I have to say, this did slightly irk me.
Merrill is rather awkward and scatty, but that doesn't imply she's incompetent. As people have argued above, she's essentially building a portal from scratch, rather than unlocking them (and thus, I hope, if she ever returns she'd be able to give more insight). She knows about as much as Morrigan when she leaves for the outside world (Morrigan too, remember, spent most of her life isolated in the wilderness). Rather, it's just Morrigan is very good at pretending she knows what she's doing, to the point she's convinced herself. Morrigan, after all, in DA:I, spends most of her role pretending she's some expert on elven lore and magic yet is about as wrong as any Dalish elf (see: being wrong about the eluvian, being determined to drink from this well that she's only just heard of, confusing tales and history when she chats shite about the statues in the Temple - and being on the receiving end of some snark from Solas because of it, being unable to see the gaes in the well and being determined to drink from it regardless of being told about it, and... well, her reunion with Flemeth regardless of what choices you picked). We also see this in DA:O when you romance her - underneath the cold, survival-of-the-fittest exterior, she's damn vulnerable and pretty unsure at times of what she's doing (especially in love). She's definitely smarter and more knowledgeable than average, but she's also good at seeming competent and bluffing, and sometimes this backfires tremendously.
So, given that our resident ~elven expert~ has about as much as a clue as everyone else, despite her efforts to make us believe otherwise, why is it that she was able to fix two eluvians when Merrill struggled with one?
Here's the potential reasons people have listed:
- Morrigan had some advantage being brought up by Flemeth
- Morrigan's ruthlessness - e.g. stealing the Dalish tome - gave her an advantage
- Morrigan was lucky enough to find an in-tact, deactivated eluvian.
1. I don't really buy that being a daughter of Flemeth gave her too much of an advantage. Flemeth concealed a lot from Morrigan and always pushed her into finding answers herself rather than providing them for Morrigan on a platter. Plus, that little hut of theirs was hardly crammed with books, after all. Morrigan was also relatively uninterested in eluvians during the events of Origins - her interest in eluvians came two years later, during Witch Hunt. Of course, Morrigan could have concealed this from us, as she did the Dark Ritual. I would like to know if a Dalish elf ever has a unique conversation on the topic actually - I haven't got that far with it myself. I personally think it's much more likely this is something she's discovered in research post-blight (and quite possibly from one of Flemeth's grimoires). She mentions the crossroads was as much a place to hide from enemies, and likely her interest in the eluvians spawned from a practical standpoint too, as she was no longer under the protection of Flemeth or the Warden after the blight.
2. I think the latter two points are true, however. Morrigan's don't-give-a-**** attitude meant she was able to steal precious secrets from the Dalish and combine them with a translation they'd never be able to access in any legal way (it's implied during Witch Hunt that many bits and pieces of knowledge on the elves is locked away in the Circles - elven history, elven magical knowledge, elvish lexicons - without any access for the Dalish: a human mage will, unfortunately, probably have an advantage here over one of the Dalish).
3. I also think Morrigan got damn lucky. It's made clear eluvians are really rare and difficult to find. Especially undamaged. The Dalish knew little of them, and the Sabrae clan only stumbled upon them by accident (part of me wonders whether Dalish clans, in their movements, deliberately try to look for ruins and keep a running record of them - if so, the Dalish origin makes a lot of sense). We have little idea, then, how Morrigan managed to find the one she did - luck's partially involved, and possibly some stolen maps or expertise. It's not probably going to be made clear. She had two years, her magical ability, plus her wits.
Really, I think it's fair enough that Morrigan managed to stumble upon the eluvian. However, I suppose what I dislike is that Merrill's quest to restore hers is played, in the narrative of DA2, is a tragic parable about the dangers of blood magic where her pursuit of knowledge is derided and Merrill's yet another victim to pride. I think that after DA:I, which counters some of the claims about spirits and magic being so dangerous (see: Solas' personal quest, and the Avaar's approach to spirits), and poses instead that greater knowledge and wisdom means we're better equipped to recognise and deal with spirits/demons, rather than immediate fear, refusal to engage and understand, and unwavering vigilance that templars propose as a solution. This is in part due to DA2's end choice means it tries to justify siding with the templars in the narrative, and its emphasis on magic as being a really grey area where there are many approaches and many of those are wrong. An unfortunate side effect is that Merrill looks like a clueless fool whereas Morrigan seems much more competent.
Whilst I disagree with the notion Bioware looks down on elves - in fact, I think it deals with them incredibly well - I do, on the whole, really dislike it in fiction when a dominant coloniser has superior knowledge to the natives. In Dragon Age, arguably Morrigan fits into that category - she's a rather haughty, clever human with a thirst for ancient knowledge who seems to know more about elves than they do themselves. Of course, she's also wrong about many things (I wish they'd made eve more of a point of this) but it wrankles at me still. I mean, given the near-complete systematic destruction of records of ancient elven history and culture, we can't expect elves in the narrative - who are either poor or enslaved - to be experts. I guess part of me wishes they'd made Flemeth and Morrigan elves (which'd solve the problem, really). But I suppose if that were the case, we might have predicted Flemythal from the start.
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