Arquen wrote...
My favorite thing in the world is when Varania looks at Hawke and goes "please, don't LET him do this." and Hawke takes a step back and goes "Fenris does as he LIKES." To me that says more about free choice and letting Fenris truly be free in one moment than anything else. Plus, like with Hadrianna.. it is NOT Hawke's place to play babysitter and "fix" Fenris. It isn't Hawke's place to tell Fenris how he should or should not act.. what he should and should not do. Even if you try to let Hadrianna speak or try to take over the conversation and let Hadrianna go Fenris makes a clear choice, and he has to live with that. He grows because of that. "I wanted to, but I couldn't..." For me it isn't about the hate eating him up inside, it's about finding a balance between the hate that "they put there," and what he truly wants out of his life.
I still do not agree. The very fact you can persuade Fenris not to kill Varania tells me he doesn't actually want to kill her. Fenris is perfectly capable of making his own decisions, yes. He does what he wants. There is no way you can talk him out of killing Danarius or Hadriana. He really wants them dead, so he makes it happen. Fenris isn't a push-over.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with Hawke being a voice of reason to Fenris, reminding him there is another way, offering him his own thoughts and feelings about the matter. It's not babysitting. It's an attempt to stop Fenris from making a - in Hawke's eyes - mistake. Trying to prevent that Fenris kills his sister is not a sign of disrespect or lack of trust in Fenris.
That in this situation Fenris actually listens to Hawke and changes his mind, says he sees reason in what Hawke says.
Danarius and Hadrianna and Varania are HIS ghosts. Varania herself redeems no points from me, and I think she signs her fate away the moment she makes her choice not to side with her brother.
Varania is not a ghost from his past. She is not one of the people who "put the hate there". She is a bridge between his life as Leto and his life as Fenris, but that does not make her guilty of what happened to him when he became Fenris. It is not her fault that Leto sacrificed everything to free her and their mother. That she doesn't truly realize what he did for them and isn't grateful is another matter.
Selling out her brother is in now way a redeeming deed for sure, but I do think she really doesn't realize what kind of life Fenris had and will have with Danarius (I doubt she would otherwise believe he got the better end of the bargain). The Magisters appear to be very good at pretending to be perfectly civilized (blood magic? Oh nooooooo, that's certainly forbidden!), so Danarius will probably not have been honest with her and kindly explained everything in an honest way. He manipulated her, maybe threatened her, and she fell for it. That makes her in the very least ignorant, selfish, aaand many other things, but not immediately plain evil (as Danarius would be).
Also, as a side note, and I know I've posted this before but... "It is still legal for elves to be sold into slavery in Tevinter, and many elves choose to sell themselves into slavery to provide for their families. This results in many Tevinter elves who are not slaves being better off than elves in other areas, even if elven slaves fare far worse."
So basically that tells me that Varania did not have it as hard as an elven slave, and moreso that she may have even had it better than other elves in Thedas -- being a free elf in Tevinter.
This is hardly evidence that she had no reason whatsoever to not be satisfied with her situation. There is no reliable "life as this sucks more than life as that" meter. It's very subjective and can differ much from case to case. We know life in an alienage can be really bad.
Also, Leto has not sold himself into slavery to provide for his sister and mother. He competed for a boon to have them freed. So they were probably freed, but then had to find a way to survive without further support.
That piece of codex provides not enough information to conclude whether Varania was simply whining or truly had gone through rough situations herself. We can assume it's not as rough as what Fenris has been through, sure. I would agree with that. But again: she doesn't know what happened to him. She has no idea. I tend to believe that most practices of magisters with their slaves happen behind closed doors, and she is a poor Elven servant. She is most likely just busy trying to make a living and little to time to wonder how the Elven slaves are doing.
About what she says before she leaves: yes, it was a nasty thing to say and she most likely said it out of spite and to hurt Fenris, but... at the same time it was the reason Fenris went looking for her. He wanted to know about his old life. He hoped she could tell him. That it turns out to be different from what he had hoped for is not Varania's fault, even though she tells him with the wrong reasons.
And in the end this information can provide a new perspective for him. He will have to find a place for this knowledge, a way to deal with the role he has played himself in receiving his markings.
Fenris is not made of glass. He can handle this, as he has handled things far worse. He doesn't need to be protected from the knowledge he gains when he spares Varania. When someone uses that as the reason to let him kill her, that's babysitting.
Sooo, pretty long post myself. Sorry for continueing the Varania discussion, but when I have ideas they want out.
And I really enjoy the different views people have about all these Fenris-related things.
To make it up: a Fenris by Alas-De-Metal
Retour en haut
) I've tried before, but in DAO my male rogue (the first rogue, intended for Morrigan) got benched for a FemCousland. I don't fight it any more. 
No one will flame you!!! That is why I love the DA fandom. I come from mostly slash fandoms and so I'm used to women preferring m/m romance. So I was wary about joining the DA fandom when I saw that most of the women here play m/f romances. But everyone has been so sweet and very accepting of how we all play our romances. It's awesome!!!!
Its going to be interesting, because I've gotten to where I no longer take Anders everywhere. I'm gonna have to break myself of that habit.
:o Oh wow...I had forgotten that little detail. I don't forsee any big plot bunnies from that, but still...perhaps?
