#anders meta

He internalized a lot of that, which is why sometimes he seems to contradict himself: he says that magic is a gift from the Maker rather than a curse and that mages shouldn’t have to prove themselves any more than non-mages do, but at the same time he still has this fear of being a “Bad” mage (i.e. not being in full control of himself and his magic at all times; merging w/ a spirit; etc.), and he still has a lot of unquestioned bias toward mages who fit into those categories that the Chantry deems “Bad” (e.g. blood mages, even when their blood magic isn’t being used unethically - tho I also think some of his knee-jerk negative reactions re: blood magic are from Justice, since he seems much more harsh about it in DA2 than he does in Awakening). 

Also, growing up in the Circle means he didn’t get any perspectives on magic other than the Chantry’s, so he’s really ignorant about Dalish clans, Avvar and Chasind traditions, etc. I mean, spirit possession is a rite of passage for Avvar mages, but that’s something he would have never heard of in the Circle, so he sees possession as something that will inevitably end up badly. Basically, he grew up in a highly censored environment that views every one of those cultures as inferior and wrong, so he has a lot to unlearn & relearn. It’s also why he’s so ignorant about Tevinter - he’s skeptical about what the Chantry says about Tevinter because he already suspects that so much of what the Chantry teaches is propaganda. The thing the Chantry focuses on in their criticisms of Tevinter and the Imperial Chantry is the acceptance magic (including blood magic), rather than what’s actually wrong with Tevinter: slavery, exploitation, imperialism, wealth and class inequality, etc. (all of which the southern Chantry also engages in or ignores, so of course they’re not gonna strongly oppose those). 

He also has the occasional crisis of faith, like in the Legacy DLC, after meeting Corypheus. When he learns that some of the Chantry’s teachings about the origins of darkspawn could be true, he starts to doubt himself - “if the Chantry was right about this, what else were they right about?” (which I’m p sure in his mind also translates to “if my abusers were right about this, were they also right about me?”). It’s worth noting that he’s also more likely to go into those self-doubt spirals when he’s in a depressed mood episode, I notice - a lot of his depressive thinking is tinged with the same self-hating, self-fearing rhetoric the Chantry tries so hard to ingrain in Circle mages. He tries to fight back against those teachings, but it can be extremely challenging for him, because that’s what spiritual abuse and growing up in an echo chamber can do (for a more extreme example, check out what the Circle mage Keili has to say in DA:O). 

TL;DR: I think he tries to be devout in his own way - that is, to find a way to be devout that doesn’t have to adhere to the Chantry’s doctrine. On his good days, he talks about how Andraste would have never agreed with how the Chantry has construed her teachings (e.g. in Awakening, if you examine the statue of Andraste). He talks about how the Maker created mages, and their magic is a gift rather than a curse (e.g. in his manifesto - a lot of his arguments are actually made from a faith-based perspective, which indicates both how personal it is for him and also his understanding of how much influence Chantry doctrine has over society as a whole). He talks about how he’s Andrastian, but that doesn’t have to mean he supports the Circle - how he can believe in the Maker and in Andraste’s teachings without agreeing with how the Chantry has interpreted the Chant. 

Him being a compassionate healer and being incredibly passionate about mage rights are huge parts of his character and they’re honestly two of the biggest things that make me like him so much. 

Like, here’s a person who was subject to systemic abuse for most of his life, who knows full well the repercussions of rebelling against the status quo, but does it anyway, because his convictions are just that strong. He knows that the Circle and the Chantry are fundamentally wrong. He’s experienced and witnessed firsthand what happens to people who fight back. Hell, when we meet him Awakening, he’s only just recently been released from a year of solitary confinement for running away - he just got out and as soon as he was able to, he ran again. If he gets caught and sent back to the Circle again, he’s going back into solitary confinement at the very least, and by the time he’s in Kirkwall, he’s also possessed by a spirit, so he’s risking just being killed outright. He’s risking everything by fighting back so openly and actively, but he does it anyway. 

And it’s not just Justice’s presence that makes him so willing to fight. Even when he was running, he was fighting back, because by constantly running away, he was refusing to submit. But in Awakening, Anders did feel like he couldn’t have any impact on the status quo - he believed that things would change eventually, he believed that the way mages are treated is inherently and fundamentally wrong and one day things would be different, but he didn’t think he’d ever see it in his lifetime, and he didn’t believe he of all people could do anything to enact change. Justice helped him realize that he could be an agent of change, but that fire and that strong sense of right and wrong were already there - it just needed to be validated and encouraged, which Justice did for him. 

And I do like that Anders needed support to be able to get to that point, bc I feel like that’s... realistic, y’know? I don’t like the idea that everyone should have to fend for themselves and not have to rely on others to stand up and fight. He couldn’t do it alone, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He hasn’t gotten much support from others throughout his life, so I like that in this instance, he had someone to lean on. (And I still wish there were more opportunities to support him more actively in DA2.)  

Like, it was difficult for Anders to admit to those feelings of powerlessness - which is entirely understandable, because in his experience, showing that kind of vulnerability could get him killed or worse (if the templars considered a mage to be weak-willed, they might not even give them a chance at the Harrowing and just make them Tranquil outright - and Anders is canonically mentally ill, which I imagine added an extra burden in terms of hiding his vulnerability). So, outwardly, he talked a big talk about only being concerned with his own freedom and pretends to be more apathetic and careless than he actually is. 

This also shows a lot in terms of his sense of humor - it’s a lot of morbid sarcasm, irreverent joking, gallows humor even - because he uses it as a shield and a coping mechanism. Ngl, I love that aspect of him, it’s one of the things that started endearing him to me in Awakening first. I play my Hawke as having a similar sense of irreverent, snarky humor, so they play well off of one another. Humor as a coping mechanism is a character trait I tend to appreciate and relate to a lot, haha. 

Anyway, I think in actuality he cares so much it hurts. It might not seem like it when we first meet him in Awakening, but I think it’s just that it’s easier and psychologically safer for him to pretend he doesn’t care than it is to admit that he does care but feels powerless to change things. It takes a lot of strength (and also support from others, which again, is something that Anders hasn’t had much of throughout most of his life) to be able to confront your own vulnerability and try to channel it into something that benefits others. 

But even in Awakening, his actions often contradicted the “I don’t care about anyone but myself” talk - if you tell him to run away in the beginning of the game, he’ll do so, but he shows back up like five minutes later because he felt like he couldn’t leave the Warden to fight the darkspawn alone (he jokes about being “bad at the whole ‘fugitive from justice’ thing”, which... turns out to be way more accurate than he may even realize in that moment). In the endgame, he’s not eager to go along with the Warden to Amaranthine, but if you do bring him, he’s one of the companions who will argue against leaving Amaranthine to burn - his instincts might tell him to run, but he cares too much about the survivors in Amaranthine to leave them to their fate. 

Not to mention, canonically, spirit healers are kinda rare. They derive a lot of their power from spirits of compassion, which means earning spirits’ trust and cooperation. A person who isn’t compassionate probably wouldn’t be able to earn that cooperation of a spirit of compassion in the first place. Not to mention his interest in being a healer in general - it’s a big part of his identity, to the point where in DA2, one of the things he worries most about is not being able to heal anymore because he’s so afraid that he or Justice will accidentally hurt one of his patients.

I think a lot of his attachment to the healer role is also tied up in his own internalized belief that he has to be a Good Mage in order to deserve freedom - it seems contradictory, it’s something that goes against his stated principles, mages shouldn’t have to prove themselves and be ‘good’ mages according to the Chantry’s fucked up doctrine to deserve freedom and life and love, but he lived in the Circle for at least half his life and he definitely internalized a lot of the hateful messages they taught about mages. Fighting against those teachings is a constant battle for him - which also ties into his occasional crises of faith, because he’s an Andrastian and all the spiritual authorities in his life have taught him that he’s a non-person, that he’s inherently sinful and cursed and deserving of subjugation because he’s a mage. 

So, he has a lot of moments of self-doubt. He has a lifetime of trauma and abuse that affect his present well-being. He has a lot of self-loathing and a lot of fear of himself (the latter esp after merging with Justice). He doesn’t see himself as worthy of love or care, even if he talks passionately about how mages deserve those things - he often doesn’t give himself the same consideration that he’s willing to give others. He has an incredibly complicated relationship with his own anger - because his anger is totally and completely justifiable, but it scares him, because he associates rage and anger with demons and loss of control. (I think a big source of the conflict btwn he and Justice is how they differ re: embracing and accepting anger. For Justice, that anger is righteous fury, it’s justified, it’s a source of passion and change. For Anders, it’s a source of fear and insecurity a lot of the time. I think a lot of their miscommunication is rooted in that fear.)

But Anders works himself half to death trying to help as many people as he can for as long as he can, and even though he’s barely making a dent in all the suffering he sees in the world, even though he’s risking everything, he just keeps going, because that’s how strongly he believes and that’s how much he cares. Every mage he helps escape the Gallows, every patient he helps in his clinic is worth it to him. That kind of perseverance in the face of hopelessness and doubt and a world set against you is really admirable to me.

And I also like how clear it is that it doesn’t come easy to him. It’s not just some inspiration porn “you can do anything you set your mind to if you just try :)” thing. He stumbles a lot. He fails a lot. He spends most of DA2 in a constant state of anxiety and desperation (esp since he really doesn’t get much support from the people closest to him, except like… Justice and Hawke, if you play Hawke in a supportive role). He’s idealistic, but he can’t help but dip into periods of hopelessness and depression and doubt - partly because he has a mood disorder, partly because that’s just… expected for someone who’s seen as much shit as he has. His life is messy and he’s tired and it shows. But even when he’s running, he’s fighting. Sometimes, survival is in itself a form of rebellion and he’s a walking example of that. He is stubborn and although sometimes it’s a negative, it also has its perks. And that passion doesn’t just manifest as rage - it’s also love, because lbh, he is a hopeless romantic (in a dorky, endearing way at times) and in his romance route he loves Hawke fiercely.  

It’s a shame that he didn’t get more positive character development in DA2 (it’s no secret how resentful I am toward the writers, he and Justice really deserved better). I headcanon him over time learning how to communicate and coexist with Justice; learning to practice self-care and be kinder to himself; more fully accepting that he has a right to be angry and he doesn’t have to prove that he’s deserving of personhood or love.

And he has a fair amount of flaws for sure - he has a tendency to project his insecurities onto others (e.g. Merrill), he’s not a good ally to other marginalized groups (e.g. elves), he sometimes lashes out at others when they don’t deserve it (which, although I understand why he behaves that way, it still isn’t fair to others who are on the receiving end), he was manipulative in the ‘Justice’ quest (I understand his motivations but despite his intentions it wasn’t acceptable behavior) - but I think he has an ability to better himself in those areas and I like to headcanon that personal growth for him. (That’s not to say I want him to be a flawless character - nobody’s perfect, and a flawless character would be pretty flat and unrealistic, but I also like when characters are allowed to have personal growth in a positive direction.)

I guess, in all, he’s an interesting, likable, and relatable character for me - I wish the writers treated him better, I have a lot of criticisms wrt how he (and Justice) were written (including how Anders was treated as a bipolar character), and I’m also willing to criticize him where it’s deserved (I have a whole tag full of meta w/ my criticisms of him) - but overall he’s one of my faves.

Even before the Circle, he was taught to fear magic and spirits and demons. He was raised by a devoutAndrastian father who disowned him the moment he found out he was a mage - in Anders’ words: “My father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon.”

Then he was forced into the Circle, which is an incredibly abusive environment for mages. The only perspective they get is an Andrastian perspective, specifically the Chantry’s interpretation of the Chant that tells them that mages are basically the source of evil in the world. They’re treated as abominations waiting to happen, taught to hate and fear themselves, and told they have no place in the world or at the Maker’s side, except as tools for the Chantry to use as they see fit. That they’re not allowed to have freedom, love, family, or community - that those things are not for them, that they don’t deserve them. That they don’t count as people. That the Circle is the only place for them, because they can’t be trusted to know what’s best for themselves, and they can’t be trusted around “normal” people. That they should count themselves as lucky for the Circle’s and the Chantry’s abusive brand of paternalism and forced helplessness. That they’re alive because the Chantry allows them to live, and that they should be grateful for it. They’re never allowed to forget that.

This is the sort of thing that children are subjected to from the moment they arrive at the Circle. Under that sort of strict indoctrination, it’s no wonder so many of them turn out to hate and fear themselves. One of the most striking examples we see is Keili in DA:O, who literally thinks the best thing she and her fellow mages can do for the world is kill themselves - that they’re inherently sinful and their only chance for salvation is to just disappear from the world (some screenshots of things she says here). We also see mages in the Gallows talk that way, too (screenshots here).

That is the kind of environment Anders spent many of his formative years in - he was forced into the Circle at age 12, which means he spent his teen and young adult years (during which identity formation is a key part of psychological and emotional development) hearing this and only this: you’re lesser; you’re more prone to temptation than non-mages (and if you do fall to temptation you will be held more accountable for it than any non-mage would); if you’re not constantly on guard against yourself, you will become a monster; if you’re victimized by a demon, it is your fault and you’re the monster, not a victim (even though a non-mage would be seen as a victim under similar circumstances - e.g. Cullen, when he’s victimized by demons during ‘The Broken Circle,’ is seen as victim, even though none of the mages systematically thrown at the mercy of demons during their Harrowings are seen as victims); etc.

Like, so much of a mage’s supposed “education” in the Circle is basically being told over and over and over again that at any given moment you could “fail” to be a “good” mage and be overwhelmed by demons - and that, if that happens, it’s your own fault for being too weak and not faithful enough. They aren’t encouraged to try to understand the Fade or spirits or magic - they’re only taught to fear them and hate the part of themselves that connects them to the Fade. Alternative beliefs are censored and stifled. All they hear is that the Fade is scary, spirits can never be trusted, and demons are everywhere. And questioning those beliefs could be a death sentence, because any sort of curiosity or doubt or anything else that can be singled out as ‘temptation’ or potential weakness can get a mage killed or made Tranquil without even a chance at a Harrowing. If the fear of demons by itself isn’t enough to keep a mage from questioning, the threat of death or Tranquility often is.

The existence of the Harrowing only drives that point home. It serves no functional purpose aside from terrorizing mages, keeping them in line, and creating a hierarchy among them, to keep them divided and alienated from one another. It does absolutely nothing to make a mage immune to demonic possession or to strengthen their control over their magic. It doesn’t do anything to predict or change how they might use their magic in the future or under varying circumstances. It doesn’t prepare them for anything (they aren’t even told ahead of time what the Harrowing entails, or even when they’ll be taken for it - they’re just woken up in the middle of the night by surprise and taken to the Harrowing Chamber and told they’re going into the Fade to prove themselves). Literally all it does is throw them at the mercy of a demon to scare the hell out of them and give the templars an excuse to cull the “weak” - if a mage takes “too long” (which seems arbitrarily defined), they’re killed. Mages aren’t even the only ones who can be tempted by or possessed by demons - we see non-mages get tempted and possessed by demons all the time throughout the games - but mages are the only ones forced to undergo a Harrowing, and they are never seen as victims for being targeted or possessed by demons, even though non-mages are.

All of this is to say: Anders was raised to live in abject fear of demons. He’s a spirit healer, too, meaning he works with benign spirits frequently and he has to be even more hypervigilant about what he lets in and what spirits he interacts with. Beyond just being afraid of what demons could do to him, he’s also very fixated on the need to be a good mage, to prove to himself and everyone else that he’s not weak, that he does deserve to be treated like a person. Now, no one should ever have to prove their personhood or that they should have basic rights, but that’s the position mages have been put in: they have to prove that they’re as deserving of basic rights as anyone else - and even then, as Anders says in Awakening, there’s nothing a mage can actually do to prove themself. They’re condemned because of what they are, regardless of what they actually do.

But this mandate of ‘proving’ themselves is really effective in keeping them suppressed, too - the Circle presents itself as a faux meritocracy. The Chantry defines what counts as a ‘good’ and ‘respectable’ mage, praises those who are appropriately submissive (gives the ‘good’ ones slight privileges over other mages, but never so much privilege as a non-mage would have), and punishes those who rebel too much (with death, Tranquility, or torture - e.g. a year of solitary confinement for Anders, or lashes for any Gallows mage who so much as speaks to a civilian). You get mages fighting amongst themselves - blaming their fellow mages who don’t toe the line for how mages are treated, rather than blaming the templars and the Chantry for oppressing them in the first place. It’s a very effective divide-and-conquer way of keeping mages subdued and having them turn on one another instead of on the oppressive institutions keeping them subdued. Tie obedience to self-worth, teach that from the time they’re children, and you effectively declaw a large portion of mages, so to speak.

Especially when religion is brought into the mix, because then it’s not just about self-worth, it’s also about faith and what the Maker and Andraste think. The dehumanization of mages is framed as something divinely ordained rather than orchestrated by everyday people, which gives it authority above and beyond mortal matters. It’s not just the Chantry or templars or non-mages in general who see you as lesser: it’s your own god. Being told time and time again that your Maker thinks there’s something about you that is inherently wrong and bad, that there’s no place at the Maker’s side for you unless you submit and be perpetually apologetic just for existing? That takes a toll.

Anders internalized a lot of this stuff. How could he not? Again, this is the echo chamber he grew up in. And he struggles against it. He really, really does. He’s in a constant process of trying to redefine his faith to make room in it for people like him. In Awakening, he talks about how Andraste - an ex-slave who led a violent rebellion against her oppressors - wouldn’t approve of how mages are treated under the Chantry. In his manifesto, he talks about how magic should be seen as a gift of the Maker, not a curse. He’s a devout Andrastian who has been rejected from his faith and is trying to reframe it in a way that accepts him and people like him.

But he also has a lot of self-doubt. There are times when he does refer to his magic as a curse, even though sometimes he argues it’s not. Faced with even the possibility that Corypheus really was an ancient magister immediately throws him into a crisis of faith - “if the Chantry was right about this, what else are they right about?” basically translates as “if my abusers were right about this, were they right about me?” He’s been rebelling his whole life, but it also doesn’t take much to make him doubt himself, especially since he doesn’t even think highly of himself in the first place - he’s always talking about how he doesn’t deserve friendship or love or care.

This stuff is really, really hard for him to shake. And on the surface, he does a good job at challenging and questioning at least some of what the Chantry taught him, but on a deeper level, a lot of this stuff is going to take a lot of work (and support!) for him to unlearn. And the things that are hardest for him to unlearn are these basic beliefs about spirits and demons, because again, demons pose a very real threat to him, and the Chantry and the Circle emphasized that threat to be even more frightening than it already is by itself. Demons are always on his radar, it’s an ever-present threat - which must be exhausting. But in his mind, fearing demons is what has kept him safe, not just physically but also spiritually and in terms of his own self-image. Falling to a demon doesn’t just mean death, it also means failure in his mind - failure to be a “good” mage, failure to prove himself as being just as much a person as any non-mage. It’s all very much tied up in his insecurities and self-loathing. 

So it’s no wonder merging with Justice throws him so much. Justice challenges what Anders thinks he knows about spirits and demons and the Fade - and what Anders thinks he knows is also what’s been, in his mind, keeping him safe all these years. Loss of control - whether it’s being able to control himself and his own power, or being controlled by others like he has for most of his life - is arguably one of Anders’ biggest fears. It makes sense given how much of Anders’ life revolves around control as a concept - control over himself (against demons, against templars), control over his magic, control over his own life and future (something he never had in the Circle, and to some extent still doesn’t have). Demons are probably one of the first things that come to mind when Anders thinks about losing control of himself - it’s what the Circle taught him, after all. So when Justice ‘takes over’ and it feels to Anders like ‘losing control,’ Anders starts to question whether Justice might be becoming a demon (even though, imo, that’s not at all the case).

Anders has trouble moving beyond that spirit vs. demon dichotomy. He tries to fit Justice into an either/or category, but it’s just not that simple. That’s why Anders goes back and forth so much - sometimes he gets defensive about how Justice isn’t a demon, and then sometimes he catastrophizes over what if Justice is a demon? Anders has trouble finding peace with that grey area (and it doesn’t help that Anders doesn’t even have the most stable sense of his own identity). Those shifts in perspective are also often linked to Anders’ mental state at any given time - when he’s depressed or anxious, he tends to catastrophize more and slip into that “I ruin everything” rumination spiral (and those are the times he starts up with the “I’m an abomination/Justice is a demon” thing).

When he first tells Hawke about Justice, it’s almost like he’s idealizing a memory - “he’s not my friend Justice anymore, he’s vengeance now; my anger corrupted him” - because Anders is prone to catastrophizing and blaming himself anyway, and it’s just what he defaults to when things don’t turn out the way he expected. But Justice was never flawless in the first place. Justice always talked about vengeance as a possible form that justice could take. This isn’t something new that Justice got from Anders - it’s just that Anders has a tendency to blame anything he perceives as negative on himself.

What also scares Anders, I think, is how readily Justice embraces Anders’ anger. Of course he does. To Justice, Anders’ anger would seem righteous - it’s an entirely valid response to oppression and abuse. It isn’t inherently destructive - it can be channeled to change things for the better. But Anders associates his anger with loss of control - how often did the Chantry talk about the dangers of rage demons, of losing control of your emotions and making yourself vulnerable to demons? - so the fact that Justice is so okay with that anger is probably a red flag in Anders’ perception, even though it’s… not actually a bad thing (imo). 

Anders has trouble processing the fact that spirits just aren’t as black-and-white as he was taught, so when Justice shows signs of things that Anders was taught to associate with demons, instead of saying ‘maybe this isn’t as simple as I thought,’ he stays within the Andrastian framework and jumps right to ‘does this mean Justice is a demon now?’  (Merrill is right when she points out that Anders might benefit from questioning the Chantry’s rigid teachings about spirits.)

I think that Anders can learn to challenge these beliefs, but it’s just gonna take time and support. He doesn’t suddenly ‘know better’ just by merging with Justice because he doesn’t actually have straightforward access to Justice’s thoughts - he admittedly has trouble even distinguishing between his own thoughts/emotions and Justice’s a lot of the time, unless it’s something they’re in direct disagreement about (e.g. Anders’ romantic interest in Hawke, lmao). Anders can’t talk directly to Justice anymore to sort through this stuff, so he jumps to conclusions that (imo) are distorted by his own negative self-image. He used to be able to talk to Justice when they disagreed (which they did often, and they both grew from talking through those disagreements and explaining their differing perspectives). But now, when Anders doesn’t understand something, all he can do is just assume (and what Anders tends to do is assume the worst). He ends up pushing Justice away instead of trying to understand him, which is obviously unhealthy for both of them because they’re sharing a body and mind now.

Then consider also that one of Justice’s biggest fears is probably becoming a demon, and... well, it would be easy for Anders to be influenced by that without even realizing it. And honestly, Anders constantly worrying about whether Justice is a demon is not good for Justice, either. Which is why it’s important for Anders to be able to let go of some of that fear. 

tl;dr - What’s holding Anders back is a fear of questioning what he thinks he knows. Justice’s presence doesn’t solve that - and in some ways, it makes Anders cling even harder to his sense of certainty about spirits and demons, because otherwise he feels vulnerable.

It might seem strange for someone who is otherwise so willing to challenge the Chantry’s doctrine, but there are just some things that Anders is hesitant to challenge too strongly, and the spirit/demon thing is one of them. Believing that there’s a strict dichotomy between spirits and demons, and that he has a good handle on which are which, allows him an illusion of safety - and safety is not something he has much of in his life. Admitting that it’s just not that simple is a scary thing for him by itself, and that’s without factoring in him being an abuse survivor who is still trying to shake the toxic things his abusers forced him to believe about himself and the world.

I think he can learn, though. It’ll just take time and support and patience, and he needs to be able to feel relatively safe enough to begin seriously challenging these beliefs. He’s just not in a safe place in Kirkwall, physically or psychologically - at least not as far as we get to see in the game itself. (I have headcanons about him and Justice learning to coexist better over the years, but the game doesn’t reflect that.)