Yet he also says "if they must die, I'd rather they die in comfort". That assumes that even if many Theodsians will die, the death might as well catch them unaware - after all, "the world burning in raw chaos" doesn't mean "people running around in fire, screaming". You also have to take into consideration that that was plan A - the one which relied on him reclaiming the orb and the Anchor to himself; two things that are now gone.
Anyway - have you considered that he may as well just try and magnify his magic and turn everyone to stone, like he did with the Qunari in Trespasser? It seemed like a rather sudden and painless death. Or perhaps they'd all just lose consciousness and fall asleep when the Fade pours into the world.
In any event: we don't really know what will happen now - in fact, Solas himself seems to be somewhat uncertain; he says "I will save the elven people, even if this world must die" and he tells a disliked inky that his plan "may" destroy Thedas.
In paragraph order (or else I won't be able to make the quotes)-
-Solas says 'die in comfort' in the context of why he interfered with the Qunari plot. He wasn't making an argument, or claim, to painless euthanasia. Solas's position is that innocent not-people shouldn't die or suffer before it's necessary- not that they shouldn't suffer or die at all.
-Addressed on the above, and by Solas's claim that his Breach plan was to wait in the Fade while Thedas burned in the chaos. He wasn't going to be around to medusa everyone- the chaos is what was going to hurt them.
-You're mis-reading. Solas is laying a conditional, not an ambiguity. His uncertainty is on the worth of his mission, not whether the world will die as a result of it.
... Um, the Elder One ISN'T in control. If you listen to comments and read codexes you know that most of the population that has survived shattering of the Veil has been sacrificed in blood rituals that had brought more demons or red lyrium harvesting, the Blight is absolutely everywhere and time magic is ripping the world further to shreds. The world is about to collapse and apparently Cory is growing desperate - otherwise why do you think he keeps ordering Alexius to undo the past and go back in time prior to Inquisitor stealing the Anchor from him? And it's implied at the very end of the quest that Inquisitor and Dorian have barely missed the destruction of probably everything, with Elder One "coming for you, me... for everyone" according to Alexius.
Sooo.. what control are you talking about?
...the demons he's in control of via his army, of course. The demons outside his control are outside his control, which is also what I said.
Cory wants Alexius to figure out how to get the anchor for the same reasons he's always wanted the anchor- his victory is incomplete without it.
Unless you mean 'destruction of probably everything' to mean 'Corypheus is going arrive and kill your asses,' then Alexius's warning probably means that Corypheus is going to arrive and kill your asses. Not the literal end of the world.
Solas never says that the world with Fade in it is extremely deadly - he mentions that it is dangerous, but only because the Fade is just like other forces of nature. In fact, in Thedas, it's very much the force of nature that was naturally occurring and connected to the world for far longer than the Veiled world has existed.
It's the Veiled world that is artificial and apparently no less deadly: Solas has created it as a last resort against the Evanuris and their destructive lust for power; it did save the world, but at a terrible cost. Aside from diminishing everyone by cutting them from the Fade, the elves haven't been really saved - seems more like their death has been postponed, as being cut away from magic messes with how they actually are and causes them to go extinct the more the magic is feared, forgotten and fading.
In fact, given that the Veil causes people to fear the Fade and distort their understanding of it, until rarer, gentler spirits are getting increasingly rare and only demons remain, it seems to have created a vicious circle that will eventually sap all life from both sides of the world. Add to that the increasing dangers of everlasting Blight and you may yet get yourself a question if it's really so good to save the world that is eventually going to slowly, but painfully, bleed itself to death, or risk violent change which at least some would be able to survive?
If it's indeed a question that will occur, then Inquisitor - and any other protagonist - stands pretty much before the same dilemma Solas stood before he's decided to create the Veil. Most of the world may be gone, but at least some may survive, so they could grow and later save themselves before the cycle repeats itself.
Solas does tell us that the merging of the Fade and Thedas will be extremely deadly, hence his numerous references to burning the world by doing so. The world with the fade after the merging may not be too bad (maybe)- but that's irrelevant for the people in the raw chaos in between them.
(Also, naturally occuring force of nature isn't really a defense. The analogy of a dammed river comes to mind. Safe before, safe after, catastrophic in the interim.)
Paragraph two- irrelevant, because Solas's previous intentions are irrelevant to the lives of people alive now and the suffering of his plan.
Paragraph three- invented argument. Neither Solas, or anyone else in the situation, argues that Solas's plan is to save the world as opposed to Solas's stated intentions. Or, as an addition, that Solas's plan will somehow stop everlasting blight. This is (yet another) case of a fan-invented argument to justify Solas's otherwise contemptable position.
Paragraph four- is simply silly. The protagonist is not faced with a delimma that the world will face certain (or even likely) death if they do not do this. Solas's plan is, at no point, framed as 'for the greater good of Thedas,' or as the only option to address certain problems, or even as a solution to said problems. It isn't even presented as a more reliable or better approach to the problems either- the analogy of taking a shotgun to someone's face to cure them of cancer comes to mind.
That you don't know, because we don't yet know what exactly Solas means by "destruction" or "returning of the world of the elves", especially given that we know that elves are very close kin to spirits.
If his aim is to return most people to their spiritual states (given that it's pretty much certain that most - if not all - living, sentient beings are spirits made flesh), so they could later be reborn to the world in which the magic and Fade flows freely, then his plan and world is profoundly different from that of Corypheus.
Corypheus after all didn't really care about the world of Thedas or what happens to the Fade on the route to achieve his mad dream about reaching the Black City: Solas on the other hand wishes to minimize harm on BOTH sides. Corypheus' Breach and dark Redcliffe future brought only death and twisted spirits to demons: and given that Solas cares about spirits not to be twisted, it's extremely unlikely he'd do anything that even resembles the shattering of the Veil or anything else Corypheus has done to achieve his goals.
We don't need to know exactly what Solas means to know enough, and to disqualify much of what you say here.
We know that Solas's aim is not to return most people to their spiritaul states because Solas's open admission is that he expect most people to die. We know that Solas does not believe or expect reincarnation of any meaningful sort, because (1) his dialogue on his dead friend in his loyalty quest, and (2) he never makes such a claim.
We can, from Cole's insight, know that Corypheus really did believe he benefiting the world. We also know Solas's goal is not your desire, since the optimal way to minimize harm to both sides is to not destroy the world (both worlds, really) that have come to exist since his nap.
The argument that Solas would be extremely unlikely to do anything that would negatively affect spirits ignores that he (1) is willing to negatively affect people he cares about in the name of his ambitions (Falessan, the Inquisitor), (2) assumes that he isn't willing to negatively affect spirits in the way he is other people he cares about, and (3) that Solas actually understands all the mechanics of his actions this time any more than he did last time.
This is yet another series of arguments Solas doesn't make to defend Solas's actions while ignorring the points Solas does make.
No, it wasn't. The subsequent explosion was supposed to kill Corypheus, not the Breach - the violence of the explosion appears to have been a shock for him; and given that it occurred after the ritual of Corypheus' was disrupted by future Inquisitor, we can't really say if Corypheus has predicted any of that himself. The Breach itself appears to be accidental, just like Herald himself/herself appears to be accidental.
Also - what's with the assumption that Solas wants elf-mage supremacy? He stood against elf-mage supremacy long before he created the Veil, which earned him the mantle of Fen'Harel, so... wut?
Not once Solas mentions that he wants the return of Elvenhan proper; in fact he destroyed it to free the elven race and readily tells Dorian that Elvenhan was as bad as Tevinter and that nobody should be romanticizing ancient elves. Then he tells him that if Dorian wishes to make amends for past transgressions, he should "free the slaves of all races who live in Tevinter today", instead of making any sort of demands about returning stolen elven glory or anything of the sort.
No - he mourns the knowledge lost and that the Veil "took everything from the elves, even themselves" and is horrified by the fact that he's sundered all other people from the Fade, hence they remind him of Tranquil: mostly unable to realize themselves or grasp the complexity of the world or the Fade, living in an unnatural, diminished world that makes them fear parts of themselves and all the potential that lies within, shortening their life-span, slowly killing dwarves and elves and making the Fade riddled with demons. So he wants to return the world to its proper, pre-Veil state - NOT the elf-mage supremacy itself.
The Breach is a consequence of the explosion, and we know from the DLC that Solas's intention was to enter the Fade and wait things out as raw chaos occured.
Solas wants elf-mages because that what real people are to him: elves, of a certain culture, who are all mages. Elves who are not mages (like Sera) are not only the furthest thing from what they were supposed to be, but mundanes in general are why he compares modern Thedas to a world of Tranquil and doesn't even see them as people (Cole's insight). In order to do this, Solas is going to assume godlike powers and massacre just about every rival to his cherished group in the process of saving them- that's pretty much 'supremacy' at the extreme end. Solas doesn't need to support to the elven gods of old to be comfortable with a Thedas that is dominated by elven mages.
No matter his rhetoric, Solas's actions and ambitions- restoring 'his people' by massacring the rest and controlling the physics of the world- is elf-mage-supremacy. It may not be his calling card, but it is what he is- just like how Solas doesn't need to be a hostile bigot to be a huge racist against mundanes and not even seeing them as real people. That's racism in practice, even if it's not racism in annoying proclomation.
That's the thing - they don't have the basis to work together. Solas outright deems Corypheus as a madman, who in his arrogance and delusions of godhood tries to reach his goals by whatever means necessary and cares little for how he does it and how much he hurts the world in the process.
In case you missed it- there were huge ironic parallels between Solas and Corypheus. Solas is, in a word, a hyprocite. On many accounts.
Worse - he readily uses blight magic, which he's thoroughly corrupted himself with - and that is a massive NO-NO in Solas' book. He is clearly terrified of the Blight and thinks it's not a power that can be wielded or manipulated, much less something anyone should corrupt self with (hence he doesn't have much nice to say about the Grey Wardens as well, even if he gives them credit for buying everyone, including himself, some time) - which is probably a correct assumption, given that he's likely seen much more powerful Evanuris corrupt themselves with it and almost destroy the world in the result. He's created the Veil in part to save people from Evanuris unleashing the horror of Blight upon the world - so why should he want a future tainted by a Blight-corrupted magister?
Still, let's assume that Solas indeed doesn't care how the Veil is removed and if the world is Blighted and demon-infested in the result - considering how desperate Corypheus is to find a way to cross the Veil, you really think he wouldn't try and seek the knowledge out from its creator (if he knew he still walked about), given that he marshals the last of his forces to march on Temple Of Mythal, where he seeks to obtain the less specific knowledge of a dead, elvhen goddess? After losing Adamant and Halamshiral (something he didn't really need orb for) he's so desperate that he scours all the elvhen ruins he could find, and that's even though he obviously disdains 'the rattus'.
Eventually he's pushed into such desperation that he risks re-opening the Breach, only to lose control of the orb (showing how tentative his control over it actually is) and let it being yanked from his grasp by Inquisitor.
Really not sure who you're arguing against here, besides your own strawman. You raised a question about how wouldn't Solas logically align with Corypheus if he intended the breach. I gave reasons why it wouldn't be logical. You... continue to add reasons why Solas, as a character wouldn't.
Strange tact, but let's continue. Ahem.
Corypheus would certainly take advantage of Solas's information if he knew of it. That doesn't mean he would work with Solas as equals or give Solas an opportunity to stop it.
What then Solas does? Shouldn't he just swoop in, stop the Inquisitor (it would be really easy, given that Inky would totally not expect that and assuming from a cutscene, where he's shown to appear much earlier than anyone else on Inky's side, he was always nearby, no matter if we take him to the party or not), now that Corypheus is gone, the orb is still intact and the Breach should allow him to easily shatter the Veil, if that was indeed how he intended to do it? Nope, he lets Inquisitor sacrifice the orb in order to seal the Breach for good.
It suggests that whatever Solas is planning to do is likely more complex and very different from what Corypheus has done, if he went as far as let go his orb - an act that he most have known will cost him dearly, as he's forced to steal Mythal's power and likely kills Flemeth in result
No, it really suggests that you're ignoring cutscene flow to justify a lot of invention. The Inquisitor magically grabs the orb in the climatic battle. The Inquisitor has a dramatic pause as the anchor and orb synchronize in glow before releasing remarkable power to close the new breach. The orb drops significantly and without its power glow, then Corypheus is gone for good. Then rocks fall, no one dies, and the the orb is found in fragments later... but Solas is dissolate not at the orb's parts, but what was lost.
Narrative implication- the Inquisitor used the power of the orb to close the breach in a dramatic finale. Then it broke, but Solas's real concern was the power. Indication for Solas- he missed his chance to swoop, because he was expecting to be handed the orb with its power included afterwards.
It suggests nothing about Solas's initial intention for the breach.
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