You know, for someone as "strong" as fiona was, as "wise", and who "overcame" obstacles and challenges that would probably have broken most, she certainly seems to be more of a craven capitulator than anything else.
Let's just focus on what we would know, had we not explored redcliffe. We know that she sat back and did nothing while Alexius came into redcliffe and essentially took over, did nothing when he kicked the arl, who at that point had been their staunch ally, out of his castle and lands. She did nothing as the normal villagers, who had taken the mages in, were driven out, possibly killed along the way, by tevinter forces. She did nothing as their forces essentially took command of the entire rebellion, didn't even fight for her position of leadership. Than, when she finds out Alexius plans to put the mages into slavery, all of them including the elderly and children, and turn them into soliders, she does nothing but complain once, than whimper like a schoolgirl getting lectured by a stern professor. She just heard that he plans on making child soliders out of the mages, and she acts like she's spent her whole life as a whipping girl slave to him.
I'm sorry, is this the same fiona who fought off darkspawn as a grey warden and rose the ranks fighting back templars? Or was vivienne more spot on with her quip about her dementia showing.
There's no fight in her, she puts up no resistence, not even passively, against Alexius. Hell, his crippled and sickly son, someone who was attacked by darkspawn and didn't have the luxury of coming out unscathed as Fiona had, did more to resist Alexius than Fiona ever does in the game.
And that's not taking into account that she sat back as the venatori rounded up the tranquil and harvested their skulls to make magic binoculars. Assuming they ever beheaded the corpses before they began the procedure and didn't just start skinning them down while they were still alive and attached to get that extra life force in there, she still should have noticed a lot of tranquil disappearing, and a sudden surge in the distribution of magic enhanced skulls coming out of redcliffe. And if she didn't know, how the hell didn't she? She's a grand enchanter, she's the defacto leader of the mages, and she couldn't keep track of 50 people? And yeah, count the skulls in the room and throughout the game, there's at least 50 there. She let 50 people die right under her nose, or she did know, and was too much of a cowardly doormat to do anything about it.
At least Lucius had the explination of proactively trying to ruin the templar order to explain his actions as a terrible leader. At least samson is shown to not give a **** to explain his utter apathy to his subordinates plights.
Fiona just sits and whines when bad things happens, and doesn't raise a finger to help. She doesn't even try to raise a resistance to the magisters taking over, or try to help save people when they go out and literally butcher them. She knows what's happening is wrong, and she doesn't even try. I hate to use this phrase, I ****** hate it and it burns a hole in my soul typing it because of the moral panic it represents currently, but in this case it 100% applies.
Fiona is nothing but a Damsel in Distress and a Burden in a Dress, a helpless female character who the protagonist must save. Thank god there are much better characters like Vivienne, Cassandra, Sera, Leiliana, Josephine, Celene, Briala, and Calpernia in this game to wash the taste of Fiona out of the players mouth.