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[berelinde]

She is in it just for the power? What power the Inquisition had when she sent the invitation for you? The power of a heretical group?

The power of a heretical group which she anticipates will lead the world into a new age. A world she will shape.

 

For years, she has enjoyed a position of privilege and power, but if Celene falls - which she will do unless the Inquisitor intervenes - Vivienne is toast. It is a calculated risk, but it is an opportunity for her to rise as a power in her own right, not as an advisor to the empress or as the mistress of the chief herald, but as an entity unto herself.

[Ash Wind]

Her alliance with Tevinter does her no favors. I thought she was cool in the novel but in the game, to basically accept a new version of mage slavery by aligning her cause with Tevinter was a terribly absurd and naive choice. i.e We're slaves>>no, we must be free>> No, we'll be slaves again, just not to the chantry.

 

She is a sad character who worsenes her lot in life by bad choices.

[Giantdeathrobot]

1.  Yep it is on her and character wise, she doesn't back down from that responsibility/mistake.  She does blame herself but feels it was the only way at the time to save her people.  However, the game makes it clear that it was hard not to take Alexius at his word since events seemed to confirm them (events that were set in motion by his spies).

 

2.  Not really. I will ask again how any leader would do better if someone was trying to force them into servitude with time travel magic and had an army of cultist spies at their disposal.  We don't even know how many times or to the extent Alexius went to convince the mages into slavery.  Not exactly a "Oh you should have known better!" moment.

 

"Yeah you should have known that Tevinter is bad AND that Alexius was using time travel magic which was impossible pre-breach AND that cultists with this time magic had infiltrated your chaotic band of Mage rebels changing events to make you join up with them instead of the Inquisitor that you originally went to Val Royeaux to see first but can't remember because the cultists changed time on you! Shame on you!"

 

3.  There was no Templar Army of Impending Doom that's clear.  It was a ruse by Venatori infiltrators who convinced most mages that there was one.  Val Royeaux Fiona makes no mention of this Templar army because it didn't exist as a lie yet and she had plenty of time to go to the Inquisition for help.  The fact is there were Templars outside Redcliffe village battling apostates in constant battle until the Inquisitor shows up.  The fact that the Mage/Templar war is on the doorstep of Redcliffe is actually a big deal and shows it wouldn't take much to convince Fiona and others of their dire need for Tevinter Mages.  Things like levels and group difficulty don't factor in.
 

 

So if I read you right, at best she was an incompetent who got tricked by the setting's card-carrying villains. At worst she was a complete fool who broke the circles to free the mages from their servitude, and then signed them all up for bona fide slavery at the first possible opportunity. So much for grand principles.

 

She couldn't have known about the whole time magic thing, but by jove, if a Tevinter Magister and his cronies appear out of freaking nowhere and start infiltrating your rebels, a basic amount of caution an mistrust seems like the absolute minimum to me. Caution such as, you know, not trusting their intel that a Templar army is bearing down on Redcliffe while the Templars are in fact chugging down Red Lyrium halfway across the province, something which would be very easy to verify? She hundreds of mages at her disposal, don't tell me none of them could do a bit of scouting.

 

This also means that Fiona betrayed Ferelden's royalty, who harbored her charges no strings attached, and stood there while Alexius kicked out the Arl who showed hospitality to the Mages, a move which surely pissed off both Templars and Chantry. She also surrendered probably the most secured defensive position in the country, which could probably hold against a friggin Blight with all the Harrowed mages at her command. To throw herself in the arms of a Empire known for its slavery and depravity. No amount of Fiona being tricked, ill informed and stupid can excuse such blatant incompetence.

 

And I notice you didn't even address the Tranquil issue, which to me is the worst of the worst. Whenever it is due to bad writing or the writers wanting to show that Fiona is incompetent, she definitely comes across as someone who couldn't manage a daycare, let alone a Mage rebellion. 

[o Ventus]

1. If she took Alexius at his word, it's on her. Tevinter magister surges completely out of nowhere and she trusts him not to abuse his position of force? Sure, that's going to work out just fine.

 

2. If she was conned, it's on her. Smart leaders usually don't. Her fighting you at Haven does not help matters here, either.

 

3. What Templar Army of Impending Doom? The Templars are currently faffing about at Therinfall Redoubt, except from a handful of rebels in the Hinterlands that the Inquisitor dispatches at level 3. There is no sign of an army powerful enough to take on hundreds of mages taking position in one of the most defensible castles in Ferelden, while having the support of the local Arl to boot.

 

4. Even if we ignore the above (and I don't) how do you excuse the massacre of the Tranquil, which the mages were in charge of, right under Fiona's nose? Because for me that's the biggest thing. Making mistakes, yeah, people do that. But that's bigger than a mistake, that's either being an accomplice or being a spectacularily blind idiot. And again, the fact that the player cannot chew her out on this makes it worst.

 

Honestly, I support mage freedom to a degree, but I would dearly love to have been able to kick Fiona's incompetent ass out of the Grand Enchanter position and hand it to someone else. That storyline really needed a Ser Barris-like figure to balance Fiona being herself.

1. That's what happens when you act in desperation. You don't think at 100% clarity.

 

2. The fight at Haven has nothing to do with anything. She's brainwashed when she appears there.

 

3. If there are Templars in the Hinterlands, then obviously they aren't all at Therinfal. And again, Fiona wouldn't know that the Envy demon took command of the Order. The last Fiona saw of the Templars (assuming she was looking at what was going on in Val Royaeux), they just left and didn't say where they were going. The Templars already had a presence in the Hinterlands. For all she knew, the Templars in Orlais were going to join those in Ferelden (and given not-Lucius' threatening speech in the middle of the city, it could easily be interpreted that way).

 

4. Those were Venatori disguised as rebel mages. Even if there were non-Venatori partaking in the act, that wouldn't condemn Fiona unless she explicitly told them to go do it. The mages who follow her do it their own volition. They're free to leave whenever they please and can do what they want. Fiona has no power over them besides rank (which is meaningless since the Circle's were abolished). The mages aren't a monolithic group with a hierarchy or a hive mind.

[Nefla]

If there's no reason to like her or dislike her, then she isn't a special snowflake Mary Sue.

Like I said, I wouldn't know. People who have read the books often say things along those lines, I haven't read the books and find her about as interesting and memorable as a stale piece of white bread.

[Ryzaki]

Fiona is just...

 

I'd feel pity for her if she wasn't so hilariously unaware.

[Aimi]

1. That's what happens when you act in desperation. You don't think at 100% clarity.

Then that makes her a poor leader. QED.
 

2. The fight at Haven has nothing to do with anything. She's brainwashed when she appears there.

There is no evidence of Fiona being brainwashed.
 

4. Those were Venatori disguised as rebel mages. Even if there were non-Venatori partaking in the act, that wouldn't condemn Fiona unless she explicitly told them to go do it. The mages who follow her do it their own volition. They're free to leave whenever they please and can do what they want. Fiona has no power over them besides rank (which is meaningless since the Circle's were abolished). The mages aren't a monolithic group with a hierarchy or a hive mind.

Yes, it does condemn her. She's the leader. She is responsible for what her followers do or don't do. If the Tranquil were under her care, and while they were under her care they were slaughtered for use in a sick science/archaeology experiment, then even if she's not the one who did the slaughtering, and even if she was unaware that it was happening, and even if she would have been personally opposed to it happening and horrified at the result, then she is still responsible because as the leader she is responsible for everything that happens in her organization. It is her job to keep her followers in line. If she is not responsible for what her followers do, then she is a bad leader. Which is the point.

And faffing about by claiming that she didn't have any authority over the rebellion is stupid. Every single mage you talk to in Redcliffe acknowledges her as their leader. If they didn't, they wouldn't have let her sign them away into Tevinter slavery. If she's got the right and the support to enslave her mage followers to a power-mad foreign cultist, she's got the right and the support to prevent people from slaughtering Tranquil.

Personally, I think that the massacre happened after she signed herself and her followers over to Alexius, and that the power she gave Alexius in the "agreement" was what he used to have the Tranquil rounded up, experimented upon, and murdered. He could go over her head, and didn't need to rely on conspirators and spies. Which, again, does not speak to her competence. If the deal with the Vints was supposed to keep her followers safe, then it comprehensively, catastrophically failed almost immediately because the supposed protectors went to work killing Tranquil. She may have kept her mages safe for the moment (from a threat that I suspect was negligible, but let that go)...by trading the lives of the Tranquil under her care for them. This was probably not an explicit trade. I don't think Fiona was a monster, just horribly incompetent.

[thesuperdarkone2]

 

There is no evidence of Fiona being brainwashed.
 

YES. THERE. IS. For one, the guide outright says the mages are brainwashed by the Venatori if you side with the templars, Leliana's option if you do the charger's mission where you investigate Redcliffe describes the Venatori performing a mind-control ritual on the mages, and a note found in the Hissing Wastes if you sided with the Templars has the Venatori gloat about how they managed to brainwash the mages while the red templars failed at corrupting the templars.

[Ashagar]

The Red Templars fail to corrupt any more of the order regardless which is why they try massacre the order instead. The only different in the fate of the Templars is that they survive if the inquisition goes there and defeats the envy demon casing the Red Templars to run away while if the inquisition doesn't go there the Templars go down fighting the red Templars leaving only scattered groups like that group you can recruit who stayed protecting their circles in spite of orders who you can recruit if you ensure their charges will be safe.

[Neon Rising Winter]

My problem with Fiona is directed towards the writers. There simply wasn't enough content relating to her to do anything but speculate on what happened and why. Which makes for a fun thread of wild extrapolation, but I'd prefer to have it nailed down in the game.

[EmissaryofLies]

The fact that she is an elf is enough for a large group of people, but the fact that she does not trust and wants to be free of an organization that has systematically murdered her people over the years is too much for some to handle.

 

The writers cannot make up their f*cking minds about who exactly she is either.

 

I wish she had died at the Conclave.

 

After Inquisition, I wish she had never existed at all.

[Violetbliss]

"Only"?

Let's ignore the debate about whether it was a good idea to vote for independence, because nobody's going to convince anybody of anything there. Look: I'm generally pro-mage, even if I like to play devil's advocate, and I think that the Circle system was very seriously flawed, yada yada yada. I generally favor the games' mage-freedom outcomes, and I'd probably try to make softened Lels the Divine every time if it didn't mean that mai waifu couldn't set down her responsibilities and come back to me. Yet I also think that Fiona was an atrocious leader who simply did not do her job competently.

If she was leading the push for independence, what was her plan to achieve and sustain it? (She didn't have one.) What preparations had she made for the safety of her followers and for their survival through the war, let alone victory? (None.) What kind of a leader faces nearly certain war without a plan? (A very very bad one.)

She led her followers into a war that they could not win, without even mounting the tiniest amount of preparation for it. Or, more bluntly, she got her followers killed because she didn't do her job. She failed to keep control over her faction. Eventually, she led her followers into slavery - a situation infinitely, unquestionably worse than anything that they faced in the Circles - because her foolish leadership had left her what she believed to be no alternative.

And let's not leave out the destruction that the war caused for the ordinary people of Thedas.

I don't hate Fiona, because hate is a luxury best not wasted on video game characters. But if she were real, I might very well hate her (especially if I were a mage), for helping to start a war that got countless people killed, a war that she had no chance of winning because of her own stupidity.

 

 

That bit about lacking a plan I totally agree with, and I found it to be pretty good commentary for our real world. This often happens even when there is good intentions with a rebellion, after all. There are several examples even today. I just don't hate her for being naive in that respect. In most other ways, I think things conspired to make things worse, such as Alexius' time magic. After all, she did approach the Inquisition -before- time was changed, because she was initially unsure how serious it was (valid question for sure). When time was altered, that just didn't happen, she was swayed in another direction and we don't even know how much that was poor judgement. After all, it would have been a fairly clever gambit, if not for that. But I also agree she is not the very best leader material - though it is hard to say who is worse of the two prime candidates, for the future of the circle mages.

 

I think a conflict would have started with anybody leading the circle, really. There was just too much upset going around. And that's senseless in a more general way, perhaps.

[Big Magnet]

I think she should be available for Judgement in Skyhold. And I wouldn't be kind to her. She is as incompetent as she is insufferable.

I would've made her tranquil, but being a mary-sue I would be worried someday she would be like "Oh look! I'm immune to tranquility too! And I have wings now!" 

[Ranadiel Marius]

I would've made her tranquil, but being a mary-sue I would be worried someday she would be like "Oh look! I'm immune to tranquility too! And I have wings now!" 

Hmm whelp, we don't have the budget to animate winged elves. Guess we'll just have to do to her what we did to the last winged elf in a Bioware game. Hopefully this one turns out less whiny.... (just joking, I love Aerie)

[ComedicSociopathy]

I don't like her and I think the reason is because that no matter if you ally or conscript the mages she still acts as their leader. In my opinion she's proven herself in Inquisition to be incompetent, disloyal and short-sighted, and thus unworthy to lead her follow mages or anyone for that matter. If there was an option to have a Ser Barris equivalent be the new leader the mages after Redcliffe then I would have elected him/her and have Fiona spend the rest of her days gardening. 

[Hair Serious Business]

Leliana,Morrigan,Varric,Alistiar...are special snowflakes already enough without Fiona to add to the list.

[Mirth]

It's also important to note her inconsistency.

She let the mages of the circle vote for rebellion, to fight for freedom.

She DIDNT let the mages vote for slavery to Tevinter.

[keyip]

The biggest piece of stupidity by Fiona - starting a war she had no chances of winning, one which would completely decimate all public sympathy, so that the only place she could look for allies... was Tevinter. She pulled the trigger without majority support in the circle and knowing full well the public, Templars, half the mages, and most people under the Sun would be against her (her tacit approval of what Anders pulled in Kirkwall doesn't help matters.) This is the action of a strategic dunce.

[Ranadiel Marius]

The biggest piece of stupidity by Fiona - starting a war she had no chances of winning, one which would completely decimate all public sympathy, so that the only place she could look for allies... was Tevinter. 

That isn't true. Somehow she managed to get an alliance with the Fereldan Monarchy (I suspect the people blown up at the conclave were responsible).....and then she backstabbed them for an alliance with a group that should have zero supply lines to their current location. I seriously do not get what the heck she was supposed to believe her end game in this situation was. x_x

[Orian Tabris]

Reading a bit of this stuff, it does sound to me like BioWare didn't do enough with Fiona as a character, and maybe she lacked a well written story arc, but I don't get what there is to hate about her.

 

Maybe I'm in the minority, because I don't really have a problem with any Dragon Age character. I loved Isolde, Anora and Loghain, and though didn't really like Howe, I could never bring myself to hate him - he was what he was.

 

I think this might be a case of, "don't hate the player, hate the game," where Fiona is 'the player' and her place in the story/her personal story arc is 'the game.'

 

But it seems to me that people will jump onto any non-playable character and complain about or drool over them till the ends of time. At least in DA.

[SgtSteel91]

I don't hate Fiona. I understand why she made her decisions and I don't think I'm as hard on her as other people are about allying with Alexius. I offer her and the Redcliff Mages an alliance and she mellows out a lot. IMO, give her a second chance and she becomes the leader the Mages need.

[Nykara]

I don't hate her, I kind of feel sorry for her. She totally derails herself by making some really stupid decisions. The only interest I have in her, is how she managed to cure the calling.

[Orian Tabris]

I don't hate her, I kind of feel sorry for her. She totally derails herself by making some really stupid decisions. The only interest I have in her, is how she managed to cure the calling.

 

Her being

Spoiler

Alistair's biological mother

didn't pique your interest?

[DracoAngel]

I don't hate her. She is just an idiot. The domino effect began when she finally won her vote for mage independence and had no plan on how all these people were going to get on in life. This is the conversation I always envisioned having with her:

Me: "Fiona sweetheart, you just severed the invisible chains on mages. Yay, good on you. We won't take into account that not all mages were treated as badly as you *think* they are, we'll ignore that. Now what is going to happen to all these mages that have only ever lived their lives in a Circle?"

Fiona: "...."

Me: "Yea... you didn't think this all the way through did ya?"

Fiona: "But I freed all the mages!..."

Me:

 

After that she kept making one bad decision after another, to where it gets to a point you just want to put her down for her own safety and the safety of others