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what if the tranquil didn't just all get turned into oculara offscreen, and actually were part of the plot. what if anders and kirkwall haunted the narrative a bit more. what if, a dalish elf who suddenly wakes up in chantry custody for a mass murder... assumes any personal information shared will lead to providing a target for an exalted march. and therefore doesn't share any. which only looks more suspicious lmao. what if the dalish/city elf stuff was not written in a way that i personally found very stupid (it will at least, be stupid in a new, different way! diversity win <3) [holds up incredibly minor npcs] "i just think they're neat" what if leliana's rose vision and general heretical tendencies went somewhere. i think she can have a little a chantry schism, as a treat. what kind of weird person would be like "hm yes. i love to wander around. as a visibly dalish apostate. all by myself :^)" and, what reasons might they have for going to the conclave directly, when it's literally Templar Central. here's her character tag uwu.

which then ended up in her winning being first, through somewhat dubious means. and then immediately assigning herself to roaming messenger duty. bc no one really wanted her to be a future leader, including her. all this basically just pissed off much of her clan, for no real benefit, aside from a vague sense of vindication. this is peak performance 📐👍

she generally thinks she is both Inherently Somewhat Evil, and also a very bad leader. which is only slightly true. but does stress her out very badly if she's given any indication that people see her as an authority figure, haha. currently in the fic timeline, no one sees her as that, and she is just expecting to be the funniest person at her own public execution, which is a role that she does feel qualified for. she is lying awake at night workshopping her Coolest Lines for this, bc she is normal.

i think in solas' case it's a bit... from his perspective, in this au, the entire "she is a prisoner" thing weighs on him a lot. no escaping the depersonalization and loss of autonomy that he's inflicted on this random elf! this is not really very good dread wolf behaviour to have gotten an innocent bystander held captive during his plans. he's so far scraping by on avoiding thinking about it, bc he doesn't believe she fully has feelings. but on the other hand, he has seen way too many miserable imprisoned elves trying to act calm about it, and despite probably(?) not having feelings, she acts exactly like those ones. so it's difficult for him to not sympathize 🍳