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Do the elves really need a homeland


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#1376
Aimi

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That's an excellent idea. In this hypothetical scenario, a successful expedition into a new, uninhabited area could lead to a mass exodus of the clans for the next Arlathvenn to establish an elven homeland. I also think some Dalish groups could reach out to the elves currently living under human rule who may want to live on their own terms. Either the Donarks, a region past the Donarks, or another area could hold promise for giving wide berth to the racial and religious hostility of the Andrastian humans.


This dramatically understates the tremendous difficulty involved in premodern migration.

Firstly, not only would a suitable settlement location have to be found, but it would also have to be transmitted to average elves. It's not clear that any mechanism exists for doing this; it would have to be organized. That's a sizable task in and of itself: letting people know where to go and how to get there.

Then, there's the issue of the cost of migration. Moving is a tremendous hardship, especially in this era; in a comparable time period for medieval Europe, almost all migration was short-distance and the flows were relatively small, and even that imposed serious costs on the people who underwent it. Food, consistent shelter, some way to move belongings, protection from attack and thievery, and so on.

In a practical sense, migration flows were low for most of human history because most people could not meet these challenges on their own. Almost all major migratory activity was centrally organized by a state, for example the Roman migrations out of Italy into the empire's provinces in the first century AD. Rome moved its people because it was militarily, economically, and culturally valuable to plant populations of Romans throughout the empire; it's hard to see any of the Thedosian states having either the wherewithal or the interest to do anything like that. Similarly, kings in eastern Europe offered financial and legal incentives for German migrants in the so-called Ostsiedlung era; even then, it took hundreds of years to move a group of people that probably numbered less than a million total.

Even relatively cheap seaborne transport could be difficult to organize for temporal rulers. The Habsburg kings of Castile-Aragon wanted to plant new colonies of their Spanish (largely Castilian, specifically Extramaduran) subjects in the New World beginning in the late fifteenth century. They had a long-established infrastructure for managing migration and resettlement, developed over the course of the Reconquista, and they expanded it dramatically for the Americas, creating a real bureaucracy. They offered substantial financial and legal incentives, and they had the shipping to move lots of people and goods. Over the course of two centuries, one of the most powerful states in the world exerted a significant part of its financial and trading muscle to get people to the Americas. Who, exactly, would do this for the elves of Thedas? Compare this to the example of England; English migration was chiefly comprised of gentlemen-farmer types who could pay their own way, or indentured-servant types who could get rich people to pay for them, or "transported" criminals that were shipped at state expense, or religious migrants who were able to draw on the resources of a community of fellow believers. Indenturing elves so that they can migrate seems like the sort of plan that Dalish types would want to avoid.

When migrations were organized without reference to legal authorities, things got...well, "tense" would be the nice way of putting it, and "bloody" would be the brutally honest way. Several thousand people, largely self-organized, made up the so-called "People's Crusade" of the 1090s, intent on reaching the Levant from Western Europe. When they crossed Hungary and the European provinces of the Byzantine Empire, they skirmished with local authorities, raided grain stocks, besieged towns, and rioted. The Byzantine emperor Alexios I detailed much of his army to escort them to Asia after that, purely so they wouldn't cause any trouble. (It only kind of worked.) That was what the relatively benign rulers did; when they were not so benign, like the Selcuk Turks, they attacked and killed the crusaders. After the first few encounters with Selcuk troops, the crusade dissolved.

One might point out that the Dalish deal with things like this already; there's a fair amount of similarity between the portrayal of the Dalish and more sympathetic looks at Romani, Travelers, and similar communities. One might also note that those groups traveled to Europe all the way from India. The problem with that is that those travels took an extremely long time - centuries - and were not organized in an effort to reach a sort of promised land. They were made up of lots of little movements, broken up by periods of stasis, and so on. It's similar to transhumant populations, like those who have inhabited the steppes of Central Asia for millennia: they move around, but they do so primarily in relatively circumscribed areas. That's primarily due to difficulty and uncertainty, combined with a lack of obvious payoff. Those things can be partially circumvented by this promised land idea, but not entirely - and probably not enough to account for a movement of peoples covering an entire continent.

The fact that it was so difficult to move anywhere on one's own, let alone long distances, meant that even refugees were an uncommon thing. War refugees benefit from UN camps, the modern laws of war, the pressure of the international media, relatively cheap transport, modern medicine (especially inoculations against disease), and suchlike things. In the premodern era, refugees would probably not have left their localities in the first place, and if they did they'd probably have been killed on the road, died of disease, been shut out of other communities, and so on. It was mildly shocking to see in Dragon Age 2 that not only did many Fereldans successfully leave the country (by boat, for which most of them ought not have been able to pay), but many were able to avoid dying on the route and then make homes for themselves elsewhere and do all of this without huge problems from the government of Ferelden or the rulers of the Free Marches. The large Fereldan community in Kirkwall was something that would have had few analogies in medieval history; its trials and tribulations, significant as they were, paled in comparison to the medieval refugee reality.

I suppose that the Fereldan example is one of the strongest arguments in favor of your resettlement plan's physical feasibility: if stuff like that happens in Thedas, it's open season on modern migratory theory. And I suppose it's certainly possible that the writers could insert the creation of a homeland outside of Andrastian Thedas- or, hell, a homeland in the Dales themselves - that saw a relatively successful effort to "gather in" the elves of the continent. But - apart from my moral-ethical and historical arguments against the idea of an elven homeland anywhere - I do not believe that it is a physically feasible project unless and until Writer Fiat makes it feasible. If it were tried in medieval Europe, it would result in the deaths of an awful lot of elves, the apathy of many more, and straitened conditions for almost all who tried, whether they succeeded or not. And that leaves aside the potential harm to human communities, because as far as I'm aware most of the people arguing for an elven homeland don't really care about that.
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#1377
Palidane

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*Super long post filled with factual historical goodness*

I completely agree. Any kind of mass migration is completely unrealistic. If the elves want to improve their current condition, they are going to have to take a page out of Martin Luther King's book and start winning hearts and minds. Malcolm X will just get them killed.


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#1378
Icy Magebane

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This dramatically understates the tremendous difficulty involved in premodern migration.
-snip-

Okay, so what's the alternative?  Wait for humans to recognize them as equals?  I'm not seeing any options beyond war, flight, and stagnation.


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#1379
Samahl

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Okay, so what's the alternative?  Wait for humans to recognize them as equals?  I'm not seeing any options beyond war, flight, and stagnation.

 

Maybe if they ask politely?


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#1380
Heimdall

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Okay, so what's the alternative?  Wait for humans to recognize them as equals?  I'm not seeing any options beyond war, flight, and stagnation.

Try to prove that they're worth more to human rules as full citizens, give them an interest in maintaining them.


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#1381
Icy Magebane

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There could be a safe haven where the Dalish would have a strategic advantage over any enemies that might threaten them. Perhaps the land mass west of the Hunterhorn Mountains?

I think it's obvious that the Dalish should have been regularly sending out explorers decades ago...  there are too many parts of the map that have question marks on them.  It's worth finding out of there's any unclaimed land out there...



#1382
Steelcan

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Okay, so what's the alternative?  Wait for humans to recognize them as equals?  I'm not seeing any options beyond war, flight, and stagnation.

there's always the whole "give up there delusions and surrender a long lost fight"


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#1383
General TSAR

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After careful thought, I support the creation of an Elven homeland.

 

All those elves together in one place makes gathering support for an Exalted March so much easier as the knife ears will be raiding human kingdoms trying to scavenge for resources when they start running low. Then the human armies will pulverize the knife ears and make the surviving elves think twice about a concept of an Elven state.

 

Everybody wins.


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#1384
Icy Magebane

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Try to prove that they're worth more to human rules as full citizens, give them an interest in maintaining them.

I don't understand.  They aren't dwarves, who can mine lyrium and therefore have a racial trait that the humans need.  They're just people.  All they can really do is work normal jobs like any human could... what other kind of utility are they supposed to be able to prove?


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#1385
Grand Admiral Cheesecake

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After careful thought, I support the creation of an Elven homeland.

 

All those elves together in one place makes gathering support for an Exalted March so much easier as the knife ears will be raiding human kingdoms trying to scavenge for resources when they start running low. Then the human armies will pulverize the knife ears and make the surviving elves think twice about a concept of an Elven state.

 

Everybody wins.

 

Now here's an Elven solution I can get behind!


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#1386
General TSAR

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there's always the whole "give up there delusions and surrender a long lost fight"

The elves or more specifically the hippie elves have their heads lodged in their intestinal tracts. 

 

Their pride will kill them, like Merrill's pride killed her and her clan. 


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#1387
Palidane

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The elves or more specifically the hippie elves have their heads lodged in their intestinal tracts. 

 

Their pride will kill them, like Merrill's pride killed her and her clan. 

But that never happened.

 

Merill's pride only got her Keeper killed!



#1388
Master Warder Z_

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Try to prove that they're worth more to human rules as full citizens, give them an interest in maintaining them.

 

Appeal to the Empire, I have been ranting about the Valley of Flowers now for a year and a half it seems.



#1389
Grand Admiral Cheesecake

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The elves or more specifically the hippie elves have their heads lodged in their intestinal tracts. 

 

Their pride will kill them, like Merrill's pride killed her and her clan. 

 

They do have a nasty habit of getting destroyed due to their own stupidity.

 

Better to end them now and then work on improving things for the City Elves (Who have it way worse than the Dalish without most of the self righteous victim complex)


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#1390
General TSAR

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But that never happened.

Which it totally did.  ^_^

 

Rest in Peace Merrill, you stupid mage wench. 

 

 

They do have a nasty habit of getting destroyed due to their own stupidity.

 

Better to end them now and then work on improving things for the City Elves (Who have it way worse than the Dalish without most of the self righteous victim complex)

 

Amen. 



#1391
Heimdall

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I don't understand.  They aren't dwarves, who can mine lyrium and therefore have a racial trait that the humans need.  They're just people.  All they can really do is work normal jobs like any human could... what other kind of utility are they supposed to be able to prove?

Its essentially the basis for Celene's entire reform strategy.  Help elven merchants get a share of the market, let them show off their most brilliant minds in Orlais' most prestigious academic institution, prove any contention to elven inferiority wrong and show that they can contribute just as well as any human.



#1392
Grand Admiral Cheesecake

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I even know how we'll get the surviving Dalish to abandon their pagan gods and become good hard working City Elves!

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=3tBqdKGiqnI


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#1393
Icy Magebane

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Its essentially the basis for Celene's entire reform strategy.  Help elven merchants get a share of the market, let them show off their most brilliant minds in Orlais' most prestigious academic institution, prove any contention to elven inferiority wrong and show that they can contribute just as well as any human.

Hm.  Well, I can't say I'm enthusiastic about a plan that basically amounts to "wait patiently until the humans deem you worthy," but at least Celene is willing to take some steps in a positive direction.  It's more than most rulers have done, Halamshiral notwithstanding.


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#1394
Master Warder Z_

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Or you know, you could always aid the Orelesians in the more direct route.

 

Elven soldiers have proven their merit on the battlefield already several times over, Point being we don't know the route that will be taken, I just point out that Nilfgaard certainly benefited from the creation of the Valley of the Flowers, now their success and longevity is at the forefront of every elf living there.

 

They are the benefactors of an entire race willing to die for them.

 

It's a brilliant strategy to be honest.

 

Spoiler

 


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#1395
LOLandStuff

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They're wasting time on the surface whining about their precious Arlathan and whatnot when they should be underground looking for it.

Every ruin we've come across has been underground.



#1396
Heimdall

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Hm.  Well, I can't say I'm enthusiastic about a plan that basically amounts to "wait patiently until the humans deem you worthy," but at least Celene is willing to take some steps in a positive direction.  It's more than most rulers have done, Halamshiral notwithstanding.

Winning hearts and minds is the only way humans and elves will be able to live together harmoniously.  Its never a swift process.


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#1397
Master Warder Z_

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They're wasting time on the surface whining about their precious Arlathan and whatnot when they should be underground looking for it.

Every ruin we've come across has been underground.

 

This is surprisingly good advice.

 

I mean, the entire area is a haunted wreck that no one bothers with, if they all moved there, i doubt any one would care.



#1398
Grand Admiral Cheesecake

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They're wasting time on the surface whining about their precious Arlathan and whatnot when they should be underground looking for it.

Every ruin we've come across has been underground.

 

Yes! Most of the Dalish can go underground to play with Darkspawn and go ruin hunting and the rest can chill out and join us after a little good old fashioned Wololo!



#1399
Samahl

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Its essentially the basis for Celene's entire reform strategy.  Help elven merchants get a share of the market, let them show off their most brilliant minds in Orlais' most prestigious academic institution, prove any contention to elven inferiority wrong and show that they can contribute just as well as any human.

 

I doubt mass-producing "credits to their race" will really help, especially since humans would simply begin comparing the lowest achieving elves to the highest achieving ones and come to the conclusion that elves have earned their low status, ignoring that they'll never have as much access to resources as humans will.


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#1400
Grand Admiral Cheesecake

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I doubt mass-producing "credits to their race" will really help,

 

It's still better than "Come on guys! Founding our own isolationist kingdom... again is sure to work! It's such a stupid idea those Shemlen will never see it coming!!!!"


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