LobselVith8 wrote...
The elves don't need to commit genocide to reclaim the kingdom of the Dales.
How are they going to deal with all the humans who live there then? The Dalish haven't proven to have an exceptionally high regard for human life.
Andrastian humans tend to be racist, and view elves as "less than people" - which is a problem that even Duncan can't dissuade some people because it's how they were raised their entire life, as he admits. The elves who live in the Alienages can be wiped out in "purges" - as we see with the dead children from the orphanage who were massacred in the purge in Denerim.
It's this monstrous and dehumanizing system that makes me hope that the elves can have a homeland where they can be free of this type of cruelty and injustice.
Human society has been racist since long before Andraste. The persecution of elves began in the Ancient Tevinter Imperium, long before she was born.The Chant has no dogma that is explictly anti-elven, nor does the Chantry in and of itself have any racist policies against elves. The root of elven opression is secular. The Chantry doesn't control most aspects of life in human nations. The plight of the elves is the responsibilty of the rulers of each of the nations.
Because the kingdom of the Dales is their homeland, and according to Dalish history, they lost it because the elves refused to convert and kicked out Chantry missionaries, which lead to the Andrastian Chantry sending in templars into their sovereign territory. We also have accounts of an elven rebellion in the occupied kingdom of the Dales.
It wasn't just because they "refused to convert." They refused to allow the existence of any Andrastian prescence at all in the borders. But mostly they lost it because they were fighting a war with Orlais and pressing further and further into their territory. The Exalted March didn't start until around the time they sacked the captial.
A rebellion by whom? Are there elven groups that aren't wandering Dalish or Alienage Elves? Because neither one of them are really the same as the elves of the Dales. The Dales aren't occupied, they are gone. Which is perhaps more tragic, but it's not the same as what happened in Ferelden.
We have examples of Alienage elves who are willing to give up the Andrastian faith for a better life and another way.
Yes, one or two examples but that hardly means they all will. Especially since the alienage elves as a whole don't hear good stories about the Dalish Elves. They've been Andrastian for generations now, they aren't all just going to give it up en mass. And I can't imagine the Dalish are going to like that. I can see many of them seeing it as a betrayal of the very principles that cost them the Dales in the first place. That right there is probably enough to gain a fair amount of distrust from some of the dalish elves. But again, the dalish are all probably bery divided on the issue, many different elves would think differently from one another.
As for the dwarves, the incident with Brother Burkle is absolutely the Dwarves fault. Orzammar is extremely traditional and highly resistent to change. The fact that a foreign faith became so popular would be an affront to the ruling parties in power. Just becuase Orzammar's oppression is less motivated by their religion doesn't make it less repugnant . They restricted the rights of Andrastian dwarves and when they peacefully protested unjust treatment, their leader was killed. The dwarves are far more abusive to their own persecuted minorities than any human nation except Tevinter, so it's not really a huge stretch out of character for living in Orzammar.
It always gets me when people blast the Chantry as being the designated bad guys because they are intolerant of other peoples' ways. As if they are the only ones. Everyone else is too, and often more brutally than the Andrastian nations. It's one the of the intended design choices about the Dragon Age universe. In a Medieval Fantasy setting most peoples have a "my way or the high way" attitude and most factions aren't purely good or evil. The Dwarves restrict the rights of other religions and castless and surface dwarves. The Dales refused to allow any Chantries to be built. The Qunari are by far the least tolerant of all foreign ideas, but most often it's the Chantry that seems singled out.
The Chantry is a much more vauge poltical entitiy than the Dwarves or Qunari anway. It isn't some single giant theocracy with absolute authority over all andrastian peoples and nations of Thedas. The inluence it has over it's nations' rulers has limits. All or most all of the countries still govern themselves. Most Chantry nations don't have that great of a system overall, but out of all the major powers that have existed or do exist, they have one of the better ones.
And the fact that that still dosn't say much is the whole point of this type of setting.
Even the history about the Fall of the Dales seems designed by Bioware to be a morally ambiguous. We don't know exactly how the conflict started because of the conflicting accounts of history in the game, but if I were forced to make a guess based only on Bioware's desire for moral grey areas, I imagine that the elves started the conflict and the humans brutally finished it or something to that effect. Neither of which would paint the respective sides as being purely in the right or the wrong.
If we ever do find out the truth about the fall of the Dales, I don't think think one side will come out squeaky clean.
Modifié par Jedi Master of Orion, 25 mai 2013 - 10:01 .
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? So far it's been volountary, yes. 
