forever anxious

used to be the background character's background character. mental health and multi-fandom sideblog.

[loopofrosewood]

always enamoured by the canon vibes of the mage warden & jowan friendship. the implied many personal crises of jowan's that the warden has made fun of him for and/or helped him with. him being the warden's like, only friend in the tower despite or because of them being a favorite of the first enchanter. him presumably being the one to help the warden settle into the tower given he's been there longer. "you're like a sister to me, but maybe if-" but he only says that if you ask him why you guys didn't bang In Front of his girlfriend. both of them potentially immediately getting distracted from breaking jowan out of the circle by a cool talking statue. the constant way the warden can rag on him and the resentment and jealousy on jowan's end. the way he did totally leave them out to dry during his escape and only makes a move to protect them if they betrayed him and he didn't know. and then they can flat out kill him later. literally awesomeeeee

[anoras]

i like how in dragon age. the whole era is called The Dragon Age because well, The Dragons Are Back. but where most fantasy would make this the focus of their plot, it is merely a side note and frankly we have more important things to worry about

[json-derulo]

"you were always such a good kid! we never had to worry about you :)" thanks! you actually should've, though. like about this specifically

[stonesense]

But i would like to hear you talk about alistair 🥺 please?

so i was going to point out that—saying this, as always, as someone who often spares loghain and who agrees that we have a fair bit of ground to criticise alistair and to absolutely show just as much understanding to the warden here—i think if you approach the issue of his reaction to sparing loghain purely as “the wardens recruit talented criminals, the HOF wanted to recruit a talented criminal, what’s alistair getting all upset about, did he not read the warden manual?”, i do think you’re being a little deliberately obtuse about the matter. like come on we know that’s not what it’s about. you’re omitting every bit of context about what makes this personal! that’s the fun stuff!

alistair had a lifetime of neglect and dreaded his future, and then along came the only group of people who ever gave him a real sense of family, self-respect, and worthwhile purpose. loghain abandoned those people to die, publicly accused them of intentionally and maliciously causing the disaster in which they died, and had alistair and the other lone survivor hunted as fugitives by bounty hunters, soldiers, and assassins. loghain is not just nebulously some guy who did some crimes. it’s intensely personal. but it’s also deeper than merely an issue of vengeance or principle. conscripting loghain threatens alistair’s very self-identity and cuts at his deepest trauma. allow me 2 elaborate

people focus a lot on what alistair says first: “joining the wardens is an honour, not a punishment! name him a warden and you cheapen us all!” that’s a really hard thing to swallow for some wardens, who have had a very different experience with the order compared to alistair. to have the wardens called an honour when you didn’t ask for this, when you were maybe taken utterly against your will? or equally to have him refute that people who have done bad things deserve the chance to join the wardens and do good for the world, when maybe you also had terrible sins on your hands before you were conscripted? it reads like alistair is glorifying the wardens way beyond what they are... and yes, i think he is doing that, and any warden reaction is totally fair. but in a less emotional scene where alistair isn’t grasping for straws in public, he knows the wardens aren’t cookie cutter honourable knights and he will tell you so. go up to him as a fresh recruit and ask him if the wardens are heroes, and he’ll be the first one to tell you otherwise. he knows what genre he is in. he is not expecting a fairytale. he may disapprove of the evils you can commit as the warden—and i should hope so!—but he will defer to you no matter what you do. so why draw the line here? why worry about the wardens’ honour now after potentially committing massacres?

i would say that even for alistair himself, honour isn’t really the issue. it’s mainly the easy argument to make in public. what he says after, and what he repeats, is this: “i will not stand next to him as a brother. i won’t!” “ask me for a pound of my flesh, or all the gold in orlais, but don’t ask me to accept that monster as a brother.” it’s the brotherhood that’s at issue.

alistair’s personal quest and fade nightmare are all about his desperation for family, seeking to fill the gap that left him insecure and unloved. his choices here imo have almost nothing to do with the honour of the grey wardens and lofty ideas about what they should represent. it’s that he believes the grey wardens are his family. this is the idea that’s entirely holding him together: that they wanted him, and found him worthy, and this legitimises him as person who can be loved or liked or accepted or respected or lead a meaningful life, when he’d never experienced any of those things

if loghain becomes a grey warden, then logically either loghain is his family—utterly unacceptable, poisoning the entire thing—or the grey wardens aren’t a family and he has no family. he’s out in the cold again. please draw a direct comparison to eamon, the authority figure he trusted, allowing him to be pushed out of his home by isolde, someone significantly older than him who had been the aggressor the whole time. please draw a direct comparison to how he sees everything bad in his life as a result of the relatives he didn’t want or choose. what he does is about this, it’s not about honour or principles or morals, it’s about his trauma and his self-perception and his last straw, it’s about him. which is exactly what makes it sympathetic and exactly what makes it selfish. AAAAGGGGGHHHH. so good.

i love that he does what he does SO MUCH. i love that it’s a niche option but it certainly doesnt require your player character to be some cackling evil monster, and it ties together so much of his character journey. him choosing to leave you no matter the consequences is such a shocking moment of agency for a character constantly led by others, more agency than he gets to demonstrate in a lot of more ‘normal’ ‘happy’ endings. i don’t know, i just feel like when i see people dilute it to ‘this is what the textbook warden should do, the logical way to respond, and he didn’t do it! what the hell?’ i’m like, come on! don’t you see how emotional and personal and gripping and selfish and understandable and human and real this is? why would you want him to do anything other than one of the best character moments in the whole series?

he’s 20 years old and nobody has ever done right by him and he is clinging to the one thing in his life that makes sense and makes him feel okay about himself, and if he loses it by not getting to lop one particular terrible old man’s head off then the companion you’ve had tanking for you the entire game is not even going to show up to the final world-saving battle bc he doesn’t gaf anymore actually and also fuck you. will not back down even if you hand him over to be executed. iconic. legendary. i don’t know how to not adore him for this. i do this to him out of love

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts: pt. 6

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts: pt. 5

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts: pt. 4

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts: pt. 3

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts: pt. 2

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitposts pt. 1… more coming soon

[ac3tinium]

dispatch shitpost here we go

[ac3tinium]

also tagging this with the ship tag for visibility, because I’ve seen it a lot in fic (excerpt from my post here)

what’s up with multiple instances of people in the fandom saying the history between Mecha Man and Flambae happened at a bank? the setting is clearly a mall in the Episode 5 flashbacks (I think the artbook even references a specific mall for their design), and Flambae’s listed crimes don’t include theft or larceny. if the misconception is coming from the newspaper headline we see at the start of Episode 3, the attempted crime of a bank heist with hostages being held doesn’t fit Flambae’s listed crimes of “Arson, assault, vandalism.” and Robert didn’t engage with Flambae until all civilians were cleared from the scene, while the photo depicts someone taking cover directly behind Mecha Man while the villain, whose outfit doesn’t resemble Flambae’s, shoots straight beams of energy (lasers, maybe?) instead of fire.

[ac3tinium]

just took emotional damage from paying attention to what Robert says to Invisigal after she goes for the Astral Pulse and Shroud gases her in Episode 6

“Visi! Visi, you gotta fight! Please, Visi!”

then his tone changes from pleading to something harsher and he says

“Hey you listen to me. You get up. Get up!”

[ac3tinium]

this… got long. I just wanted to write about some details in Dispatch I don’t often see discussed (granted, I only got into it like two weeks ago), mostly regarding Robert’s hero identity and reveal. I even compiled sources for this, so spoilers ahead!

LEGACY

in Episode 1, the news commentary + press conference segment confirm that it’s public knowledge all three generations of Mecha Man are from the same family.

“Everything I’ve done, every sacrifice me and my family have made has been for the people of Los Angeles…” — Robert, Episode 1

“Your father, your grandfather, they must be rolling over in their graves.” — Charles Kingsley, South Bay Signal; Episode 1

the timeline isn’t explicitly clear about how long each Robertson was Mecha Man, but we do know that it’s been nearly fifty years total.

“For nearly fifty years a Mecha Man has protected Los Angeles.” — News Anchor, Episode 1

“Gramps was the first Mecha Man, he died in the suit before I was born.” — Robert, Episode 1

between fifty years and before Robert was born (using 31-32 as Robert’s current age, based on TIMELINE below) means Mecha Man ‘Prime’ was active for 19 years at most. Mecha Man ‘Astral’ would then have been active for 16 years at minimum to make up the difference, since we know Robert’s dad died 15 years ago.

SHROUD’S ASTRAL PULSE

what we don’t know is how the first Mecha Man suit was powered prior to Shroud, aka Elliot Connors, providing the Astral Pulse. and evidence from multiple sources do point toward Shroud as the creator, though we also aren’t told why he can’t just make a new one.

“Good news, buddy. Shroud says he just wants the Astral Pulse. Which, we all know, isn’t really yours anyway.” — Toxic, Episode 1

“Your dad said he’d help me build a mech if I helped him build the Astral Pulse. Just another promise he didn’t come through on.” — Shroud, Episode 8

“Hey, you got the Astral Pulse out of him [Elliot]. What about the rest of us?” Chase to Robbie, Dispatch Comic Issue #5

ROBBIE ROBERTSON THE II

okay, let’s be real, the man may have been a public hero, but he was not a good father.

“Yeah, that’s totally the fuckin’ same as my dad never being home.” — Young Robert, Episode 7

“Den we talk tech stuff fo’ like one whole hour.” “That’s longer than any conversation I ever had with him.” — Royd & Robert, Episode 3

neglect is a form of child abuse! we know he wasn’t around much, leaving Chase to babysit Robert when he was away, but even when he was around… well. in Dispatch Comic Issue #5, set in 1999, he knowingly let his kid (only 8 or 9 years old at the time, based on TIMELINE below) tinker in his workshop unattended, which leads to the Mecha Man suit initiating a defensive protocol that nearly kills Robert if not for Chase’s super-speed intervention. this is how Robert got the wound on his ear, btw. Robbie does, at least (bare minimum!), first ask Robert “Are you alright? Are you hurt?” after deactivating the protocol, but he is not shown to give any comfort. instead he commands Robert to “get up” while Chase is the one cradling his injured and crying son.

“Some tough love.” “The only kind I know.” — Chase & Robert, Episode 2

TIMELINE

someone else did the math on how old Robert is based on Chase’s known age, and I think there’s a solid argument to be made for Robert immediately taking up the mantle of Mecha Man after his father’s death.

“Dad was killed fighting Shroud. That’s when I took over.” — Robert, Episode 1

“If you had people trying to kill you for the last fifteen years, you’d be jumpy too.” — Robert, Episode 2

“So Shroud kills your father, goes to jail fifteen years, breaks out and immediately dupes you into a trap where he destroys the Mecha Man suit and puts you in a coma for months (emphasis on plural)…” — Charles Kingsley, South Bay Signal; Episode 1

now, how long was Robert in a coma? at minimum, 2 months (plural). I don’t think he was put into a coma as a direct result of the explosion after his failed fight with Shroud, given that we see him conscious and standing over the wreckage of the Mecha Man suit in Dispatch Comic Issue #5, along with some dialogue from the game:

“How you got dis ting in your apartment anyways? Supah heavy da buggah.” “I disassembled it and took it in little pieces. Which is what I thought you’d be doing.” “And how long dat take you?” “Three or, no it was four days.” — Royd & Robert, Episode 3

“I spent a couple weeks after it happened trying to track [the Astral Pulse] down.” — Robert, Episode 3

even if he was put into a coma right away and spent that time looking for the Astral Pulse after he woke up, there’s still a maximum time limit.

“It was just over four months ago that image like this were recorded across the Southland.” — News Anchor, Episode 1

which, taken altogether, means Robert was likely 16-17 when he became Mecha Man, did that for 15 years, and was in a coma for a minimum of 2, maximum of 3.75 months before signing up with SDN, making him 31-32 for the main events of the game.

PUBLIC APPEARANCE

“Three generations of pilot, their identities kept secret, have given everything to protect this community…” — News Anchor, Episode 1

so the identity of the Robertsons as the pilots has always been secret, but how recognizable is Mecha Man as Mecha Man? without the metal suit, I mean.

“You’re the real deal. You’re the famous one.” — Blonde Blazer to Robert, Episode 1

Robert isn’t surprised or alarmed to be recognized as Mecha Man when he’s wearing his masked pilot costume. this happens with Blonde Blazer on the street, Flambae at the Crypto Night bar, and Waterboy in the SDN lobby. you can declare to the thieves stealing TVs that you’re Mecha Man, while the TV is literally broadcasting a photo of Robert in his pilot costume, next to his suit, on the news. his appearance in the pilot costume isn’t a secret, but neither is it as iconic as the appearance of the actual suit itself.

“Now that you- your face is next-aside-a my face… I see that I know you— of you. You’re Mecha Man— I… you’re dead… I thought.” — Waterboy, Episode 2

Mecha Man as the pilot must have been a public figure before the press conference aired, otherwise Waterboy’s comment doesn’t make sense. he’d already know Mecha Man isn’t dead if he only recognizes Mecha Man, the pilot, from the recent media address.

MECHA MAN IS A NORMIE

it’s also public knowledge that at least the first pilot of Mecha Man had no powers, but this holds true for the current generation of Mecha Man, too.

“Shroud’s augments are pretty good when normies like you use ’em…” — Toxic, Episode 1

“Hey, you should give yourself more credit. To do what you did, for as long as you did… especially without superpowers.” — Blonde Blazer, Episode 1

if that’s not enough, Robert himself confirms it for the media.

“Answer the question, buddy boy. Are you retiring? […]” “Well, I don’t have a suit, and I don’t have any superpowers so yeah, short of a miracle… pretty much.” — Chris Stratton, Torrance Tribune & Robert; Episode 1

there’s also Flambae, who equates the Mecha Man suit to Robert’s superhero status, and Prism, who (if Robert’s identity is revealed) wins the bet about Robert’s superhero identity on the basis of Mecha Man being a superhero who doesn’t have superpowers.

“Don’t you watch the news? This is a superhero bar… And you are not Mecha Man anymore.” — Flambae, Episode 1

“Told y’all! It’s so obvious he don’t have super powers.” — Prism, Episode 6

Z-TEAM DOESN’T SUSPECT

here’s where it gets interesting with the rest of the Z-Team. before the choice to reveal Robert’s identity, Robert encounters Malevola and Prism in the break room where they try to figure out what superhero he is based on what superpower he might have. the banter with Invisigal at the start of the next shift also frames the bet within the context of Robert having a non-obvious superpower.

“Maybe he’s got an iron stomach.” “Do we know anybody like that? Super digestion?” — Malevola & Prism, Episode 5

“We’ve got a few guesses at your identity, leading one right now is Blueballs man.” “Lemme guess, his power is not being able to nut?” — Invisigal & Robert, Episode 5

so at this point, Prism doesn’t suspect that Robert is Mecha Man (i.e. doesn’t have powers), but she figures it out in time to win the bet if you choose to have Robert reveal his identity to the team. which is frankly hilarious to me, that she watched Robert fight like a feral honey badger in the bar fight and went ‘yep, that guy doesn’t have powers and did his hero work from inside a metal suit’. she still appears shocked by the reveal, though.

“That’s, like, a real superhero.” — Prism, Episode 5

“No fucking way… can’t be.” — Punch-Up, Episode 5

“Wait. Robert’s Mecha Man?” — Malevola, Episode 6

depending on when the reveal happens, either Punch-Up or Malevola will verbally comment with surprise, and they both lose the bet to Prism if you have Robert reveal his identity to the team. Golem, Phenomaman, and Sonar or Coupé don’t have particularly notable reactions, but their expressions do seem to show some level of surprise as well, even if they aren’t expressly depicted handing money over to Prism for the lost bet.

“A washed up dad bod superhero with no superpowers… Can’t wait…” — Invisigal, Episode 2

“You one funny bugga… Mecha Man.” — Royd to Robert, Episode 2

“Does he look up to me or— Wait, does he know I’m Mecha Man?” “Yeah… But he said he won’t tell anyone.” — Robert & Blonde Blazer, about Waterboy; Episode 4

Z-Team members who are confirmed to know Robert is Mecha Man are Invisigal, Royd, and Waterboy. I haven’t seen anything to definitively prove or disprove Sonar knowing, from overhearing Robert’s conversation with Invisigal in the break room during Episode 2, but I personally think it seems unlikely that he wouldn’t bring it up if he knew. if anything, Malevola is the one most likely to catch the leak.

“We figure it out, bruddah. The man can be mecha again.” — Royd, Episode 6

“This your family photo area? Kinda morbid, which I’m kinda into.” — Invisigal, Episode 6

honestly, Malevola should be able to figure it out when she comes early for the housewarming party, given the topic up for discussion, but maybe she’s just not paying that much attention. or, she understands that they’re looking into fixing the Mecha Man suit, but not necessarily that Robert is Mecha Man. also, what does Z-Team think happened when Robert was in the infirmary after Proto Pulse #19 fails, if Robert’s identity isn’t revealed?? like, they still got him a gift and wrote a note to say “CONGRATS ON NOT DYING”, but presumably without the full context. I guess in a world of superpowers, it’s not too crazy to just randomly get caught in an explosion and be in need of medical care?? the biggest potential oversight, though, comes from Episode 3.

“You’ve already been a hero, okay? You have no idea what I’m dealing with.” “Ah, get outta here. At least you were born with powers. I don’t have shit.” — Invisigal & Robert, Episode 3

“Fate. Destiny. Not having powers. Seasonal depression. None of these things kept me from being a hero before. And they won’t keep me from being a hero again.” — Robert, Episode 3

that conversation was broadcasted to the entire branch, including the whole of Z-Team. so Z-Team should already know that Robert doesn’t have superpowers, unless they think Robert got his superpowers some other way (like Punch-Up, who made a deal with a sorceress, though it’s unclear if he already had other superpowers to begin with), or they forgot about it because they didn’t care enough about Robert to remember at the time. but there is someone on the team who accurately and definitively views Robert as a normie.

FLAMBAE

“You’re not supposed to lift without a spot, idiot.” — Flambae to Robert, Episode 5

Flambae says this to Robert in the gym while specifically pointing at a poster that reads, “If you do not have super powers, you need a spotter!” he also doesn’t take Robert seriously if you choose to deny being a normie.

“Normies need baby sitters so you don’t hurt yourself thinking you’re a hero. […]” “I’m not a Normie, and you know it.” “Pff, you’re the King of the Normies.” — Flambae & Robert, Episode 5

and if you choose to reveal Robert’s identity to the team, the intonation of Flambae’s words implies confirmation of an existing suspicion.

“It is you, you little shit.” — Flambae, Episode 5

alternatively, if Robert’s identity is revealed at the housewarming party by Chase, Flambae is never shown on-screen learning or reacting to the knowledge that Robert is Mecha Man. yet, in the final showdown against Shroud and the Red Ring, he will fight alongside Mecha Man just the same. perhaps Prism tells him, since she recorded Chase & Invisigal’s argument on her phone? I can’t imagine Flambae taking Mecha Man’s sudden reappearance in stride if he had no forewarning whatsoever.

“Right, you’ve met him. Didn’t you have a run-in with him years back?” — Chase to Robert, about Flambae; Episode 2

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” — Flambae to Robert as Mecha Man, Episode 1

we don’t know exactly when the run-in happened, but it’s been at least a few years. as long as it wasn’t super early in Robert’s career as Mecha Man, he and Chase would’ve already lost touch, so it’s sweet that Chase still kept tabs on Mecha Man’s activity :)

“As I literally just said, I am Flambae, a real superhero.” — Flambae, Episode 1

“You can’t get injured cause we need you behind that desk to help the real heroes.” — Flambae, Episode 5

“I got into a fight with an actual real actual hero.” — Flambae, Episode 5

I’ve been sitting on this write-up for too long to be coherent any longer, but there’s something to be said about how hero status clearly means something to Flambae. it’s like he feels the need to assert his own hero status by measuring up against Robert/Mecha Man: first, by proclaiming that he is a real hero with the right to be in Crypto Night, a superhero bar, while Mecha Man has lost that right; then, by contrasting his superhero work with Robert’s normie desk job, and referring to Mecha Man as a hero to justify the injury he gave to Flambae when Robert needles him about it. also, what’s up with multiple instances of people in the fandom saying the history between Mecha Man and Flambae happened at a bank? the setting is clearly a mall in the Episode 5 flashbacks (I think the artbook even references a specific mall for their design), and Flambae’s listed crimes don’t include theft or larceny. if the misconception is coming from the newspaper headline we see at the start of Episode 3, the attempted crime of a bank heist with hostages being held doesn’t fit Flambae’s listed crimes of “Arson, assault, vandalism.” and Robert didn’t engage with Flambae until all civilians were cleared from the scene, while the photo depicts someone taking cover directly behind Mecha Man while the villain, whose outfit doesn’t resemble Flambae’s, shoots straight beams of energy (lasers, maybe?) instead of fire.

[stonesense]

reasons i think we should talk about riordan more and show him some respect and vote for him in polls:

he’s not actually french he just picked up an accent while he was there it’s not his fault

the first time you meet him he’s a prisoner in a cell who’s been tortured for months and he still manages to reach through the bars and instakill snap his guard’s neck. that was pretty cool

despite being, again, tortured and imprisoned for months, specifically by loghain’s right-hand man and at loghain’s behest, was still willing to put his own feelings aside and suggest offering loghain the joining because he thought it was the best thing to do to save ferelden

when every grey warden in orlais was willing to give his homeland up for dead he volunteered to cross the border by himself!! imagine being the only native fereldan standing there when those decisions get made by orlesians and still being brave enough to go alone to see if anything can be done

also criticises warden leadership in the anderfels rather than just accepting whatever his bosses say and acting like the wardens are perfect

absolutely was willing to do the ultimate sacrifice so you and alistair or even loghain could live when he barely even knew you, just because he was oldest and it’s his duty

seems to call the shots for your party’s strategy in the battle of denerim. which went pretty well all things considered

do you really think you would have been able to kill the archdemon at all if he hadn’t jumped onto the thing when it was flying and clung on until he could tear through its wing, sacrificing his life to bring it down onto the top of fort drakon, where it couldn’t escape or do more damage to civilians? your warriors would have just been standing their flailing their swords at it from a distance while it rained fire on them. hopeless and also embarrassing.

this has been a riordan propaganda post please factor it into your considerations thank u

[kuningannasansa]

Cullenposting

I have a lot of thoughts about Cullen. I also struggle in the fandom because many of his fans are templar/circle supporters (and real life conservatives, yikes, dni!) or whitewash him to a degree I just can't agree with, but haters often can't bring themselves to have any sympathy for him at all. So I decided to write down some of my thoughts on him, really just to explain how I personally view his character, and it got really long. Like, reeeeeeeally.

In my defense, at least two people expressed an interest in this so here @albaharu and @reformedvillain. I'm sorry it's an actual dissertation, I won't be mad if you end up not reading it all lol.

Childhood

Cullen was born in the village of Honnleath in Ferelden a decade after the end of the Orlesian occupation. Maric was King and Loghain was a hero and an example of how even a commoner could rise high in Ferelden, specifically through military service. Wilhelm, a mage who had fought with Maric against the orlesians and been rewarded with the title of Court Enchanter as well as freedom from the Circle, was living right there in Cullen's village with his family and Shale, a golem he had found in the deep roads. According to Shale, Wilhelm liked to use his powers to frighten the villagers before Shale supposedly killed him. We don't know exactly when Wilhelm died so we can't say whether Cullen met him, but at the very least he would have heard other villagers talking about the mage who used his magic against them and then was killed by his own golem. This might explain why a young Cullen, who we are told wanted to become a templar in order to help people, might see joining the order as a way to protect not only non magical people from mages but mages "from themselves" as well. Note, I am NOT saying that Wilhelm playing magic pranks on his neighbors means that circles or templars should exist. But it's easy to see how Cullen would come to that conclusion as a kid.

There were also a few templars in Honnleath, serving at the local Chantry (I wonder how they got on with Wilhelm). Cullen begged them to teach him and they humored him. When he was 13, he came to the attention of a visiting Knight Captain who offered him a place as a templar recruit. It truly goes to show how polarizing of a character Cullen is that there are people in fandom who blame him for this, but I've seen it said more than once that Cullen is a bad person for ever wanting to be a templar. To that I say, come on, guys. Be serious. He was a child. Yes #acab, but it's very normal for kids to play cops and robbers and to want to be a cop. More importantly, Cullen was a commoner, the second oldest child of farmers with 4 children. They had mouths to feed. Cullen was being offered food and board and a job with career prospects. In fact, becoming a templar is one of the very few avenues of social/class mobility available to commoners in Thedas. And it's not like the secrets of the Order - the effects of lyrium addiction or what happens during a mage's harrowing - are well known to the public. To the average person, templars are knights who protect the public from "wicked" magic. It's very normal to want to be one.

Kinloch Hold

Shortly after finishing his training, Cullen was assigned to guard mages at the Ferelden Circle. He would have been about 19 or 20, despite looking 45 in Origins.

Surana/Amell

In world states with a female mage Warden, he develops a crush on her while she's still an apprentice. This is unambiguously terrible for her. As a prisoner, the last thing you need is your guard crushing on you. Surana/Amell has every reason to fear what he might do to her, whether he would listen if she tried to refuse him, whether she might be blamed for "encouraging" him etc. It's an awful situation created by the existence of the circle system itself and one of the many reasons it should be abolished. But Cullen really isn't being malicious here. He hasn't taken social studies classes, no one has explained to him about power imbalance in relationships. He does know that sexual and romantic relationships between templars and mages are not allowed. And that's why he isn't pursuing anything of the sort and turns you down if you flirt with him. He just has a crush and is terrible at hiding it to the point that the whole circle knows (which makes the fact that he is chosen to stand guard over the mage Warden's harrowing interesting, to say the least, and I 100% believe that it was intended as some kind of test of loyalty by Greagoir). Surana/Amell has every reason to worry over his intentions (and those of his superiors), but we the players are never given any indication that he has bad intentions. Not in the game, anyway.

Cullen's writer for Origins, Sheryl Chee, has said that she always saw him as someone who would rape the mage Warden, but even she herself admits "of course, that's not canon". She is speaking about people's tendency to romanticize Cullen/mage!Warden and saying there would be nothing romantic about the consummation of that relationship. I would agree, if we were talking about real people here. Sex between a prisoner and guard can not truly be fully consensual. But this is a fictional relationship between some pixels, people can ship whatever Toxic TM, Problematic TM mess they like and the world won't end. And if Chee really meant for Cullen to come across as a major creep upon us first meeting him, then for me she failed at conveying that. The situation is inherently creepy, but Cullen just seems kind of awkward to me and to many other players. Of course, it's possible to have a different interpretation. Clearly, some people did find him creepy, because I've seen it stated. It also comes down to how much value you as a player give to writer intent. But I've seen people say that Cullen is canonically a rapist because of this and, again, come on, guys! That's so incredibly unserious.

Broken Circle

Finally, yes, Cullen does say downright awful things to and about the mage Warden later, during Broken Circle, as well as calling for the circle to be annulled. I would point out, however, that he does so immediately after being tortured, including being deprived of food, water and lyrium. He clearly isn't at his best here. And as regards the mage Warden, the things he says - that his attraction to her, "a mage of all things", is wrong and was an "ill advised infatuation" that the demons then used against him - it's all just bog-standard Thedosian bigotry, the sort of stuff you will pick up just by living and don't need to actively learn, but do need to actively unlearn. Even in real life, there are more people who never rise above their upbringing than there are those who do. Does that make it alright? Of course not! But it's easy to see why Cullen would fall back on the familiarity of it when hurting and scared. It's easy to see how he might hate himself for having a forbidden crush after it was used against him by his torturers, might even blame himself and think that if only he had been a better templar and not tempted by "that wicked mage temptress" then the demons would have had nothing on him. Is it good thinking? No. But not everyone can be a perfect victim.

The mages, of course, have to be perfect victims, their survival depends on it. And it's valid to point out how unfair that is. Irving can not allow himself to appear traumatized or he and every other mage in the tower might be killed. And his composure as he speaks to Greagoir is admirable. However, he does have a few decades of life experience on Cullen. And the problem here isn't Cullen breaking down and raving, it's the fact that the mages can't. All of them, the mages and Cullen, should have received more care than they did after their ordeal.

I have seen arguments over how long the torture lasted, with some saying months and others saying it couldn't have been more than a day and was "basically a harrowing." Leliana says that Cullen has clearly been denied food and water and is dehydrated when the gang finds him, but that doesn't really tell us much in a world of magic, where people have been known to live for years without either (Maric, for example). Cullen himself says in DA2 that he was held for "weeks, months, I can't even say", so it was long enough for him to lose track of time, but he doesn't know how long exactly. Kester, the boat driver at the docks, says it's been "days" since anyone has been allowed into the tower. But if you ask Greagoir how long it's been since he sent for the Right of Annulment, he says it was "a while ago" and that the civil war might explain why there hasn't been a response yet, implying that he was expecting it sooner. It for sure takes more than a few days to get from Kinloch to Denerim and back. Wynne says that the trouble started after Uldred returned from Ostagar, but not how long after or when that was. How far ahead of the Warden he arrived is rather dependent on when the player chooses to start the Broken Circle quest. And then there's the fact that there are gossips talking about the Circle's "troubles" in Lothering, already. In the tower itself, we also see many decomposed corpses and Niall can't return with us from the fade because what has been "an afternoon's nap" for us has apparently been long enough for him for his body to decompose, which according to google takes anywhere from weeks to months. But if it has been that long, what have Wynne and the others been doing all that time, just standing there? Aaah, Origins timeline. This isn't the only instance it doesn't make sense. So... in conclusion, I don't know.

But honestly, is it that important? Torture is bad, regardless of length (a brave and controversial statement from tumblr user KuningannaSansa). I also don't think that it was the same as a harrowing, because a harrowing doesn't last that long (even if the reason for that is that the templars will kill you if you take too long, which is horrific, I'd personally take a clean death over slow torment but ymmv) and mages are capable of lucid dreaming in the fade and using their magic to fight demons, whereas Cullen would have been completely helpless once they had him in that cage. He could have fought beforehand, sure, but he and the other templars that Greagoir simply abandoned were outnumbered by Uldred's crew and the many demons they summoned, whereas during a harrowing, a demon is summoned specifically for the mage being harrowed, so it's more of a fair fight. A harrowing also doesn't involve being deprived of food and water. And if the torture did last longer than a few days then, as a templar, Cullen would have also been suffering from lyrium withdrawal. But again, even if it were the same, so what? One person's suffering does not negate another's. Putting mages through harrowing is awful, but so is what happened to Cullen.

Interlude

After the events of Broken Circle, Cullen is sent to the Chantry at Greenfell to "level out". It's unclear if he receives any sort of treatment there and what that might have looked like. However, he does not return to Kinloch Hold after, but is sent to Kirkwall instead. It's notable that Karl, a mage that Greagoir wants to be rid of, is sent to Kirkwall as well. I fully subscribe to the theory that the Gallows is the worst circle in Thedas, where people are sent as a punishment or because they're somehow inconvenient. It's about the worst place to send a templar with little experience who is already traumatized and trigger happy, but Greagoir clearly doesn't feel like dealing with the consequences of his cowardly decision to shut innocent people up with demons instead of doing his job of fighting said demons. I mention this because I've seen people who hate Cullen (and there are plenty of good reasons for that) say that Greagoir is what a "good templar" looks like and.... no, just no.

There's also that retconned epilogue slide according to which Cullen has a breakdown and kills three apprentices and becomes a dangerous madman on the loose in Ferelden. I personally find it very annoying when games retcon stuff, so I totally understand why people would be mad about that. If I had played Origins first I would probably be, as well. But it has been retconned, like it or not. You can still fit it into canon, sort of. Maybe Cullen attacked some mages in Kinloch and that was the catalyst for him finally being sent away. But you can't really demand that everyone else treat it as canon, too, or count it among Cullen's many sins.

What Even Is Canon?

As an aside, to a greater or lesser degree we all pick and choose what to consider canon within the media we consume. This is a great post about it, which made me think of Cullen immediately, before I'd even finished reading. Stop and go read it, then return here.

Done? Okay, good.

So, cards on the table. I like Cullen. Obviously. So when possible, I try to give him the benefit of the doubt. You are by no means required to do so. I completely understand having the least charitable interpretation of the actions of a character that just rubs you the wrong way. But personally, I try to use extrapolation and inference to give Cullen grace, if there is room to do so. Hopefully you'll see what I mean by that further down. Anyway...

Kirkwall

We next meet Cullen in Act 1 of DA2, at which point he is already a Knight Captain. Hawke, who escaped Ferelden at the beginning of Origins, has been in Kirkwall just over a year. So Cullen must have been promoted very quickly upon his arrival.

Promotion

He's young, 21 or 22, and full of anger and hate, with untreated PTSD and approximately a year's worth of experience as a templar. He has recently lost his parents. He's completely alone in a new city, which happens to be fucking Kirkwall. And due to the influx of blight refugees into Kirkwall, anti-ferelden bigotry is high. He's given a job he's insanely unqualified for. That must be not only stressful, but isolating. We know he shared a room with Samson when he first arrived, but one assumes the Knight Captain would have his own quarters. And he is not one of the troop now, he is their boss, he has to wield authority over men and women who are older and more experienced than him and probably resent him for being promoted over them, as a foreigner no less. Not an easy situation to be in. And not something you do to someone you like or respect.

I've seen it said that Meredith promoting him over the likes of Karras and Alrik shows that Cullen was the nastiest piece of work even at a place like the Gallows, but I find that unlikely at such a young age. What it shows to me is that Karras and Alrik, while being loyal as long as they are given free reign to abuse mages, are not true believers. They don't share Meredith's fear and hatred of magic born of a traumatic past event the way Cullen does. And both are also older, have stronger personalities and aren't as easy to mold and manipulate. In fact, Meredith probably picked Cullen for the same reason she picked Viscount Dumar - respectable enough face but not strong enough to challenge her. Plus, are we actually sure Karras and the other thugs like him can read? Being Knight Captain must come with at least some administrative duties. I don't think Meredith necessarily even liked Cullen at all, she just found him useful. That said, Cullen definitely admired and looked up to her.

Culpability

But regardless of how he got there, Cullen in DA2 is unquestionably a high ranking officer in charge of a concentration camp style prison and he is responsible, just after Meredith and Elthina, for everything that went on there. Whether he's aware of it all or not doesn't matter in that regard, because it's his job to be aware of it and if he isn't then he's really crap at his job. Which wouldn't be surprising, really, given how unqualified he is for it. But he is still responsible. I hate it when fans deny this by saying Cullen was just following orders. He was, but that excuse didn't fly in Nuremberg and it shouldn't fly anywhere else either, ever. One can always refuse to follow an unconscionable order. Sure, there might be consequences, but those are weighed against the results of carrying the order out. For Cullen, standing up could have led to serious consequences indeed. Samson was kicked out of the Order for smuggling a letter and forced to beg for lyrium on the streets. And we know that lyrium withdrawal is painful and can lead to death. But a truly good person would choose to take that risk rather than participate in atrocities. Standing up for what's right isn't something we do just when it's convenient and won't cost us anything. And in any case, for most of DA2 Cullen had no desire to challenge Meredith in the first place.

So how much was Cullen aware of? As Knight Captain, he should have been aware of a fair bit, if not quite everything. There are always things underlings keep from their bosses, after all. But then, according to Inquisition, he never knew about the most serious abuses. We got to square that somehow.

As mentioned above, we all pick and choose our canon to some extent. But some things are beyond doubt. Cullen must have been aware of mages being whipped, because whipping posts were placed in the Gallows courtyard for all to see. Of course, people in universe might not blame him at all for failing to stop that or for participating in it, because Thedas is a quasi medieval setting where corporal punishment is the norm. And punishing mages who break the rules is just what templars are for. However, Cullen would have also known about the misuse of the Rite of Tranquility at the Gallows. Not that there's ever an acceptable use for it - removing someone's capacity for emotion is a horrific human rights violation - but within Thedas it is considered acceptable in certain circumstances and not it others. It is against Chantry law to make harrowed mages tranquil, yet that happened more than once at the Gallows and it must have been public knowledge because some kind of paperwork apparently gets filled out about it. Probably they didn't always bother with it, but we hear ambient dialogue of a mage saying that an order form has been turned in to have her made tranquil. So that's a concrete crime that Cullen presided over. He knew about Maddox for certain, as we learn in Inquisition, as well as others who were made tranquil over "lesser offences" than smuggling a letter.

We learn his reasoning during the Tranquil Solution questline, where he says that "the Rite of Tranquility was created so mages need not be killed out of hand for a threat they might pose" and that "there is an argument to be made for applying it more widely". He fears mages and that fear has turned into hatred and dehumanization. To Cullen, after his experiences at Kinloch, all mages are abominations in waiting and it's best to have the "troublesome" ones made tranquil before they inevitably turn. He does also say that "the Harrowing has served us well for centuries" yet adds "it will be up to mages themselves whether they push us to more stringent measures". This shows clearly that while Cullen may not support Alrik's plan to make all mages tranquil, he does support tranquility as punishment, which is against Chantry law. That is why he never objected to making harrowed mages tranquil. Those mages broke circle rules and thus "proved" themselves to be "dangerous". The fact that his trauma explains his worldview doesn't mean it's a valid excuse for his actions.

When it comes to the activities of Alrik, Karras etc, things get murkier. Victims would most likely not report other templars to the Knight Captain who is known to fear and hate mages. We, as Hawke, overhear ambient dialogue from mages and tranquil, but I've always seen that as a cry for help meant for Hawke's ears. It's not like mages can come up to Hawke and talk to them directly, we also know from ambient dialogue that they would be whipped for that. And I don't see Cullen interacting with the tranquil much, if at all. As for Karras and Alrik, they were probably not spending a lot of time with a prudish young senior officer. We know Alrik had a posse of his own lickspittles, anyway.

Okay, you might say, but he must have overheard things, right? Mages talk among themselves. And Orsino in his capacity as First Enchanter or one of the more sympathetic templars like Thrask might have come to him with worrying rumors. And to that I say.... yeah. Logically, you'd expect so. And I fully understand people who go with this reading. Yet there is no hard proof of it in DA2 and in Inquisition we're told that Cullen didn't know.

This is where we need to pick and choose which version of canon to believe. Either you believe Cullen knew and is lying about it and the Inquisition is covering it up for PR reasons or you believe he managed to miss it somehow. The latter is certainly what the writers intended, at least by the time of writing Inquisition. I also genuinely find it more interesting, since the narrative doesn't need Cullen to be yet another fully irredeemable sadistic templar, we already have Alrik and Karras for that. Cullen is more interesting to me as an exploration of institutional harm and how responsibility for it is shared also by those who don't directly participate, either because they fail to notice due to privilege or refuse to believe "them" over "us". Cullen is still responsible, but for causing serious harm through negligence rather than active participation in rape.

However, if we take the writers at their word and assume that Cullen never knew about the worst abuses in the Gallows, how could he have possibly missed it? This is where extrapolation comes into it. My personal headcanon is that he was on a very high dosage of lyrium during his time at Kirkwall. Lyrium is a mind altering substance which causes memory issues (as well as increased aggression and paranoia, truly great qualities for prison guards to have). Cullen says in Inquisition that his nightmares are worse without lyrium, so it's not at all impossible that he was consuming a lot of it during DA2 to cope with his trauma and walking around the Gallows high as a kite. He did also manage to miss apostates carrying staves right under his nose, after all. Given the aforementioned aggression and paranoia, it's easy to see Meredith encourage excessive lyrium use in her templars, as well. Note that Samson, also, has an unusually high tolerance for it. You might say I am making excuses for Cullen here, and I am in a way, in order to explain away the contradictions in the writing, but at the same time, given the lack of actual proof either way, saying that Cullen definitely knew about the rapes is as much of a bad faith reading as mine is a good faith one. I will let you have yours but you got to let me have mine.

Kirkwall Is Just Like That

Cullen also had a lot on his plate in DA2, like his recruits being kidnapped by a bunch of nonsensically evil blood mages with bad lipstick. Which brings me to Kirkwall and DA2 as a whole.

Now I love all 3 games (Veilguard doesn't exist for me), but for various reasons I prefer DAO and DAI to DA2. I also feel like DAO and DAI are more tonally similar and DA2 is the outlier. For example, in DAO and DAI you can have a bad ending or a good one, but in DA2 things go to shit regardless of what you do. The violence is also ramped up in DA2 and the depiction of the circle system is a lot more heavy handed. DA2 isn't a retcon in that sense, the circles were always awful, but the awfulness felt more grounded, more insidious, actually more threatening in how institutional and semi hidden it was in Origins. DA2 sometimes goes so over the top with it that I can't take it seriously.

Like, what's up with all the random crazy blood mages with bad lipstick who seemingly do evil shit just for the sake of being evil? It's just lazy writing, frankly. They wanted to present the issue as two sided but didn't bother fleshing these characters or their motives out at all. So I just can't take them seriously. Someone could easily point to these blood mages in DA2 and say "see, that's why templars should exist" and I would just honestly ignore that because that woman with the lipstick is so ridiculous that I'd rather believe Varric just flat out made her up for extra drama.

And I feel the same way about some of the templar crimes. I don't have a problem believing that someone like Arik exists and is able to hide behind a "respectable" institution. That's perfectly in line with real life. But I actually have to suspend my disbelief a bit to buy that the templars are allowed to get away with stuff like sending "death squads" to harass non mage citizens in the city itself. Such blatant violence out in the open is something even people who want to turn a blind eye would not be able to look away from and is flat out just unwise from a PR standpoint.

So I have one more extrapolation to make. There is in fact a canon explanation for why Kirkwall has such a high number of seemingly mad blood mages. The veil is thin in Kirkwall, because of the slave quarries, where a lot of suffering took place during Tevinter times, and because some magisters were actively trying to bring it down. And under ground we have Corhypheus and red lyrium. I would extrapolate that this affects not just the mages, but templars, too. And all the other disturbed characters we meet in DA2, for that matter, like the various serial killers. Not that all those templars and serial killers would have definitely been perfectly nice people otherwise, but there does seem to be something about Kirkwall that brings out the worst in people. That ought to be kept in mind when we discuss Cullen's time there.

Turning Against Meredith

In conclusion, Cullen was 100% a villain in DA2. Despite any mitigating circumstances, he was aware of and complicit in some heinous stuff. We don't know if he ever personally whipped a mage or whether that was considered too lowly a task for the Knight Captain, but he would have given the orders, signed the paperwork. And he didn't object to any of it until it was far too late.

He could have spoken out against the illegal tranquility, at the very least, given that he knew that to be against Chantry law, which it was his job to uphold. He wouldn't even really have been going against the Order by making sure that they follow their own rules. In practice, of course, Meredith and Elthina would have seen it that way. But there were other steps available to Cullen. He could have written to the Divine or just resigned and refused to participate, at a minimum. Instead, Cullen let his fear and hatred rule him and supported the use of tranquility as punishment. He did grow increasingly disillusioned with Meredith's leadership over the course of the game and began to doubt her sanity, but he still didn't stand up to her.

Other templars objected and worked secretly with mages to overthrow Meredith. Of course, that subplot suffers badly from the above mentioned over the top writing of DA2, with people doing uncharacteristically evil and stupid things just to further the plot. The kidnapping of Hawke's sibling and Grace's refusal to stand down made it so the player can't really side with the conspirators. And because of that we can't truly say that Cullen should have participated in the conspiracy if he wanted to improve things and wasn't happy with Meredith, because that whole thing was a badly organized mess from start to finish and only made things worse.

At the end of that quest, Cullen says of Alain that he was "one of them, apart from a convenient last minute change of heart", yet he must put in a good word for Alain anyway, since Alain is not made tranquil and is present in the final battle, where Cullen rather ironically pulls the exact same move. If the player sides with the mages, his only issue is seemingly Meredith's intention to kill Hawke, which he should have been aware of from the start, given that Meredith told Hawke flat out that they would share the mages fate if they sided with them. But even though she says that right in front of Cullen, he is somehow surprised when she tries to go through with killing Hawke. When the writing is this rushed and full of holes, it's hard to take it fully at face value. But the fact remains that if the player sides with the mages then Cullen seemingly doesn't object to killing every mage in the Gallows, including children, which is... kind of an oversight by the writers, even in terms of giving him a full arc in DA2 at all, but especially given their intention to redeem him in the future. We do actually see Cullen argue against the wholesale killing and try to convince Meredith to spare the mages who surrender, but that is only if the player chooses to side with the templars, so many players might never see it. I'm a wuss and I can't actually bring myself to do a templar run of DA2 so I watched that scene on Youtube myself.

Interlude 2.0

Anyway, it all ends with Meredith turning into red lyrium in front of Cullen's eyes and Cullen is left to pick up the pieces. We are told that he rallied the templars that remained in the city and "restored order", whatever that means. He served as de fact Knight Commander, though what exactly his job consisted of I am not sure, since all the mages had left. Presumably, he helped support the civilian administration and the city guard, kept order in the streets and kept the remaining templars out of trouble. Being generous, we can speculate that he kept them from running off after the mages. In any case, he impressed Cassandra enough that she offered him the job of Commander of the Inquisition.

Many people have pointed out that Cullen is not qualified for the position of Commander and I agree that he is not qualified to lead a giant army, but no one expected him to have to do that when he was hired. The Inquisition was a much smaller organization before the worshippers of the Herald of Andraste began flocking to it. At that point, hiring a senior templar with fighting experience to oversee the training of new templars was entirely sensible. And in any case, he quickly proves himself capable of doing the job. Bull says he's doing well training the troops and the trebuchets he advocated for save everyone's bacon during the attack on Heaven.

What's more, hiring Cullen specifically was clever in another way. Having been Knight Captain when Kirkwall went to shit might have been a point against him as far as competence is concerned, but he had apparently proven himself capable enough in the years after Meredith. And such a stain on his record meant that the Inquisition could count on his absolute loyalty and dedication, because his career and reputation rested on their success. Cullen didn't have any better options, unlike some chevalier or whoever else they might have been considering. Nor was he interested in politics or likely to use his position for personal advancement, heedless of the needs of the organization as a whole.

The final confrontation at the Gallows took place in 9:37 and Inquisition is set in 9:41, so the character development that we are told Cullen experienced in that time is frustratingly left off screen. But to be fair, it's not like dealing with the fallout in Kirkwall would have left him with a lot of time to reflect, anyway. One must first get away from a terrible situation before they can start making sense of it. Still, we can make some guesses as to what he must have been thinking at that time in order to turn into the person we are presented with at the beginning of Inquisition - a man ashamed of certain aspects of his past, yet still fearful of and bigoted against mages.

Personally, I don't think he really got much farther than "wow, Meredith was actually bonkers, that was the red lyrium talking by the end there and I supported her despite not being gone on red lyrium myself, so what in the void does that make me? Perhaps I need to chill out a little, before I go the same way as her". And indeed when we meet him again in Inquisition he is distrustful of lyrium in general and how it affects him to the point that he has stopped taking it, even though that might kill him. He has also developed a hatred for the Chantry, speaking bitterly of it from the moment we first meet him at Heaven and seemingly happy to subvert its authority. Quite a change for the man who once spoke of serving the Chantry and the Maker as one and the same. And a bit odd, given that the Inquisition was originally meant to serve the Divine.

One wonders how exactly the whole thing was marketed to Cullen. The official aim of the Inquisition was to restore order aka stop the fighting between mages and templars, but it's unclear how exactly they intended to do that beyond just forcing mages back into circles. And in practice, the Inquisition was also a cover for the Divine to build a new military force to replace the templars she had lost in order to maintain her own power. I can see Cullen, aware that things had gone wrong at the Gallows, but unsure what to do about it, agreeing to join to stop the fighting, given it started at Kirkwall and in no small part due to his own (in)action. But he also wanted to stop taking lyrium and didn't wish to be a templar anymore and Cassandra apparently knew about it and was fine with it. Supposedly, then, this new force of the Divine was going to be at least somewhat different, not relying on lyrium to control its members or to fight magic. But in any case, what the Inquisition actually ends up being will be up to you as the player.

Inquisition

The thing about Cullen in Inquisition is that he is one of the three advisors, so he doesn't get the approval system that companions do, he will support you no matter what. Therefore, his character development over the course of the game is down to you as the player. I can see how that might frustrate some, but I actually like it. I like the idea of getting to have an effect on characters' personalities just by passing through their lives, like hardening or softening Leliana or Alistair. The trouble is that with those two, you got to make the correct dialogue choices to get them there, but with Cullen you can't argue against his worldview much or have him actually change his mind, he simply follows your lead happily while occasionally saying the most out of pocket shit that completely contradicts everything you and your personal Inquisition stand for and you can't! respond! and! that! sucks! Like, for real, I find it frustrating so I can't imagine how people who want to really lay into him must feel. When you tell him that templars are not needed at all, he responds with: "Tell that to the parents of a child who falls prey to possession. Mages cannot handle such threats alone." And I can't point out that templars would be of no help in that situation, anyway. They'd simply kill the child. And like, I could even envision a new reformed templar order training its members to rid the child of the demon without hurting them, but we can't speculate about that! Sure would be an interesting thing to discuss with Cullen, if the game allowed us to do so.

But anyway, Cullen goes along with what you do. So if you play as a libertarian mage or a mage supporting Inquisitor then Cullen ends up following a mage(supporter) and fighting alongside a bunch of free mages and going along, with minimal grumbling, with all sort of magic fuckery in various war table missions. If you play as a chantry devotee who makes people tranquil left and right, he goes along with that too. There's disagreement in the fandom whether Cullen has a meaningful redemption arc in Inquisition or not, but a lot of it comes down to whether we're talking about a Cullen serving a (pro)mage Inquisitor. If the Inquisitor is a mage hater, then Cullen certainly isn't redeeming himself by serving them. For me, personally, it's a power fantasy to drag him kicking and screaming towards team mage, and I do think that most players are likely to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the mage cause, so that's the assumption I will proceed under. The question then becomes: a) whether working with mages to save the world from demons is enough to make up for everything Cullen did and b) is it enough to show that he has changed meaningfully when the words coming out of his mouth sometimes prove otherwise.

Attitude to Mages

When we meet Cullen again in Inquisition, he has mellowed a little towards mages, but his attitude is still very much not great. He no longer blames all mages for what Uldred and his followers did to him, but he still sees all mages as a potential threat and doesn't believe they should be left without supervision. He also prefers to work with templars rather than mages to close the breach. That in itself is not necessarily a fault. It makes sense for the Inquisitor to worry about a huge amount of magic being funneled through their body and the danger that might pose to their health, at the least, and Cullen's observation that they know very little about the mark, so pouring magic into it without knowing how it will respond might not be the brightest idea, is actually super fair. But from his later comments it's clear that he's also simply still scared and suspicious of mages and doesn't want a bunch of them running around Haeven.

I actually like this, because it feels realistic. Deradicalization doesn't happen overnight, most people don't go from hateful bigot to perfectly woke ally overnight, there are stages in between. He's trying and failing often, but he IS trying. For example, when meeting a mage Inquisitor, this social disaster starts off with "so, you're from the Circle?", which is both so tone deaf as to be embarrassing and entirely in character for someone who has lived their whole life within an institution and probably doesn't have much else to talk about. When the Inquisitor calps back with "should I still be locked up like a good little mage?" Cullen backtracks hurriedly and insists that's not what he meant. I really liked this early interaction and wish they'd kept that energy throughout. Anyway, here we learn that Cullen no longer believes all mages should be locked up, though there probably aren't many besides the Herald of Andraste that he'd make the exception for.

If you ally with the mages, he will have a temper tantrum, there's no other way to call it. His main concern is, again, security. With the veil being thin because of the breach, he believes abominations are inevitable. If you then have a follow up conversation with him and ask if he has a problem working with you and the mages he has calmed down somewhat and says he was only thinking of the safety of everyone, mages included. Somehow, he still believes that templars can be of help with safety for mages, which is wild. But his concern does come off as entirely sincere, he is not simply arguing for locking mages up because he doesn't like them or see them as human beings with rights. And if you tell him to drop the matter, he does. Ultimately, if you ally with the mages, there will be 100s of them working with the Inquisition, doing magic fully unsupervised, and Cullen just... deals with it. And behold, there are no abominations!

And yet, despite that, if you ask Cullen if he is against templars now, he says: "Magic ungoverned could tear the world apart. It’s doing so now. Templars are trained and able to confront such dangers." Cullen, darling, you're sitting on top of the largest group of "ungoverned" mages in Thedas outside of Tevinter, and no one's died. And yet, I can't say as much. It's like the writers decided to make Cullen their mouthpiece for their "shades of grey" agenda, but then they're so incompetent at actually defending their own stance that they can't give us the chance to argue with them and that makes Cullen the character look stupid and erratic/inconsistently written. Like, okay, perhaps that line could be interpreted as Cullen not arguing for circles as they were so much as for some continued role in society for templars, perhaps similar to how it is in Tevinter. But in that case, we should be able to discuss what that might look like in more detail!

We do actually learn, during the same conversation, that Cullen no longer supports circles as they were ("The Circle may bring peace for a time, if only because people crave stability. But how long would it last?"). When you ask him what he would suggest instead, he comes up with some of the dumbest off the cuff shit that anyone's ever heard (Perhaps opportunities to work outside the Circle? A mixed military service, or healers’ clinics with templar support. Mages would be watched, but could pursue interests outside the Circle—neither freedom nor prison. I don’t know.). But that's okay, because he also admits that he hasn't really thought about it and doesn't know what's best beyond knowing that things have to change (I’m not sure it’s the answer, but something needs to change). And he expresses no desire to be a part of shaping any hypothetical future system in any way. He's at this point happy for someone else to figure out how mages should live and to leave him out of it. Which IS objectively best for all concerned.

So, Cullen goes from an ardent advocate for locking up all mages and tranquilizing any who put a toe out of line to someone who still thinks that freedom for mages will probably end in tears, but doesn't really care enough to try to stop it and knows he isn't the best person to shape any kind of future system anyway. And look, in a world where everyone is constantly saying insane shit with full confidence, I respect the hell out of an honest "I know that I don't know." Cullen won't be an advocate for mage rights any time soon, but he doesn't have to be and it's not his place to be, there are people better suited to that. Cullen can stay in his lane, advocating for templars.

As a side note, I do have a memory of asking Cullen at Skyhold how the training is going and he says it's better than he expected and everyone is pulling together to prevent the end of the world and mages and templars are getting along better than he expected. But for the life of me I can't find that dialogue now so I'm starting to doubt if it exists or if it's something I read in fafic haha, so if anyone knows where that is, let me know please? I do also have some mod that restores some of Cullen's deleted lines, so maybe it's that haha.

Finally, Cullen also develops something like a friendship with a mage in Inquisition. It's not Vivienne, as one might expect, given their similar views, but Dorian, who is not from the south and has not suffered in a circle, so has no reason to fear Cullen or be uncomfortable around him. Why Cullen isn't uncomfortable around a Tevinter necromancer is another matter, but the watsonian explanation is probably that their shared love of chess and Doiran's easy charm help things along. From a doylist viewpoint, the writers just wanted to stick two popular characters together and use a fun scene to help characterize them both (Cullen is good at strategy, Dorian cheats shamelessly). But the fact remains that this scene is the most relaxed and playful we see Cullen be in Inquisition, outside of his romance scenes. He appears to truly enjoy Dorian's company.

The Templar Order

Cullen's feelings towards his former Order are even more difficult to make sense of than his feelings towards mages. He says he stopped taking lyrium because he wants "nothing to do with that life", but if you question him about the order then he says that it should continue to exist and that he "respects the men and women who remain". Now, one can, of course, dislike an institution without condemning everyone who is a part of it, that's how I feel about the templars and the Chantry myself, but the feeling I have for individual templars is more akin to pity than respect. How can you respect someone who works for an institution that you've lost respect for, that has "lost its way" as Cullen says?

Cullen also says he understands the frustration some templars feel about the Chantry using them and disregarding the sacrifices they make by taking lyrium, risking their lives against demons etc. That's pretty fair, honestly. The chantry does take children who don't know any better, often orphans, and gets them addicted to lyrium, which will slowly destroy their minds, to fill its personal military police force. As a reward they get, at best, some class mobility and retirement at Val Royaux at some kind of care home for lyrium addled old templars. Not great, exactly. But then, why would you want that system to continue, Cullen? Presumably, things would have to change at least somewhat? We never get to ask him what he thinks should change about the Templar Order, which is a shame.

There is also Cullen's strongly negative reaction to you if you, as a warrior Inquisitor, choose to specialize as a templar yourself. All other characters will congratulate you on making a great choice if you choose their particular specialization, but Cullen tries to talk you out of it. He might respect the templars who remain, but he also doesn't want anyone he respects or personally cares for to become one.

My interpretation is that Cullen still feels a strong kinship with his comrades in arms and probably some nostalgia for his templar life, difficult as it sometimes was. He hasn't known anything else, so it's natural that it would be hard for him to let go completely. It is regrettable that we can't encourage him to do so in more ways than stopping lyrium. His reaction to you as the Inquisitor becoming a templar shows that deep down he knows being one is not a good thing, but most of the time he is not capable of admitting it even to himself, hence all the things he still says in favor of the Order.

Finally, yes, he wears armor with templar insignia on it, and I've seen that used as a point against him, but guys, new armor is expensive. This is a man who has a hole in his roof for over a year. He's not going to spend Inquisition resources that could be better used for tents for refugees on new greaves for himself. (This is actually the only one of the many arguments Cullen has with my personal mage Trevelyan which she actually loses, because she was raised noble and is thoughtlessly classist. She apologies, which rather shocks him, cause mostly she just yells at him and throws fireballs at his head.)

Romance

We also have to talk about Cullen's romance in relation to all of the above, because his love interest is potentially a mage.

The fact that Cullen is even capable of falling in love with a mage shows that his attitude towards mages has shifted significantly. This is especially true given the way he treats the Inquisitor as inherently above him, someone who is too good for him ("You're the Inquisitor and I didn't think it was possible.") and also more moral, the literal representative on earth of his god. The very fact that he can see a mage as the Maker's chosen means he's come a long way from the man who said that "mages are not people like you and me".

Still, there are bits of it which leave a bad taste in my mouth and which, I think, show the writers' worldview in a very unfavorable light. Namely, it's the dialogue between Cullen and a mage PC where she can ask him if he has a problem with her being a mage, to which he replies that he sees no corruption in her. First of all, "you're not like other X" is not a compliment, it's just creepy and proves that he sees you as somehow an exception to the rule, someone he puts on a pedestal, which is a place you can fall from very quickly. And, taken together with other stuff, like Bull leaving the Qun or dying, Dorian being the "one good Tevinter", Sera dismissing other elves and elven culture etc, it shows how the writers think about minorities. The only good ones are the ones who assimilates, who are the exception, who don't complain or take up the cause of their group.

I don't blame Cullen the character for the writers being Like That, just as I also give grace to Sera, Dorian etc. And I do think that it's believable for Cullen to say something like this, but we should be able to call him out on it and remind him that we are a mage like any other and have him listen and learn and evolve.

What's more, I don't actually have a problem with the mage PC asking that question, since Cullen did go through a traumatic experience that makes him scared of magic and magic is part of who she is. It reads like asking a woman who has been raped by a man whether she's okay being in a relationship with a man, being touched by one etc. But Cullen shouldn't be the only one asked. He should also show concern for her comfort. More so, since she's the party with less power in a templar/mage dynamic and may have potentially experienced horrific abuse at the hands of templars, too, depending on how you choose to play her. She should have all sorts of legitimate concerns like, what if the Circles come back, would he expect her to join one? What about their children, if they're mages? Now, I don't think Cullen would want that at all, but these things should be discussed before their relationship goes any further. It would give Cullen the chance to reassure her and prove he has changed. Why is Cullen the only one whose feeling get consideration? Why is he denied the chance to offer consideration and reassurance in turn?

Cullen does have another line about his relationship with a mage Inquisitor, which I like much better: "I was angry. For years, that anger blinded me. I'm not proud of the man that made me. The way I saw mages... I'm not sure I would have cared about you and the thought of that sickens me". It's honest, accepting of fault and makes it clear that he knows that his former beliefs were wrong and something he should be ashamed of. It's also worth noting that we get this line after successfully convincing him to continue with his weaning himself off of lyrium and he is feeling much better in that scene. So they do know how to write this correctly, the potential is there! Ugh!

Before moving on I want to also quickly (ha!) address some of the criticism I have seen directed at Cullen in relation to his romance.

Firstly, yes he's race and gender locked. We know that it's because of time constraints, so dismissing him as racist for that alone is simply not serious analysis. But it is still interesting to examine why his preferences are what they are, as long as we don't treat him as an inherently awful person for it. We all have ingrained racial and gender and other biases, like fatphobia etc, in real life. It's good for us to try and unlearn these biases, but having them in the first place is normal and does not make us unworthy of love. Same is true for Cullen the character. But it's also totally fair to ignore the racelock and ship him with your qunari Inquisitor, anyway.

To me, Cullen is also bisexual. You don't have to agree. But there was that one poll which asked if we see him as bi, as the writers originally intended, and SO MANY people answered with basically "he's straight because I don't like him". Being queer has nothing to do with being a good person or being likeable to you specifically and thinking that is insanely biphobic, actually. I was honestly taken aback, which is quite something, given the shit I've seen in various fandoms.

Finally, I've seen a few people say that people who like Cullen and his romance should simply romance someone else, whom they deem a better person than Cullen. Usually that's Alistair or Blackwall, given that Alistair is similarly an awkward former templar and Blackwall arguably has a better redemption arc. To that I say, characters aren't interchangeable. Yes, Alistair is awkward like Cullen, but there the similarities end. Alistair abandons you over Loghain, while Cullen is loyal quite literally to a fault. You can go crazy, he'll still follow you. Cullen is serious and incredibly hardworking to the point the Inquisitor can ask him if he ever talks about anything other than work. Alistair deflects with humor and runs from responsibility. Wynne also does his laundry for him. It might not be exactly fair to compare Alistair at 20 to Cullen at 30, but these are the ages at which we get to romance them. And a 20yo who can't wash his own socks is just not the least bit attractive to me. Whereas Cullen reads as someone I can rely on to make life easier for me as the Inquisitor. And Blackwall might express more regret for his past actions than Cullen does, but he also hides his identity for a big chunk of the game and to me that's just a personal pet peeve. Cullen's complete lack of a poker face and just blurting out every thought that pops into his head is what endears him to my autism. My point is, people romance different characters for different reasons, it's not as simple as who the least problematic hot guy is.

Redemption or Lack Thereof

So, during the course of what is usually called his redemption arc, Cullen stops being a templar and shows himself willing to work with mages, makes friends with a mage and even potentially falls in love with one. He also acknowledges that the Circle system needs to change and no longer believes in locking mages up, at least not all of them and all the time. And he doesn't think his opinion is the one that really matters, here, anyway. But he still worries that unsupervised mages might turn into abominations. And despite his many grievances, he still has some fondness for the templars. Is that enough to redeem him? Well, depends on what that means to you. It is enough, for me, to show that he has evolved in his thinking and become a better person. But redemption has another component to it, a rather crucial component - the making of amends. And that is pretty much absent from Cullen's story in Inquisition. We do not see him facing up to the mages from the Gallows that he personally wronged or doing anything personally to improve the lot of mages, specifically.

What's more, conversations in which he admits to his guilt are few and far between and the full enormity of what took place in DA2 is never acknowledged. This isn't just a Cullen problem, but a problem of Inquisition in general. Other characters like Cassandra, Varric etc also speak vaguely of the events of DA2, so it seems like the writers would like us to forget what they wrote and retcon things a bit in our mind as not being "quite that bad". Now, for me... I do that anyway, as I explained above. DA2 is just too OTT for me, personally. So for me, this kind of works. But what I do in the privacy of my own mind is my business. The fact remains they they wrote and released that game and it exists, so THEY shouldn't get to ignore it in their next official installment. By failing to address it, they are making the characters look more evil and stupid than they intended. Like, Cullen would look a lot better if he said "I did awful things like making mages tranquil illegally and I'm sorry and I won't do it again and I'm gonna do everything in my power to ensure that the cure for tranquility that Cassandra discovered is made public and reaches as many tranquil as possible" instead of "I have treated mages with distrust in the past" like, yeah?? Understatement of the century, buddy! His inability to face up to the enormity of his actions really undercuts his development. It would be fine for him to not be quite there yet at the start of the game, but by the end he should be able to admit what he did, given the writers wanted to redeem him.

Cullen is also never punished for any of his actions. When Loghain did his whoopsie in Origins (also because of trauma and fear, inflicted this time by Orlais) he could redeem himself by dying to kill the archdemon or by serving as a Grey Warden for the rest of his life. Cullen does also end up fighting and risking his life to defeat a great evil (demons and Corypheus, as opposed to darkspawn) but he does so at the head of an army, gaining rather than losing status in the process. Now, I'm not a very carceral person myself, so it doesn't bother me that you can't just cut Cullen's head off or throw him in jail like some people want to, I never do that to anyone anyway in any of my judgments. And Cullen getting to just move on with his life after what he did and achieve career advancement is also unfortunately very realistic, so I don't mind it as such. But I do wish we had gotten some differing perspectives on it. Like, what do the mages who ally with the inquisition think about serving under him? At least someone, somewhere ought to be grumbling about how unfair it is that the handsome blonde andrastian human is given a second chance that a mage or an elf or a qunari would never get. I don't begrudge Cullen his second chance, I think everyone deserves one, but I do understand and share the frustration people feel over the double standard never getting acknowledged.

So ultimately, no, I don't think Cullen's arc in Inquisition works as a redemption arc. If it was meant to be one, then the writers failed to do the necessary work. But I do think Cullen demonstrably improved as a person in Inquisition. His arc, to me is more about personal growth, deradicalization and identity, finding out who you are outside of the dogma you were raised with and the role you were assigned.

And, of course, there's the addiction aspect of it. I know some find it frustrating that it becomes the central aspect of Cullen's story instead of him making amends, but I actually don't mind it at all. I just think it's weirdly handled. Cullen's repeated pleas to resign are ignored and if you tell him to keep taking lyrium then he ends up as a homeless addict and Harding... kills him. Instead of like, getting him somewhere warm and giving him some soup or whatever? Taken together with how Samson is also demonized for his addiction, it just reads like the writers hate addicts.

But yeah, in conclusion, no Cullen isn't really redeemed by the end of Inquisition. Did the writers intend for him to be? Probably. But I don't follow any writer statements so I wouldn't know. In the game itself, though, I don't think they did enough to even tell us that this is how we should see him now, which is a sperate point from them failing to do the work of actually redeeming him. They do present him in a certain light, as a romantic interest, as a respected leader and an all around decent guy that people like and get along with. They have other characters compliment him and show him making a funny joke during a group card game and losing his clothes. They for sure want the player to like him and are using other characters to tell us that he's likeable. Even Cole likes him and he's an actual mind reading spirit, so if Cullen was putting on a front, he'd know. But all that shows, really, is that Cullen has grown as a person, isn't such a prick anymore and is more pleasant to be around, so people enjoy his company more and are willing to give him a chance as a friend or lover. Most of these people, crucially, did not know him prior to Inquisition. Varric did, but he wasn't really a mage in the Gallows.

I think that's a big reason for the fandom disagreements over Cullen. For some people, the fact the he isn't Like That anymore is enough to call him redeemed, and for other's it's justifiably not. I personally would call that growth, rather than redemption. It doesn't erase what he did to the mages in the Gallows. But to me, the growth is enough for my mage Inquisitor to romance him. After all, he's never done anything to her and she's a noble who doesn't really fully give a shit about other people.

Cullen's lack of a redemption arc doesn't really bother me, personally. In real life, it's also often the case that you just never get the chance to make amends, even if you'd like to. Who knows where all these mages and tranquil from Kirkwall are now, after all (and yeah, that IS fucked up on its own). Loghain's service as a Warden will also never make it up to the specific elves he sold to Tevinter from the Denerim alienage. And people who do bad things go on to live regular lives without facing any punishment all the time. I don't need my fiction to be all fairy tales where good triumphs and evil is punished justly. But I would like there to be some in universe acknowledgment that what is happening is privilege working in Cullen's favor. I am disappointed that we don't get that. And of course, I would be very happy to get a proper redemption arc, that would be better than what we did get. But what I have is enough for me to see potential and use as a baseline to further build on myself.

I also just think that, even if you've done something terrible, you don't owe it to your victims to have a shitty life forever and ever. For one thing, that won't actually help anyone or bring the dead back. So to me, Cullen doesn't have to make amends to be deserving of a good job or a wife and friends and a happy ending. Just improving as a person is enough. I understand why it might not be for others, though, or why some people might think he hasn't improved enough, since his arc in Inquisition is ultimately not very well written. But what else is new lol, the writing has its problems in all the DA games.

Finally, @reformedvillain, you said what really bothers you about it is the unfairness of Cullen getting this treatment from the writers while someone like Anders is constantly villainized. And yeah, that's true. But that doesn't really make me mad at Cullen. I like Anders too and I am annoyed that the writers play favorites. Even if having them is unavoidable, a good writer should not let it show so blatantly. But that is a problem with dragon age more widely and how the writers want to make things more morally grey than they actually are.

[ac3tinium]

this was such a tasty read!! kudos to you for putting together such a lengthy, well-written post. like the other people who reblogged with their thought and comments, I am supposed to be in bed and can only hope to be half as coherent as you are. alas, here are some words from an internet stranger about fictional man in video game.

I love your point about how mages have to be perfect victims, yet Cullen doesn’t because he benefits from privilege. potentially another polarizing factor in the events at Kinloch is that he was tortured by blood mages using demons, and not just incidentally by the demons themselves. so at this point going into Kirkwall, instead of becoming disillusioned with the Templar Order and his role as a protector, his fears are reinforced by the existing institutions and broad societal views.

I think Meredith absolutely took advantage of this, and you bring up so many good points about his vulnerability factors here! I find Cullen’s character way more fascinating if read as naiveté leading to negligence, since we already have so many villains by malice, and I feel like some of his tactless conversation blunders supports this read.

as for Kirkwall just being Like That, the red lyrium and thinned Veil reminds me of real-world parallels to heavy metal poisoning around improper chemical waste disposal sites. and as for the aftermath, World of Thedas 2 states that some loyalist mages remained after the rebellion, and Cullen rallied the templars for their protection as well as relief efforts throughout the city, which indeed impressed Cassandra. and there are quite a few instances of characters praising his military command in Inquisition, even though he wasn’t necessarily qualified for the position it ended up becoming when he was originally hired.

I do feel like his position as an advisor to a player with agency doesn’t really lend itself well to a redemption arc, either narratively or mechanically, so it makes sense that it isn’t the focus for his personal quest. the playerbase might want him to make amends, but why would the Inquisitor, amidst the threat of the Breach and Coryphesus, be the one to witness it? even if you play as a mage, you aren’t from the Gallows or even Kinloch. and it’s hard to say how much of a real, justified threat magic poses when the rpg gameplay elements present an inconsistent picture to lore.

now! as for his attitude to the Templar Order and those that remain, I interpreted it as him having respect for the purpose, not the current reality, of the Templar Order (to protect against the dangers of magic) and those who joined and remain for that purpose (because there’s no real way out— except trading out for red lyrium or risking death by withdrawal). he does actually say that he wants the Order to change, particularly in regards to having a safer way to leave, so I don’t think it’s accurate to say he wants the system to continue as it is. which is also why he’s so strongly against an Inquisitor choosing the Templar specialization, when things haven’t yet changed.

overall though, I hope it’s clear that I majorly share your opinion! and appreciate your write-up!

[kuningannasansa]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going for with the veil and red lyrium, I wanted to mention ancient Rome and the led in their water, but with so much to write I forgot lol.

I have not read WoT so I didn't know that! Insane to me that any mage anyone at all but especially mages would willingly stay in Kirkwall, but I guess that does go to prove that, with Meredith out of the way, Cullen got hold of the templars and stopped the annulment, that's good to know!

And yeah, I agree, if there were people in Inquisition calling on me to imprison him or sack him or whatever, I would tell them to fuck off. The sky is cracked open, I'm not going to create more problem for myself by getting rid of my general. But I do wish there were dissenters, though! Would make it more realistic.

I don't personally think magic poses any more of a threat than any other weapon. It's people who kill people, magic is just one way to do it. And crime is crime, a mage who kills someone with a fireball is no better or worse than a regular person doing it with a torch. If we aren't locking up knights in advance of them potentially skewering someone with a sword, we shouldn't do it to mages either. Plus, unlike a sword, magic actually has other uses besides causing harm, like healing and building things.

And hey, thanks, that's another thing I forgot about, but yeah he does say it should be easier for templars to leave.

[ac3tinium]

if you want to read the section on Cullen from WoT, someone posted screenshots on tumblr of it!

the fact that no one has an issue with Cullen in-game definitely contributes to some of the negativity/disappointment/anger felt by the playerbase, especially by the people who take on bad faith interpretations of his character. I don’t know much about the writer/dev side of his Inquisition appearance either, but I can imagine that it’s a result of wanting to market him for broad appeal, while simultaneously shooting the writing in the foot by shying away from controversy. in-game and irl, a character like Cullen benefits from privilege.

like zevran arainai says in Origins, “magic can kill. knives can kill. even small children launched at great speed could kill” (love that guy). based on the emotionality and unpredictability often involved in mages coming into their magic, though, I would compare the danger to something chemical or explosive, rather than something straightforward and solid like a sword. probably not inherently more dangerous than someone intentionally trying to cause damage via other means, but easier to case unintentional damage with, and imminently available at all times. not to say that the Templar Order goes about it in the right way (evidently), but I do think Cullen has a point about not letting magic go completely unchecked that isn’t just from old prejudice and fear. how justified anyone thinks this point is, is then largely determinant on how one interprets the threat of magic to really be.

and hey, thanks for engaging with me about this! it’s nice to have this conversation :) hope you have a great day!!

[kuningannasansa]

Cullenposting

I have a lot of thoughts about Cullen. I also struggle in the fandom because many of his fans are templar/circle supporters (and real life conservatives, yikes, dni!) or whitewash him to a degree I just can't agree with, but haters often can't bring themselves to have any sympathy for him at all. So I decided to write down some of my thoughts on him, really just to explain how I personally view his character, and it got really long. Like, reeeeeeeally.

In my defense, at least two people expressed an interest in this so here @albaharu and @reformedvillain. I'm sorry it's an actual dissertation, I won't be mad if you end up not reading it all lol.

Childhood

Cullen was born in the village of Honnleath in Ferelden a decade after the end of the Orlesian occupation. Maric was King and Loghain was a hero and an example of how even a commoner could rise high in Ferelden, specifically through military service. Wilhelm, a mage who had fought with Maric against the orlesians and been rewarded with the title of Court Enchanter as well as freedom from the Circle, was living right there in Cullen's village with his family and Shale, a golem he had found in the deep roads. According to Shale, Wilhelm liked to use his powers to frighten the villagers before Shale supposedly killed him. We don't know exactly when Wilhelm died so we can't say whether Cullen met him, but at the very least he would have heard other villagers talking about the mage who used his magic against them and then was killed by his own golem. This might explain why a young Cullen, who we are told wanted to become a templar in order to help people, might see joining the order as a way to protect not only non magical people from mages but mages "from themselves" as well. Note, I am NOT saying that Wilhelm playing magic pranks on his neighbors means that circles or templars should exist. But it's easy to see how Cullen would come to that conclusion as a kid.

There were also a few templars in Honnleath, serving at the local Chantry (I wonder how they got on with Wilhelm). Cullen begged them to teach him and they humored him. When he was 13, he came to the attention of a visiting Knight Captain who offered him a place as a templar recruit. It truly goes to show how polarizing of a character Cullen is that there are people in fandom who blame him for this, but I've seen it said more than once that Cullen is a bad person for ever wanting to be a templar. To that I say, come on, guys. Be serious. He was a child. Yes #acab, but it's very normal for kids to play cops and robbers and to want to be a cop. More importantly, Cullen was a commoner, the second oldest child of farmers with 4 children. They had mouths to feed. Cullen was being offered food and board and a job with career prospects. In fact, becoming a templar is one of the very few avenues of social/class mobility available to commoners in Thedas. And it's not like the secrets of the Order - the effects of lyrium addiction or what happens during a mage's harrowing - are well known to the public. To the average person, templars are knights who protect the public from "wicked" magic. It's very normal to want to be one.

Kinloch Hold

Shortly after finishing his training, Cullen was assigned to guard mages at the Ferelden Circle. He would have been about 19 or 20, despite looking 45 in Origins.

Surana/Amell

In world states with a female mage Warden, he develops a crush on her while she's still an apprentice. This is unambiguously terrible for her. As a prisoner, the last thing you need is your guard crushing on you. Surana/Amell has every reason to fear what he might do to her, whether he would listen if she tried to refuse him, whether she might be blamed for "encouraging" him etc. It's an awful situation created by the existence of the circle system itself and one of the many reasons it should be abolished. But Cullen really isn't being malicious here. He hasn't taken social studies classes, no one has explained to him about power imbalance in relationships. He does know that sexual and romantic relationships between templars and mages are not allowed. And that's why he isn't pursuing anything of the sort and turns you down if you flirt with him. He just has a crush and is terrible at hiding it to the point that the whole circle knows (which makes the fact that he is chosen to stand guard over the mage Warden's harrowing interesting, to say the least, and I 100% believe that it was intended as some kind of test of loyalty by Greagoir). Surana/Amell has every reason to worry over his intentions (and those of his superiors), but we the players are never given any indication that he has bad intentions. Not in the game, anyway.

Cullen's writer for Origins, Sheryl Chee, has said that she always saw him as someone who would rape the mage Warden, but even she herself admits "of course, that's not canon". She is speaking about people's tendency to romanticize Cullen/mage!Warden and saying there would be nothing romantic about the consummation of that relationship. I would agree, if we were talking about real people here. Sex between a prisoner and guard can not truly be fully consensual. But this is a fictional relationship between some pixels, people can ship whatever Toxic TM, Problematic TM mess they like and the world won't end. And if Chee really meant for Cullen to come across as a major creep upon us first meeting him, then for me she failed at conveying that. The situation is inherently creepy, but Cullen just seems kind of awkward to me and to many other players. Of course, it's possible to have a different interpretation. Clearly, some people did find him creepy, because I've seen it stated. It also comes down to how much value you as a player give to writer intent. But I've seen people say that Cullen is canonically a rapist because of this and, again, come on, guys! That's so incredibly unserious.

Broken Circle

Finally, yes, Cullen does say downright awful things to and about the mage Warden later, during Broken Circle, as well as calling for the circle to be annulled. I would point out, however, that he does so immediately after being tortured, including being deprived of food, water and lyrium. He clearly isn't at his best here. And as regards the mage Warden, the things he says - that his attraction to her, "a mage of all things", is wrong and was an "ill advised infatuation" that the demons then used against him - it's all just bog-standard Thedosian bigotry, the sort of stuff you will pick up just by living and don't need to actively learn, but do need to actively unlearn. Even in real life, there are more people who never rise above their upbringing than there are those who do. Does that make it alright? Of course not! But it's easy to see why Cullen would fall back on the familiarity of it when hurting and scared. It's easy to see how he might hate himself for having a forbidden crush after it was used against him by his torturers, might even blame himself and think that if only he had been a better templar and not tempted by "that wicked mage temptress" then the demons would have had nothing on him. Is it good thinking? No. But not everyone can be a perfect victim.

The mages, of course, have to be perfect victims, their survival depends on it. And it's valid to point out how unfair that is. Irving can not allow himself to appear traumatized or he and every other mage in the tower might be killed. And his composure as he speaks to Greagoir is admirable. However, he does have a few decades of life experience on Cullen. And the problem here isn't Cullen breaking down and raving, it's the fact that the mages can't. All of them, the mages and Cullen, should have received more care than they did after their ordeal.

I have seen arguments over how long the torture lasted, with some saying months and others saying it couldn't have been more than a day and was "basically a harrowing." Leliana says that Cullen has clearly been denied food and water and is dehydrated when the gang finds him, but that doesn't really tell us much in a world of magic, where people have been known to live for years without either (Maric, for example). Cullen himself says in DA2 that he was held for "weeks, months, I can't even say", so it was long enough for him to lose track of time, but he doesn't know how long exactly. Kester, the boat driver at the docks, says it's been "days" since anyone has been allowed into the tower. But if you ask Greagoir how long it's been since he sent for the Right of Annulment, he says it was "a while ago" and that the civil war might explain why there hasn't been a response yet, implying that he was expecting it sooner. It for sure takes more than a few days to get from Kinloch to Denerim and back. Wynne says that the trouble started after Uldred returned from Ostagar, but not how long after or when that was. How far ahead of the Warden he arrived is rather dependent on when the player chooses to start the Broken Circle quest. And then there's the fact that there are gossips talking about the Circle's "troubles" in Lothering, already. In the tower itself, we also see many decomposed corpses and Niall can't return with us from the fade because what has been "an afternoon's nap" for us has apparently been long enough for him for his body to decompose, which according to google takes anywhere from weeks to months. But if it has been that long, what have Wynne and the others been doing all that time, just standing there? Aaah, Origins timeline. This isn't the only instance it doesn't make sense. So... in conclusion, I don't know.

But honestly, is it that important? Torture is bad, regardless of length (a brave and controversial statement from tumblr user KuningannaSansa). I also don't think that it was the same as a harrowing, because a harrowing doesn't last that long (even if the reason for that is that the templars will kill you if you take too long, which is horrific, I'd personally take a clean death over slow torment but ymmv) and mages are capable of lucid dreaming in the fade and using their magic to fight demons, whereas Cullen would have been completely helpless once they had him in that cage. He could have fought beforehand, sure, but he and the other templars that Greagoir simply abandoned were outnumbered by Uldred's crew and the many demons they summoned, whereas during a harrowing, a demon is summoned specifically for the mage being harrowed, so it's more of a fair fight. A harrowing also doesn't involve being deprived of food and water. And if the torture did last longer than a few days then, as a templar, Cullen would have also been suffering from lyrium withdrawal. But again, even if it were the same, so what? One person's suffering does not negate another's. Putting mages through harrowing is awful, but so is what happened to Cullen.

Interlude

After the events of Broken Circle, Cullen is sent to the Chantry at Greenfell to "level out". It's unclear if he receives any sort of treatment there and what that might have looked like. However, he does not return to Kinloch Hold after, but is sent to Kirkwall instead. It's notable that Karl, a mage that Greagoir wants to be rid of, is sent to Kirkwall as well. I fully subscribe to the theory that the Gallows is the worst circle in Thedas, where people are sent as a punishment or because they're somehow inconvenient. It's about the worst place to send a templar with little experience who is already traumatized and trigger happy, but Greagoir clearly doesn't feel like dealing with the consequences of his cowardly decision to shut innocent people up with demons instead of doing his job of fighting said demons. I mention this because I've seen people who hate Cullen (and there are plenty of good reasons for that) say that Greagoir is what a "good templar" looks like and.... no, just no.

There's also that retconned epilogue slide according to which Cullen has a breakdown and kills three apprentices and becomes a dangerous madman on the loose in Ferelden. I personally find it very annoying when games retcon stuff, so I totally understand why people would be mad about that. If I had played Origins first I would probably be, as well. But it has been retconned, like it or not. You can still fit it into canon, sort of. Maybe Cullen attacked some mages in Kinloch and that was the catalyst for him finally being sent away. But you can't really demand that everyone else treat it as canon, too, or count it among Cullen's many sins.

What Even Is Canon?

As an aside, to a greater or lesser degree we all pick and choose what to consider canon within the media we consume. This is a great post about it, which made me think of Cullen immediately, before I'd even finished reading. Stop and go read it, then return here.

Done? Okay, good.

So, cards on the table. I like Cullen. Obviously. So when possible, I try to give him the benefit of the doubt. You are by no means required to do so. I completely understand having the least charitable interpretation of the actions of a character that just rubs you the wrong way. But personally, I try to use extrapolation and inference to give Cullen grace, if there is room to do so. Hopefully you'll see what I mean by that further down. Anyway...

Kirkwall

We next meet Cullen in Act 1 of DA2, at which point he is already a Knight Captain. Hawke, who escaped Ferelden at the beginning of Origins, has been in Kirkwall just over a year. So Cullen must have been promoted very quickly upon his arrival.

Promotion

He's young, 21 or 22, and full of anger and hate, with untreated PTSD and approximately a year's worth of experience as a templar. He has recently lost his parents. He's completely alone in a new city, which happens to be fucking Kirkwall. And due to the influx of blight refugees into Kirkwall, anti-ferelden bigotry is high. He's given a job he's insanely unqualified for. That must be not only stressful, but isolating. We know he shared a room with Samson when he first arrived, but one assumes the Knight Captain would have his own quarters. And he is not one of the troop now, he is their boss, he has to wield authority over men and women who are older and more experienced than him and probably resent him for being promoted over them, as a foreigner no less. Not an easy situation to be in. And not something you do to someone you like or respect.

I've seen it said that Meredith promoting him over the likes of Karras and Alrik shows that Cullen was the nastiest piece of work even at a place like the Gallows, but I find that unlikely at such a young age. What it shows to me is that Karras and Alrik, while being loyal as long as they are given free reign to abuse mages, are not true believers. They don't share Meredith's fear and hatred of magic born of a traumatic past event the way Cullen does. And both are also older, have stronger personalities and aren't as easy to mold and manipulate. In fact, Meredith probably picked Cullen for the same reason she picked Viscount Dumar - respectable enough face but not strong enough to challenge her. Plus, are we actually sure Karras and the other thugs like him can read? Being Knight Captain must come with at least some administrative duties. I don't think Meredith necessarily even liked Cullen at all, she just found him useful. That said, Cullen definitely admired and looked up to her.

Culpability

But regardless of how he got there, Cullen in DA2 is unquestionably a high ranking officer in charge of a concentration camp style prison and he is responsible, just after Meredith and Elthina, for everything that went on there. Whether he's aware of it all or not doesn't matter in that regard, because it's his job to be aware of it and if he isn't then he's really crap at his job. Which wouldn't be surprising, really, given how unqualified he is for it. But he is still responsible. I hate it when fans deny this by saying Cullen was just following orders. He was, but that excuse didn't fly in Nuremberg and it shouldn't fly anywhere else either, ever. One can always refuse to follow an unconscionable order. Sure, there might be consequences, but those are weighed against the results of carrying the order out. For Cullen, standing up could have led to serious consequences indeed. Samson was kicked out of the Order for smuggling a letter and forced to beg for lyrium on the streets. And we know that lyrium withdrawal is painful and can lead to death. But a truly good person would choose to take that risk rather than participate in atrocities. Standing up for what's right isn't something we do just when it's convenient and won't cost us anything. And in any case, for most of DA2 Cullen had no desire to challenge Meredith in the first place.

So how much was Cullen aware of? As Knight Captain, he should have been aware of a fair bit, if not quite everything. There are always things underlings keep from their bosses, after all. But then, according to Inquisition, he never knew about the most serious abuses. We got to square that somehow.

As mentioned above, we all pick and choose our canon to some extent. But some things are beyond doubt. Cullen must have been aware of mages being whipped, because whipping posts were placed in the Gallows courtyard for all to see. Of course, people in universe might not blame him at all for failing to stop that or for participating in it, because Thedas is a quasi medieval setting where corporal punishment is the norm. And punishing mages who break the rules is just what templars are for. However, Cullen would have also known about the misuse of the Rite of Tranquility at the Gallows. Not that there's ever an acceptable use for it - removing someone's capacity for emotion is a horrific human rights violation - but within Thedas it is considered acceptable in certain circumstances and not it others. It is against Chantry law to make harrowed mages tranquil, yet that happened more than once at the Gallows and it must have been public knowledge because some kind of paperwork apparently gets filled out about it. Probably they didn't always bother with it, but we hear ambient dialogue of a mage saying that an order form has been turned in to have her made tranquil. So that's a concrete crime that Cullen presided over. He knew about Maddox for certain, as we learn in Inquisition, as well as others who were made tranquil over "lesser offences" than smuggling a letter.

We learn his reasoning during the Tranquil Solution questline, where he says that "the Rite of Tranquility was created so mages need not be killed out of hand for a threat they might pose" and that "there is an argument to be made for applying it more widely". He fears mages and that fear has turned into hatred and dehumanization. To Cullen, after his experiences at Kinloch, all mages are abominations in waiting and it's best to have the "troublesome" ones made tranquil before they inevitably turn. He does also say that "the Harrowing has served us well for centuries" yet adds "it will be up to mages themselves whether they push us to more stringent measures". This shows clearly that while Cullen may not support Alrik's plan to make all mages tranquil, he does support tranquility as punishment, which is against Chantry law. That is why he never objected to making harrowed mages tranquil. Those mages broke circle rules and thus "proved" themselves to be "dangerous". The fact that his trauma explains his worldview doesn't mean it's a valid excuse for his actions.

When it comes to the activities of Alrik, Karras etc, things get murkier. Victims would most likely not report other templars to the Knight Captain who is known to fear and hate mages. We, as Hawke, overhear ambient dialogue from mages and tranquil, but I've always seen that as a cry for help meant for Hawke's ears. It's not like mages can come up to Hawke and talk to them directly, we also know from ambient dialogue that they would be whipped for that. And I don't see Cullen interacting with the tranquil much, if at all. As for Karras and Alrik, they were probably not spending a lot of time with a prudish young senior officer. We know Alrik had a posse of his own lickspittles, anyway.

Okay, you might say, but he must have overheard things, right? Mages talk among themselves. And Orsino in his capacity as First Enchanter or one of the more sympathetic templars like Thrask might have come to him with worrying rumors. And to that I say.... yeah. Logically, you'd expect so. And I fully understand people who go with this reading. Yet there is no hard proof of it in DA2 and in Inquisition we're told that Cullen didn't know.

This is where we need to pick and choose which version of canon to believe. Either you believe Cullen knew and is lying about it and the Inquisition is covering it up for PR reasons or you believe he managed to miss it somehow. The latter is certainly what the writers intended, at least by the time of writing Inquisition. I also genuinely find it more interesting, since the narrative doesn't need Cullen to be yet another fully irredeemable sadistic templar, we already have Alrik and Karras for that. Cullen is more interesting to me as an exploration of institutional harm and how responsibility for it is shared also by those who don't directly participate, either because they fail to notice due to privilege or refuse to believe "them" over "us". Cullen is still responsible, but for causing serious harm through negligence rather than active participation in rape.

However, if we take the writers at their word and assume that Cullen never knew about the worst abuses in the Gallows, how could he have possibly missed it? This is where extrapolation comes into it. My personal headcanon is that he was on a very high dosage of lyrium during his time at Kirkwall. Lyrium is a mind altering substance which causes memory issues (as well as increased aggression and paranoia, truly great qualities for prison guards to have). Cullen says in Inquisition that his nightmares are worse without lyrium, so it's not at all impossible that he was consuming a lot of it during DA2 to cope with his trauma and walking around the Gallows high as a kite. He did also manage to miss apostates carrying staves right under his nose, after all. Given the aforementioned aggression and paranoia, it's easy to see Meredith encourage excessive lyrium use in her templars, as well. Note that Samson, also, has an unusually high tolerance for it. You might say I am making excuses for Cullen here, and I am in a way, in order to explain away the contradictions in the writing, but at the same time, given the lack of actual proof either way, saying that Cullen definitely knew about the rapes is as much of a bad faith reading as mine is a good faith one. I will let you have yours but you got to let me have mine.

Kirkwall Is Just Like That

Cullen also had a lot on his plate in DA2, like his recruits being kidnapped by a bunch of nonsensically evil blood mages with bad lipstick. Which brings me to Kirkwall and DA2 as a whole.

Now I love all 3 games (Veilguard doesn't exist for me), but for various reasons I prefer DAO and DAI to DA2. I also feel like DAO and DAI are more tonally similar and DA2 is the outlier. For example, in DAO and DAI you can have a bad ending or a good one, but in DA2 things go to shit regardless of what you do. The violence is also ramped up in DA2 and the depiction of the circle system is a lot more heavy handed. DA2 isn't a retcon in that sense, the circles were always awful, but the awfulness felt more grounded, more insidious, actually more threatening in how institutional and semi hidden it was in Origins. DA2 sometimes goes so over the top with it that I can't take it seriously.

Like, what's up with all the random crazy blood mages with bad lipstick who seemingly do evil shit just for the sake of being evil? It's just lazy writing, frankly. They wanted to present the issue as two sided but didn't bother fleshing these characters or their motives out at all. So I just can't take them seriously. Someone could easily point to these blood mages in DA2 and say "see, that's why templars should exist" and I would just honestly ignore that because that woman with the lipstick is so ridiculous that I'd rather believe Varric just flat out made her up for extra drama.

And I feel the same way about some of the templar crimes. I don't have a problem believing that someone like Arik exists and is able to hide behind a "respectable" institution. That's perfectly in line with real life. But I actually have to suspend my disbelief a bit to buy that the templars are allowed to get away with stuff like sending "death squads" to harass non mage citizens in the city itself. Such blatant violence out in the open is something even people who want to turn a blind eye would not be able to look away from and is flat out just unwise from a PR standpoint.

So I have one more extrapolation to make. There is in fact a canon explanation for why Kirkwall has such a high number of seemingly mad blood mages. The veil is thin in Kirkwall, because of the slave quarries, where a lot of suffering took place during Tevinter times, and because some magisters were actively trying to bring it down. And under ground we have Corhypheus and red lyrium. I would extrapolate that this affects not just the mages, but templars, too. And all the other disturbed characters we meet in DA2, for that matter, like the various serial killers. Not that all those templars and serial killers would have definitely been perfectly nice people otherwise, but there does seem to be something about Kirkwall that brings out the worst in people. That ought to be kept in mind when we discuss Cullen's time there.

Turning Against Meredith

In conclusion, Cullen was 100% a villain in DA2. Despite any mitigating circumstances, he was aware of and complicit in some heinous stuff. We don't know if he ever personally whipped a mage or whether that was considered too lowly a task for the Knight Captain, but he would have given the orders, signed the paperwork. And he didn't object to any of it until it was far too late.

He could have spoken out against the illegal tranquility, at the very least, given that he knew that to be against Chantry law, which it was his job to uphold. He wouldn't even really have been going against the Order by making sure that they follow their own rules. In practice, of course, Meredith and Elthina would have seen it that way. But there were other steps available to Cullen. He could have written to the Divine or just resigned and refused to participate, at a minimum. Instead, Cullen let his fear and hatred rule him and supported the use of tranquility as punishment. He did grow increasingly disillusioned with Meredith's leadership over the course of the game and began to doubt her sanity, but he still didn't stand up to her.

Other templars objected and worked secretly with mages to overthrow Meredith. Of course, that subplot suffers badly from the above mentioned over the top writing of DA2, with people doing uncharacteristically evil and stupid things just to further the plot. The kidnapping of Hawke's sibling and Grace's refusal to stand down made it so the player can't really side with the conspirators. And because of that we can't truly say that Cullen should have participated in the conspiracy if he wanted to improve things and wasn't happy with Meredith, because that whole thing was a badly organized mess from start to finish and only made things worse.

At the end of that quest, Cullen says of Alain that he was "one of them, apart from a convenient last minute change of heart", yet he must put in a good word for Alain anyway, since Alain is not made tranquil and is present in the final battle, where Cullen rather ironically pulls the exact same move. If the player sides with the mages, his only issue is seemingly Meredith's intention to kill Hawke, which he should have been aware of from the start, given that Meredith told Hawke flat out that they would share the mages fate if they sided with them. But even though she says that right in front of Cullen, he is somehow surprised when she tries to go through with killing Hawke. When the writing is this rushed and full of holes, it's hard to take it fully at face value. But the fact remains that if the player sides with the mages then Cullen seemingly doesn't object to killing every mage in the Gallows, including children, which is... kind of an oversight by the writers, even in terms of giving him a full arc in DA2 at all, but especially given their intention to redeem him in the future. We do actually see Cullen argue against the wholesale killing and try to convince Meredith to spare the mages who surrender, but that is only if the player chooses to side with the templars, so many players might never see it. I'm a wuss and I can't actually bring myself to do a templar run of DA2 so I watched that scene on Youtube myself.

Interlude 2.0

Anyway, it all ends with Meredith turning into red lyrium in front of Cullen's eyes and Cullen is left to pick up the pieces. We are told that he rallied the templars that remained in the city and "restored order", whatever that means. He served as de fact Knight Commander, though what exactly his job consisted of I am not sure, since all the mages had left. Presumably, he helped support the civilian administration and the city guard, kept order in the streets and kept the remaining templars out of trouble. Being generous, we can speculate that he kept them from running off after the mages. In any case, he impressed Cassandra enough that she offered him the job of Commander of the Inquisition.

Many people have pointed out that Cullen is not qualified for the position of Commander and I agree that he is not qualified to lead a giant army, but no one expected him to have to do that when he was hired. The Inquisition was a much smaller organization before the worshippers of the Herald of Andraste began flocking to it. At that point, hiring a senior templar with fighting experience to oversee the training of new templars was entirely sensible. And in any case, he quickly proves himself capable of doing the job. Bull says he's doing well training the troops and the trebuchets he advocated for save everyone's bacon during the attack on Heaven.

What's more, hiring Cullen specifically was clever in another way. Having been Knight Captain when Kirkwall went to shit might have been a point against him as far as competence is concerned, but he had apparently proven himself capable enough in the years after Meredith. And such a stain on his record meant that the Inquisition could count on his absolute loyalty and dedication, because his career and reputation rested on their success. Cullen didn't have any better options, unlike some chevalier or whoever else they might have been considering. Nor was he interested in politics or likely to use his position for personal advancement, heedless of the needs of the organization as a whole.

The final confrontation at the Gallows took place in 9:37 and Inquisition is set in 9:41, so the character development that we are told Cullen experienced in that time is frustratingly left off screen. But to be fair, it's not like dealing with the fallout in Kirkwall would have left him with a lot of time to reflect, anyway. One must first get away from a terrible situation before they can start making sense of it. Still, we can make some guesses as to what he must have been thinking at that time in order to turn into the person we are presented with at the beginning of Inquisition - a man ashamed of certain aspects of his past, yet still fearful of and bigoted against mages.

Personally, I don't think he really got much farther than "wow, Meredith was actually bonkers, that was the red lyrium talking by the end there and I supported her despite not being gone on red lyrium myself, so what in the void does that make me? Perhaps I need to chill out a little, before I go the same way as her". And indeed when we meet him again in Inquisition he is distrustful of lyrium in general and how it affects him to the point that he has stopped taking it, even though that might kill him. He has also developed a hatred for the Chantry, speaking bitterly of it from the moment we first meet him at Heaven and seemingly happy to subvert its authority. Quite a change for the man who once spoke of serving the Chantry and the Maker as one and the same. And a bit odd, given that the Inquisition was originally meant to serve the Divine.

One wonders how exactly the whole thing was marketed to Cullen. The official aim of the Inquisition was to restore order aka stop the fighting between mages and templars, but it's unclear how exactly they intended to do that beyond just forcing mages back into circles. And in practice, the Inquisition was also a cover for the Divine to build a new military force to replace the templars she had lost in order to maintain her own power. I can see Cullen, aware that things had gone wrong at the Gallows, but unsure what to do about it, agreeing to join to stop the fighting, given it started at Kirkwall and in no small part due to his own (in)action. But he also wanted to stop taking lyrium and didn't wish to be a templar anymore and Cassandra apparently knew about it and was fine with it. Supposedly, then, this new force of the Divine was going to be at least somewhat different, not relying on lyrium to control its members or to fight magic. But in any case, what the Inquisition actually ends up being will be up to you as the player.

Inquisition

The thing about Cullen in Inquisition is that he is one of the three advisors, so he doesn't get the approval system that companions do, he will support you no matter what. Therefore, his character development over the course of the game is down to you as the player. I can see how that might frustrate some, but I actually like it. I like the idea of getting to have an effect on characters' personalities just by passing through their lives, like hardening or softening Leliana or Alistair. The trouble is that with those two, you got to make the correct dialogue choices to get them there, but with Cullen you can't argue against his worldview much or have him actually change his mind, he simply follows your lead happily while occasionally saying the most out of pocket shit that completely contradicts everything you and your personal Inquisition stand for and you can't! respond! and! that! sucks! Like, for real, I find it frustrating so I can't imagine how people who want to really lay into him must feel. When you tell him that templars are not needed at all, he responds with: "Tell that to the parents of a child who falls prey to possession. Mages cannot handle such threats alone." And I can't point out that templars would be of no help in that situation, anyway. They'd simply kill the child. And like, I could even envision a new reformed templar order training its members to rid the child of the demon without hurting them, but we can't speculate about that! Sure would be an interesting thing to discuss with Cullen, if the game allowed us to do so.

But anyway, Cullen goes along with what you do. So if you play as a libertarian mage or a mage supporting Inquisitor then Cullen ends up following a mage(supporter) and fighting alongside a bunch of free mages and going along, with minimal grumbling, with all sort of magic fuckery in various war table missions. If you play as a chantry devotee who makes people tranquil left and right, he goes along with that too. There's disagreement in the fandom whether Cullen has a meaningful redemption arc in Inquisition or not, but a lot of it comes down to whether we're talking about a Cullen serving a (pro)mage Inquisitor. If the Inquisitor is a mage hater, then Cullen certainly isn't redeeming himself by serving them. For me, personally, it's a power fantasy to drag him kicking and screaming towards team mage, and I do think that most players are likely to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the mage cause, so that's the assumption I will proceed under. The question then becomes: a) whether working with mages to save the world from demons is enough to make up for everything Cullen did and b) is it enough to show that he has changed meaningfully when the words coming out of his mouth sometimes prove otherwise.

Attitude to Mages

When we meet Cullen again in Inquisition, he has mellowed a little towards mages, but his attitude is still very much not great. He no longer blames all mages for what Uldred and his followers did to him, but he still sees all mages as a potential threat and doesn't believe they should be left without supervision. He also prefers to work with templars rather than mages to close the breach. That in itself is not necessarily a fault. It makes sense for the Inquisitor to worry about a huge amount of magic being funneled through their body and the danger that might pose to their health, at the least, and Cullen's observation that they know very little about the mark, so pouring magic into it without knowing how it will respond might not be the brightest idea, is actually super fair. But from his later comments it's clear that he's also simply still scared and suspicious of mages and doesn't want a bunch of them running around Haeven.

I actually like this, because it feels realistic. Deradicalization doesn't happen overnight, most people don't go from hateful bigot to perfectly woke ally overnight, there are stages in between. He's trying and failing often, but he IS trying. For example, when meeting a mage Inquisitor, this social disaster starts off with "so, you're from the Circle?", which is both so tone deaf as to be embarrassing and entirely in character for someone who has lived their whole life within an institution and probably doesn't have much else to talk about. When the Inquisitor calps back with "should I still be locked up like a good little mage?" Cullen backtracks hurriedly and insists that's not what he meant. I really liked this early interaction and wish they'd kept that energy throughout. Anyway, here we learn that Cullen no longer believes all mages should be locked up, though there probably aren't many besides the Herald of Andraste that he'd make the exception for.

If you ally with the mages, he will have a temper tantrum, there's no other way to call it. His main concern is, again, security. With the veil being thin because of the breach, he believes abominations are inevitable. If you then have a follow up conversation with him and ask if he has a problem working with you and the mages he has calmed down somewhat and says he was only thinking of the safety of everyone, mages included. Somehow, he still believes that templars can be of help with safety for mages, which is wild. But his concern does come off as entirely sincere, he is not simply arguing for locking mages up because he doesn't like them or see them as human beings with rights. And if you tell him to drop the matter, he does. Ultimately, if you ally with the mages, there will be 100s of them working with the Inquisition, doing magic fully unsupervised, and Cullen just... deals with it. And behold, there are no abominations!

And yet, despite that, if you ask Cullen if he is against templars now, he says: "Magic ungoverned could tear the world apart. It’s doing so now. Templars are trained and able to confront such dangers." Cullen, darling, you're sitting on top of the largest group of "ungoverned" mages in Thedas outside of Tevinter, and no one's died. And yet, I can't say as much. It's like the writers decided to make Cullen their mouthpiece for their "shades of grey" agenda, but then they're so incompetent at actually defending their own stance that they can't give us the chance to argue with them and that makes Cullen the character look stupid and erratic/inconsistently written. Like, okay, perhaps that line could be interpreted as Cullen not arguing for circles as they were so much as for some continued role in society for templars, perhaps similar to how it is in Tevinter. But in that case, we should be able to discuss what that might look like in more detail!

We do actually learn, during the same conversation, that Cullen no longer supports circles as they were ("The Circle may bring peace for a time, if only because people crave stability. But how long would it last?"). When you ask him what he would suggest instead, he comes up with some of the dumbest off the cuff shit that anyone's ever heard (Perhaps opportunities to work outside the Circle? A mixed military service, or healers’ clinics with templar support. Mages would be watched, but could pursue interests outside the Circle—neither freedom nor prison. I don’t know.). But that's okay, because he also admits that he hasn't really thought about it and doesn't know what's best beyond knowing that things have to change (I’m not sure it’s the answer, but something needs to change). And he expresses no desire to be a part of shaping any hypothetical future system in any way. He's at this point happy for someone else to figure out how mages should live and to leave him out of it. Which IS objectively best for all concerned.

So, Cullen goes from an ardent advocate for locking up all mages and tranquilizing any who put a toe out of line to someone who still thinks that freedom for mages will probably end in tears, but doesn't really care enough to try to stop it and knows he isn't the best person to shape any kind of future system anyway. And look, in a world where everyone is constantly saying insane shit with full confidence, I respect the hell out of an honest "I know that I don't know." Cullen won't be an advocate for mage rights any time soon, but he doesn't have to be and it's not his place to be, there are people better suited to that. Cullen can stay in his lane, advocating for templars.

As a side note, I do have a memory of asking Cullen at Skyhold how the training is going and he says it's better than he expected and everyone is pulling together to prevent the end of the world and mages and templars are getting along better than he expected. But for the life of me I can't find that dialogue now so I'm starting to doubt if it exists or if it's something I read in fafic haha, so if anyone knows where that is, let me know please? I do also have some mod that restores some of Cullen's deleted lines, so maybe it's that haha.

Finally, Cullen also develops something like a friendship with a mage in Inquisition. It's not Vivienne, as one might expect, given their similar views, but Dorian, who is not from the south and has not suffered in a circle, so has no reason to fear Cullen or be uncomfortable around him. Why Cullen isn't uncomfortable around a Tevinter necromancer is another matter, but the watsonian explanation is probably that their shared love of chess and Doiran's easy charm help things along. From a doylist viewpoint, the writers just wanted to stick two popular characters together and use a fun scene to help characterize them both (Cullen is good at strategy, Dorian cheats shamelessly). But the fact remains that this scene is the most relaxed and playful we see Cullen be in Inquisition, outside of his romance scenes. He appears to truly enjoy Dorian's company.

The Templar Order

Cullen's feelings towards his former Order are even more difficult to make sense of than his feelings towards mages. He says he stopped taking lyrium because he wants "nothing to do with that life", but if you question him about the order then he says that it should continue to exist and that he "respects the men and women who remain". Now, one can, of course, dislike an institution without condemning everyone who is a part of it, that's how I feel about the templars and the Chantry myself, but the feeling I have for individual templars is more akin to pity than respect. How can you respect someone who works for an institution that you've lost respect for, that has "lost its way" as Cullen says?

Cullen also says he understands the frustration some templars feel about the Chantry using them and disregarding the sacrifices they make by taking lyrium, risking their lives against demons etc. That's pretty fair, honestly. The chantry does take children who don't know any better, often orphans, and gets them addicted to lyrium, which will slowly destroy their minds, to fill its personal military police force. As a reward they get, at best, some class mobility and retirement at Val Royaux at some kind of care home for lyrium addled old templars. Not great, exactly. But then, why would you want that system to continue, Cullen? Presumably, things would have to change at least somewhat? We never get to ask him what he thinks should change about the Templar Order, which is a shame.

There is also Cullen's strongly negative reaction to you if you, as a warrior Inquisitor, choose to specialize as a templar yourself. All other characters will congratulate you on making a great choice if you choose their particular specialization, but Cullen tries to talk you out of it. He might respect the templars who remain, but he also doesn't want anyone he respects or personally cares for to become one.

My interpretation is that Cullen still feels a strong kinship with his comrades in arms and probably some nostalgia for his templar life, difficult as it sometimes was. He hasn't known anything else, so it's natural that it would be hard for him to let go completely. It is regrettable that we can't encourage him to do so in more ways than stopping lyrium. His reaction to you as the Inquisitor becoming a templar shows that deep down he knows being one is not a good thing, but most of the time he is not capable of admitting it even to himself, hence all the things he still says in favor of the Order.

Finally, yes, he wears armor with templar insignia on it, and I've seen that used as a point against him, but guys, new armor is expensive. This is a man who has a hole in his roof for over a year. He's not going to spend Inquisition resources that could be better used for tents for refugees on new greaves for himself. (This is actually the only one of the many arguments Cullen has with my personal mage Trevelyan which she actually loses, because she was raised noble and is thoughtlessly classist. She apologies, which rather shocks him, cause mostly she just yells at him and throws fireballs at his head.)

Romance

We also have to talk about Cullen's romance in relation to all of the above, because his love interest is potentially a mage.

The fact that Cullen is even capable of falling in love with a mage shows that his attitude towards mages has shifted significantly. This is especially true given the way he treats the Inquisitor as inherently above him, someone who is too good for him ("You're the Inquisitor and I didn't think it was possible.") and also more moral, the literal representative on earth of his god. The very fact that he can see a mage as the Maker's chosen means he's come a long way from the man who said that "mages are not people like you and me".

Still, there are bits of it which leave a bad taste in my mouth and which, I think, show the writers' worldview in a very unfavorable light. Namely, it's the dialogue between Cullen and a mage PC where she can ask him if he has a problem with her being a mage, to which he replies that he sees no corruption in her. First of all, "you're not like other X" is not a compliment, it's just creepy and proves that he sees you as somehow an exception to the rule, someone he puts on a pedestal, which is a place you can fall from very quickly. And, taken together with other stuff, like Bull leaving the Qun or dying, Dorian being the "one good Tevinter", Sera dismissing other elves and elven culture etc, it shows how the writers think about minorities. The only good ones are the ones who assimilates, who are the exception, who don't complain or take up the cause of their group.

I don't blame Cullen the character for the writers being Like That, just as I also give grace to Sera, Dorian etc. And I do think that it's believable for Cullen to say something like this, but we should be able to call him out on it and remind him that we are a mage like any other and have him listen and learn and evolve.

What's more, I don't actually have a problem with the mage PC asking that question, since Cullen did go through a traumatic experience that makes him scared of magic and magic is part of who she is. It reads like asking a woman who has been raped by a man whether she's okay being in a relationship with a man, being touched by one etc. But Cullen shouldn't be the only one asked. He should also show concern for her comfort. More so, since she's the party with less power in a templar/mage dynamic and may have potentially experienced horrific abuse at the hands of templars, too, depending on how you choose to play her. She should have all sorts of legitimate concerns like, what if the Circles come back, would he expect her to join one? What about their children, if they're mages? Now, I don't think Cullen would want that at all, but these things should be discussed before their relationship goes any further. It would give Cullen the chance to reassure her and prove he has changed. Why is Cullen the only one whose feeling get consideration? Why is he denied the chance to offer consideration and reassurance in turn?

Cullen does have another line about his relationship with a mage Inquisitor, which I like much better: "I was angry. For years, that anger blinded me. I'm not proud of the man that made me. The way I saw mages... I'm not sure I would have cared about you and the thought of that sickens me". It's honest, accepting of fault and makes it clear that he knows that his former beliefs were wrong and something he should be ashamed of. It's also worth noting that we get this line after successfully convincing him to continue with his weaning himself off of lyrium and he is feeling much better in that scene. So they do know how to write this correctly, the potential is there! Ugh!

Before moving on I want to also quickly (ha!) address some of the criticism I have seen directed at Cullen in relation to his romance.

Firstly, yes he's race and gender locked. We know that it's because of time constraints, so dismissing him as racist for that alone is simply not serious analysis. But it is still interesting to examine why his preferences are what they are, as long as we don't treat him as an inherently awful person for it. We all have ingrained racial and gender and other biases, like fatphobia etc, in real life. It's good for us to try and unlearn these biases, but having them in the first place is normal and does not make us unworthy of love. Same is true for Cullen the character. But it's also totally fair to ignore the racelock and ship him with your qunari Inquisitor, anyway.

To me, Cullen is also bisexual. You don't have to agree. But there was that one poll which asked if we see him as bi, as the writers originally intended, and SO MANY people answered with basically "he's straight because I don't like him". Being queer has nothing to do with being a good person or being likeable to you specifically and thinking that is insanely biphobic, actually. I was honestly taken aback, which is quite something, given the shit I've seen in various fandoms.

Finally, I've seen a few people say that people who like Cullen and his romance should simply romance someone else, whom they deem a better person than Cullen. Usually that's Alistair or Blackwall, given that Alistair is similarly an awkward former templar and Blackwall arguably has a better redemption arc. To that I say, characters aren't interchangeable. Yes, Alistair is awkward like Cullen, but there the similarities end. Alistair abandons you over Loghain, while Cullen is loyal quite literally to a fault. You can go crazy, he'll still follow you. Cullen is serious and incredibly hardworking to the point the Inquisitor can ask him if he ever talks about anything other than work. Alistair deflects with humor and runs from responsibility. Wynne also does his laundry for him. It might not be exactly fair to compare Alistair at 20 to Cullen at 30, but these are the ages at which we get to romance them. And a 20yo who can't wash his own socks is just not the least bit attractive to me. Whereas Cullen reads as someone I can rely on to make life easier for me as the Inquisitor. And Blackwall might express more regret for his past actions than Cullen does, but he also hides his identity for a big chunk of the game and to me that's just a personal pet peeve. Cullen's complete lack of a poker face and just blurting out every thought that pops into his head is what endears him to my autism. My point is, people romance different characters for different reasons, it's not as simple as who the least problematic hot guy is.

Redemption or Lack Thereof

So, during the course of what is usually called his redemption arc, Cullen stops being a templar and shows himself willing to work with mages, makes friends with a mage and even potentially falls in love with one. He also acknowledges that the Circle system needs to change and no longer believes in locking mages up, at least not all of them and all the time. And he doesn't think his opinion is the one that really matters, here, anyway. But he still worries that unsupervised mages might turn into abominations. And despite his many grievances, he still has some fondness for the templars. Is that enough to redeem him? Well, depends on what that means to you. It is enough, for me, to show that he has evolved in his thinking and become a better person. But redemption has another component to it, a rather crucial component - the making of amends. And that is pretty much absent from Cullen's story in Inquisition. We do not see him facing up to the mages from the Gallows that he personally wronged or doing anything personally to improve the lot of mages, specifically.

What's more, conversations in which he admits to his guilt are few and far between and the full enormity of what took place in DA2 is never acknowledged. This isn't just a Cullen problem, but a problem of Inquisition in general. Other characters like Cassandra, Varric etc also speak vaguely of the events of DA2, so it seems like the writers would like us to forget what they wrote and retcon things a bit in our mind as not being "quite that bad". Now, for me... I do that anyway, as I explained above. DA2 is just too OTT for me, personally. So for me, this kind of works. But what I do in the privacy of my own mind is my business. The fact remains they they wrote and released that game and it exists, so THEY shouldn't get to ignore it in their next official installment. By failing to address it, they are making the characters look more evil and stupid than they intended. Like, Cullen would look a lot better if he said "I did awful things like making mages tranquil illegally and I'm sorry and I won't do it again and I'm gonna do everything in my power to ensure that the cure for tranquility that Cassandra discovered is made public and reaches as many tranquil as possible" instead of "I have treated mages with distrust in the past" like, yeah?? Understatement of the century, buddy! His inability to face up to the enormity of his actions really undercuts his development. It would be fine for him to not be quite there yet at the start of the game, but by the end he should be able to admit what he did, given the writers wanted to redeem him.

Cullen is also never punished for any of his actions. When Loghain did his whoopsie in Origins (also because of trauma and fear, inflicted this time by Orlais) he could redeem himself by dying to kill the archdemon or by serving as a Grey Warden for the rest of his life. Cullen does also end up fighting and risking his life to defeat a great evil (demons and Corypheus, as opposed to darkspawn) but he does so at the head of an army, gaining rather than losing status in the process. Now, I'm not a very carceral person myself, so it doesn't bother me that you can't just cut Cullen's head off or throw him in jail like some people want to, I never do that to anyone anyway in any of my judgments. And Cullen getting to just move on with his life after what he did and achieve career advancement is also unfortunately very realistic, so I don't mind it as such. But I do wish we had gotten some differing perspectives on it. Like, what do the mages who ally with the inquisition think about serving under him? At least someone, somewhere ought to be grumbling about how unfair it is that the handsome blonde andrastian human is given a second chance that a mage or an elf or a qunari would never get. I don't begrudge Cullen his second chance, I think everyone deserves one, but I do understand and share the frustration people feel over the double standard never getting acknowledged.

So ultimately, no, I don't think Cullen's arc in Inquisition works as a redemption arc. If it was meant to be one, then the writers failed to do the necessary work. But I do think Cullen demonstrably improved as a person in Inquisition. His arc, to me is more about personal growth, deradicalization and identity, finding out who you are outside of the dogma you were raised with and the role you were assigned.

And, of course, there's the addiction aspect of it. I know some find it frustrating that it becomes the central aspect of Cullen's story instead of him making amends, but I actually don't mind it at all. I just think it's weirdly handled. Cullen's repeated pleas to resign are ignored and if you tell him to keep taking lyrium then he ends up as a homeless addict and Harding... kills him. Instead of like, getting him somewhere warm and giving him some soup or whatever? Taken together with how Samson is also demonized for his addiction, it just reads like the writers hate addicts.

But yeah, in conclusion, no Cullen isn't really redeemed by the end of Inquisition. Did the writers intend for him to be? Probably. But I don't follow any writer statements so I wouldn't know. In the game itself, though, I don't think they did enough to even tell us that this is how we should see him now, which is a sperate point from them failing to do the work of actually redeeming him. They do present him in a certain light, as a romantic interest, as a respected leader and an all around decent guy that people like and get along with. They have other characters compliment him and show him making a funny joke during a group card game and losing his clothes. They for sure want the player to like him and are using other characters to tell us that he's likeable. Even Cole likes him and he's an actual mind reading spirit, so if Cullen was putting on a front, he'd know. But all that shows, really, is that Cullen has grown as a person, isn't such a prick anymore and is more pleasant to be around, so people enjoy his company more and are willing to give him a chance as a friend or lover. Most of these people, crucially, did not know him prior to Inquisition. Varric did, but he wasn't really a mage in the Gallows.

I think that's a big reason for the fandom disagreements over Cullen. For some people, the fact the he isn't Like That anymore is enough to call him redeemed, and for other's it's justifiably not. I personally would call that growth, rather than redemption. It doesn't erase what he did to the mages in the Gallows. But to me, the growth is enough for my mage Inquisitor to romance him. After all, he's never done anything to her and she's a noble who doesn't really fully give a shit about other people.

Cullen's lack of a redemption arc doesn't really bother me, personally. In real life, it's also often the case that you just never get the chance to make amends, even if you'd like to. Who knows where all these mages and tranquil from Kirkwall are now, after all (and yeah, that IS fucked up on its own). Loghain's service as a Warden will also never make it up to the specific elves he sold to Tevinter from the Denerim alienage. And people who do bad things go on to live regular lives without facing any punishment all the time. I don't need my fiction to be all fairy tales where good triumphs and evil is punished justly. But I would like there to be some in universe acknowledgment that what is happening is privilege working in Cullen's favor. I am disappointed that we don't get that. And of course, I would be very happy to get a proper redemption arc, that would be better than what we did get. But what I have is enough for me to see potential and use as a baseline to further build on myself.

I also just think that, even if you've done something terrible, you don't owe it to your victims to have a shitty life forever and ever. For one thing, that won't actually help anyone or bring the dead back. So to me, Cullen doesn't have to make amends to be deserving of a good job or a wife and friends and a happy ending. Just improving as a person is enough. I understand why it might not be for others, though, or why some people might think he hasn't improved enough, since his arc in Inquisition is ultimately not very well written. But what else is new lol, the writing has its problems in all the DA games.

Finally, @reformedvillain, you said what really bothers you about it is the unfairness of Cullen getting this treatment from the writers while someone like Anders is constantly villainized. And yeah, that's true. But that doesn't really make me mad at Cullen. I like Anders too and I am annoyed that the writers play favorites. Even if having them is unavoidable, a good writer should not let it show so blatantly. But that is a problem with dragon age more widely and how the writers want to make things more morally grey than they actually are.

[ac3tinium]

this was such a tasty read!! kudos to you for putting together such a lengthy, well-written post. like the other people who reblogged with their thought and comments, I am supposed to be in bed and can only hope to be half as coherent as you are. alas, here are some words from an internet stranger about fictional man in video game.

I love your point about how mages have to be perfect victims, yet Cullen doesn’t because he benefits from privilege. potentially another polarizing factor in the events at Kinloch is that he was tortured by blood mages using demons, and not just incidentally by the demons themselves. so at this point going into Kirkwall, instead of becoming disillusioned with the Templar Order and his role as a protector, his fears are reinforced by the existing institutions and broad societal views.

I think Meredith absolutely took advantage of this, and you bring up so many good points about his vulnerability factors here! I find Cullen’s character way more fascinating if read as naiveté leading to negligence, since we already have so many villains by malice, and I feel like some of his tactless conversation blunders supports this read.

as for Kirkwall just being Like That, the red lyrium and thinned Veil reminds me of real-world parallels to heavy metal poisoning around improper chemical waste disposal sites. and as for the aftermath, World of Thedas 2 states that some loyalist mages remained after the rebellion, and Cullen rallied the templars for their protection as well as relief efforts throughout the city, which indeed impressed Cassandra. and there are quite a few instances of characters praising his military command in Inquisition, even though he wasn’t necessarily qualified for the position it ended up becoming when he was originally hired.

I do feel like his position as an advisor to a player with agency doesn’t really lend itself well to a redemption arc, either narratively or mechanically, so it makes sense that it isn’t the focus for his personal quest. the playerbase might want him to make amends, but why would the Inquisitor, amidst the threat of the Breach and Coryphesus, be the one to witness it? even if you play as a mage, you aren’t from the Gallows or even Kinloch. and it’s hard to say how much of a real, justified threat magic poses when the rpg gameplay elements present an inconsistent picture to lore.

now! as for his attitude to the Templar Order and those that remain, I interpreted it as him having respect for the purpose, not the current reality, of the Templar Order (to protect against the dangers of magic) and those who joined and remain for that purpose (because there’s no real way out— except trading out for red lyrium or risking death by withdrawal). he does actually say that he wants the Order to change, particularly in regards to having a safer way to leave, so I don’t think it’s accurate to say he wants the system to continue as it is. which is also why he’s so strongly against an Inquisitor choosing the Templar specialization, when things haven’t yet changed.

overall though, I hope it’s clear that I majorly share your opinion! and appreciate your write-up!