I have posted this on many Anders threads because people are going either "OMG HE'S AN EVIL MURDERING BASTARD" or "OMG FINALLY SOMEONE BLEW UP THE CHANTRY" and missing the bloody point: that Anders himself never questioned that what he did was wrong. He fully acknowledges that his actions were murder, and were morally contemptible, and that justice was required of him for what he did. What he understood is that it wasn't about right or wrong, it was about necessity. He believed that the system of imprisoning mages within Circles, under the watch of the Chantry's templars, was wrong, and would accept nothing less than separation from chantry. And with that, he understood that unless someone was willing to take drastic measures, then nothing ever would change. He knew that the templars would rise against mages everywhere for his action, and that therefore all the mages locked within Circle towers would be forced to rise up against the templars in order to save themselves. By his actions, no mages would be able to take, say, Wynne's position that the templars and Circles are necessary, except for those mages who hated their own magic and wanted to embrace imprisonment or even suicide. They would have to either submit to templar tyranny, or fight to save their own lives. So he removed any stalemate--"there can be no compromise"--in the name of ending an indisputably broken system that served no one.
Anders does NOT say anywhere, clearly or otherwise, that he acted to become a martyr. What he does say is that he acted specifically to remove any chance for compromise. He KNEW that what he did was murder, and he knew it was wrong, and he knew that he had to pay for it. In this, he was a tragic figure, taking it upon himself to be the reviled murderer so that other people would have the freedom to condemn his actions. Like it or not, that is a very realistic, real-world scenario. For every Martin Luther King or Anne Frank or Rosa Parks or Gandhi you see in the world, there are people with blood on their hands who gave them and rest of the world the opportunity to take the moral high road. Their actions ARE despicable, but that doesn't make them any less necessary. This is the point that the rest of us are missing, from our very comfortable positions in life: being able to take the high road and condemn the actions of murderous freedom fighters is, sometimes, not recognized for what it is: a luxury that we would NOT HAVE if not for those murderers giving the rest of the world something to rally around.
He knew no such thing. If the Fereldan Circle is anything to go by, the Knight-Commander and his Templars are usually less strict and ruthless than Meredith and her men. There's no reason to assume the Knight-Commander in Orlais would hear about a Chantry that got blown up by an apostate in Kirkwall and based on that alone to call for the Right of Annulment for his own Circle. Anders is hardly the first abomination to cause the death of numerous innocent people. That's the whole reason the Circle is there in the first place. A Circle does not normally get annulled because somewhere in the region an abomination went on a killing spree. Heck, the Fereldan Circle had been overrun by blood mages and abominations and still Greagor trusted Irving's word and did not insist on all surviving mages to be slain. Meredith had been driven to extreme paranoia and even madness by that stupid idol, and that's why she ordered to have all the mages killed.
Justice's mindset was: doing what is just = doing what is right, and merging with Anders must have made this sense of what is just = right Anders' primary moral compass. Anders might have known that killing the Grand Cleric, the other sisters and whoever else was unfortunate enough to be in the Chantry or near the explosion is unfortunate and not a good thing, no, but he still saw it as acceptable for the greater good, the greater good being free mages. And I thoroughly disagree that this was for any good at all and was necessary. Had he blown up Meredith's office or the templar barracks, it might be more debatable whether he was justified in resorting to violence and murder. Would this not have resulted in the same outcome? Would Meredith not have flipped out (if he had not succeeded in blowing her up along with her office) and called for retribution? I doubt that in the progressed state of her madness she would still have listened to Elthina's pleas for peace, and as Elthina said her power isn't that great that she can order the Knight-Commander around. If Meredith deemed an attack on the templars an act of war from the mages, she would still call for the Right of Annulment.
Blowing up innocent civilians because they happen to not share your extremist mindset and would argue in favor of peace is always despicable, never justified and never necessary.
Heh, good to know, but you know which timeline I speak of. Most of mankind's history is problems getting fixed with bloodshed. Until 400 years ago (and I'm being kind here) if there was a problem in a society people rebelled and fixed it with violence. There was no "right channels" to apply through, you either fought for it or you died. Sometimes some people did what Anders did, a horrendous act which actually raised very good question. Imagine you and me are mages in Orlais circle. We hear that entire circle of mages got annulled because of actions of an apostate that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH CIRCLES. What do we do? I mean we just realized we are not safe from genocide and ethnic cleansing even if we did nothing to provoke it. In this scenario violence is used to bring much greater concerns to light, the current circle system is not working and it has to change, immediately. There is no way to do that peacefully in Thedas as there was no way to do it in the timeline I talked about.
That's also not true. The Warden could ask for the Circle to be granted independence as a boon from the King or Queen and this is allowed. Progressive rulers have therefore been shown to be open to suggestions like this and to not be inherently opposed to more freedom/rights for mages. Of course the writers backpedaled on that because we need more mage drama, but it showed that there ARE peaceful possibilities here. The Warden was a special case, yes, but the goodwill among the rulers was there. The problem is demanding extreme change, immediately, as Anders did.
If the mages were discontent, they could have made this known and tried to force a debate and the allowance of more rights by taking peaceful actions. The Circle could have stopped producing enchantments and other valuable artifacts high in demand. Mages skilled in the art of healing could refuse to use their powers any longer to help the sick and the wounded. That is already a very hard measure that will cost lives, but unlike blowing up defenseless old ladies, it shows the good magic can be used for and what mages have to offer to society. Anders' act of terrorism destroyed any goodwill common people might have had for the mages and their plight. He proved that it would be safer for everyone if every single mage was locked up and not allowed outside, or they will commit an act of war in a place of neutrality and peace. Magic is becoming more common. More children show signs of magical talent. This would increase the number of families counting mages among them. This again would increase concern over the lives of mages and the rights they have. There would be more people going "my brother/sister/son/daughter/cousin/aunt/uncle" is a mage and a good person, they can be trusted and deserve to have more freedom". But again, Anders wanted extreme change and he wanted it RIGHT NOW and he had to be the one to do it, so he committed an act of terrorism.
Even if the mages would win the war, they could no longer hope to live among the common people and find their place in society. No village or city that would be happy to have potential terrorists among them. Mages would still be forced into isolation to avoid being chased out.
The fact that Anders does not recognize the hypocrisy of his statement makes him feel more real to me; after all, how many of us can say that we are truly self-aware?
There's a difference between optimistic bias (which everyone has) and being downright delusional. If one's lack of self-awareness goes that far, there's something seriously wrong with that person. Anders' statement also goes beyond mere hypocrisy, as even if he would genuinely believe he is more openminded than Fenris, he is still bringing this up right after he has lied to Hawke and tricked him/her into helping him to blow people up.
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