#davgmeta

while i do believe that solas has a good read of varric, he'll also be about ten years out of date on his specific mannerisms, phrases, etc., while rook would be intimately familiar with them. also, tidbits like "varric" making fun of solas for having porn in the lighthouse seems... odd, for solas to do. not because he couldn't, but i just don't see him necessarily thinking about that particular angle. there are several moments like this, where i'm like, okay but would solas think of saying that right now?

solas is in the regret prison. i list this for two reasons: first, he is cut off from the outside world except for his tenuous blood bond with rook, a connection that i don't believe allows him a significant enough amount of power to create and actively puppeteer this facsimile; and second, he is in the regret prison, actively being haunted by his own memories and regrets. i don't think he has the mental bandwidth to play at being varric on the regular

it seems to me much more effective, sustainable, and realistic that solas simply prevents rook from recognizing that varric is dead. all that requires is preventing them seeing the evidence of his death, which is evidence of absence, not presence. he can also gently twist the things other people say to rook, but again, i don't think it's active manipulation. it's more like planting a strong suggestion, and then the mind works to support that preconceived notion, particularly when it appeals to rook

because it wasn't the elvhen who attacked the titans, it was the evanuris. in fact, the elvhen were slaves to the evanuris, and she knows that. but she still - understandably! i wanna make it clear this is not a critique, it's a really good, interesting bit of characterization - blames all elves for it to a degree

the elvhen were victims of the evanuris, just as the dwarves were, just as the titans were. and it's this really messy place because, yes, the elves almost certainly went to battle because the evanuris commanded them to do so, and yes, the evanuris were not originally seen as gods but as generals, so one could assume free elves still willingly(-ish) fought for them

but ultimately, the destruction of the titans only happened after solas took form (and likely not immediately after, either - he took form to help mythal, and they developed the plan for the dagger and then created it, all of which likely took time) and solas was only called when elgar'nan was already beginning to exert control

really, modern dwarves and modern elves share a historical enemy, and it's not each other, it's the evanuris. elves have had an extremely hard history: they had what we can safely assume to be a period of freedom, taken away (presumably slowly) as they became enslaved to the evanuris. then solas' actions resulted in the unintentional destruction of arlathan and stripping the elves of their immortality, yes, but also a significant portion of their magical power, and killing a great deal of them in the process. the survivors were scattered and lacking a societal center, effectively displacing them as the "reigning race," although again, that's a faulty view of the elvhen even at the time, because they were enslaved by their own leaders

with the elves being disparate and scattered and the dwarves having been forced underground - and the kossith presumably becoming the beginnings of the qunari around about this time - the stage was clear for humans as a race to become the power in thedas, and they killed or enslaved many elves. correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't recall anything about humans enslaving dwarves: of course, trade with dwarves was necessary due to lyrium, and the cultural pressure for dwarves to stay underground (likely stemming from a fear of reprisal should they travel back into what had then become elvhen territories) means that surfacer dwarves must exist largely unchallenged. but elves provided no material benefit to humanity, and so were treated as interlopers, outliers, "savages," or - horribly - opportunities

and it's really, really interesting to see lace have to grapple with all of this, because she obviously has a great deal of sympathy for slaves, but she seems hesitant to connect the dots about the elvhen. she acknowledges that solas was right to move against the evanuris and try and free his people, but she still blames elves as a whole for what became of her people

emphasizing the watsonian element of this! i am approaching this entirely in-world!

now, the basic idea as i understand it is that the qun teaches that the qunari - in this case, the implication being that it is the kossith themselves, not the human, elves, or dwarves who become qunari - will go "mad" without the strict structure of the qun. that there is a bloodlust that is inherent to their species, one that must be strictly controlled

i think saying that this is a load of bullshit is entirely fair, especially because it is an amazingly effective tool for the qun to use in order to control their people and that is reason enough for it to exist. but i also find it interesting to consider whether there is - or, more to the point, was - a grain of truth to this

if your inquisitor becomes a reaver, cassandra can tell you about members of her family. now, these are tales passed down, but she speaks of them consuming more and more dragon's blood and becoming increasingly impacted by it, even physiologically; that some of them even grow scales. but the main thing she is talking about is their bloodlust, their wildness, that they begin to lose control

the iron bull tells the inquisitor of a belief among the ben hassarath, that the tamassarans might have added some dragon blood into the mix so long ago

corypheus tells a qunari inquisitor that their blood is "engorged with decay" and that their race is not a race, it is a mistake (apparently kieran says something to a qunari inquisitor about how their blood does not belong to them!)

while this implies that the kossith might have stemmed from another race entirely, it may also refer to the act of mixing dragon blood into their racial makeup. or both! (personally i'm in the 'both' camp, but we just don't know for sure!)

but if we take what cassandra says to have any truth to it at all, it seems possible that the early alterations might have induced violent madness. in which case, the idea that the qunari/kossith are inherently prone to such madness may have been used as an excuse for the behavior of these early experiments (a way to avoid acknowledging that they were experiments at all, framing the dramatic behavior as stemming from something else entirely), or it might have been known at the time, but twisted and muddied by the passage of years and obfuscated by the qun as it grew to become what it is now, in-game

i have also seen people question whether the change was something ghilan'nain did to them, which is an intriguing possibility! going with that for a moment, the story might have been changed by the kossith themselves in order to erase that part of their history, the fact that they were, in this view, akin to lab experiments. perhaps they chose to tell their children, who told their children, and so on and so forth, that their "madness" was just inherent to their people, that it was a burden they had to live with and learn to control

now, do i think the iron bull or a qunari inquisitor would be prone to violent madness without the structure of the qun? no! do i think any of the qunari would be prone to that without the structure of the qun? no! but do i believe there might have been a time when that was at least sorta-kinda true? possibly!

and i certainly believe that the idea of it serves the qun wonderfully. take shathann: she left not out of any hatred for the qun, her work there, or the culture, but because she knew what they would do to taash, how they would use them. teaching the qunari that they will go mad without the qun is a damn good way to keep those like shathann to stay there, because in her case, if she believed she'd lose her mind, if she believed she might become violent towards taash, or if she believed taash might become a maelstrom of violence themselves, she might have stayed in place

she's brutal. she's compassionate. she's reactive. she's centered. she's in hiding. she's front and center. she's a protector. she's a killer. she's a farmer. she's a warrior

i feel like she's a being of dichotomies. it's even in her name: lace and harding

and in veilguard, she, a dwarf, gains magic. this is the ultimate dichotomy, but it's also a dichotomy-that's-not: it's a confluence, a point at which two seemingly contradictory forces meet and create a unified whole

(ppl who want to be tagged for my meta under the cut: as always, lmk if you'd like on or off this list!)

i see, above all, a protector. in many ways, i do see a mother. but i do not see kindness, i do not see gentleness

i'm not saying that like She's Bad, Actually, rather that her approach to caring, to protecting, does not manifest as something gentle and warm and soft and kind. she is a mother, but in many ways she does not fit the motherly-goddess archetype

she is many things. an old woman. a spirit. a dragon. a warrior. a queen. a mother. a goddess. a person. blunt, coarse, mystical, mysterious, unrelenting, fanciful, sardonic, bitter, sharp, ruthless. she's angry

i think it is apt that she is depicted as a dragon. there is a conceptual brutality to dragons, profound grace mixed with unbelievable capacity for violence. she is the mother who will rend those who threaten her children apart, but she is not the mother who will gently lull those same children back to sleep after the fact

in a way, mythal's motherhood is exemplified in flemeth's motherhood of morrigan. there is, of course, a brutality to it, a cruelty, violent and destructive. but she is also clearly trying to prepare morrigan for a world that will - and does - seek to destroy her. a world that resents magic, a world that punishes women for their desires, a world that rewards love with destruction and regret. mythal - and flemeth, both separately and in the ways they are conjoined - has a great bitterness, a deep mistrust of the world, one that she tries to instill in morrigan

is it good? no! is it gentle? absolutely not! is it fucked up? it is! but all that can be true, and it can be true that she was trying to prepare morrigan. there was never any gentle motherhood to flemeth, just as there is no gentle motherhood to mythal. a strategic motherhood. a brutal, sharp, violent motherhood. a motherhood that subverts many of the conventions around the role and what type of person fulfills that role

i've written previously about how i think ghilan'nain's design, which appears very much as one body stacked on top of another, may have been a result of her absorbing andruil (i've written meta and fic about it!), but i don't think that view precludes this one

today i'm thinking about how the specific configuration of her body may also represent a birthing of monstrosity. ghilan'nain's body - what appears to be her body, her original body - seems to be the uppermost one, the head and arms, torso down to her hips. then a new body seems to emerge

that second body, given its placement compared to her original anatomy, could be viewed as a birthed creature. it emerges from where ghilan'nain's pelvis would have once been

as such, i think her design can be viewed as an intentional reference to her being known as the mother of monsters. somewhat in line with dragon age's broodmothers. caveat that motherhood =/= literally birthing, motherhood in reality is far more complex and nuanced than that, but as far as coding and representations and inference goes, motherhood is often associated with birthing, with bringing to life literally through one's own body

in da2, he pursued the idol - made of red lyrium - for money. it destroys kirkwall (yes there was a lot more going on, but the idol was significant) and destroyed his family. destroyed his friend's family (again: more going on, but still)

then in dai it had spread even further. the toll was even greater. it had infected the landscape, had been fed body after body, and was (part of) what empowered a being to rip open the sky

in davg, we see how this arc is so, so representative. how in da2, we are shown how modern dwarves, all unknowing, try to profit off the blood of their ancestors. we are shown the core corruption of dwarven society, a corruption at least partly festering as a result of scrubbing the histories

in dai, we are shown how deeply interwoven lyrium is. that game demonstrates its physical presence in the world, an ancient, primordial presence, now red and infuriated and springing forth. but it's one thing to hear about lyrium veins, and another to see huge crystalline growths emerging into the open air, a kind of forcible reclamation of the surface the dwarves were driven from. and it was fed bodies, it grew through and in them, an inversion of how it had been used to grow the evanuris' bodies. a violence once enacted upon it, now enacted by it

and then in veilguard, the circle closes. lyrium in varric's heart, the furious blood of the titans meeting directly with the lifeblood of its descendants, used as a weapon to slaughter one and wielded by one of those who used it to forge a body for himself. after, held by lace, it gives to her the ancient life and history and force of her people. perhaps varric's death unlocked that. perhaps it would have given it to any dwarf who could touch it first in life rather than in dying. but it was a tool of death for one of its distant descendants, then a means of reclaiming an ancestral history for another

and this resonates with bellara's struggles and through her, elven struggles with their own fraught history, recently turned on its head. dwarves have been profiting off the very literal blood of their ancestors for centuries, selling it to be consumed by elves and humans; elves descend from conquerors, tyrants and slavers who drove the dwarves underground

like... how did it start? did elgar'nan begin it unintentionally by taking form and using lyrium? or did he start it intentionally after because he saw them as a threat to his power? or maybe he wanted to take possession of the lyrium?

i also have a lot of questions about the amount of lyrium that is needed to form a body, and the impact it would have on the titans. i mean... is it the ache of a splinter or the brief sting of a bug bite? or is it the shattering agony of a part of one's body being removed?

do they even feel it at all? lyrium is said to be their blood, and a human can lose quite a bit of blood. like a blood sample being taken, that's immaterial (barring certain conditions ofc)

so much is so dependent on things we don't know (and i like that!)

so, perhaps elgar'nan took form and it stirred the titans, either due to pain or due to the disruption itself. perhaps the continued emergence of more spirits taking form exacerbated the issue until it was the titans who made... well, not the first move, but the first move that was distinctly war-like

or maybe taking form just... wasn't a big deal, in some way. fucked up? sure, yeah, it was still using part of someone's body to make your own. but if it wasn't disruptive or painful, perhaps that wasn't the causal issue here. in which case, the war might have come about from elgar'nan. perhaps he saw - directly or indirectly - the power of the titans and saw them as a threat to empire. perhaps he wanted the world for the elvhen, and not for the dwarves. perhaps he did not view the dwarves alone as any particular threat, so went directly for the titans

and this uncertainty leads to additional uncertainty!

did mythal take form to stop elgar'nan attacking the titans? now, if mythal did take form in order to protect the titans in some manner, that sentiment very obviously did not remain - watcher!mythal, the fragment we meet in the crossroads, views the titans as monsters. and while it's possible that view developed over the course of her watching, it's also the closest we have to insight into arlathan era mythal's views. but it could have been less about protecting the titans and more about stopping elgar'nan disrupting the natural balance, or something along those lines; not protecting the titans as independent beings, but as part of the world she was more broadly trying to protect

or it might have been that she took form for the elvhen people (side note: i view the evanuris as spirits, but the elvhen as physical beings who were in existence prior to elgar'nan's emergence. ik not everyone shares this view and that's fine! but that's a cornerstone of my meta). perhaps she did so in order to protect them from the war that was brewing, or because she feared that elgar'nan would abuse them in some manner, control them, or otherwise get them to do his bidding

or perhaps she came because she did not trust elgar'nan. just that. uncertain about what she would be there to quell, but certain that she would be needed, that she should be involved

it is also unclear why, exactly, mythal asked for solas' aid. was it to stop elgar'nan? or was it because she needed his help navigating the war that was on their doorstep? or the war that had been ongoing, elvhen being slaughtered in the wake of an impossibly powerful enemy (even if that enemy had good cause to stand against the evanuris)?

whatever the reason for her request, he clearly participated in helping her "end" the war. so he was a participant in the war between evanuris and titans, and we don't know how long between his emergence and the two of them creating the dagger and his using it. it might have been weeks or months, or it might have been years, decades. hell, it could have been generations, although i find that unlikely

but the evanuris were all extremely powerful mages, and the titans were so vast that each of them is essentially a mountain unto itself, so the damage wrought by their battles would have been... cataclysmic

and if the world is destroyed, well, there's nothing left for anyone: for elvhen, for dwarven; for evanuris, for titan; for mortal, for immortal; for physical being, for spirit

ultimately, there's so much i don't know, and so many lines that can be drawn, but with so many variables that an entirely different line can be drawn right next to it. and that's neat!!!