#templar order

Meredith's sister was a mage who turned into an abomination and killed 70 people because she did not want to be sent to the circle and received no training. The templars took Meredith in and essentially indoctrinated her (WoT Vol 2 page 191).

Her promise was that "no abomination will take another family like they did mine". She came to believe that no matter how cruel the circle, no matter how bleak the lives of mages - it was better than the alternative. That caution is necessary and mages have to be treated differently otherwise they could end up killing innocents like her family (WoT Vol 2 page 192). So you can see how trauma radicalised her and the templars decided that someone who had just been traumatised by a mage was the perfect kind of person to be a templar.

So when Meredith encounters Cullen, she recognises someone whose experiences and fears mirror her own. Cullen already shares many of her beliefs as a result of his trauma, and Meredith takes an interest in his career because of that ideological alignment. (WoT Vol 2 page 193).

This isn’t grooming in the classical sense. I would say it is more aligned to something like ideological patronage - promoting a “true believer”, particularly one whose pain makes him earnest, rigid, and reliable. To any reasonable observer, Cullen should never have been promoted so quickly or made second-in-command - but that decision was political and ideological. More rooted in trauma and institutional extremism rather than predatory social bonding for personal exploitation.

This doesn’t make Meredith’s actions right, but calling it grooming shifts responsibility away from Cullen. Cullen could have refused the promotion. He could have spoken out sooner, but he didn’t because he had already learned, through trauma and institutional conditioning, that questioning his superiors was not his place. Meredith didn’t need to instil that belief in him.

Anyway, it is the chantry that grooms (on am institutional not personal level I don't want to delve into precise definitions as I am not an expert) and indoctrinates its templars.

Cullen was only 8 when he wanted to become a templar, joined at the age of 13 - and was not the youngest there. Most of the recruits were raised by the chantry or ''spare'' children of nobles who had been groomed (WoT Vol 2 page 224) for the profession. Templars are often recruited young and from people from religious backgrounds - which assume was Cullen's case. See below:

So there is evidence, in my opinion, that the chantry grooms people to become templars: early recruitment, ideological absolutism, suppression of dissent, moral framing of obedience as virtue, and punishment for deviation.

Meredith was taken in after experiencing trauma at the hands of a mage, Cullen was taken in at a young age when he thought that being a templar was about protecting people.

There is evidence that Cullen held a softer view of mages prior to his trauma. In the WoT Vol 2 page 224 it is stated that ''Cullen proved enthusiastic but loyal, if more inclined to converse with the mages that the other templars". There is also this line from the mage origin where Cullen expressed that he feels uncomfortable hunting down apostate mages.

While, yes, this is still problematic, he is not displaying the levels of zealotry that we see in DA2 yet. It is his trauma that made him fearful, and that Meredith sympathised with. But by the point he got to her he was already indoctrinated and fearful of mages.

It’s worth saying that the fear of magic in Thedas doesn’t arise from nowhere. The history and lore of the world make it clear that people have legitimate reasons to fear it especially when it’s uncontrolled or misunderstood. Magic is inherently tied to the Fade and to spirits and demons, and mages are vulnerable to possession or losing control. Even well‑intentioned magic can be dangerous without oversight.

In the games themselves, we see multiple situations where magic causes fear or tragedy: Wynne set a boy on fire in response to bullying, Anders accidentally set a barn on fire when his magic appeared, then there's Connor in DAO, the fact that mages are considered to have instigated the blight, and blood magic in Kirkwall which ends up with the death of Hawke's mother. These are just a few examples. But the Chantry’s responses and the way they are institutionalised often turn that fear into repression. Both Meredith and Cullen witnessed the worst that mages have to offer and retreated into the order because of it.

The world teaches people to see mages as threats, and then uses that fear to justify controlling them through circles, templars, tranquillity, and punishment. That doesn’t make the fear unreasonable on an emotional level, but it does mean that the Chantry exploits and amplifies that fear to maintain power and templars are the tools in that broader war over magic.

Anyway, my point was that all templars are made into obedient servants of the chantry and the chantry does not seem to care about the welfare of their templars. We see with Samson what happens when someone breaks the rules. We see with Cullen what happens to a templar who is traumatised by mages. There are probably other examples that I cannot think of at this time, but I wanted to use this as a jump of for talking about what I think shaped Cullen's views and beliefs. Because Cullen even in the order when he believes mages are dangerous maintains that the templar Order's purpose is not only to protect the population from magic, but also to protect the mages that the templars are sworn to oversee (ref: dragon age Wiki for Cullen).

Cullen is somewhat of a foil to Meredith because he slowly comes to question her and realise that what they're doing is wrong. He eventually leaves the order but the healing process is a long journey which I will not get into hear because I know his DAI depiction is a touchy subject. I see it as less of a 'redemption' arc and more of a personal reckoning rather than absolution. I agree with others that DAI should have explored the indoctrination and exploitation of templars in far greater depth; there wasn’t nearly enough space given to the angst of unlearning, of realising that much of what you were taught was wrong, and of confronting how deeply trauma shaped you.