine, and that you thought you believed that it was, but you were going to show me it wasnât with your actions, that I needed to be someone else. People usually do. I hadnât realized that you were frustrated with yourself because you thought you were pressuring me, and I thought you were frustrated with me, with the situation. Iâd been waiting for that to happen, and I assumed thatâs what it was. But you didnât, even when Iâd tried to fix things and made them worse. You were patient, and you kept asking me what I wanted until I believed that I could have what I wanted. That it was something you wanted too. And then I felt like I didnât need to run anymore. You make me feel safe, Solas.â
3 and 4. I wrote about their first impressions of each other in To Pass the Torch. Rook has kind of a hero worship crush on Lavellan, Lavellan sees a great deal of what she was feeling to a great extent during the Fifth Blight. Lots of respect, Lavellan wishes that she could have spared Rook the responsibility.
Rook did realize when Lavellan knelt before Solas in A Sinking Star that she was prepared to follow Solas' lead with whatever he decided next and that was a bit of an 'oh shit' moment for Rook.
Theyâd had something between hero worship and a crush, and the way that the Inquisitor had looked when she gave them the wolf statuette⊠Perhaps it had been growing up in the Necropolis, seeing peopleâs grief, seeing the beauty of how people were still loved and remembered after death, but Rook had always been a little romantic, a little sensitive, though not without a strong sense of pragmatism, and that was part of growing up in the Necropolis too. Harding and Varric had both mentioned that the Inquisitor and Solas had been involved, but they couldnât reconcile the Inquisitor with being someone who would pine after a former⊠whatever, for years. She didnât seem like a hopeless romantic. A strong sense of justice, of personal responsibility, but not someone who would overlook someone elseâs failings because she was in love. And there was a certain amount of studied grace, to the Inquisitor. Not a falsity, just⊠someone who was aware that she was capable of terrible things, and chose to be kind.
Listening to the Inquisitor talk about her feelings for Solas⊠they could see it. He seemed so kind and wise, and sad⊠Rook thought that could have described the Inquisitor too, and the Inquisitor had the knack of speaking with someone seriously, as if they mattered, as if they were important, looked at them with an intensity and an attention that was a little unnerving. As if, in Solas, the Inquisitor had recognized someone, like her, who had been placed in a terrible situation and had the power and responsibility to do something about it, alone. As if she saw Rook as the same kind of person, which was more than a little unsettling, but also inspiring.
And Rook, when they had gone back to the Lighthouse and spoke to Solas, really watched when he spoke this time. For what was really there, rather than what they were expecting to see. Trying to see the person, rather than the Dread Wolf. Theyâd seen Solasâ expressions, in the memories from the Crossroads, go from a greater vulnerability, sadness, fear, frustration to that same mask of cocky confidence that he wore when he talked to Rook. The mask that was cracking. That infuriating sardonic smirk started to look like a rictus, a pained grimace, and it fell completely, more than once, when he spoke of the Dalish, and most especially when he spoke of the Inquisitor. Kind and wise and sad, like sheâd said. Like the Solas they'd seen in the regret murals. They werenât sure that they believed Solas, but they did believe in the Inquisitor, and they did believe in what their eyes were telling them. That is, until Solas had clawed his way out of the Fade Prison over the top of them.
Theyâd been entirely prepared to try to trick Solas in binding himself to the Veil then, the fragile trust that had started to form between them broken. They hadnât even been upset that Solas had betrayed them again, if you could even count it as a betrayal when you were mostly expecting it. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, and they should have known to just take Solasâ words at face value. The Veil will not fall by my hand. The Inquisitor had even told them he was a terrible liar. She was right. He told the truth very carefully, and let people come to the wrong conclusions, and Rook had fallen for it.
But the Inquisitor had spoken for him in a room filled with people who would have been perfectly content to see him fall and had no faith in him whatsoever, and that⊠that was something special. The Inquisitor had pride. As much as Solas, they thought. To swallow her pride, when everyone at that table had known that she still cared for him, when to ask would have been a humiliation? That carried more weight with Rook than they thought she had realized.
And, on a practical note, if it didnât work, at least Solas would probably find her arrival a good enough distraction they could bind him to the Veil anyway. Heâd stopped to talk with Varric; he would undoubtedly stop to talk with the Inquisitor.
And he had stopped to talk with Rook. Heâd stopped to talk with the Inquisitor. Heâd tried to explain himself. Heâd been so very obviously desperate, and so very obviously tired. And so very obviously just a man torn by what he saw as his duty. They hadnât expected it, and theyâd been tense where the Inquisitor had been calm.
And then, Rook had realized as they watched the Inquisitor kneeling before a weeping Solas after Mythal had released him from her service that they werenât entirely sure that the Inquisitor was an ally after all, though perhaps that wasnât right either. Their elven wasnât the best; theyâd studied the Fade rather than linguistics and the alienage elves that theyâd learned from as they wandered around Nevarra City as a child werenât as fluent as the Dalish, but the elven that the Inquisitor was speaking sounded⊠older somehow, echoed in the Fade. There is no fate but our love. It could have been a plea for Solas to change his mind, but they didnât think it was. They thought it perhaps a pledge, an absolution that no matter what he chose she would love him still, regardless of what they would be forced to do by duty.
They had remembered in that moment the notes that theyâd read on the temporal anomalies in Redcliffe, researching for their thesis project. Theyâd skimmed through the notes that the Inquisitor had written, and set them aside to be forgotten until now. It had been an action report of what she had called the âDark Futureâ, one in which Varric and Solas had both died to allow her and Dorian to go back in time, preventing that future from ever happening. Interesting reading, but the Inquisitor wasnât a mage, and she hadnât had as good of a theoretical understanding of magic then as she had later, and they hadnât known Varric then, or, for that matter, Solas. Hadnât even remembered the report, when theyâd met him, and of course the Varric theyâd known hadnât been the Varric of the Inquisitorâs Dark Future. Perhaps if they would have remembered the easy sacrifice of which Varric had been capable in another time, perhaps they would have disagreed with him in trying to talk Solas down.
The Varric and Solas in the Dark Future had sacrificed themselves willingly for the chance of a better future. As they thought the Inquisitor would. As they thought this Solas would, and had been planning to. As they had thought both the Inquisitor and Solas might in that moment. That skimmed report had suddenly become far more relevant as they had thought that maybe the Inquisitor saw this world as Solasâ own Dark Future. That she might trust his judgement, as the creator of the Veil, as someone who knew this world and the previous, as someone that she knew as someone wise and kind, as to what might be best. That the Inquisitor, unlike Rook, had considered the potential ramifications of taking down the Veil as a real possibility for a future, rather than a calamity to be avoided at all costs.
And Rook hadnât known what to do either. The Inquisitor had saved the world once, more than once, really. And she had trusted Solas to make the choice. And they hadnât thought it was because she loved him. They had thought it was because the Inquisitor was the only other person who could understand the decisions that Solas had been forced to make, and that was terrifying. It hadnât been a decision Rook was prepared to make.
It had been a relief, when Solas had straightened and decisively bound himself to the Veil. The decision was out of their hands. They had not had to make the choice and live with it, and so it had been easy to go back to being Watcher Ingellvar, to let saving the world become something else that someone else had done. Davrin and Lucanis had killed Ghilanânain, theyâd struck the final blow on Elgarânan themselves, and Solas had ended the Blight and bound himself to the Veil. Theyâd been part of a team that had done it. And, they realized, Solas had been part of their team that had ended the Blight, all along, as had the Inquisitor.
Or rather, theyâd all been part of the Inquisitorâs team. Rook had been recruited when Varric had recruited them after the War of the Banners, and it had been confirmed when the Inquisitor had met Rook, her agent once removed, in the Cobbled Swan and Rook had agreed to continue working with her. To clean up what the Inquisitor had accepted as her mess, her responsibility. And the Inquisition had truly, and only, been disbanded when the Inquisitor had stepped into the Fade. She had, in doing so, disbanded the Inquisition as she had said, rather than let it turn into something that someone else would have to stop. Rather than let herself turn into someone who would need to be stopped.
But Solas, Rook thought, had never really left the Inquisition behind, or the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor believed in Solas, in his wisdom, in his kindness. And Solas had once been a spirit of Wisdom. How like spirits were the first of the elves? How much did perception shape them, even still? How much did the Inquisitorâs perception, specifically, shape Solas? His first step on the path to atonement had been binding himself to the Veil as the Anchor had been bound to her. Had he bound himself to the Veil because he had felt that to do so would have been to live up to her example, her belief in him? And what exactly might happen if the Inquisitor died because she ran off into the Fade alone to help her clan without Solas?
He had been very much caught between Pride and Wisdom, when they had spoken on the steps of the Archonâs Palace. Between, perhaps, falling into the madness of godhood and remaining a man. And the Inquisitor had tipped the balance. From the moment that she spoke, that possibility of godhood had crumbled, though he had continued to direct the fall of the Veil. If he lost her, through an inability to aid her, because he was only a man? Rook thought the world might see Fenâharel, the Dread Wolf, the ancient Dalish God of Treachery and Misfortune in all his grief-stricken madness, and that was something no one needed.
