Oh look how we handle the genocide with technicalities!
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people,so does it really matter if it will likely happen as consequence?
A consequence of whom Solas is already aware and despite it want to fulfill his plan.
So yes for my perspective is a genocide since he wish to perform a plan while perfectly aware of its possible repercussions.
I'm not defending Solas's intentions or actions as right; in any case there's insufficient information about why he is working to do whatever he's doing (presumably bring down the Veil, but we can't be sure of that either since he did tell us that WAS his plan, but his plans have changed).
Knowingly causing deaths, even incidental ones, is certainly wrong. On the scale Solas's plans entail, and the scale of mass casualties he expects, it's extremely wrong. That's precisely why I wouldn't want anything to do with someone like him in reality, but that said, he makes for a fascinating character. However, Solas is a nuanced character, and there's probably more to it than just selfishness or a desire to make things better for himself and his people. Probably. I can't say for sure, but Weekes seems to be the kind of writer who is going to make this into a tangled situation where things aren't clear-cut good and evil.
To put it into context, if a military were to use a carpet bomb style attack on a highly populated region known to harbor terrorists, we know that a lot of civilians would die. More might be saved in the long run than were killed, because the terrorist cell can't plan out attacks anymore. But, innocent people still died--they were individuals, and now someone's going to write them down as numbers, as if they didn't have names and families and hopes and dreams of their own. Garrus from Mass Effect has to make similar choices for the turians in ME3--"ruthless calculus," he calls it. I suspect that this is sort of where Solas is at--not that exact situation, but there's some reason--some massive reason--he feels he can't stop his plan. For some reason, he seems to believe that his end results will justify the mass casualties brought about by his plan. That doesn't make it right or good. Whether it's justified or not is a moral and philosophical debate, but it's probable that Solas at least believes that whatever monster he's making himself into, he's acting for the greater good.
That said, he's not genocidal--he doesn't want to bring about mass destruction and seems to hope that people will survive despite his expectations, and even if he's low approval and doesn't view the populace as people, he still doesn't bear them the amount of ill will required to actually desire their extermination (he won't mind it as much, maybe, but it's still a lot of death and suffering and he doesn't want to be responsible for that). His actual goal is not to destroy the modern Thedosians, and we can't even say for sure that his goal is only to renew the world for the ancient elves. He's already grieving for the Inquisitor (painting that fresco, remember?) before his plan truly goes into motion--possibly before he even feels the Inquisitor is a "real" person. He feels it is necessary to accomplish... whatever it is he's trying to accomplish. Again, we don't really know. It may tie in with the Blight and/or Titans as well as the Veil.
So don't take my statement that Solas isn't actually genocidal to mean I condone his actions. I think the mass destruction he expects is heinous. It's still possible he might (arguably) be justified, but only if there are no alternatives to his plan that will cause less harm and the consequences of not carrying out his plan are worse than the destruction caused by his plan. I know that some will say he still wouldn't be justified even if the world is going to end/be devoured by Blight within the next decade if he doesn't act. But, it's possible that he sees something we don't (because the writers haven't seen fit to play all their cards yet) and his plan is intended to stop something even worse. Then again... is it worth becoming a monster to stop something worse happening later?
There's an interesting psychological phenomenon going on, isn't it? A lot of people think that we'll be fighting for preservation of modern Thedosians... yet there are those who don't see that the other side does that as well? I mean, it at least appears to be one of the major motives for Solas - and even without him we hear from Abelas that they're dying out, and we don't even know how many of them there are, or if the world will lose something important if they disappear.
Heck, we can tell that even modern elves - as well as dwarves AND mages - appear to be on a slightly longer road towards extinction unless someone stems the tide, in some magical way too; dwarves seem to suffer due to severed connection with Titans and their birth rate is steadily declining, elves can only mate between themselves otherwise their offspring is human and the mage population is declining either because people are actively working to cull their numbers (Chantry) or they intermarry and keep the gifts of magic from larger population (Tevinter).
Yet because we don't identify with them as readily as common humans it's THEY who have to go? Is sitting on our hands and just waiting for the problem to go away on its own really a better solution?
Some could say that this may simply be the natural way of things... but ah, now we know that the world *isn't* in it's 'natural' state, is it? Some could say that the majority can't be sacrificed for minorities - but we don't even know how many people will suffer from the state the world is in in the long run. What if things go their way and the Veil will deteriorate on its own and there will be nothing anyone would be able to do to save anyone; not even a fraction of population? What if the same thing happens but with the Blight? Or what if the Qunari will have their way and strengthen the Veil (which we know they're working on!) to the point that they'd inadvertently cut the magic from the word entirely - and we know what happens when people are cut away from the Fade.
At this point we just don't know if this could/will happen. But those are possibilities we can't so far exclude. Nor we can ignore that with the way things are there are people (and spirits) who suffer greatly and who'd probably use any opportunity to improve the well-being of themselves and their loved ones. I can't really blame them for that.
Building on this further, we don't know what long-term effects Solas perceives the Veil as having. Changing the very nature of the world was an experiment that he seems to believe has gone awry. He may not know too much from having been in the Fade, but I'm sure more has changed than people's connection to the Fade (and their spirits apparently? Elves at least seem to all have a spirit, in a very literal sense, if I understand the context clues right--maybe modern elves lack this.). We read about things going extinct from lack of magic--such as that one codex on the giant flower that the elf watched die. If he perceives that things are becoming worse, i.e. something to do with the Blight (red lyrium would imply this to be the case...), that could be why he feels the need to act now.
What we do know is that Solas thought the Breach was too dangerous to leave unrepaired. I suspect the Veil, if left alone, would have eventually formed many tears that would have been exactly like what we see in Inquisition with the various rifts we seal. Even if its existence isn't a long-term problem, its eventual and inevitable failure most certainly is. The Breach isn't good; neither are the rifts it causes. Even without the Breach, rifts forming would have been bad--they force spirits through, who are then corrupted and begin to attack.
That said, I wish the spirits had been more interesting this time. I remember the sloth demons and desire demons usually had interesting dialogue, and their words were more dangerous than their attacks. That no longer seems to be the case for DAI. I imagine Despair could have been given some fascinating scenes when the Inquisition was at its low points (i.e. Corypheus just destroyed Haven--so give up), but it wasn't anything more than another battle with no real dialogue. Missed opportunity, if you ask me.
Solas: "You must understand - I awoke in a word where the Veil had blocked most people's conscious connection with to the Fade. It
was like walking through a world of Tranquil."
It's literally there, in the comment he compares people to Tranquil.
Going a step further, there are context clues (one is even dropped in the Jaws of Hakkon DLC where Ameridan or Telana mentions their spirit... as though it were part of them, but also a Fade spirit) suggesting that elves are supposed to be both spirits and flesh. That they materialized from spirits in the first place, just as Cole has. In that case, flesh without connection to its spirit, no matter how much free will or thought or emotion it has, must seem to be less than a person to Solas, at least until he can either get used to the idea or decide that the spirits are still there but severed from their bodies because of the Veil.
But I might be wrong. I've said it before, but I'm rarely right in my theories (then again I make a lot of them and I was right about elves apparently being spirits originally... so there's that).
Well if we go by what Felassan said in masked empire, then I don't see why would comment about other races.
I think he said something along the lines of "There were no other people but the elves". Humans and qunari were probably not even part of the equation for him because they didn't exist in the world stage yet.
But the dwarves. The dwarves are a different matter. We know there is heavily implied interaction between them and the elves in the form of a war or conflict of some sort. But we are not sure in what context. The main thing that was implied was that the evanuris went after Titans, the dwarves themselves were rarely mentioned.
Were they even considered people by the elves? Were the ancient dwarves really different from modern day dwarves ("the dwarves don't really remember the dwarves" ->Cole)? Why is that Solas himself admits he knew little of the dwarves in no small part because he could never find them in the fade?
You would think Solas would know about the dwarves, given their implied conflict with the Evanuris.
If the elves didn't see the other people as people, Felassan's comment makes perfect sense.
Humans have changed in some way we don't know, dwarves lost their connection to the Titans... We don't have much info on the origin of qunari, but DAI made me think that wherever they came from, the original race pre-modification actually existed prior to the elves (and was perhaps conquered by the elves, and dehumanized, so to speak).
Retour en haut
Bah, I'm getting all teary-eyed just thinking about it.
