Sutamina wrote...
Xilizhra wrote...
At this point, stepping down from power.
could you come up with something far more persuasive please
Let me try.
ahem.
The templars as an order have existed long before they were part of the chantry. They were called the Inquisition way back then, and they were a specialized mage hunting force, feared by mages and non-mages alike.
The Chantry itself didn't rise with Andraste, but over a century after her death, and was merely one of many Andrastian cults that Emperor Drakon of Orlais liked, and through exalted marches and brute force, was able to expand the Chantry, and thus Orlais' influence worldwide and many mage supporters have strong reservations about any organization that has gotten in bed with the Chantry when the Chantry itself is in bed with Orlais and has been from its inception. If you read Thedas Calender codex entry, you will see that the Divine actually was going to name the new Age the Sun Age as a way to celebrate Orlesian supremacy, but when a High Dragon surfaced, she swiftly named the new Age the Dragon Age, but rumors went around that she was actually supporting the Orlesian ruler of Ferelden as the Battle of River Daine was about to occur, and his crest was a dragon.
If you take both accounts on the fall of the Dales, Dalish and Chantry side both, it paints a rather poor picture of the templars and the Chantry when the Dalish said that they turned away the missionaries, and when missionaries failed, templars came next. We know from codex enries that the Emperor of Orlais wanted to move North to Nevarra, but the Dales were in the way. We also know that Orlais had just gone through a lengthy blight and was in great need of fertile land, something the Dales had in abundance.
We know that Orlais went to war, were repelled, then the Dalish attacked, and they made it to Val Reyeoux when the Chantry declared an Exalted March, calling in templars from all nations and obliterated the Dalish, taking their homeland. And it was the Chantry that declared all the elves now had to live in alienages and absolutely had to convert to the worship of the Maker, or die, pretty much.
As an organization, the templars rely heavily upon the addictive substance of lyrium, and depending on which lore you use, either augments their templar powers, or provides it, or in Alistair case, he openly doubts its ability to even do that and thinks the Chantry uses it as a leash to keep their templars in line seeing as he never used lyrium. (I know Gaider tried to say lyrium IS needed, but fact of the matter is that the lore is as it is in Origins, and Alistair did say what he did, and so we have confusion on that front.) And the Chantry controls the lyrium trade, and so if the templars wish to gain access to more lyrium, they'll be razing the land and cause problems for all the people, because smuggling is not only a dirty business, but smugglers lack the capacity to supply an entire army their lyrium, and since the templars have left the Chantry so they can commit genocide, they've lost their access to lyrium.
Which means you'll have an army of drug-addicted religious zealots running around and will likely go insane from lyrium withdrawal or possibly die, and that in turn will make them desperate and it's not only mages but also the common man who will suffer as the templars go on their quest for lyrium.
On an institutional level, the templars, even when they were the inquisition, hated mages and magic simply for being mages, and were feared not only by mages but also by non-mages before being absorbed into the Chantry because of their stance on mages, and so the order, while claiming to be protecters and defenders of mages from the world and the world from mages, have always been biased against mages from the beginning.
The templar codex says it looks for those of religious fervor above those of moral character for recruitment because they don't want templars questioning their orders, and having so much power over time has given the order itself a strong sense of entitlement. This is shown in many instances where Cullen says the Divine will have no choice but to support templars becase they have authority over mages by Divine Right (and I'd love for him to point that out for me in the Chant of Light seeing as templars didn't even exist when Andraste wrote the Chant,) or by Lambert and the Seekers, supposedly the templars oversight-committee, working their butts off so they can be templars themselves and are actively suppressing mages at the College of Magi (doesn't help the mages that Fiona is so strong-willed and quite controversial.)
So what we have is a drug-addcted army full of religious zealots watched over by an order of mageaphobe Seekers, all of them hating and fearing mages for being alive, many of them openly discussing killing mages with glee (Cullen in Origins, Meredith and the Right of Annulment....you can't say she didn't want it as the moment she had the authority she declared it and wouldn't look for any alternatives, even up to the slaughter itself and sounded happy about it,) who have hated mages from the very beginning, while the Seekers are led by a man who grew up in Tevinter, and thus has the most negative view of mages you can get, and a willingness to go against the Divine's orders and his own duties in response to that fear, both organizations are part of a religious order that is strongly political and strongly pro-Orlesian, so strong in fact that Maric and Loghain actually seriously considered kicking out the the Chantry from Ferelden because it was seen as an Orlesian organization more than a religious one.
Ultimately leading to a system where the mages have no real power for themselves, only the illusion of it, with the threat of lobotomy and genocide hanging over them at every turn by an organization that makes it no secret that they and the Chantry only barely tolerate magic as it is, and thus the mages are never going to be equal players in the game of deciding their own fates, and the templar order (and the Chantry) should step down as mages guardians and overseers, and allow another group with similar abilities but less baggage take over, and also allow mages a bit more say in how they live their lives, including the right to marry without special permission, raise their own children, or even enter a trade provided they have gone through all the training necessary to control their power.
Was that more persuasive?
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