I call this cadence a “song” because it makes me think of the Cole banter about Solas - “he hurts, an old pain from before, when everything sang the same.”
Is this cadence really how the ancient elves used to speak to each other? For example, all of the mural memories are in this Hallelujah cadence, and Elgar’nan, Ghilan’nain and Mythal are all perfectly in the cadence when they speak:
A very telling detail to me in this cadence is the memory with Elgar’nan and Mythal so on the same page, so of perfect accord and of the same mind, that they are finishing each other’s lines.
In that memory, Solas is relegated to his own private segments that neither of the others join. He is exiled within his own Hallelujah cadence.
It is also interesting to note that Solas and Mythal never share this entwining that Mythal and Elgar’nan have. (The only times Mythal shares Solas’ line is to interrupt him with “Impossible,” and the moment they are apologizing while he kills her.)
Now, maybe this cadence is not an Ancient Elf Spirit Thing, and the cadence appears this way because it is filtered through Solas’ memories. After all, he painted these.
(And also, characters like Felassan do not speak in this cadence even once. So it’s not how all Ancient elves spoke all the time.)
But there is the use of Hallelujah between Solas, Mythal and Lavellan during Solas’ finale scene, and also one more example that makes me think the ancient elves may have at least occasionally spoke like this, and that this way of speaking, this song, is something that Solas is longing to hear again:
It’s this - it’s also in Solas’ conversation with Elgar’nan!
Solas is mocking Elgar’nan for being so blighted and corrupted, he can no longer speak in Hallelujah cadence. Solas seems to equate the cadence to “speaking elven,” speaking the language they should both speak. And I checked, neither Elgar’nan nor Ghilan’nain speak this way in dialogue.
So, it leaves me with this image of Solas as the last of his kind. Everyone who spoke his language is dead. The blighted monsters and ghosts can no longer hear or understand the music, they can no longer speak elven.
But Lavellan, half a world away, DOES.
Lavellan speaks this lost language of the gods.
Solas’ heart speaks Solas’ language. She has thought of Solas for so many years, she has endured her trials, and she has come to understand him even more than she had before. She has somehow, knowing the truth, become even closer to him, able to see both the good and the bad with open eyes.
Lavellan knows how to speak in elven, she can hear the hidden, mysterious currents that he can. Lavellan is his still-living family, his heart, the other part of the duet that Solas so clearly longs for.
Finally, at the end of the story, Lavellan is the one who pronounces, in elven, the final Hallelujah with Solas, when they have both finally passed their long trials, just before they marry and step together into the land of the gods, a duet in perfect accord.
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