Solas cares nothing for the well-being of modern elves. Not only does he not see them as his people, he doesn't even see them as people at all. He only reaches out to them because for his plan to work, he needs subordinates to be sacrificial pawns to achieve his goal, and the modern elves are the most likely to listen to his lies of a better world for elves. It may be a better world for elves, but not their kind of elves but his kind of elves.
You didn't actually bother reading the OP, did you?
You didn't actually bother reading the OP, did you?
I read it. And I disagree entirely with it.
Personally I don't think Solas really finds the state of the current elves (be it ancient or modern) to be very relevant, i think he sees all that is elven to be a fallen remnant and he wants to reboot the world so that they have a chance to grow back. He is of course misguided in some of that thinking (no doubt) but it makes sense to him, since ultimately he wants to correct what he percieves was his mistake and probably not worth the cost in the end. He wants to try something else, since he still thinks that he can save this new generation. Like the other "gods" he is, or was, a leader of people, and he still thinks of himself as one (if imperfect) clearly.
Anyway, that was my rough takeaway from it. Either way, whatever I may think about his action or logic, I think it's actually one of the best characters they have written to date.
Thank you and I do agree with a lot of your views, but with Sera I'm not so sure. It seems there will be more revealed about Sera and her nature in future games, she is special is some way to every other modern elf and I for one would love to know how. I always play an elf and a mage, but I never felt that Solas considered her one of his people, perhaps thats only my impression, but thats what I felt when I played the romance arc, especially when he drops her for not removing her vallaslin.
I believe the elves that join Solas may be evacuated to another astral plain thru the eluvians to escape the veil/catastrophe but I don't see all being saved.
Well said and good read.
I have to thank you for a great text, great concluisons and well researched content.
In my opinion, Solas feels pity for the elves. Once they were a powerful and cultured race, well-educated
and gifted. They used to live in their palaces made of glass and were blessed with immortality. Now they
are nothing more than, what Abelas said, shadows. Shadows of what they used to be, a twisted memory.
He feels pity.
And guilty.
I do like Solas. He is one of my favorite characters in the whole DA universe.
But that does not make me unable to show some criticism:
The elves were something bigger, something better and the idea of making them great again is a noble one.
No slavery, no second class beings anymore, that sounds good for me.
What really bugs me is that Solas has his very own interpretation of what this means.
His mind is not open for a new idea of existence regarding the elves. He is averse to everything they are now
- Dalish or city elf - and I really feel like he wants to ignore the centuries of development the elves went through
after what he did to them.
That is indeed very sad.
He encourages Abelas to step out of his trapped mind (and long lost world).
Why isn't he trying to do the same? Just a bit, at least, for there maybe are other ways and other options.
This doesn't fit his sharp mind.
But after Halamshiral he can say "Our people? Who are- oh, you mean elves! I'm sorry, I was confused. I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves."He is clearly poking at Sera to see how much "elfyness" there is left in her, but I don't think he finds much.He uses "our people" quite a bit when talking to the Inquisitor after the sing-song, but I'd put that down to manipulation - his objective there is to encourage the Inquisitor to accept their place as leader.
I find it amazing how many people use the top line ("the return of my people means the end of yours") to discard everything you said in the above post to interpret Solas' plans to be "help only a few dozen sleeping ancient elves, then discard all modern elves once it's done." While Solas does say "the return of my people means the end of yours" to an Elven Inquisitor, I interpreted it to mean culturally, not literally. The city and Dalish elves are not "his people" right now because they are neither connected to the Fade nor culturally tied to the ancient elven culture.
By restoring modern elves into ancient elves, it will be the return of the ancient elves as the dominant elven culture and the "end" of the city elf and Dalish elf (not connected to the Fade, clinging to scraps of the past) as the majority/dominant culture of the elven population. And I think that's something most modern elves are fine with; most of them don't like living in slavery or poverty in human cities or being homeless wanderers on the outskirts of human lands. They only do so because they're making the most of the poor hand humans have dealt them in a human-dominated world. By restoring their world and their people to what they once were, they won't have to do that anymore.
I do find it amazing how many people choose to interpret the mass exodus of elves joining Fen'Harel as "suicidal end-of-the-world cultists who want to destroy the world and die in the blaze to restore ancient elves knowing they won't benefit from it" and I'm like, "What game have you been playing??? Solas has stated so many times in so many ways that he wants to restore the modern elves to their former status and most of them want to join him because they want to make a better world for their kind because they're tiring of languishing in slavery, second-class citizenry, and homeless wandering." Criminy...
You make valid observations but your theory can't account for everything.
It is true that Solas has approached the elves on more than one ocasion. However, judging by what we see of him, these encounters have lead to him believe not only that they are not his people but that they are not people at all.
Therefore, when Solas says "elvhen such as I", how could he be referring to Dalish or City Elves when he has already admitted he does not consider them his people? Which is something he clearly stated after Halamshiral?
Therefore, the logical conclusion being there are others like Solas and Abelas out there.
His conversation with Sera plus the end of Trespasser add evidence to this. He tells Sera that she is the furthest from what she is meant to be. Therefore, in his mind, there is a way elves should be AKA like him.
Therefore, if what he means is to restore the elves, wouldn't he use terms and phrases such as "It will be alright. I will restore our people." Instead, what he says is "destroy" and "death".
My opinion is that it can be interpreted either way. Maybe he wants to bring down the Veil so the elves alive today become like their ancestors or maybe there are hidden remnants of the ancient elves like Abelas' people and he wants to kill everyone and repopulate the world with them.
Personally, I would rather the former. I would very much like to if the conflict in DA4 pitted humans against elves for the right to live in Thedas rather than everyone uniting against Solas.
You make valid observations but your theory can't account for everything.
It is true that Solas has approached the elves on more than one ocasion. However, judging by what we see of him, these encounters have lead to him believe not only that they are not his people but that they are not people at all.
Therefore, when Solas says "elvhen such as I", how could he be referring to Dalish or City Elves when he has already admitted he does not consider them his people? Which is something he clearly stated after Halamshiral?
Therefore, the logical conclusion being there are others like Solas and Abelas out there.
His conversation with Sera plus the end of Trespasser add evidence to this. He tells Sera that she is the furthest from what she is meant to be. Therefore, in his mind, there is a way elves should be AKA like him.
Therefore, if what he means is to restore the elves, wouldn't he use terms and phrases such as "It will be alright. I will restore our people." Instead, what he says is "destroy" and "death".
My opinion is that it can be interpreted either way. Maybe he wants to bring down the Veil so the elves alive today become like their ancestors or maybe there are hidden remnants of the ancient elves like Abelas' people and he wants to kill everyone and repopulate the world with them.
Personally, I would rather the former. I would very much like to if the conflict in DA4 pitted humans against elves for the right to live in Thedas rather than everyone uniting against Solas.
Wouldn't that conflict rather be Solas and the elves against everyone else. Humans along with dwarves and qunari?
I applaud the amount of effort you have put into your post but there are various contradictions to this theory throughout the game.
To begin with, Solas states that his original plan was for Cory to activate the orb, get blown up and then Solas stroll in and recover it, step into the Fade and tear down the Veil. At this point none of the modern elves had been encouraged to join him. So when the world burned in the raw chaos they would have been destroyed along with the other races.
There are hints throughout that Solas doesn't see modern elves as the same as him. He makes little slip ups, which are far more apparent if you aren't romancing him and thus choosing the heart icons. The most apparent one is after the episode at the Winter Palace when he really is puzzled for a moment when you suggest that placing Briala on the throne will help our people. Then suddenly the penny drops, "Oh you mean the elves." Even before Trespasser my Lavellan was thinking, "Of course I mean the elves, who do you mean?"
The conversation with Abelas is quite clear. He does not see Lavellan as one of his people, but he does acknowledge Solas as such. What Abelas is puzzled about is how Lavellan came by what he can obviously sense is ancient elven magic and in hindsight is probably also puzzled why it hasn't killed him. I have a theory in fact that it is Morrigan's relationship to Mythal and the Inquisitor bearing the anchor (whether an elf or not) that stops the spirits in the Well from blowing their mind. There has to be something inherently dangerous about it and Cole says that basically you will end up with all these voices in your mind. But I digress.
In Trespasser Cole tells us that it was Solas who killed Felassan. This was before he returned to Thedas and Felassan had clearly been awoken early in order to set things up for him and probably do some fact finding. I think that Felassan had been having dealings with that clan for years in order to gather information and use them when convenient. He clearly hadn't tried teaching them anything and was quite willing to let them be torn apart by a demon because it suited his purposes to help Briala and Celene. Yet he had been the one who guided the party to them. Like his master he was quite happy to use people for whom he had no regard and the discard them when he no longer needed them. WoT2 hints heavily that Felassan was another ancient elf, not simply some Dalish who had been influenced by Solas in his dreams. He was also on familiar terms with Imshael. He was able to persuade Imshael to leave his party alone by wiggling his vallaslin, which I think was a hint to Imshael that they were not genuine and reminding him of Fen'Harel and Imshael realised that he was hinting at the latter's imminent return. However, Felassan sees something of Solas in Briala and her desire to help her people, the city elves. He also says to Solas that "They are stronger than you think," about Briala. He also suggested it would do no harm to let her try and help her people. Yet the Dread Wolf disagreed and killed him. According to Cole this was because Felassan had come to see Briala as people. Felassan tried reasoning with him but he knew the moment he allowed his mind to enter the Fade that he was likely doomed. If Fen'Harel saw all elves as people to be restored, why didn't he accept Felassan's argument? Why did he kill him for seeing Briala as people?
To some extent Solas has to keep to his original plan because if he had abandoned it through his interaction with the Inquisitor then he had killed his friend for nothing. Why did he take back the eluvians from Briala when she had been using them to help the elves if he now saw them as his people? Because he wanted them entirely under his control or the control of those that he does consider his People.
Lastly he makes it quite clear to Lavellan that they and all those dear to them will die when he carries out his plan. "I will never forget you" to a romanced Lavellan do not seem the words of someone who expects to see them again some time in the future.
I am of the opinion that the elves were originally spirits who became more material through contact with the waking world, similar to Cole. When he brought down the Veil and severed their connection to the Fade, those that were born after became gradually more and more disconnected from the Fade and thus more and more material. They still have some magic in their blood and so it may well be that as their material bodies are destroyed, their essence will return to the Fade as a wisp that will regenerate over time and it is in this sense alone that you can regard him as saving the modern elves. Like his friend that we saved but was then too damaged to stay in their original state, when the elven wisp recovers they will likely not remember anything of who they were before, although it is possible that for a romanced Lavellan if the strength of Solas' memory of them is sufficient, something of their identity might remain. For others though, it will be as though they are a new individual, which will probably be for the better as they wouldn't want to remember anything of what they were before or who they had lost.
For the ancient ones it may be different because he can instruct them to enter uthenera until it is over and because they are still in their original form from just after the Veil went up, they will simply be reconnected without losing themselves.
Now, I don't know about you but Solas never stroke me as someone who wouldn't take responsibility for his actions.
You know, except for the bit where a major part of his character is that he's more than willing to let most of the world die if it gets him his utopia back.
Or how the fact that he doesn't identify with either the Dalish or the City elves is well documented.
Fantastic post, OP. I think there are different statements that partly contradict each other about Solas and whether he cares for the current elves, but even if the picture isn't quite as clear as you claim, having all those pieces of dialogue and lore in one place is really nice.
Here's a piece of evidence you missed: in the epilogue of Trespasser, we hear about elves vanishing, the implication being that Solas has something to do with it. If those elves go to join him, they must hope to gain something from that. Do they, perhaps, hope to be restored, and Solas said it was possible? If so, then either he cares, or he's deceiving them. While he's clearly capable of the latter, at this point I'm more inclined to believe the former.
Not that I agree with his methods. That has to be said, too.
I agree it's possible that Solas is deceiving them. I don't consider it likely, considering the story has made it a point that the "modern" elves can be restored. The game goes out of its way to make it clear (via Sera and the Inquisitor) that elves "see" the Fade differently than any other race.
Solas cares nothing for the well-being of modern elves. Not only does he not see them as his people, he doesn't even see them as people at all. He only reaches out to them because for his plan to work, he needs subordinates to be sacrificial pawns to achieve his goal, and the modern elves are the most likely to listen to his lies of a better world for elves. It may be a better world for elves, but not their kind of elves but his kind of elves.
You keep beating this drum, but it's contradicted by Solas's own words:
I applaud the amount of effort you have put into your post but there are various contradictions to this theory throughout the game.
To begin with, Solas states that his original plan was for Cory to activate the orb, get blown up and then Solas stroll in and recover it, step into the Fade and tear down the Veil. At this point none of the modern elves had been encouraged to join him. So when the world burned in the raw chaos they would have been destroyed along with the other races.
There is nothing to indicate that none of the modern elves (in the original plan) wouldn't have been encouraged to join them. The evidence in the game is that he clearly would, since that is what he does. The only change in his plan is the delay in having to defeat Corypheus.
The conversation with Abelas is quite clear. He does not see Lavellan as one of his people, but he does acknowledge Solas as such.
It's quite clear the game / story offers no way for Abelas to know Solas is anything other than a "modern" elf. The dialogue Solas has with Abelas is simply (to Abelas) a modern elf convincing one trapped by duty (Abelas) that there are still other possibilities in life.
Lastly he makes it quite clear to Lavellan that they and all those dear to them will die when he carries out his plan. "I will never forget you" to a romanced Lavellan do not seem the words of someone who expects to see them again some time in the future.
Solas sees the elves in Thedas as "his people".
The thing I find MOST laughable... is that he "claims" to have had a "plan" for the Forgotten Ones AND the Evanuris... which his fool plan will release and who will all very likely join forces to kill him first.
Yeah - right.. you're definitely not the "God of Good Plans" Solas.
And if he was interested in being anything but smug and obtuse... maybe he could explain what he means when he says the Veil was better than ANY other option at the time...and why he thinks taking it down now is a good idea.
Yeah - cause history NEVER repeats itself Solas. In your "new" elven world seven new elves certainly would NEVER gain obscene power - usurp your "benevolent" rule... and become the new Evanuris... slaughter more dwarves... enslave more elves... kill more titans... possibly create more darkspawn...
Well... it wouldn't if you left the Veil up, but you're as backward thinking as the Dalish.
For the ancient ones it may be different because he can instruct them to enter uthenera until it is over and because they are still in their original form from just after the Veil went up, they will simply be reconnected without losing themselves.
What ancient ones? They died when they became mortal after the Veil was raised.
The story has us involved in the plight of modern elves. It makes sense that the story would continue for them.
@Almostfaceman: Abelas is an ancient elf - no?
My hope would be that the modern elves reject the Cult of Personality that Solas represents and forge a future free of enslavement to the Dread Wolf.
And anyone who thinks Solas isn't going to HAVE to rule over his new elven subjects hasn't studied much history.
@Almostfaceman: Abelas is an ancient elf - no?
My hope would be that the modern elves reject the Cult of Personality that Solas represents and forge a future free of enslavement to the Dread Wolf.
And anyone who thinks Solas isn't going to HAVE to rule over his new elven subjects hasn't studied much history.
Okay. This is bit divergent to the topic. I'm not making an argument that Solas would be a great leader or that he has some moral high ground.
@Almostfaceman: But it isn't. This is about the future of the elves and whether he actually cares about them or not.
He doesn't. He wants to relive his old life... if they serve as props to that end - so be it.
Solas cares about anyone who fits into his magical eugenics restoration program - if they don't step in line behind his every word - they're just more chaff to be winnowed.
You keep beating this drum, but it's contradicted by Solas's own words:
Inquisitor: You'd murder countless people?Solas: Wouldn't you, to save your own? You must understand. I awoke in a world where the Veil had blocked most people's conscious connection to the Fade. It was like walking through a world of Tranquil.Inquisitor: We aren't even people to you?Solas: Not at first, you showed me that I was wrong... again.
If negative approval he instead says:
Solas: The fault is hardly yours. The Veil was my creation, another of my countless mistakes.
So while he is sorry about it, he doesn't deny how he doesn't see you as people.
Inquisitor: You never cared about us. We were the means to an end.
Solas: You were people, and you deserved better...
Again, if negative approval:
Solas: You have a castle, an army, and a title that leaves every world leader quaking in fear. Be content.
He has the gall to suggest you should mind your place and be thankful for him using you.
Solas: Ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma'sula e'var vhenan.
Sera: Pppbbthh!Solas: Excuse me?Sera: Excuse yourself, whatever you said and what I did, same difference to me.Solas: I'd hoped, well, our people can sometimes feel the rhythm of the language despite lacking the vocabulary.
As others have pointed out, what he says prior to his revelation is suspect because he is presenting a false persona. He is pretending to be a modern elf.
@Almostfaceman: But it isn't. This is about the future of the elves and whether he actually cares about them or not.
He doesn't. He wants to relive his old life... if they serve as props to that end - so be it.
Solas cares about anyone who fits into his magical eugenics restoration program - if they don't step in line behind his every word - they're just more chaff to be winnowed.
That's your opinion, but it's clearly contradicted by the way Solas reaches out to the elves of Thedas... as I illustrate in my original post.
@Almostfaceman: It is (my opinion) - we'll see who's right in DA4. *shrugs*
Only... when DA4 comes and if he's using the elves for his ends... and you write "This is a retcon of what was obviously happening in DA:I.: The reality will be that you were simply incorrect.
And yes, the same goes for me.
Though my problem with Solas has nothing to do with whether or not he wants to give the elves their sparkle back. So being wrong about how he feels about the elves hold very little weight with how he's presented in DA:4.
If he's presented as a person not willing to wipe out three other sapient species for his own ends... then I'll be the one crying retcon.
As others have pointed out, what he says prior to his revelation is suspect because he is presenting a false persona. He is pretending to be a modern elf.
Solas is clearly motivated to try and connect with his people. He does this with Sera. That's the simplest explanation and the one that makes the most sense.
Remember, Solas feels responsible for the plight Sera is in. For the plight of the Dalish. For the plight of the city elves. He raised the Veil and destroyed the elven world.
During his "false persona" he makes no effort in disguising that he has difficulties with the Dalish and with Sera. But clearly he still reaches out to them.
As I said, if Solas doesn't care about what he did to the elves then why reach out to any of them at all? He would have no reason to do so and that's the point you're missing.
So, in pretending to be a modern elf who doesn't care about the modern elves, he has no reason at all to have the conversations he does have with Sera. This counters your point completely.
@Almostfaceman: It is (my opinion) - we'll see who's right in DA4. *shrugs*
Only... when DA4 comes and if he's using the elves for his ends... and you write "This is a retcon of what was obviously happening in DA:I.: The reality will be that you were simply incorrect.
And yes, the same goes for me.
Though my problem with Solas has nothing to do with whether or not he wants to give the elves their sparkle back. So being wrong about how he feels about the elves hold very little weight with how he's presented in DA:4.
If he's presented as a person not willing to wipe out three other sapient species for his own ends... then I'll be the one crying retcon.
You're speaking in hypothetical's about a possible future. That can literally go anywhere. My interest was in taking evidence from the game presented in the story and using it to derive a motivation and plan of the character Solas.
Retour en haut