the haven chantry in origins, next to a medieval scandinavian stave church
and then the haven chantry in inquisition, next to an orthodox christian church
like. ok im all for different regions having different designs principles, i love the kirkwall vs ferelden vs orlesian chantry robes. and i'd be super down for ferelden and orlais to have different chantry architecture. but then they. didn't do that. they retconned the chantrys. the redcliffe chantry also now looks orthodox. why'd they do it this way. i could see the denerim chantry getting rebuilt in a new style after the blight but not redcliffe or haven's.
INTERESTING new development is that the reason the chantry looks orthodox to me is i think it's meant to be early medieval "norman romanesque" style. which in dragon age terms probably means it is the style southerners came up with after kicking out tevinter. still inspired by their designs, but drifting with local materials and knowledge.
once they got good enough at those, architects could increase the weight capacity of their structures and pre-plan art out of the stone itself, leading to a new architecture, personalized style. irl this lead to gothic, the main style of the medieval ages, but for thedas this can be something else, and that's likely the style we see in denerim.
the only hiccup is that bioware used real gothic architecture for tevinter ruins in dao. but we can pretend the first ever blight set architecture back a few centuries because dwarves couldn't do it all for the humans anymore. so the romanesque was a reset of sorts.
for quick reference: romanesque 10-13th century, gothic 12-16th c, renaissance 15-16th c, baroque 16-18th c. with my clothing post I put thedas in roughly a 15th, 16th century. which is great for both val royeaux looking baroque and denerim looking older within a decade of each other - orlais has the money to be ahead a style or two.
meanwhile, the oldest surviving structures are either tevinter ruins, or romanesque strongholds. romanesque did have the problem of their square corners were very easy to break in a siege. but if you are clever enough with the placement, like say a forgotten village in the mountains or a tall, defensible cliff, your enemies can't get at the corners to destroy them. hence haven's chantry and redcliffe's castle still having that antique style all this time later!
still doesn't explain the retcon though.
