The fact that is was felt necessary to include the late addition of the Solas romance so that we would sympathise with his character more, seems to suggest that he is going to be the next antagonist - particularly after the epilogue. However, I'm not exactly holding my breath that he actually wants to do anything about the modern day elves but, as he admitted after Haven, if people were to learn about his involvement with Corypheus then an elf Inquisitor, and by implication all elves, would suffer as a result, which would be equally true if he set something even more controversial into motion.
There is also the fact that in both Masked Empire and DAI there seems to be a concerted effort to rubbish the Dalish. Solas asks the question are you typical of the Dalish? First run through I would have been inclined to say yes if I was basing my answer on what I knew of them from previous games, particularly DAO where the first origin I played was Dalish. Sure the Dalish had their faults but I still felt I could admire their tenacity and determination not to give in and surrender their freedom. When I did the City elf origin it seemed clear that they didn't know an awful lot about the Dalish, just the odd anecdote about how so and so had run off to join them or had been helped by them, and it certainly didn't seem as though we were looking to the Dalish to suddenly swoop in and save us from the alienages or that we held them in high regard. One thing that both groups did seem to have in common was the importance of sticking together as a community but that people who went outside of it were shunned and exluded, like Soris and his human wife or Zevran's Dalish mother with her woodcutter. Even that was understandable given both communities were struggling to survive in a hostile human controlled world and that in the case of marrying a human you are literally encouraging the extinction of the elves, since any children will be elf blooded humans. However, when a city elf ran off to the Dalish, it seemed that they would do their best to assimilate them. Zevran gave up on joining them because he didn't like the life, not because they wouldn't accept him. Pol was in our clan and Zathrian had taken in Lanaya. The last one is particularly significant since she was a mage child and she was certainly not the only one since she had to compete for the position of First.
In DA2 Merrill is chatting with Sebastian and he is saying how the Chantry does good in that they look after widows and orphans. Her response is that the Dalish do that anyway, not as religious duty. Oddly enough, whilst Merrill doesn't seem to be treated with any sort of deference by the City elves, when Marethari comes to town they all appear to bow as though they regard her as someone they should reverence. Quite apart from the fact that you'd think it would have been wiser for her to keep a low profile, I really don't get why they should regard her like this.
We also discover that Merrill didn't originally belong to the Sabrae clan but was given to them by another clan who had a surfeit of mage children. I understood this was act as of generosity and the tradition associated with this was to ensure that no clan was left without a Keeper. My understanding of the lore at this point was that the Dalish believe that all their ancestors were magical (something they probably got right) and therefore the Keepers are held in such high regard because they feel they are closest to what a "true" elf should be. The Keepers lead the clans and no one seems to be able to do anything without their agreement.
So then we move on to the latest lore regarding the Dalish. In Masked Empire the Dalish clan we meet is meant to be representative of the Dalish generally. From what their Keeper says it is the Sabrae clan and Zathrian that are the exception with how they treat city elves who come to them for aid. Clearly the Lavellan clan is the same since they, like Mahariel's father believe they can learn something from the humans. Briala seems to hold it against them that they are not doing more to help the City elves. However, what exactly are they meant to be doing? The City elves in Origins weren't looking to them for assistance generally, not were the City elves in DA2. I didn't exactly approve of the Keeper's attitude towards city elves but Briala's starry eyed expectations of the Dalish didn't seem realistic or what the majority of city elves would expect. Her gripe mainly has to do with the fact that Felassan has been feeding the Keeper information from Briala over the years, about what exactly is never made clear, and that he was aware of this fact and should have been grateful. I'm pretty sure the Keeper never accepted this information knowing it came from a lowly city elf, given his attitude towards them. Nevertheless we are clearly meant to identify with Briala's reaction to the Dalish, which if the boards are anything to go by largely succeeded.
However, it gets worse. I don't have a problem about the Dalish mistaken view of their gods since it was always clear they were basing their knowledge on very sketchy information. However, the Dales was around for 2-300 years before it was finally conquered and yet we are to believe that in all that time they never turned up information that we discovered in a matter of weeks? My big objection comes from the revised Dalish attitude to mages and magic. We are told by 3 separate individuals, Maevaris, Vivienne and "Dalish" from the Chargers, that there is a rule among the Dalish that there should by only 3 mages per clan and if it goes above that number, the spare is turned out from the clan. Obviously if there is another clan on hand to take them, that is where they go but as Vivienne asks, what happens if they are all full up? The answer would appear to be, according to Maevaris' experience, no matter what the age, the extra mage is sent away. In her case, a seven year old child was effectively abandoned in the wilderness to die. I cannot believe how the original 3 mage rule has been twisted in this way, particularly as it is illogical.
The reasoning for this expulsion of excess mages is apparently because they clans so fear possessed mages they want to limit numbers. Why if that is the case do they have their senior position occupied by a mage? Why do they hold them in such reverence and believe them to be closer to their ancestors? Why in fact do they need as many as 3 mages in a clan at all? As has previously be argued, if mages are in so much danger of being possessed, why isn't Tevinter a raving nut house? What Andraste warned against and what is the chief danger of magic is the abuse of power. A slave running away from Tevinter would not say they feared the Magisters because of abominations but their use of slaves in blood magic rituals. This was Fenris' chief objection to mages and magic - abuse of power. This would also have been true of the first inhabitants of the Dales, who became the Dalish. If you think about it logically, the number of mage children in a clan would not likely be very large anyway; the average clan is not more than 50 members in total. More than 3 would indicate a very high percentage of mages overall, which seems unlikely since they aren't breeding for them specifically. However, when clan numbers are so small, every individual is surely valuable? That is why they care for all widows and orphans as part of the whole clan family. Yet now we are asked to believe that they would abandon a child to die simply for being a mage, even though they also believe that elf mages are closest in their idea of a "true" elf.
So when Solas asks me am I typical of the Dalish, what am I to say? I am not typical of the Dalish as portrayed in Masked Empire and DAI, nor is my clan. So is the idea to make us less sympathetic towards the Dalish as the claimed last representatives of the "true" elves and therefore more inclined to sympathise with whatever action Solas takes in the future, however misguided it is, since even if it results in the wholesale slaughter of elves, particularly the Dalish, no one is going to mourn them much anyway?
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