when i was thinking about what i wanted to do with mx. elen amell initially, i was mostly thinking about how i could make her distinct from eilonwy, my surana. eilonwy is sort of my Default Circle Character Archetype; deeply anti-circle rebe-type, has experienced a lot of abuse from the templars, rightly sees herself as being failed by pretty much every authority figure she's ever known, etc, etc. the obvious answer here was to make elen pro-circle, but i just don't have much interest in writing/playing/etc a character who starts and STAYS pro-circle. the injustice of it is just soooo extreme that i can't get myself into the headspace of actually defending it long-term. okay, elen will start out pro-circle and then realize that actually the circle is fucked up. and how i initially conceived her was someone who was a researcher, enjoyed the circle and never really had any reason to resent it because it provided clothes and food and all the books she could ever want, etc, and her realization about the circle's injustice is less rooted in personal experience and more with a broader sense that any institution with that much power is going to do harm. but then i was like fuck i just made solene again.
SO. eventually where i landed was elen starts the game a centrist, convinced she's content in the circle, convinced she's happy being a researcher and never attracting negative attention, convinced she's happy being irving's apprentice, convinced she believes what the chantry says about mages and is content with it all. the problem is that none of it is true, she's just gaslighting herself. her entire identity within the circle is a self-protective self-delusion, because to acknowledge her lack of freedom and her lack of safety and the lack of a way out would inspire such despair she'd just stop functioning. every aspect of her identity is, without her consciously realizing it, built around making the circle survivable. she's feminine and polite because that keeps the templars placid with her. she loves research and reading because it's an Appropriate hobby for her to have, makes her look intelligent without seeming ambitious. she believes that the circle and the chantry are right because this gives her a way to silence her conscience when apprentices get put in solitary or made tranquil or killed. she starts the game with long hair and a slim body — and part of that's just because the circle isn't feeding its charges more than it needs to be, but she intentionally watches her weight so she can stay small and nonthreatening looking, even if she couldn't consciously articulate that that's why.
she loves jowan. she adores him. and she still sells him out to irving, because she can't even imagine lying, because she can't imagine going against the circle. because if she allows herself to believe that the circle isn't right, even for a second, then what was it all for? so she goes along with it and she lies to jowan and she convinces herself while she's doing it that she's doing him a favor! just desperately lying to herself, "well, once we prove that it's really lily's fault, they'll see that they don't have to make jowan tranquil! it'll all be okay! i'm doing the right thing!" with a manic, almost hysterical intensity in her head. she tells jowan and lily that she wants them both to be happy and she means it, even as she's actively working against them. the cognitive distortions are crashing into each other like trains. jowan and lily are like well surely her weird vibes are just because we're doing an Illegal Thing when in reality she is breaking her brain trying to justify this morally fucked thing she's doing.
anyway, she gets out of the circle, joins the wardens, et cetera. and she goes back to the circle because she needs to check and make sure things are okay and they are Not, and she saves irving and on a surface level it patches some of the mental holes in her head — oh, ok, being against the circle does make u crazy and violent, so she was right!! but in her heart she knows that's not true, and she knows that irving was working with uldred and she knows they were trying to bait mages into learning blood magic so that they could be killed and she knows she likes eating when she wants and sleeping when she wants and seeing the sun and feeling the wind on her face. and she's putting on weight and muscle and a lot of her long pretty hair gets burned off in a fight and she has an enormous, sobbing meltdown about it, and alistair is like What The Hell This Is An Insane Reaction but zevran and leliana and wynne and a little bit morrigan Get It, at least enough. cos it's not about the hair it's about the fact that she is slowly, slowly coming to the crushing, traumatic realization that she doesn't know anything about herself because her entire identity is a lie she made up to give herself a way to ignore the abuse those around her suffered and that she suffered. and that she was so fucking cowardly she — sold out her friend? erased herself? convinced herself it was all fine? and her body is changing and she's scared of what that means, scared she'll attract negative attention, and that means she has to acknowledge that she was scared in the circle, too, that all of her choices weren't organic and neutral, they were made out of a fear she was too cowardly to even acknowledge.
so it's like. elen's circle traumas are more...existential than eilonwy's are. the circle didn't beat her or lock her away, but it did result in just this...total breakdown and erasure of any kind of real identity. the thing that's traumatic is that realization, that she has no identity, that her body and thoughts and identity are false and the circle did that to her. and then of the "low-level" harm she was just constantly experiencing at a base level (constant surveillance, no personal freedoms, etc) that she'd managed to ignore hitting her all at once. plus the GUILT of all this — how much abuse she overlooked or excused, and does she even have the right to be upset over the harm she's experienced when others had it worse?? it's all messy!!
the person they (we do gender exploration, alongside all this other self-discovery!) settle into over time, with much pain and self-discovery and grief and guilt, is someone who's kind, and capable, and fairly androgynous in their styling and self-image, and who actually doesn't care about research as much as she thought she did, who prefers to act and be decisive. who likes being physically strong and, also, plush and soft, who distrusts authority figures, including organizations like the wardens. and there's some time in the middle where they swing too hard into rebellion for its own sake, and i have a lot to say about the dual thrill and grief at doing something that would have, mere months ago, been completely unthinkable, but still...they're good, and they discover what it means to be Good not as a way to earn existence, but as a way to simply...be.
