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[randomcheeses]

Human nature. We're designed to like people who are nice to us and our friends. However selfless and self-sacrificing he may be, by act 3 apart from Varric and possibly Isabela, Anders is throwing unwarranted and rather snide accusations at all the other companions. He's the jerk with a heart of gold trope, but for a lot of players, the writers wrote him a bit too much jerk.

Modifié par randomcheeses, 02 octobre 2011 - 08:09 .

[Arquen]

I think that is Fenris actually... though his heart is less gold and more lyrium fueled rage and turmoil. LMAO

Isabela is the slattern with a heart of gold... but oh so much more than that.

Anders being a jerk at the end is less emo whiny and more descent to madness. Plus I find characters like Morrigan and Fenris refreshing. I like blunt and honest. I strongly dislike Merrill and I disliked Leliana. Coincidentally I loved Alistair, but he also didn't let things just slide without speaking his mind about it.

Modifié par Arquen, 02 octobre 2011 - 01:41 .

[MG800]

I can understand not liking Anders. I wonder sometimes why I do like his personality (I usually don't go "whee" about sanctimonious, but when Anders starts to go all holy on someone, it's funny. Probably because I knew him in Awakening. Or he's just unintentionally hilarious).
Hmm. I had a problem with Fenris romance, but If we're really about to disregard "memories coming back" and replace it with "too fast, too much, let's destroy everything" - well, that I can relate to at least. Maybe I even make a Hawke who's blinded enough to go for it.
Still, a romance consisting on waiting? Waiting for someone to finally stop teasing, and make up his mind, waiting for someone to finally talk to you? To stop running away? No thanks. Just not my brand of crazy(not to mention, he's sometimes bugged the way you can't sleep with Isabela before him *le gasp* ).
Besides Fenisabela is cute. I might never romance Isabela fully because of this pairing.

[Carmen_Willow]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I've realized something lately: whether or not someone likes Anders has a lot to do with their ability to empathize with others, and put themselves in others' shoes.  People who dislike him tend to think "It wouldn't happen to me,"  "I'm not one of them," "I'm special," or "only the uncooperative ones have bad experiences."

I disagree that disliking Anders indicates a person without empathy. That's rather a broad conclusion to make. You can totally empathize with his plight and his burdens and feel sorrow at his disintegration but still not like his behavior. I am deeply aware that, given the right stressors, you can get a human being to do just about anything. But knowing that does not excuse the behavior. I can understand why someone does something and still disagree with it and most certainly stay away from someone who engages in that behavior.

It's not fair to pin the "No empathy" medal on the chest of everyone who dislikes Anders.

Edited to fix quote box.

Modifié par Carmen_Willow, 02 octobre 2011 - 11:10 .

[randomcheeses]

Carmen_Willow wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I've realized something lately: whether or not someone likes Anders has a lot to do with their ability to empathize with others, and put themselves in others' shoes.  People who dislike him tend to think "It wouldn't happen to me,"  "I'm not one of them," "I'm special," or "only the uncooperative ones have bad experiences."

I disagree that disliking Anders indicates a person without empathy. That's rather a broad conclusion to make. You can totally empathize with his plight and his burdens and feel sorrow at his disintegration but still not like his behavior. I am deeply aware that, given the right stressors, you can get a human being to do just about anything. But knowing that does not excuse the behavior. I can understand why someone does something and still disagree with it and most certainly stay away from someone who engages in that behavior.

It's not fair to pin the "No empathy" medal on the chest of everyone who dislikes Anders.

Edited to fix quote box.

Exactly. I empathise a great deal with Anders' plight and the mage cause. I side with the mages every time now that I have the templar achievement. However, I still dislike him for e.g. being a hypocritical manipulative jerk. I understand why he is the way he is, and I'm sorry that he's gone through terrible things that no one should.

That doesn't change the fact that he is  manipulative and hypocritical in addition to being brave and selfless and it certainly doesn't mean that I should excuse his bad behaviour.  Understand it, yes. Empathise, yes. Excuse it and give him a free pass for an act of mass murder, no matter how well intentioned and even necessary it may have been?

Absolutely not.

Modifié par randomcheeses, 02 octobre 2011 - 03:09 .

[mcsupersport]

Anders selfless??? Get real, he is a radical who thinks his way is best with no real care for what really will happen as long as he gets his way. Do you really think mages will be better off with a war on the Templars and since there was a mage attack on the Chantry, most common people as well. The writers may not write it that way, but the direct attack on the Chantry will/should sway most common people who believe in Andraste to fight against the Mages instead of helping. It will make the fight harder not easier, and by Ander's own words, he would rather see all mages dead, then "enslaved" to the Chantry. He could easily taken the route in Origins where Mages were HELPFUL in defeating an enemy and thus gained greater freedom in their country and many people looked with favor on them, but that is the harder route and less likely to make him a an Icon/symbol. Anders showed the world they couldn't trust mages, while the Hero of Fereldan showed them mages were good people too. Who will get a better change??

[Knight of Dane]

GreenClover wrote...

Knight of Dane wrote...

Inteligence is understanding, and you learn understanding by being taught something or experiencing it. Merrill has never worked with Guards, Arishok and thieves. And tricking someone to get into a warehouse is something she has never experienced the need for before.

Hawke also never dealt with Arishok before we meet the qunari in person, but our PC somehow manages to avoid silly and facepalm-making statements. Hawke has never been to Fade, but he doesn't go all "Oh, cookies-rainbows-butterflies!", etc. And I'm quite sure the dalish do know about thievery, they are so good at blaming humans for stealing their culture, after all Or you can remember Lanaya's reaction when you try to take an elven book in DAO. So I really doubt any other dalish would act like Merrill after meeting a tief. I don't think it's only about being taught something, it is also about what kind of person you are. Some people can adapt to new situation easily, some can not. Merrill probably belongs to the second group. Even after leaving in human society for 7 years she someties speaks in unbelievable manner. It doesn't mean she is actually stupid. But it still can be very annoying. So annoying that you may call her dumb on emotions.
As for that Hawke-blaming part of your post... well, I see it has already been discussed)

As you said, people differ. But there is also the diffference that Hawke has always, or at least since her father died, had to be the head of her family. Merrill was as she says herself secluded from the rest of her clan, she never learned anything about interacting with other speices, that's why she acts the same way around the Arishok as when she first met Hawke.
And i don't really remember her being like that in the fade, before entering she asked enthuiastically if she could come, but that's mostly because she's curious and not because she thinks it'll just be a fieldtrip. And when the demon gets to her it offers her the one thing she wants.
Perhaps we can just say that Hawke is a extraordinary person in a crazy world, eh?

[Quething]

mcsupersport wrote...

Anders selfless??? Get real, he is a radical who thinks his way is best with no real care for what really will happen as long as he gets his way. Do you really think mages will be better off with a war on the Templars and since there was a mage attack on the Chantry, most common people as well. The writers may not write it that way, but the direct attack on the Chantry will/should sway most common people who believe in Andraste to fight against the Mages instead of helping. It will make the fight harder not easier, and by Ander's own words, he would rather see all mages dead, then "enslaved" to the Chantry. He could easily taken the route in Origins where Mages were HELPFUL in defeating an enemy and thus gained greater freedom in their country and many people looked with favor on them, but that is the harder route and less likely to make him a an Icon/symbol. Anders showed the world they couldn't trust mages, while the Hero of Fereldan showed them mages were good people too. Who will get a better change??

Yeah. While I don't entirely agree that nonviolent, lead-by-example passivity is the only way (or even always the best way) to go on principle alone - a Ghandi or an MLK can only achieve what they did with the support of a rational, empathetic majority, which is not always available to the persecuted group (though I think it is in the case of mages, despite DA2's crap writing) - I do have to agree that "Anders" and "selfless" don't go in the same box. Like at all.

Anders is significantly less selfish, in DA2, in that he's expanded his desire for personal freedom into a general desire for mage freedom. He's now able to empathise with people who are not him, but who are very close to him.

Very very close to him.

Like, exactly like him. Right up to "trying desperately to fight the system."

His contempt for Orsino, his indifference to the lives of the mages that will have to die in the Rite of Annulment he deliberately engineered, his ragey homicide/near-homicide of Ella for being "complicit" with the templars, his total indifference to the potential opinions of people like Wynne and Irving (Aequetarians are, we're told, by far the majority of the mage community) - that's more than all the evidence you need to see that Anders doesn't even extend his sympathy and compassion to all mages. He certainly doesn't give a crap about the suffering of non-mages; his ominious threats to Leliana and his sick sadistic glee in handing Fenris to Danarius strike me as tip of the iceberg at best. I'm really very surprised that he's still running his Darktown clinic by Act III. Last vestige of his humanity still clinging to the ideals he wishes he held, I guess.

That's not selflessness. He doesn't care about people in pain. He cares about his pain, specifically.

I don't hate him for it, myself. It just makes me sad, and more than a little annoyed with the writing team for Hawke's manufactured, railroaded impotence in even acknowledging the situation, much less trying to help it. But it's pretty easy to understand why many people would.

@Knight of Dane: Merrill was in training to be a Keeper. That's more "head of the family" than Hawke was ever asked to be; a whole clan and the shemlen who threaten them is a lot more to manage than a pair of twin siblings. Sure she never had practical experience with it and she's quite sure she'd be terrible at it, but she had a lot more opportunity to learn the ropes of leadership and social interaction/diplomacy with other species than Hawke (who didn't have a mentor and pretty much had to learn by doing) ever did.

Modifié par Quething, 03 octobre 2011 - 03:22 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I'm always amazed at how many people don't realize that the game explicitly states that Meredith had already sent to the Divine for a RoA, a request that would bypass Elthina's authority, and was just waiting for a response. If she got that response in the affirmative, there would be absolutely no way for Hawke to know that Meredith was doing the RoA until after every single mage was dead, including Bethany, if she's there. The chance is very, very high that those mages were as good as dead to start.

And given the fact that the Divine sent someone to Kirkwall to try to get Elthina to leave because the Divine was already considering an exalted march upon the city to deal with the mages there... I can't think of any reason to believe the Divine would deny Meredith's request for the RoA. So Anders probably doesn't cause the RoA at all... all he does is ensure that it occurs at a time and place where Hawke knows about it, and can act to stop it or, if not stop it, at least soften the blow.

But everyone decides to blame Anders for putting the other mages in danger. Do you just not know about the threat of the Divine approving Meredith's request, and Meredith carrying out the rite without Hawke even knowing about it? Nobody has ever been able to provide a good reason why they think the Divine is likely to refuse Meredith's request. Most seem to not even know that the request was made!

[Eudaemonium]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I'm always amazed at how many people don't realize that the game explicitly states that Meredith had already sent to the Divine for a RoA, a request that would bypass Elthina's authority, and was just waiting for a response. If she got that response in the affirmative, there would be absolutely no way for Hawke to know that Meredith was doing the RoA until after every single mage was dead, including Bethany, if she's there. The chance is very, very high that those mages were as good as dead to start.

And given the fact that the Divine sent someone to Kirkwall to try to get Elthina to leave because the Divine was already considering an exalted march upon the city to deal with the mages there... I can't think of any reason to believe the Divine would deny Meredith's request for the RoA. So Anders probably doesn't cause the RoA at all... all he does is ensure that it occurs at a time and place where Hawke knows about it, and can act to stop it or, if not stop it, at least soften the blow.

But everyone decides to blame Anders for putting the other mages in danger. Do you just not know about the threat of the Divine approving Meredith's request, and Meredith carrying out the rite without Hawke even knowing about it? Nobody has ever been able to provide a good reason why they think the Divine is likely to refuse Meredith's request. Most seem to not even know that the request was made!

Somehow (!) I actually managed to miss the line where the gae states that she's already written to the Divine. When does that crop up? Do you have to talk to Meredith?

[TastesLikeTNT]

Eudaemonium wrote...

Somehow (!) I actually managed to miss the line where the gae states that she's already written to the Divine. When does that crop up? Do you have to talk to Meredith?

If I remember correctly, it's Ser Karras who says it if you click on him in Act III.

[Ryzaki]

Yes Ser Kerass who is easily killed (and most likely commonly killed).

How strange that people miss a one line of dialogue that's easily missed.

[randomcheeses]

To be fair, not every player clicks on every NPC and if you don't click on the right templar in the gallows in act three you can miss that line completely.

[TastesLikeTNT]

There's a lot in Dragon Age 2 that is important to the plot and also easy to miss, sadly. The good Ser Karras himself has a nasty habit of tripping and falling face-first on my Hawke's sword.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Yeah. I'll admit that I wish it were presented more clearly in game, in a way that was harder to miss. I don't fault people for missing it in game, but it's mentioned on the forums all the time... well, it comes up at least once in every "why I think Anders is a Jerk" thread, at least. Which is probably why every Anders fan seems to know about it, but most other people don't.

I've been a bit snippy lately and I apologize. But really, the whole point of the game, the whole point of Anders' manfesto, his crusade, all his arguments that everyone is so sick of... the whole reason the other circles rise up is this: the Chantry can murder any circle mage at any point for any reason they like.

Even if Meredith hadn't sent to Val Royeaux, it wouldn't be Anders fault that the mages died... because because it's still Meredith who calls the RoA, and it's still the Templars who carry it out. It's like if an abused child dares to talk back to his father, and then his father beats his mother half to death... and you're blaming the abused child for his mother's beating. No. The father and the father alone is responsible for beating the mother.

The whole point of Anders' plan is that the Templars won't be satisfied merely executing the person actually responsible. If they'd just killed him, cut him down in the street, tarred his head and mounted it on the city walls, they would have proved him wrong. They would have proved that only bad mages get punished, and good innocent mages are unharmed. But instead, they took their anger out on completely unrelated people, because they're... something. Something terrible.

The Templars had their chance to avoid the war right there. All it would have taken is the execution of one man, one poor, desperate man, for the crime he actually committed. All it would have taken was... justice. Because it isn't bombing the Chantry that causes the war. It isn't killing or sparing Anders. It isn't some exiled Prince... it's the fact that the Templars used the Right of Annulment as an excuse to murder mages for a crime that they were definitely, 100% innocent of. It taught mages everywhere in Thedas that just being good, cooperating, and submitting wouldn't save them from being murdered on a whim, on any whim, for any reason the chantry saw fit.

That's why I get so aggravated when people insist that those mages would have been safe if Anders just hadn't done anything. No mage in Thedas is ever really safe. That's the whole point of it. And in the end, Meredith proves that, regardless of what side you're on...

but people blame Anders for what she decides to do. And that just seems... mad.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 03 octobre 2011 - 08:10 .

[Quething]

There were about a thousand ways for Anders to demonstrate that Meredith was bonkers that didn't involve getting people killed. As for protecting the mages from the RoA:

1) That the Divine hasn't yet granted it despite Meredith asking for it for forever and a day is reason enough for me to think that she will continue to not grant it,

2) All it would take to save the lives of those mages and permanently protect them from the RoA would be killing Meredith. Assassination is certainly not beyond the capabilities of Anders' social circle. He's certainly willing to ask more and harder of Hawke at other points in the game. If minimizing the damage was his priority, he would have prevented the damage, not tried to provoke it, controlled environment or otherwise (and remember, he provokes it even if Hawke is a Templar-siding Rival, who he can have no expectation of intervention and opposition of the slaughter from).

But Anders didn't want that. Anders didn't want the Circle to survive, because that would remove the justification for his war. Anders knew that most mages would be happy to have a compromise. Anders didn't accept compromise. So he removed that choice from them, without consideration, compassion or consent.

Modifié par Quething, 03 octobre 2011 - 08:42 .

[Eudaemonium]

CCG, You are a breath of fresh air. When the day inevitably coes that you get too sick and tired to attempting to educate forumites who really don't want to be, the world will be a worse place.

PS: Thanks all for telling me who says the line. I confess to not clicking on NPCs as much as I should.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Quething wrote...

There were about a thousand ways for Anders to demonstrate that Meredith was bonkers that didn't involve getting people killed. As for protecting the mages from the RoA:

1) That the Divine hasn't yet granted it despite Meredith asking for it for forever and a day is reason enough for me to think that she will continue to not grant it,

2) All it would take to save the lives of those mages and permanently protect them from the RoA would be killing Meredith. Assassination is certainly not beyond the capabilities of Anders' social circle. He's certainly willing to ask more and harder of Hawke at other points in the game. If minimizing the damage was his priority, he would have prevented the damage, not tried to provoke it, controlled environment or otherwise (and remember, he provokes it even if Hawke is a Templar-siding Rival, who he can have no expectation of intervention and opposition of the slaughter from).

But Anders didn't want that. Anders didn't want the Circle to survive, because that would remove the justification for his war. Anders knew that most mages would be happy to have a compromise. Anders didn't accept compromise. So he removed that choice from them, without consideration, compassion or consent.

Really? Where did I miss the chance to kill Meredith? I mean if there'd been an opportunity, Anders not wanting to do it wouldn't have prevented me. It wouldn't have prevented me for a bloody second, no matter what that guy thought. Hell, I've got a pal, used to work for the antivan crows! Handsome bloke too. I'm a stealther, I've got an amoral stealther lover, and she had sex with the guy who used to be a crow, who knows the Warden, who is also a stealther! The four of us coulda taken out Meredith in a moment, if it were possible to do it.

You seem to be claiming that the reason that we can't kill Meredith is that Anders doesn't want her to die. That's nonsense.... though killing Meredith wouldn't actually solve any long-term problems, either.

Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of the concept of travel time... or geography. This is Thedas. They don't have Email. Val Royeaux is a long journey away... the messenger could be anywhere on his way there or back. That we haven't heard back yet indicates nothing.

But even dismissing all of that, killing Meredith doesn't change the fact that any time a Templar or a Divine goes mad, they pretty much can and do try to kill a bunch of innocent mages... or are we forgetting history, when some mages declined to light the Andrastean flames, and a mad Divine tried to call an exalted march on her own bloody chantry? Are we forgetting a desperate Orlais who painted the entire elven nation as blood mages, to create an excuse to call the rest of the human nations in on an "exalted march"  that would double the size of their country? Are we forgetting Ser Rylock, who wanted Anders dead for a crime he didn't commit, all those years ago? 

The problem isn't just that Meredith is insane. The problem is that there EXISTS a person who can grant the "Right" to kill a whole group of people, sight unseen, for crimes they may or may not have committed. The problem is that a complete nutter can sit in that office for YEARS threatening to murder those people whenever she gets a chance, and nobody higher in the chain of command bats a single bloody eyelash. The problem is that you can imprison a group of psychically sensitive people on a bloody hellmouth and then blame them when they go insane! Has nobody else ever seen Rose Red, or the Haunting of Hill House, or the House on Haunted Hill, or any of the other dozen movies where they're like "hey, let's take some unstable people and put them in a ghooooooost house!" Spoiler alert: IT USUALLY DOESN'T END WELL.

The reason "there can be no compromise" is that the Chantry has absolutely no motivation to compromise. Seven years of "compromise" have just lead to increasingly poor conditions for mages.

And honestly, all the mages don't have to die to start the war. All that needs to happen is this: someone calls a stupid, horrific, unjustified Right of Annulment. That's all that's required. It doesn't have to be successful, hell, the mages successfully resisting would actually do a better job getting the war off on the right foot. And considering that Anders shows up to fight with the mages if you let him go, it seems unlikely that he doesn't want to save them.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 03 octobre 2011 - 09:02 .

[Knight of Dane]

Quething wrote...

mcsupersport wrote...

Anders selfless??? Get real, he is a radical who thinks his way is best with no real care for what really will happen as long as he gets his way. Do you really think mages will be better off with a war on the Templars and since there was a mage attack on the Chantry, most common people as well. The writers may not write it that way, but the direct attack on the Chantry will/should sway most common people who believe in Andraste to fight against the Mages instead of helping. It will make the fight harder not easier, and by Ander's own words, he would rather see all mages dead, then "enslaved" to the Chantry. He could easily taken the route in Origins where Mages were HELPFUL in defeating an enemy and thus gained greater freedom in their country and many people looked with favor on them, but that is the harder route and less likely to make him a an Icon/symbol. Anders showed the world they couldn't trust mages, while the Hero of Fereldan showed them mages were good people too. Who will get a better change??

@Knight of Dane: Merrill was in training to be a Keeper. That's more "head of the family" than Hawke was ever asked to be; a whole clan and the shemlen who threaten them is a lot more to manage than a pair of twin siblings. Sure she never had practical experience with it and she's quite sure she'd be terrible at it, but she had a lot more opportunity to learn the ropes of leadership and social interaction/diplomacy with other species than Hawke (who didn't have a mentor and pretty much had to learn by doing) ever did.

You're right and wrong.
I think it's odd too that Merrill wasn't taught how to interact with other species, as a leader of a clan i would have guessed Marethari would let the hunters bring her to trade with the Shemlen. I won't go into guessing what keeper training really involves and if it differ from clan to clan, but you can see some really different personalities if you compare Lanaya/Velanna/Merrill, where Lanaya is the only one fit to be a leader.
There is also the question as to how much you can learn without experience, you can't tell a dog to just sit without helping it understand when it does it right, that's what you do when you treat it when it sits. Merrill has only ever been told what shemlen are like, and it's clear most of the clan despise them.
And:
Malcom will always have been a inspiration to Hawke, mage or non-mage, that's pretty much canon by now; everyone in the family complements you on how alike you are.

[GreenClover]

Knight of Dane wrote...
And i don't really remember her being like that in the fade

She didn't, and I didn't mean that. I meant that Hawke doesn't act like Merrill when he gets in the place he/she has never been to. To cut long story short, Merrill's reaction to the situation she never dealt with is usually squee-like, but Hawke's reaction is more... er, let's say common. And this is not because Merrill is a dalish, it is because she is such type of person. But whatever person you are, it's rather strange to learn so little about the society you've been living in for 3-7 years. Perhaps she should have spent more time outside, away from the mirror  

I'm sorry, I'm a little bit tired of this, because English isn't my native and it takes some time to write an answer. And I doubt we shall convince each other anyway. So thank you for the conversation. 

[Knight of Dane]

GreenClover wrote...

Knight of Dane wrote...
And i don't really remember her being like that in the fade

She didn't, and I didn't mean that. I meant that Hawke doesn't act like Merrill when he gets in the place he/she has never been to. To cut long story short, Merrill's reaction to the situation she never dealt with is usually squee-like, but Hawke's reaction is more... er, let's say common. And this is not because Merrill is a dalish, it is because she is such type of person. But whatever person you are, it's rather strange to learn so little about the society you've been living in for 3-7 years. Perhaps she should have spent more time outside, away from the mirror  

I'm sorry, I'm a little bit tired of this, because English isn't my native and it takes some time to write an answer. And I doubt we shall convince each other anyway. So thank you for the conversation. 

English is my fourth language too, but i think we have largely spoen about what needs to be said.
I also agree that there is far too little development on her part, Act 3 was too short to provide with enough scenario's to judge that, but it woul've been nice to see hger adapt.

[Heidenreich]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Quething wrote...

There were about a thousand ways for Anders to demonstrate that Meredith was bonkers that didn't involve getting people killed. As for protecting the mages from the RoA:

1) That the Divine hasn't yet granted it despite Meredith asking for it for forever and a day is reason enough for me to think that she will continue to not grant it,

2) All it would take to save the lives of those mages and permanently protect them from the RoA would be killing Meredith. Assassination is certainly not beyond the capabilities of Anders' social circle. He's certainly willing to ask more and harder of Hawke at other points in the game. If minimizing the damage was his priority, he would have prevented the damage, not tried to provoke it, controlled environment or otherwise (and remember, he provokes it even if Hawke is a Templar-siding Rival, who he can have no expectation of intervention and opposition of the slaughter from).

But Anders didn't want that. Anders didn't want the Circle to survive, because that would remove the justification for his war. Anders knew that most mages would be happy to have a compromise. Anders didn't accept compromise. So he removed that choice from them, without consideration, compassion or consent.

Really? Where did I miss the chance to kill Meredith? I mean if there'd been an opportunity, Anders not wanting to do it wouldn't have prevented me. It wouldn't have prevented me for a bloody second, no matter what that guy thought. Hell, I've got a pal, used to work for the antivan crows! Handsome bloke too. I'm a stealther, I've got an amoral stealther lover, and she had sex with the guy who used to be a crow, who knows the Warden, who is also a stealther! The four of us coulda taken out Meredith in a moment, if it were possible to do it.

You seem to be claiming that the reason that we can't kill Meredith is that Anders doesn't want her to die. That's nonsense.... though killing Meredith wouldn't actually solve any long-term problems, either.

Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of the concept of travel time... or geography. This is Thedas. They don't have Email. Val Royeaux is a long journey away... the messenger could be anywhere on his way there or back. That we haven't heard back yet indicates nothing.

But even dismissing all of that, killing Meredith doesn't change the fact that any time a Templar or a Divine goes mad, they pretty much can and do try to kill a bunch of innocent mages... or are we forgetting history, when some mages declined to light the Andrastean flames, and a mad Divine tried to call an exalted march on her own bloody chantry? Are we forgetting a desperate Orlais who painted the entire elven nation as blood mages, to create an excuse to call the rest of the human nations in on an "exalted march"  that would double the size of their country? Are we forgetting Ser Rylock, who wanted Anders dead for a crime he didn't commit, all those years ago? 

The problem isn't just that Meredith is insane. The problem is that there EXISTS a person who can grant the "Right" to kill a whole group of people, sight unseen, for crimes they may or may not have committed. The problem is that a complete nutter can sit in that office for YEARS threatening to murder those people whenever she gets a chance, and nobody higher in the chain of command bats a single bloody eyelash. The problem is that you can imprison a group of psychically sensitive people on a bloody hellmouth and then blame them when they go insane! Has nobody else ever seen Rose Red, or the Haunting of Hill House, or the House on Haunted Hill, or any of the other dozen movies where they're like "hey, let's take some unstable people and put them in a ghooooooost house!" Spoiler alert: IT USUALLY DOESN'T END WELL.

The reason "there can be no compromise" is that the Chantry has absolutely no motivation to compromise. Seven years of "compromise" have just lead to increasingly poor conditions for mages.

And honestly, all the mages don't have to die to start the war. All that needs to happen is this: someone calls a stupid, horrific, unjustified Right of Annulment. That's all that's required. It doesn't have to be successful, hell, the mages successfully resisting would actually do a better job getting the war off on the right foot. And considering that Anders shows up to fight with the mages if you let him go, it seems unlikely that he doesn't want to save them.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

I love you.<3

[leggywillow]

Quething wrote...

There were about a thousand ways for Anders to demonstrate that Meredith was bonkers that didn't involve getting people killed. As for protecting the mages from the RoA:

1) That the Divine hasn't yet granted it despite Meredith asking for it for forever and a day is reason enough for me to think that she will continue to not grant it

Except we know from Sister Nightingale that the Divine is already considering drastic measures against Kirkwall by Act 3.  An Exalted March has been mentioned, for pity's sake.  From the Divine's perspective, annulling the Circle would lead to far fewer casualties than some kind of military action against Kirkwall as a whole.  If she's already considering razing the city, I can't imagine why she'd refuse the RoA.

[Wulfram]

leggywillow wrote...

Except we know from Sister Nightingale that the Divine is already considering drastic measures against Kirkwall by Act 3.  An Exalted March has been mentioned, for pity's sake.

An Exalted March is only mentioned by Grand Cleric Elthina, who has no particular insight as the the Divine's plans, and only as an example that Divine's can not always avoid taking actions which harm innocen

From the Divine's perspective, annulling the Circle would lead to far fewer casualties than some kind of military action against Kirkwall as a whole.  If she's already considering razing the city, I can't imagine why she'd refuse the RoA.

There is no indication that the Divine is considering razing the city.

Modifié par Wulfram, 03 octobre 2011 - 01:57 .

[Jackalope]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
Hell, I've got a pal, used to work for the antivan crows! Handsome bloke too. I'm a stealther, I've got an amoral stealther lover, and she had sex with the guy who used to be a crow, who knows the Warden, who is also a stealther! The four of us coulda taken out Meredith in a moment, if it were possible to do it.

My coffee almost came out of my nose.  This is great.

That's nonsense.... though killing Meredith wouldn't actually solve any long-term problems, either.

But it would make me feel better...

Has nobody else ever seen Rose Red, or the Haunting of Hill House, or the House on Haunted Hill, or any of the other dozen movies where they're like "hey, let's take some unstable people and put them in a ghooooooost house!" Spoiler alert: IT USUALLY DOESN'T END WELL.

Well, if anyone in the Thedas had been more genre-saavy, they would have known not to trust Tim Curry in the first movie, for starters.