Tar-Míriel did nothing wrong

thing thats bad: aww

thing that has both genuinely amazing pieces of storytelling and abysmal dogshit slop both happening like entirely interchangably:

so what do the shadow dragons do? they assist in slave revolts, apparently. but when you work with them in one of the first missions in the game you’re tracking down a red lyrium “relic.” no explanation as to what this is or why it’s important other than the venatori have it. so surely during the shadow dragon companion’s quest you must do something dealing with slavery right, since that’s the shadow dragons’ whole thing? no? aelia is (checks notes) trying to unleash a demon sealed beneath minrathous, for evil reasons i guess? if i want more context i have to read tevinter nights? apparently she’s venatori but there is no connection between what she’s doing and what the other venatori are doing in the main plot of the game, and neve’s plotline is about the threads, not the shadow dragons? the shadow dragons are just kind of fully irrelevant?

so what about rook mercar? as a rook who works with the anti-slavery faction, you must have some input on literally any of this, right? no, you don’t know your base of operations or the leaders of your organization or the fact that mae lost her seat which happened years ago and is the reason the shadow dragons even exist and it was a public smear campaign so rook not knowing this is literally insane. you’re explicitly raised by a wealthy military family from a city that isn’t this one, and there’s no explanation as to how you got to minrathous or why you started working with the shadow dragons. the only mercar-specific dialogues you really get are saying “shadows stick together :)” a few times. you have broken chains in your bedroom from a slave rebellion you helped. why the fuck did you keep those? rook mercar is useless and toothless and stupid on purpose so that you don’t think too hard about the issues that supposedly drive your character but are barely present in the game. and at the same time, they were sent away from the shadow dragons for being too radical and not going along with the safe plan! 😭

and then for some reason you get to choose the next archon—the ruler of a system that is built upon slavery. for some reason one of your queer liberal friends gets to be president even though it’s an internal election process within the magisterium and dorian has probably fewer than a dozen allies and mae is believed by most of the imperium to have committed some sort of vaguely-alluded-to treason. we are not even going to confirm whether all the magisters blighted by elgar’nan were killed or not. literally don’t worry about it kitten ❤️. nothing about the system is going to change. dorian using spies and blackmail and assassins to accomplish his goals is framed as radical when he spent an entire game making snide jabs about how that’s the essence of tevinter politics. mae says you can get the people on your side and show them the truth as if tevinter being a complete farce and magisters doing blood magic and the nation running on slavery isn’t the stereotype everyone outside of the country knows and as if all of that isn’t known more deeply by the people who live there. as if “having the people on your side” means anything in tevinter and can accomplish change without revolution and without any violence.