Zevran: I am hardly the person to lecture on the worthier points of human nature, but surely this is a fine time to display the oft-lauded virtue known as mercy?
Zevran: I deserved to die, and you spared me. Why are you so quick to condemn these mages?
Warden: Youâre a lot better-looking than most of the mages.
Zevran: Why, thank you. Flattery would normally distract me, but not today. Inconvenient, no?
Warden: Youâre saying I made a mistake sparing you?
Zevran: (Nervous laughter) Perhaps. But you did it nevertheless, no?
Warden: Magic and knives are different.
Zevran: Magic can kill. Knives can kill. Even small children launched at great speed could kill.
Zevran: Why single out the wielders of one and not the others?
Warden: Mages can do more damage with one spell than you ever could.
Zevran: Mm. TouchĂŠ.
Zevran: Iâve taken the lives of many throughout my career, but this is no measured act. There is no chase, no hunt, no dignity in this⌠there is only slaughter.
Warden: What about the people they might slaughter?
Zevran: Might, not will. Committing genocide just because something might happen is more than the mark of a weak mind. It is insanity.
Warden: Zevran, youâre a hypocrite.
Zevran: Perhaps I am at that, and a thief and a murderer as well. But I looked my victims in the face.
#i could not believe how long and detailed zevranâs argument is during broken circle#there are so many dialogue branches#and the note specifically describing his laughter as nervous#the script actually just reads âchucklesâ but the VO comments say ânervous laughterâ#the warden kinda just threatened him there! and this is a warden whoâs willing to slaughter a bunch of mages so itâs a very real threat!#and zevranâs clearly very aware of that! and he keeps pleading for the mages anyway!#he is so ready to go to bat for this - no one else in the party argues the point in anywhere near this detail (via carabas)
Zevran fights the most for the little people, the downtrodden, the ones forgotten and shunned by society. Because Zevran knows all too well (more than most of the other companions) how it feels to be trapped in a role that you cannot choose to opt out of, only because of an accident of birth.Â
Poverty in his case, magic in theirs, but it is hard to not see the parallels.Â
