You make some fair points Sir JK.
Justinia is never in full control of the situation, that I agree with you wholeheartedly. It would be near impossible for her to keep every last Circle Mage, Templar, and Priest in line. The Chantry command structure just seems too chaotic for affective control, so I can't blame Justinia for that.
I agree that in order to keep allies and maintain her power, Justinia will have to do certain things to keep them loyal to her. Show them that she has their interests as well as her own.
It doesn't seem that either Justinia or Celene are willing to commit aid to the other unless they can show that they have a certain amount of control over their subordinates. This is just my opinion but I believe that the tasks they give each other through Leliana are how they test each others strengths and weaknesses.
When it comes to Justinia and Celene this quote comes to mind.
“If soldiers are punished before they have grown attached to you, they will not prove submissive;
and, unless submissive, then will be practically useless. If, when the soldiers have become attached
to you, punishments are not enforced, they will still be unless.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I don't believe that the either of them have the attachment from the groups they claim to help. Both the Templars and Mages as a whole don't seem all that attached to the Divine IMHO, just as the elves (CE) don't seem to care much for Celene.
Just my opinion thought.
Yes, Celene and Justinia does test one another. That's just part of the Game though. What Celene did was a courtesy to Justinia, she offered a her a chance to clean house before the pressure was high enough that she would have to do it herself, cultivating an ally as it were. What Justinia did was inform Celene that she cannot be seen as Celene's ally if Celene loses the Game.
And no, neither of them does have any attachment from the groups they were trying to help. But mind that neither had much opportunity to impress their target audiences. Justinia was wandering a minefield of sensitive reactionary templar toes. One misstep and everything she would have tried to to would have been undone. In such a case you need to operate secretly and aim for as much as possible in one go. A cure for tranquility would have gone a very long way in that regard (maybe even give templars pause).
Similar for Celene. Her reforms benefittted primarily rich or sponsored elves or were virtually invisble. As such, there was not much to gain their hearts. And indeed, like Justinia, she's at the top of a pyramid that's traditionally seen as the cause of all suffering.
This was not a failure to follow the lesson you quoted, but a case where following was rendered if not impossible then at least severely difficult to do.
That is a really good point. Both the Divine and Celene aren't well trusted people by the various groups they want to help. In my opinion, this is a drawback of their bardic training. Both characters seem to default to acting covertly, which while not necessarily bad, doesn't lend itself to trustworthiness. Battles aren't just won with calculation and logic, but with hearts and minds too.
I don't think so. It's just that trickle-down reform tend to be barely noticeable and Justinia had not even gotten that far yet. I suspect that a far greater obstacle is that both of them are the first progressive leaders in a very long time. As such, the reason they're not trusted is that they have a lot of catching up to do. Compensating for all time lost. Celene's had twenty years and her reforms were just starting to actually take effect, Justinia has only had 7 at this point.
Well it isn't that divine did good job in run for their trust so she screwed extremely or did that deliberately because for fan of peace she did a lot to start war. In practice pissed off every group she could and both templars and mages were right to not trust ther.As for her she should be in control so you want to tell me that every other divine even if puppet managed keep things in check it wasn't divine fault despite that she pissed off both group and let mages escape to start war please...
She was horrible leader lambert was much better leader in the end lambert won her peoples.
To be fair KS. The Orlesian nobility were getting annoyed and were vocally advocating just decimating the mages and templars both. Had she done nothing, she'd have ended up with nothing too. And hitting the mages with the iron first of the templars would just have caused open rebellion, like it did in Rivain, which in turn would have caused the Orlesian nobility to wipe out the templars -and- the Divine if she supported them.
If the Divine is still alive by the time DAI comes out, I would love the possibility to ask her or her representatives why the inquisition should trust anything they say.
Indeed.
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