listen I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore but on this playthrough of DA2 I found myself once more entranced and heartbroken to see hawke reenact their relationship with their mother with the entire cursed city of kirkwall. you can never do enough for leandra, and you can never do enough for kirkwall. leandra is proud of you, and kirkwall uplifts its champion, but no matter how hard you try for them you can't fix everything there that's broken, no one could, and even the fact that anyone would feel the burning responsibility to take that task on is a huge warning sign on its own. leandra will easily allow you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the family's continued well-being again and again, even when she'll beg you to spare the twins from the same thing. it's such a sad, painfully realistic thing because I truly don't think leandra meant to fuck up her kids, and yet she primed her oldest for an abusive toxic codependent relationship with an entire ongoing dumpster fire of a city state better than she ever could have if she had meant to.
I think what leandra actually, deep down wants from you is something you can never ever give her and that is cruel to ask of anyone, but especially your kid -- to bring her back to a time when she was happy. to reclaim when you were all happy, when nothing was broken that couldn't be fixed, before malcolm died, before you had to leave behind bethany or carver's broken body on the ground. to get her childhood back from where she left it and found it all gone and in ruins when she returned. 'this is all your fault'. this is the tragedy of parenthood sometimes I think, that capacity to define a life: she said that once, in a moment of profound pain, and she probably wouldn't have said it under other circumstances and she apologizes later, but now hawke has to live with that forever. leandra can't bear her own emotions without letting them spill over onto someone else so she won't have to hold the discomfort of them anymore, and hawke is left to shoulder that burden and responsibility again and again, handed the impossible task of making it all okay again, somehow -- of stopping anything bad from ever happening again in the Nr 1 Bad Things Constantly Happening capital of thedas.
and then at the same time there's the mirror of how varric's whole family wants orzammar back (and to him orzammar is just a ghost he's seen in their eyes -- there's something in his voice when he says 'That stupid plate was the whole city of Orzammar to him' that gets me every time, how much he understands that he doesn't understand and how lonely that makes him among them, and on top of it all he's frustrated and ashamed and sad that he just doesn't get it and can't meet them on it -- like it's a betrayal that he actually belongs up here, when varric wants so badly to be loyal), just as the hawkes want happiness back. (I don't think it's Lothering in itself that longing is for, it's for being together. Lothering was just the place they stayed the longest.) they're all in exile, even as they try to make a new home out of that exile.
(varric and hawke's real 🤝 quality across all personalities, affinities and choices is 'parentified child' lmao. so much of varric's character makes perfect sense once you know he grew up supporting a mother who was an emotionally volatile alcoholic, honestly. between varric, the hawkes, isabela, seb if you have him and merrill's whole Situation with marethari I feel like DA2 covertly is to mommy issues what ME2 is to daddy issues fjsdjfa)
basically I think I'm trying to pick apart exactly why the fact that leandra is clearly proud of hawke and tells them so several times doesn't feel like it helps at all, almost feels more like a cage even though it's clearly meant well? and what I'm getting is that it's because my sense of what hawke actually needs, in general but especially from a parent, isn't admiration or approval but to be loved and supported and understood. I don't believe leandra ever quite understands them, and it scares her because it makes her think she maybe never even understood malcolm. (that's the subtext of a lot of what leandra will say about him in legacy, at least. he's slipping away from her as the years pass after his death and she fears she never really had him in the first place, if he had secrets like these.) she consistently treats her oldest more like a partner or peer than as her child, which considering hawke is always described as being very similar to their father… I mean I totally see how that could be easy to slip into for her after he died especially, but it doesn't make it any less fucked up or unfair.
the real leandra in legacy is. she is SO absurdly self-centered, if you really pay attention. I don't want to keep dunking on her because I don't think she's like this on purpose, but it boggles my mind. if you do the quest in act 1 she gets so upset and overwhelmed that the kids just sort of sit there like :( at the end, which adds to the trend that through the game you constantly see hawke comforting leandra, and you pretty much never see leandra comforting hawke, beyond some light vaguely encouraging comments in passing. if you do legacy in act 2 while she's still alive hawke comes to her, tentatively asking if malcolm ever spoke to her about any of it -- clearly requesting some sort of emotional support or help to make sense of it. she then expresses her side of it, but never once does she say anything to the effect of 'hey that was a lot to go through, are you okay after all that?'.
instead she essentially hands them the responsibility of having a good life, to repay what malcolm did for all of them. and in theory that's not the worst takeaway I suppose, malcolm probably would want them all to be happy, but in the moment it only feels like more expectation heaped upon you somehow? especially since you don't really get to express anything about how it made you feel before she goes to the 'ah no use complaining' zone (after SHE got to express her grief at feeling like she's losing more and more of that old life, and hawke barely got to say anything fhsfalkjfs). in general she really doesn't do much like. parenting, does she haha. there is so much love there in that relationship, and yet so little comfort. Oh, those days. All of us, in that simple place. Well, that's neither here nor there, is it. This life, we have to make the best of it. And thanks to you, and him, I will. Oh well, mum, I'm uh. I'm glad you feel better after that, at least. Nice to be of service.
it's varric's ghost-leandra who actually acknowledges what a burden hawke has taken on, that shows an understanding of why they're doing it, acknowledges the loss they've been through and also reassures them in their sense of belonging that still can't be taken from them, despite it all -- The best of him is still with you. The best of all of us. It's what makes you try so hard. You'll always have that. We'll always be family. (you can't take 'loved' away, huh.) you get a bit more of a reconciliation/reconnection between hawke and their dad's memory by being reminded he got like this too, you know (implicitly you're not alone). varric through leandra is the one who tells them what they probably would have wanted and needed to hear from a parent right then -- It's going to be alright. that's what Hawke, The Champion means to everyone else, and for once they get to be the one to hear it. except only in a kind dream that never really happened. I. it. hmmmmmm. crushing. that is crushing. but also so incredibly tender from varric's side, and so moving to me that he's seen all this stuff and so desperately wants to give them that comfort. anyway DA2 is about love in some of the realest and thus messiest and most human ways I've ever seen and it makes my brain go wild it's my favorite game of all time goodnight
