Guest_Imanol de Tafalla_*
Tevinter, Orlais, and the Chantry are the unholy trinity of everything that is wrong with humanity.
The Dwarves have their slippery politics and caste system. The Qunari have their totalitarian philosophy which promotes forceful expansionism.
The Dalish are long overdue.
Oh noes the elves suck just as much as everyone else.
Maker forbid.
That said if the devs do nuke the dalish elves the threads will be delicious.
I completely agree with the OP.
BioWare seems to be going out of their way to make the Dalish come across as more unsympathetic and more likable every book and game, and it just gets so contrived. Especially the "3 mages per clan" rule. Dalish lore makes it clear they believed their ancestors were all magically connected, that they feel the decline of magic among their people reflects a decline of their elvish heritage, and that culturally they feel more magic among their kind symbolizes reviving their elvish heritage. Then DAI comes around and say they have a strict 3-mage rule and excess mages are thrown out if there's no clan in need of a Keeper's First or Second nearby. Um, hi, that makes no sense, and directly contradicts Dalish cultural values. How are they supposed to reconnect with their magical heritage if they exile members who do?
What other reason does BioWare have to put that there except to make the Dalish appear more jerky than they already have?
Also, funny how when some humans don't show their best colors, other characters and the narrative are quick to point out, "Not all humans are like that! Most are still good!" But when a few elves don't show their best colors, other characters are quick to condemn all elves being that way, and the narrative is content to sit back and let the player think that that one or those few jerky elves represent most/all elves of that culture.
Funny how when the Andrastian religion and culture doesn't show it's best colors, other characters and the narrative are quick to point out that for all the harm, trouble, corruption, abuse, and bigotry the Chantry promotes, it promotes just as much peace, tolerance, stability and charity and is worth preserving. Any time the PC condemns the Chantry or says it needs to be severely reformed/disbanded, at least one other character is quick to point out that it does more good than harm and is worth preserving. YET, when the Dalish religion and culture doesn't show its best colors, other characters are quick to condemn the entire Dalish culture as sucky, and the narrative itself allows the player to go on thinking the entire culture is this sucky and should be abandoned/disbanded.
What the H-3-L-L, BioWare?
It's rather unfortunate how one-sided Inquisition is. You get a plethora of characters speaking in support of the Chantry of Andraste as an institution or about the Andrastian faith, but when it comes to the Dalish - an ethnic group of men, women, and children - you're surrounded by characters who consistently denigrate the People.
Evidently not seeing that they didn't help the humans, and survived the blight without a scratch.Levy more troops with group with a limited population? Please try agein. Sorry that make no sense. Matching a darkspawn with numbers is pointless. They would just make more, much much more. Letting the darkspawn stay for any long time is just going to make the problem worse. It a horrible idea simply because it just making the problem of the darkspawn worse in the long run.
And yes we do know how many men the elves army has. The fact the elve in general has a way smaller population then human make it a point there is a massive limit to there army numbers.
Not helping the humans with the darkspawn to defend their home land is just going to mean they are going to face a larger darkspawn army in the long run when it comes to there home land.
What? The Dalish aren't being vilified, they're being made to be more morally gray. You may have wanted to see the Dalish handle their problems reasonably and fairly every time, but that's not what I wanted to see.
Even with all of this "vilifying" they still are fairly appealing compared to all of the other organizations in Thedas. They aren't any better or worse than anyone else, and that's a good thing.
Not going to get much grayer than TME or DA II or other encounters where they are hostile/prejudiced, slaughtered, or depicted as malicious idiots. The only thing that did make them gray was Red Crossing and their mysterious past, and Bioware took that too. There's a reason why they have to be CONSTANTLY DEFENDED on these forums. Why the most that we can say half the time is "they're not all like that".
They do not 'suck as much as everyone else' when everyone else has been seen from multiple view points and philosophies in a fairer manner.
Evidently not seeing that they didn't help the humans, and survived the blight without a scratch.
Because as luck had it the humans held. And doing that bit them on the ass later.
Evidently not seeing that they didn't help the humans, and survived the blight without a scratch.
Not going to get much grayer than TME or DA II or other encounters where they are hostile/prejudiced, slaughtered, or depicted as malicious idiots. The only thing that did make them gray was Red Crossing and their mysterious past, and Bioware took that too. There's a reason why they have to be CONSTANTLY DEFENDED on these forums. Why the most that we can say half the time is "they're not all like that".
They do not 'suck as much as everyone else' when everyone else has been seen from multiple view points and philosophies in a fairer manner.
Did you talk to the Dalish in DAO? In DA2? They are abrasive and hostile there, sure, but they are given every reason to act that way. The humans hate them and treat them like **** so it's only reasonable that they do likewise. They are, overall, depicted as victims and/or the wronged party. Between the humans and the Dalish it is quite obvious in those games that the Dalish are more reasonable, seeing as how they aren't so unreasonably hateful and oppressive like the humans are. DAI and TME showed that the Dalish can be idiots and a**holes too.
Their relationship with Orlais was always in the shitter anyway. Other than Orlais no human nations bordered them other than Ferelden tribes. And on top of that no human nation would have helped the dalish fight against an exalted march.I wouldn't say 'without a scratch'. Physically, maybe, but their deliberate inaction destroyed their credibility and any hope of a positive relationship with any other nation in Thedas. Relationships that might have come in handy later when Orlais was decisively adding them to history's list of Elven failures.
Did you talk to the Dalish in DAO? In DA2? They are abrasive and hostile there, sure, but they are given every reason to act that way. The humans hate them and treat them like **** so it's only reasonable that they do likewise. They are, overall, depicted as victims and/or the wronged party. Between the humans and the Dalish it is quite obvious in those games that the Dalish are more reasonable, seeing as how they aren't so unreasonably hateful and oppressive like the humans are. DAI and TME showed that the Dalish can be idiots and a**holes too.
Yes, yes I did talk to them. In between the snide remarks and the word 'shem' I got the feeling that they didn't much care for me for no other reason than my playing a human or city elf. They do not have much contact with humans and the little that they do is hostile from both sides; the Dalish do not come across as 'victims' aside from owing their place in Thedas to Red Crossing. Their arrogant superiority does not seem to win much support either.
Not sure of the elves you encountered in DA II. The ones that I met hated the very sight of me for no other reason than being a human. The elves that I met could not move to hostilities fast enough when their Keeper died through no fault of my own, because she was dangerously stupid.
Zathrian torturing the descendants of his son's murderers for generations is not reasonable. Marethari keeping her clan lingering around a demon and eventually submitting to said demon is not reasonable.
They were nice to their kin and barely tolerant of anything else. Origins did a fine job of showing the good and the bad of the Dalish. From that point on it was all down hill, with Inquisition, DA II and TME dealing a heavy one sided blow. Unlike the diversity in representation that the humans enjoy in DA, especially Inquisition.
The disposability of dalish elves has always been troubling, in each game there's the chance to wipe out a clan (it's a lot easier to kill clan Lavellan than it is to save it). TME deliberately makes the clan unlikeable so when Michael makes a deal with a demon to let them be slaughtered in exchange for an eluvian key readers either won't care or think that they deserve it.
I can't be the only one who would have preferred to see Michel and Celine both get ironbark in their gullets. The only Orlesian who comes off sympathetic in TME is Gaspard, and only because at least he's honest about being a terrible person.
Guest_Faerunner_*
Their relationship with Orlais was always in the shitter anyway. Other than Orlais no human nations bordered them other than Ferelden tribes. And on top of that no human nation would have helped the dalish fight against an exalted march.
It was a sound strategy.
I've been holding onto this letter for a long while for an occasion like this.
Note the first screenshot particularly.
"It is easy to see on any map how large the Dales are. More importantly, they stand between Orlais and the rest of the south and would likely have represented a significant obstacle to the Empire's expansion into Ferelden. Naturally, we stood to benefit from propagating the narrative of a hostile, unreasoning people attacking innocent missionaries and making blood sacrifices of good Andrastian babies."
While the narrator goes on to admit that the elves didn't do much to endear themselves to their human neighbors either, when you strip away the "overt pro-Chantry and pro-human biases" (Anonymous' words), what we know the elves actually did hardly warrants what happened to them. Even within the game, someone in the University of Orlais noticed how much humans stood to gain (financially, territorially, militaristically, etc) from painting the elves as unreasonably hostile savages that did nothing but attack and provoke and alienate their human neighbors and thus earned getting conquered and getting all their land and freedom confiscated by humans. No one says Orlais was justified conquering Ferelden because they were a bunch of savage barbarian war-tribes that didn't "properly" unite into a contemporary nation at the time like the rest of the civilized world, yet the elves deserved it because they weren't friendly and/or communicative enough?
Yet, ironically, I feel BioWare is as guilty of the same pro-Chantry and pro-human biases addressed in this Codex (that they wrote) because they keep depicting the ancient elves and Dalish elves as increasingly "hostile, unreasoning people attacking innocent[s]" each new game and book, almost as a way to justify their lot in life. As a way to excuse humans subjugating them, non-elven characters spitting at them, and the narrative itself finding any excuse to butcher them horribly in each book and game (again, it's much easier to kill Lavellan's Clan than save them; it was easier to kill Merrill's Clan than spare them). And the anti-elven content is easier to find than the pro-elven content.
It seems to boil down to: "Yes, humans as a whole mistreat elves; but the elves are jerks so they deserve it."
And I don't buy it.
Not to mention the whole Solas thing and him running down the Dalish, making them out to be stupid. He gets real sarcastic when my male Lavellen claims to be a "true" elf and how they've been trying to maintain their culture since the humans "broke their treaty" and took away our land but then says something interesting among the sarcasm, "oh look the Dalish got something right", so apparently he does agree we were sold out by Orlais.
Actually the number of things the Dalish got wrong is pretty much balanced out by what they got right. They believe all their ancestors were magical: correct. They believe their ancestors were immortal: correct. They believe that Fen'Harel was responsible for the loss of their gods: correct. Things then started to go wrong because they could no longer contact their gods: correct. Okay their empire was already in decline/possibly destroyed when Tevinter took over but essentially Tevinter was built on the back of elven magical knowledge since it would appear that practically everything Dorian recognises as ancient Tevinter magic, Solas maintains that the elves got there first. Even the Vallaslin is largely correct since it is something only done when you come of age and you choose your image based on your devotion to a particular god. Dedicated devotion to a particular god and following their every whim could be seen as slavish devotion; again we only have Solas' word on this. I was thinking that perhaps the Dalish insistence that you have to be worthy/adult to receive your Vallaslin could be a partial memory. May be those without the markings were considered the lowest in society in ancient times and left to do the menial tasks, while the "favoured ones" were adopted by a particular god/priest representative. Anyway, it seems to me that the only thing the Dalish may have got wrong is their perception of Solas but again one man's rebel hero is another man's sly betrayer. I have noticed that whilst Solas talks the talk about all the right things and seems a good guy, he really is only following his own agenda. However, we do seem to be led into thinking he is the fountain of knowledge and the Dalish are idiots.
I've been having a bit of a think over night and I think an earlier poster could be right about the use of the Vallaslin in a future plot. If Solas does release the gods from their prison, their first act would probably be to try and contact their followers and may well do this via the blood writing (blood magic), a bit like the dark mark in Harry Potter. After all in this game we had the Grey Wardens being controlled, so it would follow a pattern to make the Dalish the next villains based on some sort of mind control. Judging from the response to my post, very few people would sympathise with the Dalish or shed any tears over their destruction. What Solas does with his love interest sort of hints at this. According to PW he was going to tell her about himself, having given up on his plans for the future, but at the last minute changed his mind, remaining true to himself and his goals, and told her about the Vallaslin instead, offering to remove them. If he is intent on releasing the elven gods and he suspects they will use the vallaslin to control the Dalish, it would account for why it is only after he resolves to continue with his plan that he feels the needs to tell her.
Anyway, having been critical of the Dalish myself in the past and certainly not agreed with everything they believe or do and been more sympathetic towards the city elves, I am now back on side with my Dalish origin in DAO and going to defend them if permitted to do so in any future games/DLC. The Dalish are being sold short by the writers and the 3-mage rule is totally illogical based on their previous cultural values.
I'm a bit confused as to how they didn't come across as victims to you. They hate humans, sure, but the humans are far worse to them. They have reason to be mad at the humans, but the humans have no reason to hate them.Yes, yes I did talk to them. In between the snide remarks and the word 'shem' I got the feeling that they didn't much care for me for no other reason than my playing a human or city elf. They do not have much contact with humans and the little that they do is hostile from both sides; the Dalish do not come across as 'victims' aside from owing their place in Thedas to Red Crossing. Their arrogant superiority does not seem to win much support either.
Not sure of the elves you encountered in DA II. The ones that I met hated the very sight of me for no other reason than being a human. The elves that I met could not move to hostilities fast enough when their Keeper died through no fault of my own, because she was dangerously stupid.
Zathrian torturing the descendants of his son's murderers for generations is not reasonable. Marethari keeping her clan lingering around a demon and eventually submitting to said demon is not reasonable.
They were nice to their kin and barely tolerant of anything else. Origins did a fine job of showing the good and the bad of the Dalish. From that point on it was all down hill, with Inquisition, DA II and TME dealing a heavy one sided blow. Unlike the diversity in representation that the humans enjoy in DA, especially Inquisition.
I'm a bit confused as to how they didn't come across as victims to you. They hate humans, sure, but the humans are far worse to them. They have reason to be mad at the humans, but the humans have no reason to hate them.
I am saying that they did not come across as only victims and only a wronged party, much of which is owed to what happened to them after Red Crossing. The humans have more than enough reasons to hate the Dalish. They camp out on land that isn't theirs, their leaders are Dalish Mages, two things that Andrastianism doesn't care for. Some of their clans are also little more than thugs who prey on whomever has the misfortune of venturing near their 'territory'. Not unlike the ones you hear of from Zevran.
The elves in DA2 attack you due to the fact that they think that the Keeper was murdered by a pariah and her human accomplice. Is it so unreasonable that they would try to kill such assassins on sight?
Before getting all the answers? Or even if you explain that the Keeper was possessed? Yes. I suppose the problem is that they were already wanting to attack in the first place and that gave them the perfect justification.
Zathrian is a poor example. If the curse is removed, no one proclaims that what he did to the humans was right and the new Keeper is able to smooth out some aggressions between the clan and humans.
One way that the Dalish were definately not balanced out in DAO was in their handling of mages. They are apparently able to have a bunch of mages and there aren't any negative consequences (which I'm sure was good for all the pro-mage players, but removes any chance of difficult choices when dealing with the Circle, because mage freedom would be a fairly obvious choice). The three mage rule allows for some complexity there, just like with the Circles and the Qun. It makes the point that you can just have a whole bunch of free mages out there clear.
Zathrian is the leader of his clan who is willing to see his own suffer because of his hatred of humans. He's a great example of the grey morality of the Dalish. Not much unlike Loghain for the humans.
After DA II and TME, Inquisition piles on with its take on how the Dalish handled extra mages. The Dalish were already complex, adding more 'bad' on top of what little 'good' they had left was unnecessary and stunk of writer bias.
Bioware just hates the dalish, don't they?
Previous games at least tried to show all the factions as more or less grey: with bad and good moments. Only the Tevinter and orlais seemed to be truly "bad". The templars got villainized in DA2 a lot but thankfully Bioware brought more greyness in DA:I
Poor elves, though? TME and DA:I do nothing but **** on them, retcon and plainly try to make them look evil to the point that I just can't take the narrative seriously
What? The Dalish aren't being vilified, they're being made to be more morally gray. You may have wanted to see the Dalish handle their problems reasonably and fairly every time, but that's not what I wanted to see.
I respectfully disagree. You have multiple characters give context and support to the Chantry of Andraste and the Andrastian faith, and the same simply isn't true for the Dalish. Plenty of players already expressed disdain for the Dalish since Origins because the Dalish were unfriendly towards their main character, and Inquisition simply put the negativity at the forefront (with Solas, Minaeve, Vivienne, the mercenary Dalish) while leaving the positive in the more difficult to achieve areas (like Clan Lavellan at the war table).
No one wants the Dalish to be perfect, but the denigration and disregard for them by developers who seem incredibly biased in favor of Andrastian human culture and perspective is becoming incredibly annoying at this point.
Even with all of this "vilifying" they still are fairly appealing compared to all of the other organizations in Thedas. They aren't any better or worse than anyone else, and that's a good thing.
The single person who can speak in positive terms of the Dalish is Inquisitor Lavellan, while we have advisers, companions, and even minor characters who speak in favor of the existence of the Chantry of Andraste as an institution, or in positive terms about the Andrastian faith. Solas can come around, but that necessitates that Lavellan is pro-Dalish. It's ridiculously one-sided.
Yes, I did feel like they were especially harsh on the Dalish...but incidentally, this is the same reason I prefer the elf Inquisitor over the human. I feel it works better for the exploration of faith, "questioning of everything you thought you believed" story that Inquisition is trying to tell. The disillusionment is more intensely felt, because you actually get to come face to face with some of your gods, and find out they are flawed. Whereas, I felt they were playing it a bit more safe with the Andrastians. Maybe due to real world comparisons to real religions, or perhaps because of the choice not to reveal whether the Maker exists, we don't get to explore more about Andraste and who she was.
Did you talk to the Dalish in DAO? In DA2? They are abrasive and hostile there, sure, but they are given every reason to act that way. The humans hate them and treat them like **** so it's only reasonable that they do likewise.
Reasons that are never explicitly addressed during the actual scene, and necessitate understanding the lore (mainly from codex entries or having played as Mahariel) to give context as to why the Dalish are abrasive. The scene where Hawke, Varric, and Fenris encounter Clan Sabrae doesn't address how horrible the Dalish have been treated; it maligns them instead, and completely ignores how the Dalish have valid reasons to be wary about outsiders. It's similar to Sarel's negativity towards the Warden: you find out he's upset because his wife was recently killed by the werewolves, but only if your character is Dalish; otherwise, you simply think that's who he is.
They are, overall, depicted as victims and/or the wronged party.
That simply isn't true. You can encounter an optional scene where the clan warn templars away (who tortured one of their children), but it's incredibly easy to miss it. You can also hear about how Andrastian humans have threatened them to convert, but this is also easy to miss because it's in Act III, and requires you to go out of your way to speak to all the Dalish instead of the quest target. In contrast, the scenes that show the Dalish at their worst are always at the forefront, and even mandatory.
Between the humans and the Dalish it is quite obvious in those games that the Dalish are more reasonable, seeing as how they aren't so unreasonably hateful and oppressive like the humans are. DAI and TME showed that the Dalish can be idiots and a**holes too.
Clan Virnehn in TME were one-dimensional caricatures in a story where even minor human characters like Comte Pierre were allowed to have depth and nuance, and we have the 'three mage' recton in Inquisition simply to invalidate the Dalish as an alternative to the Chantry controlled Circles, adding more negativity to how most people already viewed them.
My thought as new truths were revealed about the Dalish in DA:I was that old saying "All that glitters isn't Gold". Not every civilization or species or race is pure or perfect. The Dalish are flawed, just as every faction of Dragon Age is flawed. Kinda like those Asari from ME. They seemed to be better than everything... but what is revealed in ME3 isn't good karma for them.
I'm looking forward to learning more lore in future games.
Needless to say... I don't read DA comics or DA books. I just play the games, so my statements are from a narrow perspective. I consider the DA story to be an evolving one. Especially after the ending of DA:I.
I have lots of questions that I hope to get answers to in upcoming games. However, I'm old enough to realize that not all my questions will get answered and a bunch of stuff will get answered in ways that make me unhappy.
I am concerned about the elves, really wish they could grow again and be like the elves in LOTR (which in my understanding was a lot like they were before humans).
Would love to see them taking back their promised land and building an empire there (was promised by andraste ffs, you don't even respect your own prophet??) There is no more expansionism going on, orlais and fereldan are (in some way) at peace.
They have a reason to be hostile against humans and outsiders, as far as they know, humans destroyed their kind, and as far as everyone knows, humans treat them like ****, city elves are servants or almost slaves.
No one is perfect, but the elves have so much history that was just put under the rug, even the beautiful winter palace was what? an elven building. There is so much beauty about the dalish, they are my favorite in the game.
Did you talk to the Dalish in DAO? In DA2? They are abrasive and hostile there, sure, but they are given every reason to act that way. The humans hate them and treat them like **** so it's only reasonable that they do likewise. They are, overall, depicted as victims and/or the wronged party. Between the humans and the Dalish it is quite obvious in those games that the Dalish are more reasonable, seeing as how they aren't so unreasonably hateful and oppressive like the humans are. DAI and TME showed that the Dalish can be idiots and a**holes too.
They then treat humans abrasively and hostile, which in turn makes humans treat them abrasively and hostile, congratz you have made a circle of hostility... with no end in sight. *Slow Clap*
Which then means that Elves are no different than humans.
I am saying that they did not come across as only victims and only a wronged party, much of which is owed to what happened to them after Red Crossing. The humans have more than enough reasons to hate the Dalish. They camp out on land that isn't theirs, their leaders are Dalish Mages, two things that Andrastianism doesn't care for. Some of their clans are also little more than thugs who prey on whomever has the misfortune of venturing near their 'territory'. Not unlike the ones you hear of from Zevran.
Before getting all the answers? Or even if you explain that the Keeper was possessed? Yes. I suppose the problem is that they were already wanting to attack in the first place and that gave them the perfect justification.
Zathrian is the leader of his clan who is willing to see his own suffer because of his hatred of humans. He's a great example of the grey morality of the Dalish. Not much unlike Loghain for the humans.
After DA II and TME, Inquisition piles on with its take on how the Dalish handled extra mages. The Dalish were already complex, adding more 'bad' on top of what little 'good' they had left was unnecessary and stunk of writer bias.
Well, I already commented on how the Dalish mage situation was not balanced. The Chantry is indirectly portrayed as being wrong about mages since the Dalish are able to have several free mages without issue. Next, if several clans were stated to be little more than thugs, what's wrong with showing those clans that are negative examples? You've just claimed that bad clans existed back in DAO so why do you take issue with such clans appearing in DAI and TME?
Well, an outsider from a race of people who have historically hated the Dalish and the former First who had to leave the clan due to use of blood magic say the Keeper was possessed. Why shouldn't the clan trust them? Them blaming Hawke and Merrill for the death of the Keeper and seeking out revenge for the presumed act is very understandable. It isn't like they would go and start massacring the people in Kirkwall afterward to repay what the clan had lost. That would have been an unreasonable portrayal of the Dalish.
Yes, I know that Zathrian is an example of gray morality, but in the first game, he's probably the worst we saw out of the Dalish whereas among the human characters we had such straightforwardly evil characters as Howe. When the worst person is a fairly sympathetic character, then the Dalish are being given a positive portrayal.
Except it really didn't. They needed the Dalish mages issue to be altered to make the mage/templar issue not so one-sided. The three mages rule made it clear that everyone has difficulty when it comes to dealing with mages and there are no easy answers.
Reasons that are never explicitly addressed during the actual scene, and necessitate understanding the lore (mainly from codex entries or having played as Mahariel) to give context as to why the Dalish are abrasive. The scene where Hawke, Varric, and Fenris encounter Clan Sabrae doesn't address how horrible the Dalish have been treated; it maligns them instead, and completely ignores how the Dalish have valid reasons to be wary about outsiders. It's similar to Sarel's negativity towards the Warden: you find out he's upset because his wife was recently killed by the werewolves, but only if your character is Dalish; otherwise, you simply think that's who he is.
That simply isn't true. You can encounter an optional scene where the clan warn templars away (who tortured one of their children), but it's incredibly easy to miss it. You can also hear about how Andrastian humans have threatened them to convert, but this is also easy to miss because it's in Act III, and requires you to go out of your way to speak to all the Dalish instead of the quest target. In contrast, the scenes that show the Dalish at their worst are always at the forefront, and even mandatory.
Clan Virnehn in TME were one-dimensional caricatures in a story where even minor human characters like Comte Pierre were allowed to have depth and nuance, and we have the 'three mage' recton in Inquisition simply to invalidate the Dalish as an alternative to the Chantry controlled Circles, adding more negativity to how most people already viewed them.
That's all well and good but the fact that such content is hard to access doesn't change that it's there and it pushes the Dalish as being undoubtedly correct in their views. You may not like the way one must access it, but it's still there and makes for an unbalanced portrayal. The Dalish are made out to be victims if you are willing to look into things, at least in DAO and DA2.
So? There are plenty of one-dimensionally cruel and selfish human characters in the series. Why can't we have a singular Dalish clan that acts that way?
Also, the Dalish were never an alternative. Their free practice of magic displays the Circles as wrong. Being an alternative would mean that it served as another option, not a group which may invalidate the actions of another.
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