umm. so theres a take ive seen floating around a couple times — that anders is, like, a white lib who thinks he should be 'owed a place in an ivy league' on the grounds of being a legacy student, or sometimes for being middle class. which like. i do get the joke hes a white man who distributes pamphlets yayy. but if we're talking like, Seriously, i do think this is... pretty far off base?
like... within the context of dragon age... anders is a person who was ripped from his family and incarcerated as a little boy simply for existing as he was. the education he was given was given to him Solely so the skills he learned could be exploited and he could perform complex, dangerous free labour to profit his captors — and as a spirit healer, he even more than his fellow captives (other circle mages) was at risk of being killed or made tranquil simply for doing the work that was asked of him, as spirit healing is considered a particularly dangerous specialisation by the chantry due to its association with spirits. during this time he was also abused, monitored 24/7, taught that his existence itself was a crime, a danger to the people around him, and — notably — even once put in solitary confinement (for a year!) for trying to escape. even when he did manage to make his escape stick, he could only do so by swapping one imminent horrible death in service for another (the wardens are basically a death cult...); and (if you take the short story as canon) he was also chased out of the wardens, again, for existing as he was (ie: for choosing to merge with justice in an attempt to preserve his life & form a partnership to fight for mage liberation).
when you meet him in da2, he is effectively homeless — he's living in a sewer, and still providing free medical care for the poorest people in kirkwall, while working with the mage underground to smuggle mages to freedom & fighting for mage liberation through 'peaceful' means (such as appealing to the grand cleric & writing and distributing his manifesto) for seven years. and when he finally snaps, blowing up the chantry, he's forced on the run again!
& that's not to say he's suffered and so he's incapable of wrongdoing, or being flawed. anders is, like— incredibly chantry-poisoned; he's absorbed the teachings of the institution that abused him, and this causes him to be incredibly narrow-minded and judgemental, often cruel in his estimation of mages who don't agree with him or fall victim to demons for acting in a way he considers weak-willed or incorrect, and also— it leads him to be outright racist, most often to elves but also about qunari when the opportunity presents itself. among other things, he's also more-or-less incapable of considering dissenting opinions, because he's so convinced he's right and the very real persecution he deals with every day has taught him that those who disagree with him are Dangerous, he's somehow both clingy and avoidant, spite can lead him to entrench himself in positions that are unutterably cruel (fenris...) and he has a really nasty jealous streak that can lead him to espouse nasty denigrating opinions of his friends he otherwise never seems to hold. also. he is Manipulative.
but i think that his experience do pretty much make the idea that he feels 'entitled' to an elitist position in higher education like... laughable. whose legacy is he leaning on for a position? he can't even expect his parents to grant him a spot Outside Forced Labour Jail. he isn't riding a nice midpoint here of "not technically being part of the wealthy classes;" he is basically as oppressed within the setting as a human can get! the only thing he feels his class position entitles him to that he isn't automatically receiving is, like, a right to a free life. he wants that for everyone like him! and he is to be clear often presented as demanding it Pretty Stridently and being pretty bitter that he can't have it. but like. he's right lol. he Should Have It. they should All have it. if there's One point on which anders is right it is What Mages Deserve. right
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