berelinde wrote...
David Gaider said...
They are definitely not free. In Kirkwall, they are tantamount to prisoners.
berelinde responds...
And this is better than slavery how, precisely? Slaves, at least, have some value. Prisoners have none. In 12 out of 14 EU nations, prisoners are deferred from giving blood to the Red Cross because rape is assumed to have occurred within 24 hours of incarceration. That does not say much for prisoner rights, if they cannot even secure the right to choose their sexual partners.
Maybe the idea was to present an area of moral ambiguity, but if that was the case, it might have been a better idea to downplay all the themes of templar abuse of mages. Does Alrik really have to threaten Ella the way he does? Does that nameless Act 2 tranquil really have to be so brainwashed when she defends Alrik against her one-time lover? While those examples stand, you'll never convince any thinking female that templars are anything other than opportunistic monsters. Which is a shame, because Ser Otto in DA:O did a wonderful job convincing folks that templars were selfless in the defense of everyman against the threat of demons.
I weep for how far honorable templars, and there must be some, have fallen.
I wrote in another thread that the problem with the Chantry is that they recruit only those who have a fervent and, often enough, fanatical devotion to the Maker. And this is the problem because they're not recruiting people who care about the populus, who want to help the citizens, or who treat everyone as they should be treated. They're recruiting people who go "The Maker's glory will rain down and consume the 'heathens' just as the flames took Andraste!"
Very rarely do the people who believe in the Maker and are honorable to the people get recruited. DA:O's Templars that we saw were among those, though we didn't see much of them to draw definite conclusions on their personas, but enough to lump them into the category of decent people.
http://dragonage.wik...entry:_TemplarsIn that codex entry, it mentions that a flawless moral center is a, and I quote, "secondary concern". I would think that should be the primary concern, but faith takes priority over everything else. This is more evidence to me that the Chantry is corrupt, no matter how much pious action and niceties they put on to shroud the truth. That's not to say every member of the Chantry is corrupt (Elthina wasn't), but as a whole the Chantry establishment is corrupt.
DA2 shows that most of Kirkwall's Templars are power-mad and corrupt. The only good ones we saw were Thrask, Cullen, and that kid we saved from Tarohne (there may be more, but those are all I can think of).
And honestly, this ties into Anders' being justified because he saw the bigger picture. What he did wasn't an assault on Kirkwall's Chantry or Elthina. It was an assault at a religion filled to the brim with hypocrisy. So in my book, he is justified and he should live. Poetic justice. While those people who were killed do deserve justice, that can wait. It's enough for the time being that Anders wanted to die for what he did, not to be a martyr but to give them justice (though he may have become one. But who's to say really?).
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