#having thoughts again

Like, during the war he had Warriors yeah, but also Young Link/Mask. Tune could be young and silly while still retaining his role as an older brother, somebody worthy of respect, somebody who can help the adult (Warriors) even if he’s not allowed to help for certain things.

As Tune, he had pretty much the same family dynamics and power dynamics with Mask & Warriors that he has with his grandmother and Aryll. He’s not de-facto in charge and somebody older is definitely looking out for him, but he’s also definitely looking after someone younger who needs an older, emotionally-regulated example to look up to.

And then it’s LU, and … Wind doesn’t have that anymore. He’s the youngest. Every act of silliness and stupidity comes with the threat of judgment for being childish. There is nobody younger that needs him, there is nobody who automatically leans into giving him the respect and authority that an older sibling has. Mask was a brat, but he also saw Tune as something akin to Saria, someone maybe smaller than his 17yr self but still older.

And now, Time is old.

Heck, most of the chain are older teenagers or adults. That adjustment in dynamics for Wind must’ve been brutal once the more familiar relationships started taking hold. Can anyone of you eldest children in the chat imagine suddenly being the youngest in your family? Yikes.

A remnant is a leftover. If the wolf statuettes in the Crossroads are regrets Solas deliberately seals away, too painful to face, then the 3 remnants in the prison are the pieces that have bled through because they are at the core of his pain.

Remnant of Parting

Mythal gave wisdom, yet to him she betrayed it by siding with the Evanuris. She represented protection for the people, yet he failed to protect her from her murder. What should be memories of love and trust have become reminders of disconnect and guilt.

The line “striding with the powers of hidden ways” describes the Mythal we know, moving through the world with secret knowledge and unseen strategies, shaping events quietly, even as Flemeth. Solas set her apart from the other Evanuris and admired her, but the phrase also points to secrecy that may have extended even to him. Those hidden ways became paths he couldn’t, or wouldn't follow (ascending to gods), and therefore divided them. And it's interesting this remnant describes a dragon aspect and not the companion spirit he once knew or even the woman. Dragons are majestic, distant, and fearsome but it also feels tied to their final parting when he slew Flemeth and took her power. The image of his unfinished fresco in Skyhold’s rotunda comes to mind - the dragon slain, the bond broken.

“Fingerprints mar the golden shine” - the “gold” shows Solas clinging to a pure, idealized memory of Mythal in my opinion. But the fingerprints suggest two things: he won’t face his own choices in their shared story, and he won’t see her flaws either, won't see how she herself treated him, how he treated her. His attempt to preserve a spotless memory only leaves marks of denial. That’s why, in an atonement ending, she reminds him it was never just him it - was both of them.

All of this is bound up in the word parting. It isn’t a single moment but the story of being severed again and again. He mourns the Fade, his spirit self, he mourns Mythal, honours her, resents her, condemns himself all at once and he mourns the world.

Remnant of Failure 

This remnant is tied to the Inquisition. To me, the image of the plain wolf ties this regret to Solas as a man - the one who's eyes were open to the people of Thedas.

“Orb shards, broken by misplaced trust.” - the orb he gave Corypheus, snatched out of his control when the Inquisitor interrupted the ritual and took it's power. The Inquisition placed its trust in him - in the companion who walked beside them - and he placed trust in himself that he could keep his secrets and remain distant - but failed. He also had to trust the Inquisition, trust them to clean up his mess, to protect him when he's at his weakest. Looking back, it feels like trust is misplaced on all sides because every bond was shadowed by what he hid.

The text goes on: “slivers of an irretrievable power.” These are not pieces that can be put back together; they're slivers - small and piercing: the lost orb forcing him to take Mythal's power, the Anchor burned into the Inquisitor, the friendships and/or love that formed in its wake, the secrets pressing down between them. Slivers that can’t be pulled, that keep burrowing deep whenever he touches the memory.

But also interesting are the words “the kindling of regrets.” Kindling is what sparks fire and keeps it burning. This is the regret that doesn’t stop producing more. The broken orb didn’t just end one plan; it lit the blaze of everything that followed - the rise of the Inquisition, the bonds Solas made, his severing of them, walking the din'anshiral and into the events of VG. A single fracture created warmth for a time - connection, friendship and even love - but also ensured the fire would consume everything.

And this is the paradox that keeps the regret "humming with a diffuse, lost vitality.” It's still vibrating, still alive, but can't be resolved. The orb’s destruction might have given him some of the most peaceful times of his ancient life. And because of the Anchor, he lived among mortals in a way he hadn’t before. He was simply Solas - a man who came to care for mortals. But the same accident also meant he would one day have to cut it away, take back what he had given, and sever the bonds that changed him.

Remnant of Reflection 

This remnant is about identity to me. The imagery of paint and palette recalls Solas’ murals in Skyhold and the Lighthouse - his way of curating history, cultivating memory, and how the world sees him - and how he remembers himself.

Here the Dread Wolf dominates the image: six eyes blazing, jaws hanging over a city. Unlike the plain wolf of the Remnant of Failure, which symbolised Solas the man, this is the figure of myth - all-seeing and terrifying. The city beneath evokes Arlathan, destroyed under his rebellion, but it could also stand for every mortal society since, living under the shadow of the Veil. This reflection is not the Solas he knows or longs to be, but the figure history and others paint: a devourer and destroyer.

What makes this remnant more disturbing is the palette description. The codex describes the colours in words like “strange… unsettling… choleric.” These are the hues of something unnatural, disturbing and of sickness. When Solas looks at the Dread Wolf he sees grotesquerie (what he didn't want Lavellan to see).

That grotesquerie is highlighted in Callback. In Skyhold, his frescoes bled into life and manifested as a demon of Regret. It was defeated only when Sutherland voiced his own regret - that he had acted alone and used his friends - which the demon recognized as its own. Dying, it admitted, “There might have been a better way.” Just as regret seeped out of paint and plaster in Skyhold, here it crystallizes in the prison. The Dread Wolf’s likeness, crusted into sickly colors, becomes a mask he can't escape.

then come dig the hole yourself prick!!!

Like we know that some things about the previous heroes were known, at least to the royal family. Zelda has her little ceremony thing that references at least three of them and the canon inclusion of their clothes and weapons in totk means that there are things known about them. I personally subscribe to the idea that Wild is the one that writes the descriptions for the things in his inventory, so when it comes to his predecessors items, he’s pulling from his own knowledge of them to write those. 

We also know that he pulled the sword a decent amount of time before the calamity even rose, and at that point he had already become the most skilled swordsman so what else could they have done to help prepare him for his role in everything? What about get him to study the myths of those that came before him? That’s a possibility right? 

I know we like to really lean into the whole ‘memory loss’ part of his story and it’s an important part of him, but just once I want to see him really knowing things about the others, like how Four’s shield gets passed down to Wind through his family, or how the fierce deity mask was used against the moon in a battle in another land, or how sky’s tunic was a uniform that he got from winning a race with a large bird or how he can get a hold of items that really shouldn’t even be in his plane of reality. (Twili helmets, Ravio’s hood, goddess sword (renamed ‘white sword of the sky’ in totk, etc)