#same thoughts about fandom.. really different fandom

Colonialists do not come to your country just to rape women and abuse the locals for the sadistic thrill of a power trip. They come to extract resources.

Orlais should have come to Ferelden for high-quality wool, lumber from Bresilian Forest, ore from Frostback Mountains and untouched lands that can be turned into plantations, to grow grain there and sell it to the highly urbanized Free Marches, Nevarra and Antiva.

Stealing Loghain's dog or killing his mother is not an example of colonialism. It is a simple moral tale: evil individuals harming those less powerful in a personal way out of sadism. This could happen anywhere, between people of any ethnicity — an Orlesian lord and an Orlesian peasant family, or a Ferelden lord and a Ferelden family. Such atrocities occur because of economic inequality between the participants, it is the economy that drives conquest, transforming that inequality into both an economic and a racial hierarchy. If the writers aimed to depict a real occupation, the Old Imperial Highway wouldn't be the only road on the map. Orlesians would have built an extensive network for two reasons: to connect mines and granaries to ports like Highever, Denerim, and Amaranthine, and to allow rapid military response to rebellion. Did you think the Orlesians were like Mongols, sweeping across the steppe on horses? Of course not. To be honest, even the Mongols brought infrastructure, just in different forms, like language (many Russian words related to taxation and trade have Turkic origins. Guess why). Actually, I can use Mongols as an excellent illustration of my next point: colonialism is impossible without collaborators, and when the colonialists leave, it is often the collaborators who become the new rulers. Don't believe me? Look at the history of Russia. Moscow became the capital only because its rulers used the Mongols to crush their rivals. They were the Khan's most ruthless tax collectors, brutally oppressing their own population to maximize profits. The logic is simple: the more you pay the colonialists, the more they allow you to keep for yourself. This is THE reason why countries that have suffered colonial rule often have a dictatorship problem.

The military is the most developed infrastructure occupiers leave behind, because its primary purpose is to terrorize the population into compliance. And that population is not afraid to use such tactics on itself, because surprise, rich people are assholes everywhere.

Colonialism creates a sick society that cannot survive on its own, composed only of enforcers and peasants. The enforcers cannot rule in the absence of the metropole; all they know is how to scare, torture, and kill. The peasants cannot rebel or gradually develop civil society, they have been terrified into submission. Colonialism systematically destroys the very social class from which civil society is formed: the free urban population. The metropole has no use for artisans, merchants, and scholars from the colony. At best, it will bring them to the capital as exotic curiosities for the elite. At worst, it will actively destroy them. That story beat from The Stolen Throne, where Orlesians drive some of Fereldan farmers off their land, makes no sense. Why would you destroy your own profits by killing the workers for your mines and plantations? Are you stupid? Such a tactic only makes sense in the specific case of settler colonialism, which is a very different type of evil, and I don't think that's what's depicted in the canon.

We do not see Orlesian peasants moving into Fereldan farmlands. We hear nothing about Orlesians burning down forests to make space for new farms. We are shown no new cities, towns, or villages built by Orlesians. If this were true settler colonialism, about a third or a quarter of Ferelden would be Orlesian or of mixed heritage, with border regions and new towns being 90% Orlesian. King Maric wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. How do you deport a third of your country? That's the whole point of settler colonialism: it alters a nation forever, or simply destroys it over time.

Let's return to my historical example. Do you know what happened to the sophisticated artistic traditions of Kievan Rus' during the Mongol occupation? None survived, because the artisans were not needed by the new state. Do you think it was just the Mongols' fault? No, absolutely not. The only place where older traditions survived was Novgorod. And do you know what Moscow did to Novgorod when it "liberated" the country from the Mongols? It fucking destroyed it. The "enforcer" class forged by occupation will do anything to remain in power. It will colonize its own people and destroy their very soul if necessary.

The Muscovite rulers did not abandon the tactics they developed to serve the Khan. They perfected them. They could have made the country more democratic, like Novgorod, they could have invested in resurrecting artistic traditions and regrowing the urban population. But no. Their state model was built on extracting raw resources, and for that, you only need dirt-poor farmers and a military to keep them in check — and to conquer new ones from time to time.

Realistically, after liberating itself from the Orlesian yoke, Ferelden would have been primed for its own expansion, perhaps into the Korcari Wilds. It's more convenient to cut down their forests than to further deplete Ferelden's own. The occupation and rebellion would have given Fereldens the military experience to crush scattered tribal neighbors. Other Fereldan exports could have been furs (as with Russia) and perhaps pearls (did you know that northern rivers used to have them in abundance? Korcari Wilds have a colder climate and enough rivers). The fur trade alone would be an excellent excuse to conquer the Wilds, much like the push into Siberia.

Ferelden should have had a strong collaborator class. Ruthless teyrns, arls, and banns who kept their titles and enjoyed King Meghren's favor by being his best tax collectors. Puppet rulers are necessary to make occupation palatable and efficient: they would be hated but tolerated because they are Fereldan. Meghren's court should have been split between them and imported Orlesian nobility — the latter likely from poorer, ambitious families, as well-established dynasties don't typically cross the sea to seek new opportunities.

A farmer's son is unlikely to make history. If I were rewriting the rebellion, I would make Loghain the son of a minor loyalist bann, murdered by the Orlesians for failing to quell a rebellion. His father would have seen serving Orlesians as the lesser evil, a way to ensure his people still had a Fereldan leader. The Orlesians would kill him for being a poor manager—if you allow an uprising to happen without alerting the authorities, you must be disloyal yourself.

This way, the tragedy of Loghain's father would still be tied to Maric. He would die in the crossfire between the rebellion and Orlesian paranoia. Loghain would learn a bitter lesson: his father was a bootlicker, but it didn't save him because he wasn't ruthless enough to be a good manager. He would be torn: "Do I join the rebellion to avenge my father, even though he was a collaborator? Or am I too smart to join this suicidal crusade of naive fools and thugs?". In the book, Loghain isn't thrilled about the rebellion at first, so I would keep that intact.

The view of rebellion as a fight between "The People" and the occupiers is a mythologization that comes later. In reality, it is almost always a civil war between collaborator elites and anti-collaboration aspiring elites. ALL. EMPIRES. RELY. ON. COLLABORATORS. IT. IS. THEIR. WHOLE. DEAL. The people who joined Maric's side weren't "noble liberators"; they were a different faction of the elite, fighting to take control for themselves.

Look up real rebellions:

Do you think the Spanish Reconquista was a simple Christian vs. Muslim war? It was a complex civil war where Christian kings routinely hired Moors as mercenaries and allied with Moorish taifa (petty kingdom) rulers against their Christian rivals. El Cid, a national hero, fought as a mercenary for both Christians and Muslims. It was not a crusade but a slow, political land grab.

Do you think the Sepoy Mutiny was a war for Indian independence? It was old Mughal and Maratha elites versus massive sections of India that supported the British. The British ruled through a network of collaborator princely states and employed vast numbers of Indian soldiers, the Sepoys. Even this iconic rebellion was an alliance of convenience between disgruntled elements of the old ruling class trying to oppose those benefiting from the new order.

Do you think that the Algerian National Liberation Front led unified people to freedom? The FLN spent as much time massacring rival nationalist movements as it did fighting the French. It used terror to coerce an often-ambivalent population, assassinating "collaborators" who were sometimes just people who wanted to live in peace. This should have been an element of Maric's rebellion! A peasant doesn't care who is his lord, and doesn't want to die just so his wife and children can pay taxes to a different man.

This pattern holds even for slave revolts, because freed slaves don't want universal freedom, they want to have their own slaves. Free people of color joined the Haitian Revolution for equal rights with white people, not for the abolition of slavery. They owned one-third of the plantations and one-quarter of the slaves. After the French were defeated, the revolution devolved into a civil war between Black leaders over who gets to control the new state.

The conflict between Ferelden and Orlais is loosely based on the Norman conquest of England. While William the Conqueror did systematically replace Anglo-Saxon elites, he also allowed many to keep their power in exchange for loyalty. It was the dispossessed elites who resisted, the collaborators had no reason to rebel. Norman rule left a lasting legacy: new bureaucratic tools, Latin-derived vocabulary, architectural influence, and a shift in England's political axis from Scandinavia to Continental Europe.

Realistically, Loghain should have been a ruthless, dispossessed minor noble with military genius and a grudge against everyone. He would have picked Maric as the only viable leader who didn't want him dead and could best serve his ambitions. Maric would make him Teyrn of Gwaren because he is fucking terrified of him. A ruthless pragmatist who owes his position not to lineage but to his own cunning and blade? That's a potential kingslayer. Gwaren is both a reward and a punishment: a position close to the king, but in a logistical nightmare of a region that makes gathering allies for a coup nearly impossible.

A "liberated" Ferelden would be a failed state in the making. The new houses coming to power would be a junta, seizing the juiciest lands from defeated loyalists. The new crown would be bankrupt, forcing Maric to grant his elites significant autonomy and tax exemptions in exchange for their loans and troops. They would essentially be independent warlords. This is the classic post-revolutionary fallout: the central authority is weakened by the very powers that created it.

Ferelden would remain a client state in all but name. Its economy would still be tied to exporting raw resources, with Orlais and its Free Marcher clients as the primary buyers. The new Fereldan oligarchs would own the enterprises left by the Orlesians but lack the expertise and capital to run them, they would have to take new loans and hire foreign specialists. The skeleton of the nation is still foreign.

Many collaborators would have survived, fleeing to Orlais and the Free Marches with their wealth and expertise. They would form a bitter diaspora — a permanent fifth column waiting for a chance to reclaim their holdings.

The war would have devastated craftsmen and farmers. The new powers, to service their debts, would enclose common lands for more profitable sheep runs. The very people who cheered for liberation would be economically crushed by their "liberators." Some will turn to banditry.

Denerim's alienage would swell with refugees from the war-torn countryside. The new regime, even more cash-strapped and xenophobic than before, offers them even less. The elves become a social bomb. Loghain's deal to sell them to Tevinter would be a brutal form of social engineering — quelling unrest by "relocating" a surplus, discontented population to "countryside" and "coastal cities". It would take a lot of time for the elves to realize what is truly happening and to where they are really being deported.

Let's get back to my historical examples! I mentioned Novgorod specifically for a very good reason. The main danger to Maric after the rebellion would be his most powerful ally, the Couslands.

They are the Novgorod to Maric's Moscow — mercantile, naval, cosmopolitan, and likely seeing themselves as the king's equals. Their power is dangerous because it isn't based solely on feudal loyalty. Considering that they're a well-established dynasty with a port city, It's logical that they might have been collaborators, perhaps negotiating a separate peace with Orlesian commanders on terms favorable for all sides involved. Maric and Loghain would have discovered this. The result? A new deal. One Cousland is executed as a traitor and another lives as a "loyal vassal", with the house's history rewritten to glorify a patriarch who "died heroically in battle."

The Muscovite state is a very good analogy for a more realistic Ferelden. The army, the only organ fully developed under colonialism, would become the primary institution. Maric would rely on forces modeled on the Orlesian legions he fought—used as much to crush internal dissent as external threats. Unable to trust the old feudal elite, who either longed for a return to Orlesian rule or plotted to start their own dynasty by killing the last Theirin, Maric's power base would be a new "service nobility" — people like Loghain, military men and tax collectors from politically irrelevant families, chained to the throne by a "land for loyalty" scheme.

In this world of realpolitik, Cailan's plan to marry Celene isn't stupid. It might be immoral, but it is very pragmatic. He represents a significant faction of the elite who look at the ledgers and see only one solution: reintegration with Orlais on better terms. Nobles drowning in Antivan and Marcher loans want the Imperial treasury to assume their debt. Those who profit from exporting wool to Orlais want tariffs removed. Some simply see no value in Fereldan sovereignty when compared to Orlesian universities, canals, superior architecture and chevalier academies. Ferelden has only mud, stone keeps, and debt.

Becoming a semi-autonomous Grand Duchy within the Empire would be good for many. Oligarchs would become counts with seats in the Orlesian government, their sons would become chevaliers, trade would flow freely. The Blight would become Orlais' problem to solve.

Loghain knows what the cost will be. Could Anora, raised in the authoritarian, land-owning oligarch style, ever play the Grand Game? Could she be a banker? She is a warlord's daughter, not a smooth-talking merchant's heir. Loghain's decision to elevate a despised man like Rendon Howe is brilliant realpolitik: a tyrant with no other allies is far more dependent and less dangerous than a strong, popular leader.

Alistair's naivete represents the mythology of the rebellion — the pure, heroic tale people tell after the dirty deeds are done. His shock at the realpolitik is the shock of a boy raised on stories confronting the monstrous machine his father actually built. It is soul-crushing.

This is the story Dragon Age: Origins could have told: a civil war for the soul and future of a nation. Maric could have been a liberator who became a tyrant to secure his liberation; who betrayed his allies; who built a state in the image of his oppressors; and who left a legacy of institutional paranoia that doomed his sons, his friend, and his kingdom.