#he is complex

It drives me crazy that the Dragon Age fandom reduces Solas to either “asshole villain” or “misunderstood baby who did nothing wrong.” Y’all are all wrong, he’s both and that’s what makes him absolutely fascinating.

You can’t just write him off as a arrogant lone wolf who doesn’t care about anyone but himself, because over and over the game goes out of its way to show you he is motivated by the fact that he cares deeply about the world and the people in it. At the same time if you only focus on his moral center you’ll gloss over giant details like he’s a damn war criminal and he manipulates people while justifying it because of his moral goals.

If you ignore his flaws then he’s boring: he’s just a magic nerd who’s generically nice.

If you ignore his strengths he’s boring: He’s a villain with no real motivation and is generically mean.

He’s beautiful and tragic because his kindness overlaps with his ruthlessness. He’s fascinating because his intelligence is mingling with his pride. He’s brilliant because his moral code is marred by his twisted sense of duty. You take any of these things away and he becomes flat and uninteresting.

admittedly? deep down he regrets what happened on the ionan edgeworld --- he regrets more-so what he was forced to do to nakuri and his men as a result of rhaast’s influence, not necessarily what he had to corun zago. he regrets what he did to keelo, the fightmek who had trained him in his rise to becoming ordinal. deep down he does not necessarily enjoy killing and hurting people, this is evident within his odyssey lore story.