adneate wrote...
A Chantry by nature of being a religious institution is always classified as a soft target, it serves no military function and is not fortified against attack. Terrorrists and insurgents attack them because they are difficult to defend and often are packed with civilians who can be slaughtered with ease.
Anders is cut from the same cloth as a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace or someone who walks into a Sunni school in order to kill children. His actions are deplorable and inhuman, his actions condemn others to death. For that alone he is a vile waste of oxygen.
See, this is the problem with trying to use the real world as a source of comparison. It never works. The Chantry isn't a religious institution as they exist today, it's also the primary political power in Thedas (apart from the Imperium and the Qun territories, obviously). They have absolute say in matters when it comes to mages - look at what happens when Alistair/Anora tries to free the Ferelden Circle at the behest of a Mage Warden - they flatly refuse them and that's the end of the matter.
In Kirkwall, the Templars are in control, and the Chantry controls them. It's akin to attacking, say, the Pentagon in order to strike a blow against the US military (a better example would be bombing Whitehall to take out the military headquarters of the UK armed forces - it's a largely civillian building in a largely civillian area). As I mentioned in my
incredibly long and boring post, there's no such thing as a civillian target in medieval warfare. Nor such a thing as a civillian.
Everyone and
everything is a viable target. And in this case it is an appropriate target, since it is the Chantry and not the Templars who are truly in charge in Kirkwall.
Of course the real reason why Anders chose the Chantry as a target is obvious: he
wants to provoke a war. By removing the only hope of mediation - Elthina - he hopes to provoke Meredith into action. And it succeeds. He provides Meredith with both the opportunity and the motive/justification to step it up a notch, which provides the spark needed for the war to begin.
And he realises that what he did was wrong. He
wants to die for what he's done, fully
expects to die. He stepped forward and took responsibility for his actions, instead of anonymously planting the bomb or blowing himself up with it. He was willing to face justice for what he's done. To me, that speaks volumes.
I'm not arguing that the destruction of the Chantry was a morally good act, but it
was necessary in order to start a revolution, and it
was a viable target by nature of the Chantry being both a political and military force throughout Thedas (and Kirkwall in particular). Not liking what Anders did is fine - hell, I didn't particularly like it - but trying to compare that to the real life bombing of a Church or a Mosque is absurd, since they aren't the centre of power for a military order against which the "terrorist" is trying to spark a revolution. Anders wants to overthrow the Templars - not just in Kirkwall but in all of Thedas - and to do that the Chantry also needs to be attacked and overthrown.
For Anders there can be no compromise: the mages
will be free from the Templars. And the Chantry is a part of the institution.
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