169 réponses à ce sujet

[BubbleDncr]

I've always been a Dalish elf fan, and I'm an even bigger Dalish elf fan after DA:I. 

 

I forget when I specifically learned it, but I've known for years that Dalish trade mages/anyone between clans as needed. So learning of their 3 mage rule doesn't really bother me, it's just adding to the information I already knew. Though honestly I didn't even know about that until I came to the forums - I guess I just wasn't paying attention when it came up in game? So to me it kind of seems like the forum makes a bigger deal out of it than the game intended. 

[LobselVith8]

No, it was to stop the dalish from being the mary sues they had been written as. "Oh look at us, we can have our entire clan be mages and not a single one ever has to worry about temptation, jealously, anger, fear, or other issues that make us susceptible to dmeons. Aren't we all just sparklingly perfect desu!"

 

Not a single Dragon Age game has ever suggested that the Dalish were perfect, and I doubt even a single fan on this forum has ever made that claim about the Dalish. The first game involved Zathrian cursing the humans who murdered his son and raped his daughter, so I don't see how you could think that anyone thought the Dalish came across as perfect in the story.

 

Give me a break with that crap. The dalish system was not nor was it ever going to be perfect, just like everything else in this series. Being mad over a flaw in the dalish system, a drawback, being added to them that doesn't clash with previously established lore regarding them is childish at best.

 

Considering we have already had a clan with more than three mages, it certainly does clash with the recton introduced in Inquisition. It also clashes with what Merrill verbally says about how the clans treat mages, and what her own codex entry reads about mages: "As each generation passes, magic becomes more rare among the Dalish. As the gift dies out, talented children are moved between clans so that every Keeper has a successor, and no clan is in danger of being left without guidance."

[Addai]

They kinda were. Like, really not well done if people think the only reason the dalish way of doing things wasn't the norm was human racism.

You're saying the Dalish were mary sues who never suffered or had any negative portrayals before, and that's ridiculous. But the reason they shouldn't display Andrastian superstitions is that they're not Andrastian. It's not a natural development from their culture- seeking to restore a time when all elves were mages and having magic was as natural as breathing- to have them suddenly start turning mage children out into the snow. The only rationale I can think of for that is that they've absorbed Andrastian ways of thinking. If that's the case, then they might as well not be Dalish. We already have city elves for that.

[TK514]

Considering we have already had a clan with more than three mages, it certainly does clash with the recton introduced in Inquisition. It also clashes with what Merrill verbally says about how the clans treat mages, and what her own codex entry reads about mages: "As each generation passes, magic becomes more rare among the Dalish. As the gift dies out, talented children are moved between clans so that every Keeper has a successor, and no clan is in danger of being left without guidance."

I don't recall ever actually seeing a clan with more than three Mages. We have heard that a clan had several at one time, there was competition, and then they are below the threshold when we arrive. I could be misremembering, but I don't think it is ever explicitly stated what happened to those who lost the competition to become First. I assumed at the time that they were just unimportant and hanging around somewhere, and after DA2 that they had been bartered off, like Merrill, but those are both assumptions that could very we'll be wrong, especially in light of this new information.

[In Exile]

I don't recall ever actually seeing a clan with more than three Mages. We have heard that a clan had several at one time, there was competition, and then they are below the threshold when we arrive. I could be misremembering, but I don't think it is ever explicitly stated what happened to those who lost the competition to become First. I assumed at the time that they were just unimportant and hanging around somewhere, and after DA2 that they had been bartered off, like Merrill, but those are both assumptions that could very we'll be wrong, especially in light of this new information.

 

The clan in DA:O had more than 3 mages if you count the random mage-like enemies you fight when you encourage the werewolves to massacre them, but I think the that's quite a weak thread to putt the canon label on. Aside from Zathrian the only mage we meet via the plot is Lanaya, and there's some argument to be made that Anarein is part of the clan rather than just Dalish hermit who is friendly with the clan. 

[LobselVith8]

I don't recall ever actually seeing a clan with more than three Mages. We have heard that a clan had several at one time, there was competition, and then they are below the threshold when we arrive. I could be misremembering, but I don't think it is ever explicitly stated what happened to those who lost the competition to become First. I assumed at the time that they were just unimportant and hanging around somewhere, and after DA2 that they had been bartered off, like Merrill, but those are both assumptions that could very we'll be wrong, especially in light of this new information.

 

Zathrian's clan welcomed Aneirin when they already had Zathrian, Lanaya, and Elora, and he states that while he left the clan (because he wants to be out among nature, where he believes he's learned quite a lot), he follows the clan because he feels indebted to them. Before the 'three mage' recton, the context of Merrill's codex addressed that magic was dying out among the Dalish, which necessitated the need to allow mages into other clans who needed them (which is why Merrill went to the Sabrae Clan), and this is contradicted by Inquisition, which goes in an entirely different (pro-Circle) direction.

[LadyJaneGrey]

 

I can't agree enough with this. I love Solas and I romanced him with my female Lavellan and would do it again if anything happened to my "canon" save... but yeah. Both Solas and Sera take shots at the Dalish every chance they get, jump on all their flaws, and quickly dismiss their virtues. Sera refuses to change her stance no matter what, but Solas can come around... only if Lavellan impresses him and takes a pro-Dalish stance. If the PC is not Dalish, or doesn't defend his/her people, or throws his/her people under the bus, Solas goes on thinking they're the worst of elven kind.

 

 

I'm glad you mentioned this, because I've been thinking it for a long while. The narrative, other characters, and even most players keep saying, "The Dalish were wrong! They got everything wrong!" For all the reasons you said though, no; the Dalish didn't get it wrong. They were missing a few details here and got a few more mistaken, but for the most part they were right. They did used to be a great empire; they did used to be immortal; their gods were real; their pantheon were betrayed and somehow taken out of commission; Fen'Harel is in some way responsible for the elves' fall; any gods that can hear them have abandoned them for not being worthy of saving (Mythal, you ******). The vallaslin are designs that honor the gods.

 

Sure, the Dalish miss a few details (like their great empire having court intrigue, corruption and slavery like any great empire (Orlais and Tevinter), there being infighting among the pantheon before Fen'Harel did whatever he did, and the vallaslin that are meant to honor the gods also happening to be imposed on slaves by their masters), but on the whole the Dalish got it right. 

 

Certainly more right than most Andrastians in the game, for worshipping the PC as the "Herald of Andraste" because they believe the woman seen in the rift with you was Andraste and the mark on your hand was bestowed by the Maker when he sent you through the Veil. Yet, when it's revealed that they were wrong because woman seen in the rift with you was Justinia and the mark was placed by accident when you disrupted a nefarious ritual by an ancient magister darkspawn, the characters are quick to say, "Well, you're still Andraste's Herald because you're still carrying out her will and/or the Maker helped you indirectly," I thought, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Moving the Goalposts fallacy!"

 

Funny how when Andrastian characters are proven to be plain wrong about the Herald of Andraste, the characters and narrative are quick to defend that they could be indirectly right, or it's fine that they choose to believe the lie because it gives them faith/comfort/stability/purpose. YET, when the Dalish are proven to be mistaken about specific details of a lore they still get right overall, other characters and the narrative are quick to condemn them as, "The Dalish got it WRONG!"

 

 

Agreed so much. I used to be really critical of the Dalish, dumped on them every chance I got, and was all "Rah! Rah! City elves!" Then I realized what contrived lengths the writers go to depict them as unlikable and unreasonable as possible, and what lengths other players went to condemn them for every fault yet dismiss/undermine every virtue. When I realized I was guilty of the same fallacies, I started looking at their history, culture, values and goals with eyes unclouded by hate, and realized I don't think they're nearly as bad as the writers or other players make them out to be. If anything, I admire them for standing by their religion and heritage in a world that wants to proselytize them.

 

I still love city elves, and my "canon" Warden is still a City Elf, but I like the Dalish too and I also think they're being sold short by the writers.

 

 

Wow.  This entire post is lovely.

 

About Solas and Sera: I find it interesting that we never hear about a specific instance of their interacting with a Dalish and having a negative experience.  I'm willing to give Solas the benefit of the doubt that he actually DID try to interact with more than one individual and/or clan and was rejected by all of them.  And, as much as I love Sera, I wonder exactly when she had opportunity to interact with all these Dalish she's decided are too efly and "right t*ts for living in the woods."

 

To the OP: The three mage per clan rule seems like a lore CYA from the writers. Before this, any time the mage/templar/danger issue came up it was very easy to say "well, the Dalish figured it out - go ask them."  Yet the rest of it seems like an attempt to make the Dalish more interesting (possibly because they're going to kill them all because they're deliciously cruel like that) rather than to make the audience NOT care if they all die terribly.  It would have helped to see more than one clan per game to give more varied perspectives.

 

Because the Dalish at this point are much less unified or similar to one another than, say, Orlais or Ferelden.  How can one claim to be a "typical Dalish"?

[littlebrightpanda]

So, we know that Minaeve was kicked out of her clan and that Dalish was kicked out. Do we actually know the situation the clan was in at the point of them being kicked out? Minaeve mentions herself that she is a pretty bad mage, maybe she wasn't good enough to become a future keeper and her clan didn't know what to do with her and might have been in a dire situation that warranted throwing out a child to them (food shortage?). 

 

With Dalish it might have been similar- not fit for keeper, not really valuable to the clan, not talented enough- which caused her being cast out. Or she left voluntarily. We don't know. 

 

Dalish clans are portrayed as trying to uphold their traditions and trying to keep their culture intact. I think it lies in the realm of possibility that casting out an unfit individual might be seen as a good solution to some clans. Dalish aren't was widespread as humans, and don't have re-educators like the Qunari, so this might be their way of removing a potentially harmful individual, despite their potential talents. But each clan probably has to decide for themself. 

 

And the 3 mage rule makes sense in terms of equal mage distribution. All clans need keepers, where are they supposed to get mages from if there aren't any born in their clan? Zathrian's clan might have been a bit lenient on those terms, as one of the mages was an "outsider" and not a "true" Dalish. 

 

This also shows how fractured the Dalish actually are, with some allowing drastic measures to uphold their traditions (as in TME), and some being quite careful (the clan in DAI, not regarding the individuals). The knowledge Vivienne has might be based on those "few" clans she got in contact with, which means that information cannot be generalized. 

[Eterna]

The Dalish are supposed to be tragic, you are supposed to feel for them because despite their intentions and strong desire to preserve their culture they are wrong and are woefully ignorant of how wrong they are.

 

They are a sad people meant to show the effects of losing ones culture. 

[Dean_the_Young]

Darkspawn killing humans are darkspawn that aren't killing elves. It is the primary objective of the dalish army to protect the dales and they succeeded in doing so.

You know until they got shittershattered

 

That might make sense... if it weren't for the fact that every human male captured and converted by the Blight is another darkspawn to kill the elves, and that every human female captured and converted into a broodmother is another few hundred (or thousand).

 

The Blight doesn't grow weaker in conquering its foes- it grows radically stronger.

[Dean_the_Young]

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.

 

'Sound strategy' generally doesn't lead one to being a reviled international pariah, conquered, and then scattered to the winds as a diaspora forever fleeing.

 

 

Just saying.
 

[Dean_the_Young]

If the danger were that great, then no civilization in Thedas would have survived past the stone-age.

 

Hm? Civilizations can survive tribes and villages occasionally getting torn apart. In fact, civilizations can survive villages being wiped out on a semi-regular basis.

[leaguer of one]

The Dalish are supposed to be tragic, you are supposed to feel for them because despite their intentions and strong desire to preserve their culture they are wrong and are woefully ignorant of how wrong they are.

 

They are a sad people meant to show the effects of losing ones culture. 

So were the quarians. Even then they did show there bad side. Nothing is every 1 dimensional with bw cultures.

[Dean_the_Young]

I can't help but feel that the Dalish were sort of always the whipping boy faction of the DAverse. If any group is always seemingly on the verge of being totally annihilated, it's these guys.

 

They're tribals in a world in which a magical apocalypse has not only happened, but has become routine.

 

Nomads are already a pretty vulnerable social organization. The setting didn't do them any favors.

[IanPolaris]

Hm? Civilizations can survive tribes and villages occasionally getting torn apart. In fact, civilizations can survive villages being wiped out on a semi-regular basis.

 

Only if those wipe-outs are relatively rare.  If the number of people drop below a critical number, then inbreeding will render a species extinct within 5 generations or so.  The point is that mages seem to be reasonably common (a small hamlet can be expected to have one or two).  If a mage were THAT suspectible to being turning into an abomination that would destroy that tribe or hamlet (say 50%), then each generation we'd expect half the tribes to be wiped out.  Grind that out over 5 generations or so and you have extinction (since this death rate is far greater than the replacement rate).

 

Not only that but rules and morays that require mages to be imprisoned or worse would be universal but we know they are not.  Indeed before the Chantry existed nobody required mages to be isolated from nonmages (except maybe the Qun...but that's a big unknown since we don't know about them prior to about 300 years ago).

[Dean_the_Young]

The Dalish are supposed to be tragic, you are supposed to feel for them because despite their intentions and strong desire to preserve their culture they are wrong and are woefully ignorant of how wrong they are.

 

They are a sad people meant to show the effects of losing ones culture. 

 

I think it's far less 'the effects of losing one's culture' and far more 'the folly of clinging to the past rather than moving on.'

 

Pretty much all the Dalish arcs we've come across court disaster for a pretty consistent reason: the Dalish involved is so invested in the past that it blinds them not only to problems in the present, but disaster in the future. The Dales were fixated on reclaiming True Elfyness, to the point that they spurned former friends and neither made or even wanted allies going forward. Their fall, we learn, was as much a result of a woman's rejection of her brother moving forward with his life past that identity as anything else. In DAO, Zarathrian cared more about a grudge against those long dead than anything else. In DA2, Merrill cared more about a forgotten mirror than staying with her clan, and in turn the Keeper put a former apprentice ahead of her own current followers.

 

While Bioware has never condoned or morally vindicated the destruction of Arlathan or the Dales, they have also never condoned the Dalish habits of nursing old grievances centuries past. Dalish remembrance of the fall of the Dales, the use of it to justify suspicion and animosity with humans in the present, has never been presented as a Good Thing. It has always been a character flaw.

[Dean_the_Young]

Only if those wipe-outs are relatively rare. 

 

 

'Relatively' can be 'yearly' with a sufficient population group. So long as the rest repopulate and resettle fast enough, it's a survivable pandemic.

 

 

If the number of people drop below a critical number, then inbreeding will render a species extinct within 5 generations or so.  The point is that mages seem to be reasonably common (a small hamlet can be expected to have one or two).

 

*Citation needed.

 

 

 

If a mage were THAT suspectible to being turning into an abomination that would destroy that tribe or hamlet (say 50%), then each generation we'd expect half the tribes to be wiped out.  Grind that out over 5 generations or so and you have extinction (since this death rate is far greater than the replacement rate).

 

 

Or, and this is simpler, we don't have to have extinction-rates of abominations to have socially unacceptable rates of abominations. Problem resolved.

 

It would hardly be a novel concept. Societies frequently refuse to tolerate things they could mathematically endure.

 

 

Not only that but rules and morays that require mages to be imprisoned or worse would be universal but we know they are not.  Indeed before the Chantry existed nobody required mages to be isolated from nonmages (except maybe the Qun...but that's a big unknown since we don't know about them prior to about 300 years ago).

The Dwarves didn't have mages. The ancient elves all were mages. Tevinter was ruled by mages. The unorganized tribals had no means to systemically isolate mages, when the mages weren't already rulers or privileged classes.

 

Nobody required mages to be isolated from mundanes because before the Chantry, no one but mages had the power to do so, and they were the ones least interested in social division. They ruled society. That abominations rates didn't wipe them out doesn't really mean much of anything except that abomination rates didn't wipe them out.

[LobselVith8]

I think it's far less 'the effects of losing one's culture' and far more 'the folly of clinging to the past rather than moving on.'

 

That's not really the case, since elves are discriminated against because of their race, whether you're addressing the Dalish or the Andrastian elves. The institutionalized racism against the Andrastian elves would suggest that the Dalish don't have much of an alternative to their life of hardship, since they value their religious freedom and autonomy too much to live under human rule.

 

Pretty much all the Dalish arcs we've come across court disaster for a pretty consistent reason: the Dalish involved is so invested in the past that it blinds them not only to problems in the present, but disaster in the future. The Dales were fixated on reclaiming True Elfyness, to the point that they spurned former friends and neither made or even wanted allies going forward.

 

You seem to be forgetting that Drakon had conquered his neighbors in a series of Exalted Marches and establish an empire under the worship of the Maker, and wanted to expand his territory even further. That would be a problem for a neighboring kingdom inhabited by people who followed their own religion.

 

Their fall, we learn, was as much a result of a woman's rejection of her brother moving forward with his life past that identity as anything else. In DAO, Zarathrian cared more about a grudge against those long dead than anything else.

 

Actually, the Emerald Knights pursued a former member of their group who they thought would give state secrets to the enemy; the truth of the matter wasn't uncovered until afterward.

 

In DA2, Merrill cared more about a forgotten mirror than staying with her clan, and in turn the Keeper put a former apprentice ahead of her own current followers.

 

Highly advanced technology that had the potential to irrevocably change the lives of the People. I don't see how Merrill was wrong to pursue her research, particularly given how the Orlesian Eluvian network has allowed Briala and her elven rebellion to get as far as it has in their fight to empower their people. Even Gaspard comments on how this technology could be beneficial.

 

While Bioware has never condoned or morally vindicated the destruction of Arlathan or the Dales, they have also never condoned the Dalish habits of nursing old grievances centuries past. Dalish remembrance of the fall of the Dales, the use of it to justify suspicion and animosity with humans in the present, has never been presented as a Good Thing. It has always been a character flaw.

 

I imagine that the current state of having their religion outlawed and being threatened to convert or outright attacked would suggest that the Dalish have modern reasons to be wary about Andrastian humans. After all, the threat posed by Andrastian humans is the reason why Clan Lavellan travels in the Free Marches: Lavellan's clan "travel along the borders of each city-state's territory, where Free March rulers will be less inclined to attack them, for fear of accidentally provoking neighboring cities."

[leaguer of one]

I think it's far less 'the effects of losing one's culture' and far more 'the folly of clinging to the past rather than moving on.'

 

 

I like this human he understands.

 

 

Pretty much all the Dalish arcs we've come across court disaster for a pretty consistent reason: the Dalish involved is so invested in the past that it blinds them not only to problems in the present, but disaster in the future. The Dales were fixated on reclaiming True Elfyness, to the point that they spurned former friends and neither made or even wanted allies going forward. Their fall, we learn, was as much a result of a woman's rejection of her brother moving forward with his life past that identity as anything else. In DAO, Zarathrian cared more about a grudge against those long dead than anything else. In DA2, Merrill cared more about a forgotten mirror than staying with her clan, and in turn the Keeper put a former apprentice ahead of her own current followers.

 

While Bioware has never condoned or morally vindicated the destruction of Arlathan or the Dales, they have also never condoned the Dalish habits of nursing old grievances centuries past. Dalish remembrance of the fall of the Dales, the use of it to justify suspicion and animosity with humans in the present, has never been presented as a Good Thing. It has always been a character flaw.

[leaguer of one]

That's not really the case, since elves are discriminated against because of their race, whether you're addressing the Dalish or the Andrastian elves. The institutionalized racism against the Andrastian elves would suggest that the Dalish don't have much of an alternative to their life of hardship, since they value their religious freedom and autonomy too much to live under human rule.

 

 

You seem to be forgetting that Drakon had conquered his neighbors in a series of Exalted Marches and establish an empire under the worship of the Maker, and wanted to expand his territory even further. That would be a problem for a neighboring kingdom inhabited by people who followed their own religion.

 

 

Actually, the Emerald Knights pursued a former member of their group who they thought would give state secrets to the enemy; the truth of the matter wasn't uncovered until afterward.

 

 

Highly advanced technology that had the potential to irrevocably change the lives of the People. I don't see how Merrill was wrong to pursue her research, particularly given how the Orlesian Eluvian network has allowed Briala and her elven rebellion to get as far as it has in their fight to empower their people. Even Gaspard comments on how this technology could be beneficial.

 

 

I imagine that the current state of having their religion outlawed and being threatened to convert or outright attacked would suggest that the Dalish have modern reasons to be wary about Andrastian humans. After all, the threat posed by Andrastian humans is the reason why Clan Lavellan travels in the Free Marches: Lavellan's clan "travel along the borders of each city-state's territory, where Free March rulers will be less inclined to attack them, for fear of accidentally provoking neighboring cities."

1.Digging in the dirt and hoping you'll find something is an Alternative? Nope. And this paranoia  of human working again elves is not in Rivain.

 

2.And that means they had to Alienate all humans?Even the one not part of drakon's army? I a country has a fear another country is going to invaded it because said country is invading others, would it not be smart to ally with countries working ageist said country? Enemy of enemy is friend?

 

3.No they weren't. That not what happened.

 

4.So ignoring the demon in the marrior was a smart thing?

 

5.*Points to Rivain

[IanPolaris]

Answers in bold:

 

'Relatively' can be 'yearly' with a sufficient population group. So long as the rest repopulate and resettle fast enough, it's a survivable pandemic.

 

False.  If the society is broken up into small tribes or hamlets or the like, and there is no or limited contact, then what I said applies.  Not only that but you need to review your history.  When our own earth was in the stone age, total population was considerably less than a million.  Total.

 

*Citation needed.

 

It's called math.  Say you start with a total population of X (doesn't really matter).  Let's say that half of the tribes are wiped out by abominations.  Assuming there is no resupply (more on this in a moment), you get a classic half-life decay curve.  After five generations, you'd have 1/32th of the starting population.

 

Now, let's assume (since this is normal for stone age type societies), that interaction between tribes is rare to almost unknown, and what little contact there is might be a handful of people...say no more than 1/20th of the tribal size.  Now for a typical stone age tribe, you'd have about half the population of the tribe be of breeding age, and not all of them (admittedly most but not all) will be paired up.  Let's also assume that tribes don't split apart until a critical population mass is reached (say about 150% of the normal tribal size).

 

The 'p' value (the NET number of surviving children per breeding couple) has to be 2 just to replace the breeders.  It has to be a bit more than 2 to replace everyone in the tribe.  If the p value is 3 then you get a surplus of 1 extra person per breeding couple....and 3 is a pretty typical net value.  Given that half the tribe are breeders and given that you increase this number by half per generation (or 1/4th the entire tribe), you'd need two generations for N tribes to double (just to double the number of tribes...not double the population).

 

So we have half the tribes being lost per generation, but (pro-rating it), we only get 1/4th of those tribes back by breeding replacement.

 

Verdict:  Extinction

 

 

Or, and this is simpler, we don't have to have extinction-rates of abominations to have socially unacceptable rates of abominations. Problem resolved.

 

It would hardly be a novel concept. Societies frequently refuse to tolerate things they could mathematically endure.

 

Even if the rate were low enough not to insure extinction, it would leave lasting and terrible scars on the suriving societies.  Only ONE society shows such scars:  The Qunari 

 

Even a modest abomination rate (if it destroyed tribes) would be enough to prevent a magical society from ever evolving...yet we have Arlathan and Tevinter.....Hmmmm....

 

 

The Dwarves didn't have mages. The ancient elves all were mages. Tevinter was ruled by mages. The unorganized tribals had no means to systemically isolate mages, when the mages weren't already rulers or privileged classes.

 

Which means the Elves should have been a smoking ruin long ago.

 

 

Nobody required mages to be isolated from mundanes because before the Chantry, no one but mages had the power to do so, and they were the ones least interested in social division. They ruled society. That abominations rates didn't wipe them out doesn't really mean much of anything except that abomination rates didn't wipe them out.

 

 

Mages ruling society absolutely wasn't at all the universal rule.  Certainly Andraste herself though there was nothing untoward with mages living alongside mundanes while cautioning that magic should serve men not rule them.

[Typhrus]

While I'm not going to say I'm one side or the other, I do feel like I should point out this observation.

The people on the Pro-Dalish side have been bemoaning the fact that all of the Dalish clans seem to be lumped together when something bad happens. Yet in their defence of said actions they group the Dalish together as one entity again. It just seems ironic.

Even if the 3 mages per clan was strictly enforced, we still don't really know the circumstances behind some being kicked out and left to fend for themselves in the wilderness. To my mind, it seems likely (if it is enforced in all clans) that they would trade and move the excess mages into other clans as need be. Examples of doing this would be at the Arlevhen's (sp?) every ten or so years. The other example would be when clans in their wanderings happen to end up relatively close to one another to allow for the movement of excess mages or other people not required in one clan, but maybe the other. If it happens that they aren't close to other clans or aren't close enough to the ten yearly meetings of the clans, then they might have to resort to the rather distasteful dumping of excess mages into the wilderness.

This would only apply however, if this 3 mages per clan rule is enforceable amongst the entirety of the Dalish clans. Which is something I doubt somewhat, because like the circles, each clan develops in a different area with different needs and issues. This sort of goes back to my original observation, each clan is unique in the way that they deal with their lifestyle and members within in. Some clans might be like the ones in TME or DAII, others might be more relaxed about how many mages they contain or how they deal with humans. As such, one can't really tar the Dalish in one broad brush stroke because of such individuality with the various clans, sure the ultimate goals of reclaiming what was lost in their religious practices or history unites them, but it doesn't necessarily define each and every different clan.

[Andreas Amell]

The revelations that Solas gives to a Dalish Inquisitor changes a lot of lore that was established by Dalish Keepers.

 

Whatever happens, I don't believe the Elven race will rise again by any return of their gods. In fact, I suspect today's elves are merely the descendents of the lower class who were enslaved by their own. Whatever reason for the loss of true history, chances are their gods will not care to save them if they return, but claim them for their uses. The Keepers will probably be instrumental to that. The term 'keeper' may just be their own version of taskmaster - it was their job to keep the slaves under control. Maybe the reason Keeper lore has misunderstood history is because they didn't know better themselves.

[LobselVith8]

The revelations that Solas gives to a Dalish Inquisitor changes a lot of lore that was established by Dalish Keepers.

 

Whatever happens, I don't believe the Elven race will rise again by any return of their gods. In fact, I suspect today's elves are merely the descendents of the lower class who were enslaved by their own. Whatever reason for the loss of true history, chances are their gods will not care to save them if they return, but claim them for their uses. The Keepers will probably be instrumental to that. The term 'keeper' may just be their own version of taskmaster - it was their job to keep the slaves under control. Maybe the reason Keeper lore has misunderstood history is because they didn't know better themselves.

 

In the Dales, the Keepers were the priests. You read a bit about them from the High Keeper Robes: "Dating back to the period of the elven Dales, when the Keepers were not leaders and guides for individual clans but rather priests who served as archivists and magical scholars, these robes belonged to the High Keeper for the largest temple of old Halamshiral, dedicated to Elgar'nan the All-Father and Eldest of the Sun."

[TK514]

Zathrian's clan welcomed Aneirin when they already had Zathrian, Lanaya, and Elora, and he states that while he left the clan (because he wants to be out among nature, where he believes he's learned quite a lot), he follows the clan because he feels indebted to them. Before the 'three mage' recton, the context of Merrill's codex addressed that magic was dying out among the Dalish, which necessitated the need to allow mages into other clans who needed them (which is why Merrill went to the Sabrae Clan), and this is contradicted by Inquisition, which goes in an entirely different (pro-Circle) direction.

So the closest you can come to showing a clan with more than three Mages is a clan that had three mages and a guy that wasn't part of the clan but lived nearby(and whose presence/existence is dependent on performing an optional side quest).

So...no examples to support your case at all.