1602 réponses à ce sujet

[Colonelkillabee]

The obliteration of an entire civilisation is always unwarranted. This is particularly true when the elven attack on Red Crossing was due to a misunderstanding.

There's no misunderstanding, they trespassed on human lands, killed a human on it, and that may have been an accident, but they then chose to take the village and cities and press on further into their territory over it in retaliation for their men being killed over it, while they again were trespassing.

 

I don't think it was just, but I'd say I understand the human's reaction. Unwarranted would be attacking with no cause, just expansion like an Empire.

 

In my opinion.

[Bad King]

There's no misunderstanding, they trespassed on human lands, killed a human on it, and that may have been an accident, but they then chose to take the village and cities and press on further into their territory over it in retaliation for their men being killed over it, while they again were trespassing.

 

I don't think it was just, but I'd say I understand the human's reaction. Unwarranted would be attacking with no cause, just expansion like an Empire.

 

In my opinion.

 

It was still a misunderstanding - the handful of Emerald Knights present at the village mistook a running villager as an attacker (which was a pretty dumb assumption) and then had to fight a group of (justifiably) angry villagers. We still don't really know how that event developed into the war, but we know for a fact that the Orlesian Empire and the Chantry are expansionist by nature (the Chant declaring that only when all people sing the Chant of Light will the Maker return) while the elves were isolationists. So it seems likely to me their destruction of elven civilisation and their substitution of it with Orlesian culture and the Andrastian faith were what their leaders had desired all along. As isolationists, the elves' seizing of human lands were likely defensive in nature rather than it being expansionism - they probably realised that the Orlesians and the Chantry would use the events of Red Crossing as a justification for conquest and sought to push against them.

 

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous that what happened at one village led to an earth shattering war that likely could have been avoided through negotiation.

[Colonelkillabee]

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous that what happened at one village led to an earth shattering war that likely could have been avoided through negotiation.

I agree, though the elves should have known better when they kept pressing forward past red crossing. After Val Royeaux was taken, it was all inevitable.

[Sui Causa]

The state elves are in today is was not inevitable. It is the result of years and years of human cruelty and self righteous superiority fueled by greed under the guise of religious faithfulness.

 

Conflict was inevitable. The way humans handled it afterwards is still deplorable no matter how the war went. They did exalted marches on Tevinter to free the elves after they were conquored, and then proceeded to do the same thing they condemned Tevinter for.

 

With all that has happened, it's no frickin wonder the Dalish don't trust humans. The war between Ferelden and Orlais, Tevinter and the Qunari, pretty much any other major war has ended up with both sides being able to rebuild and keep their cultures intact. Elves get involved and it's like free reign to absolutely destroy their culture and civilization and crap all over them leaving them destitute with nothing but slums where they are raped and murdered for sport by human nobles, but "it was inevitable" so it's somehow less horrible?

[In Exile]

It was still a misunderstanding - the handful of Emerald Knights present at the village mistook a running villager as an attacker (which was a pretty dumb assumption) and then had to fight a group of (justifiably) angry villagers. We still don't really know how that event developed into the war, but we know for a fact that the Orlesian Empire and the Chantry are expansionist by nature (the Chant declaring that only when all people sing the Chant of Light will the Maker return) while the elves were isolationists. So it seems likely to me their destruction of elven civilisation and their substitution of it with Orlesian culture and the Andrastian faith were what their leaders had desired all along. As isolationists, the elves' seizing of human lands were likely defensive in nature rather than it being expansionism - they probably realised that the Orlesians and the Chantry would use the events of Red Crossing as a justification for conquest and sought to push against them.

 

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous that what happened at one village led to an earth shattering war that likely could have been avoided through negotiation.

 

No one is omniscient. The Orlesians - even if they were well-intentioned - had absolutely no way of knowing what actually happened beyond the fact that the Emerald Knights massacred a village. It just so happened they were there on a completely unsanctioned trip at a time when they went entirely off the reservation and had no connection with the central government in the Dales nor even the intention to massacre anyone. 

 

But Orlais doesn't know any of that. And if the diplomatic channels were already shut down because of mutual hatred and tension, well, it's not hard to see how each side would go completely overboard.

 

Just think if we discovered that an entire small town in the US was killed by Russian special forces. We'd probably avoid WWIII because of the kind of international diplomatic system we've set up - not to mention our very well-developed forensic science - but it would be a near thing. 

[Roamingmachine]

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous that what happened at one village led to an earth shattering war that likely could have been avoided through negotiation.

 

 

In the real world, one idiot with a gun back in 1914 managed to set in motion a war on a previously unforseen scale that shattered the then-dominant european powers and planted the seed for the even worse second world war.  There were no issues that reasonable people couldn't have talked through back in 1914 either, but when conditions are right with tensions running high and jingoisms being spouted everywhere, a single insignificant spark is all it takes and reasonable voices get drowned out.

[Mushashi7]

Elves are perhaps the most interesting race in the Dragon Age universe.

They are a free people who doesn't want to bow to the civilisation. And that is good, because this so called 'civilisation' also destroys a lot and everything around it - blindly.

I feel with the elves. I really do.

[Eliastion]

When talking about war between Dales and Orlais and Exalted march, there are a couple aspects we should consider. I thought about it for a bit and came to two conclusions: first of all, "Exalted March of the Dales" came to be the name for the entirety of the war, even the part before the Exalted March was declared - and likely Chantry was in fact involved in the war right from the beginning, again - even before anyone called it an Exalted March (this makes even more sense when we remember that it was the first time anybody used the name for anything other than Andraste's campaign and Orlais already fought for faith while not calling it Exalted Marches.

This blurs the line between "normal war" and Exalted March, which is a good thing, since people (educated people) seem to generally accept Red Crossing as the event that led to Exalted March - preposterous claim UNLESS the whole war is called Exalted March even before Divine named it as such.

 

The second aspect would be of the "who shot first" variety. There are, generally, two options: after Red Crossing (let's assume it as the most severe in a series of border incidents) the Elves marched with their army and took Montsimmard or Orlesians attacked the Dales in force and were immediately pushed back into their own territory. The first would make a bit more sense from military standpoint (underestimating enemy you want to attack is one thing, but underestimating him to extent leading to such a crushing defeat right at the beginning of war?) but the latter would be much more consistent with apparent elven politics. Basically, neither scenario sits well with me, but after thinking a bit, I'm now almost sure that it was indeed Orlais+Chantry that actually made it into a full-fledged war. Otherwise why would anyone consider Red Crossing as a cause/trigger for the war? The war didn't start as follow-up to Red Crossing, but rather as reaction for it. Take this codex (it's not the only one that suggests this chain of events):

http://dragonage.wik...ch_of_the_Dales

It supposedly circulates among the educated elites, they - no doubt - know of the extent of elven victories. Yet still Chantry is credited with attacking in response to Red Crossing and the events in the village are even questioned. The author is almost certainly wrong, we have no account of false-flag operation (I put "almost" for possibility that humans wiped out the rest of the village to incriminate elves as monsters who massacred a village rather than killed a bunch of armed villagers near said village). But it doesn't matter for us at the moment - what's important is the fact that anyone could consider false-flag operation supposed to give Orlais/Chantry an excuse for invasion. Now, were it the elves who invaded afterwards, it would make absolutely no sense.

 

So, I think we should consider canon the chain of event:

1. Border incidents that lead to

2. Red Crossing that's used as excuse for

3. Orlais (with Chantry already actively involved) making a move on the Dales, but underestimating them to such an extent that

4. Dales crush the invading forces and go on counteroffensive, capturing Montsimmard after which

5. Chantry (already fighting in the war from the very beginning!) declares the already-in-progress war to be an Exalted March against the Dales, the name that will later stick as the name of the whole conflict.

At least that's the only idea I have for reconciling codex entries about Red Crossing being the cause for Exalted March with what we know about the first stage of the war

Admittedly, it may still seem somewhat far-fetched, but we have little choice if we want it all to make modicum of sense - after all we can't even just write it off as retcon since both confirmations of Dalish offensive and the abovementioned codex entry come from DA:I and are completely new lore rather than something recycled from previous installments.

[Heidirs]

I do think pointing the finger at what happened at Red Crossing or the taking of Orlais is looking in the wrong direction. Tensions between humans and elves had been building for years and existed even before the Dales were founded. That's where the cause for the war truly lies. Red Crossing was just water boiling over an already heated pot.

[dragonflight288]

We from the account at Red Crossing what happened to provoke hostilites, but not the immediate aftermath. 

 

I read it thoroughly yesterday to make sure I understand the events at Red Crossing and this is what I gather. 

 

Someone disappeared so the elves are blamed, and no one knows what really happened. 

An elf is murdered and an Emerald Knight brings back her corpse. 

That same elf then begins to disappear frequently and the murdered elf's sister sees him with a human. 

The Emerald Knights fear he is a traitor and track him down, and outside the village the human woman starts running towards them crying out and holding something. The elf who saw him with her shoots her and only finds out after the fact that the woman was holding daisies and a letter.

The humans in turn suspected she was leaving and a group followed her and heard her cry. They came in and saw a group of elves standing over her body. They attack but were no match for the group of elves. 

The elf-lover of the woman held her body and refused to leave, and the humans refused to listen and killed him then dumped his body in the river where the elves recover it and then put him in a tomb.

 

From what I understand, the elves slaughtered a group of humans as a result of a misunderstanding on the outskirts of the town itself since the woman was meeting him where that one elf saw the two of them together, while some star crossed lovers were killed in the crossfire. 

 

It does not say in the note about a massacre of the town, so the immediate aftermath of this skirmish is unknown. Did the elves attack, did the humans, did the humans attack the town of Red Crossing and then say the elves did it? Each of these options are possible.The first would make sense if there are elves who feel that the conflict is going to be a war no matter what and want to avenge the elves already killed. The second would make sense if the humans rallied the town and attacked the elves in a fit of rage and they responded with overwhelming force. And the third makes sense when you take into account the elves isolation policy. 

[Steelcan]

I don't think there's any reasonable evidence for Red Crossing being a false flag operation, especially since Orlais wasn't exactly ready for the Elven invasion

[BronzTrooper]

I don't think there's any reasonable evidence for Red Crossing being a false flag operation, especially since Orlais wasn't exactly ready for the Elven invasion

 

True, but that had more to do with the fact that Orlais had seriously underestimated the Dales' military.

[Insaner Robot]

Or the fact that a blight ended less than fifteen years before the war started.

[Xilizhra]

Regardless of any of this, I still agree with the notion that all of the markers celebrating the slaughter of the Dales should be toppled.

[TK514]

Or the fact that a blight ended less than fifteen years before the war started.

 

I think this has more to do with early gains by the Dalish than anything else.  Orlais just wasn't prepared to fight a war so soon after a century long Blight where they did all the heavy lifting.  They were in the middle of rebuilding and/or consolidating any gains in the North and East, rather than paying much attention to the isolationist neighbors to the South.  So when the Dalish attacked, they basically stole a march on Orlais, who was completely unprepared to counter.  It wasn't until the Orlesians had had a chance to regroup and bring their battle hardened forces to bear that the war started to turn.

 

And, complete wild supposition on my part, but part of the reason the Dales were offered no quarter could have been Orlesian resentment at having to fight yet another war rather than enjoying a well earned peace after spending the last century in an unrelenting battle for the literal fate of the world.  I have no difficulty at all imagining a nation that had lost two or more generations to the Darkspawn would overreact poorly when they perceived they had been stabbed in the back by people who did nothing to assist.

[myahele]

Dont lump up the rest of humans with orlaisians. this was their fight and doing

[Qun00]

I think it depends a lot on the clan, with "pity" element being nigh-omnipresent and "hate" very rare.
Dalish, generally speaking, consider themselves better and more fortunate, so they would tend to consider city elves pitiable and be a bit condescending to them. But "hate" seems so extreme - I understand that some elves can consider city elves to be their own prison guards, insulting to elfyness in their willing subjugation to shemlens treating them like trash... but frankly, I think they usually settle for pity and disregard rather than hate
And most just don't care all that much altogether.

Something, something, flat ear something.

The Dalish aren't necessarily bad people, but it's easy to see why they're not good at making friends.

Solas has a pretty accurate opinion on the subject.

[Dark Helmet]

I don't think there's any reasonable evidence for Red Crossing being a false flag operation, especially since Orlais wasn't exactly ready for the Elven invasion

 

Are the Elves not allowed to make stupid mistakes?

 

Because "Let's invade the most powerful people in Thedas because we overreact to things" Seems like a REALLY stupid idea.

 

You sort of have to reap what you sow when you do **** like that.

[BronzTrooper]

Are the Elves not allowed to make stupid mistakes?

 

Because "Let's invade the most powerful people in Thedas because we overreact to things" Seems like a REALLY stupid idea.

 

You sort of have to reap what you sow when you do **** like that.

 

The fact that Orlais was a very powerful human nation had less to do with it than the fact that it was the home of the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux (basically the base of all the Chantry's power).  Had the Grand Cathedral been located in another nation like Nevarra or the Free Marches, an Exalted March likely wouldn't have been called- at least, not until after Orlais had fallen to the Dales.  If the Dales were so outmatched by Orlais, they wouldn't have been able to push all the way to Val Royeaux.  imo, this proves that, militarily, the Dales were definitely a match for Orlais.  Orlais only won due to numbers, not a superior military.

 

Plus, Orlais has had their ass handed to them by Ferelden and Nevarra (multiple times in Nevarra's case), and the Dales would've been more than a match for them at the height of their power.

[Steelcan]

Any nation no matter the quality of its troops will lose ground in a surprise attack by a competent enemy.  That the Orlesians were able to not just stem the tide, but turn it into a total victory over the elves speaks to more than numbers

[BronzTrooper]

Funny, considering how the war started in 2:9 and ended in 2:20, effectively a 11-year war.  Unless the Dales actively engaged in guerrilla warfare during their advance, I highly doubt that it was pure surprise that allowed them to push all the way to Val Royeaux.

[Steelcan]

Funny, considering how the war started in 2:9 and ended in 2:20, effectively a 11-year war.  Unless the Dales actively engaged in guerrilla warfare during their advance, I highly doubt that it was pure surprise that allowed them to push all the way to Val Royeaux.

*sigh*

 

When the army falls apart at first, like in a surprise attack, it can be a hard to muster troops to fight effectively, not to mention political turmoil that be as a fallout of the war

[BronzTrooper]

*sigh*

 

When the army falls apart at first, like in a surprise attack, it can be a hard to muster troops to fight effectively, not to mention political turmoil that be as a fallout of the war

 

True, but I find it hard to believe that it would take Orlais until the Dales had reached Val Royeaux to muster its military.  Plus, it was Orlais that declared war on the Dales, not the reverse, meaning that they knew there was going to be, at the very least, extended conflict between them.  If it truly was a surprise attack, the Dales would've likely declared war first (obviously after their forces attacked, of course).

 

Either way, I'm not interested in getting into another argument over this.

[MoonDrummer]

Orlais, I would imagine, was reinforced from Templars throughout all of Thedas, and probably a lot of volunteers too. I agree though the course of the war doesn't really make sense, especially if Val Royeux was sacked. 

[Steelcan]

Orlais declared war after elven troops were pouting into the nation. Its a bit of a moot point by then