& to be clear dragon age deserves None of this careful thought and analysis. because the answer always actually comes down to "the devs are racist" and "the devs are misogynistic" but it's fine. let's play touys
my vision for commander of the inquisition evangeline de brassard:
recruited by cassandra after her and rhys are forced to leave the rebel mages because they had the genius idea of just. making another templar order that's totally different
except neither of them tell her this so she recruits them with the hopes of them being able to convince the mages to return under the chantry's control
despite common belief, evangeline wouldn't actually advocate to side with mages. she wouldn't oppose siding with the mages but she very clearly prefers the templars, especially since she's already encountered templars using red lyrium. another chance to blame the institutional failings of the templars on an external cause? baby she's taking it
if the mages join the inquisition, it'll be very tense for her and she'll always say that they should have people watching over them because they're still dangerous
if the templars join the inquisition, she'll stop playing this song and dance of "no... i'm no longer a templar. i left that life behind me...." and make herself knight-vigilant of the newly reformed (is it really?) templar order
romanceable but only if you're a human or elven mage and her romance can only be triggered in haven when you're still the inquisition's prisoner
rhys is also there but this isn't about him. she WILL be cheating on him if you romance her
and then in the epilogue she breaks up with you because she no longer holds any power over you. sorry.
you said something somewhere about isabela and bethany having vastly different relationships with femininity and gendered trauma and i'm realising it's made me very curious: how do you see bethany's relationship with gender and womanhood, and do you think she considers that aspect of her identity as being related to her victimisation? because on the one hand, it does seem very gendered to me that she as little sister is being treated as this sort of precious but burdensome object to be protected within her family. but also how much of that is she associating with woman, and how much is she associating that with mage, or is it something else entirely?
i have to first acknowledge that i love @gyrovagi and @ikarons's dragon age gender discussion, namely these two posts. bc i am now i think irreversibly academia-brained, let me also say that while those two posts are rattling around in my brain currently, there is a whole ecosystem of mage-gender thought and more broadly, how misogyny/sexism functions in thedas as a setting that nominally venerates women due to the andraste of it all out there. and all of it makes me feel like a teakettle abt to explode.
jumping off that point, bc we're dealing w a type of misogyny that comes from the veneration of women (compelled to complain that that's actually p normal for misogyny as we know it), i gotta state that the type of womanhood/internalized misogyny bethany is dealing w has sooooooooooo much more to do suffering and impossible expectations than like. whew. okay. i thought this was going to be a normal answer, and i don't know why i thought that lmao.
1. andraste as non-mage but ideal woman; bethany as mage and aspiring woman
bethany is at least a little bit drawn to andrastianism. she enjoyed listening to leliana's stories in lothering. she goes to the chantry in kirkwall to light a candle for carver. maybe leliana was only ever telling secular stories. maybe she went to the kirkwall chantry out of guilt. i think it does a disservice to her whole deal to say she isn't religious, bc religiousity (read: andrastianism) is compulsory in thedas. v few things abt bethany's whole deal are abt agency in a positive way, at least initially. whether she likes it or not, she's suffused in andrastian patriarchy.
andraste is inescapable as the ideal of womanhood. andraste, as the daughter of an extremely influential alamarri leader, is of noble blood, and i have so much to say abt alamarri culture being superseded by andrastian interpretations of alamarri culture but this is going to be so long already a;sdljf;ldask
andraste also 'overcomes' infertility, and while that's a moral framing i personally find rly abhorrent, we all live in a society. she also 'overcomes' the chronic illness that causes her infertility: second verse, same as the first, etc. there's some shit there re: values surrounding procreation and being able-bodied that i think. are in the mix. even if again this is going to be so long already.
women are mothers, and if they're sick, it's bc you can suffer your way to goodness — sometimes as an ex-slave, and sometimes as a martyr. lol, lmao even.
i think it can be extrapolated that andraste demonstrates a fidelity and patience that are supposed to be venerated/emulated, esp in contrast to her husband, maferath. maferath has a concubine named gilivhan who bears him children long before andraste does, but nowhere in the mythology does there seem to be any cruelty or resentment on andraste's part — she raises gilivhan's three sons as her own after gilivhan's death. so part of womanhood is a sort of default maternal attitude.
i do not think the presence of concubines in this instance points to a thedas-wide acceptance of, say, polyamory or even communal child-rearing. isolde is pissed by the idea that alistair is the result of an extramarital affair and takes it out on alistair. i would argue that while andrastian mores would advise her to be more tolerant of and patience with her husband's other partners or children..........................clearly the chantry is more than capable of taking over the responsibilities of raising alistair while isolde and eamon get back to their marriage and connor.
so we've got andraste as wife and mother, and let's not skip over andraste being The Bride. the ur-bride. faithful to her mortal husband and yet also some other guy's wife. CLEARLY, at least to maferath and his contemporaries, wives being another man's concubine or participating in other relationships is sufficient cause to betray whole causes, much less the wife in question. wife, mother, bride. my take here boils down to the idea that andraste, despite being a mother and married to a mortal man, kind of gets to retain a spiritual virginity.
then you've got andraste as warrior and prophet. women who fight and women who are believed. LOADED!
intriguingly, tho it doesn't seem super emphasized, there is andraste as enslaved — and formerly-enslaved. I'm Every Woman. potential for some v conflicted and guilty feelings on bethany's part there as she ruminates on her lack of freedom and also relative freedom as compared to her brethren in the circles. is it blasphemy to hate her life? idk ask teenage bethany sitting in the lothering chantry listening to sermons abt how magic exists to serve man.
last but not least, there's andraste as sister. andraste as witness to whatever mysterious accident that claims the life of halliserre, the accident that causes her chronic illness that in turn causes infertility. much 2 think abt.
bethany's not a wife and a mother, and she's never been a bride. those are def things that i think she wants to be, bc those are things women are supposed to be. she knows she's of 'noble blood' and demonstrates a genuine interest in rediscovering and reclaiming leandra's history.
bethany is not a warrior, or at least her ability to protect herself and be violent to others is not integrated into her identity — or rather it's been forcibly integrated into her identity in such a way that viewing herself as inherently dangerous or as an unstable weapon in need of constant surveillance is like. idk if i'm articulating this well, but if you're constantly a threat, enacting violence on purpose might not register in the same way as it would for aveline, for example, who can more effectively categorize and maybe compartmentalize her own violence.
Aveline: You show admirable restraint, Bethany.
Bethany: For a mage, you mean.
Aveline: I could also say, "for a Hawke," but yes, for a mage.
Bethany: You have a sword. Why aren't you killing someone right now?
Aveline: Fair point, but I can put my sword down.
Bethany: Believe me, I have tried.
bethany would love to be able to put down her sword, but since she can't, she just does her best to pretend it's not there. kind of. that said, this battle cry: 'what are you, afraid? i'm not hiding anymore!' i think reveals a lot abt how she feels abt fear and when she's allowed to not be afraid.
bethany might feel like a prophet (and it wouldn't allay that feeling, i think, to be someone who does more observing than participating), but if she's a prophet, she's a cassandra, a cassandra who feels like smth is coming for her and once it does, if she gets taken by the templars, she's relieved it finally just happened.
in the circle, bethany becomes a teacher and at least one of her younger apprentices rly bonds w her. when immersed in an explicitly andrastian environment, she conforms, not unhappily, to the ideal of an andrastian woman as much as any mage can, by taking on a position that allows her to be maternal.
bethany and freedom is p fraught, kind of its own essay, but since this is going to be a monster already, let's focus on:
2. bethany as sister
that's like her whole identity to whole hawke family: baby sister. she has to be protected, she has to be curtailed, she has to be hidden. leandra says she never cried as a child — is this bc, as is true for many girls, she understood from an early age that her emotions created the need for attention and energy that she might have experienced as equal parts smothering and exposing? is it bc from a v early age, malcolm impressed upon her the importance of her keeping her emotions in check, bc they put both her and her family in danger of demons or templar attention? what abt the pressures that come from being raised in a family that seems to have struggled w money at least periodically?
like what's the difference between being a mage and being a girl for someone living in a body where they are one and the same? how do you separate your gender from your mage-gender? i think bethany shows signs of trying to a 'normal' woman in that she's demure, polite, pacifying, etc. those things are inevitably filtered thru her identity as an apostate mage, but if she performs them well enough, then maybe she can be mistaken for a well-behaved woman first, before she's a well-behaved mage, right?
babies who are 'easy' don't cry. children who are well-behaved are quiet. bethany is always the baby sister. like she just wants to be 'good,' whatever that means. a good woman is a good wife is a good mother is a good warrior (presumably a warrior who can put down their sword as well as wield it; read: discipline) is a good sister. i am being deliberately delicate abt the enslavement aspect bc yes, if you are enslaved, you are designated 'good' if you are quiet, obedient, competent — but not too competent. andraste did free herself. mages aren't supposed to do that. one must imagine sisyphus happy and dry heaving, etc.
she would have been praised consistently for her control, and she is, in the game, even by someone like fenris, praised in absentia for her self-control, phrased as a lack of weakness. do we think bethany was seen as mature for her age. do we think the neighbors told leandra and malcolm how lucky they were to have such a helpful and sweet little girl who stayed out of the way. even her childhood friend peaches chooses not to turn bethany into the templars bc she seemed, AND I FUCKING QUOTE, 'too nice to be magic.'
the big moment in her life when she stands her ground against a bully is the incident that precipitated the family's move to lothering. do we think she learned any unfortunate lessons abt what happens to mage girls who fight back. do we think we can infer that no amount of staying quiet and nice protected bethany from the kid who bullied her so badly she threw him across the field w her magic. do we think it's a coincidence that this bully was a boy.
when she fails! as a sister! her family suffers. it is never just abt bethany's wellbeing, tho clearly she's internalized that 'other ppl' are the ones 'taking the risks' on her behalf, as if she is not herself at risk. she doesn't get to feel her own feelings abt her life. she is the vessel for everyone else's anxiety and grief, and she doesn't even get to fucking cry.
she is, in this way, way closer to halliserre than andraste. does she think of herself as andraste-adjacent? does she have enough exposure, even, to andrastian texts on halliserre to identify w her? would she, too, love to die in a mysterious accident that unburdens her family from the burden of caring for her, one that leaves her unblemished and tragic but free from the obligation to be good? i think that's what she means when she says she tried to put her sword down, yeah.
3. how much of it is being a mage, and how much of it is being a woman
ig we can get into the weeds of suffering as worship and suffering as nonnegotiable here, but that feels too thorny to actually approach in a way that works. idk man. i do think 'mage' as a gender category positions 'mage' as a failed person in a way that feels analogous to a lot of misogyny/types of misogyny. what i'm going to skirt around here is that she mentions alrik, who is a rapist who (shoutout @recents) specifically targets mages w the threat of being made tranquil and also just straight up targets tranquil mages, period.
but while i agree that this can kind of be muddied by the gender dynamics between alrik and ella during dissent...................................i am also cognizant of the fact that a circle-route bethany mentions alrik by name in her letter and that ella is one of bethany's students, the one bethany mentions in that same letter as having gotten rly attached to bethany. that is a connection that has rly horrible implications. how much bethany can protect ella is directly contradicted by how much she can protect herself.
bethany is a failed woman bc she's a failed person as a result of being a mage. i think she still tries to 'good girl/woman' herself into being a person, or at least to cancel out her mageness. but as the dialogue w aveline shows, she rly resents it when other ppl compliment her on being a 'good' (read: unthreatening) mage.
but tbh i don't think bethany rly gets to decide for herself what's going on w all that until after the end of da2. the sheer amount of sexualization she experiences even from ppl who ostensibly respect and love her is like. she simply doesn't ask for any of it (except maybe w isabela and sebastian, and wrt latter don't piss me off). but i do think that varric rly takes the cake for me in terms of benevolent sexism.
Varric: So... Milady Sunshine, what's your first act as a noblewoman going to be?
Bethany: *giggles* A noblewoman with no fortune and no title? Looking for work, probably.
Varric: Practicality is for peasants, my lady. You need to do something frivolous to celebrate your birthright.
Bethany: Such as...?
Varric: Come up to the Hightown Market and complain bitterly that there's no Orlesian silk that matches your eyes.
Bethany: But what if something does match my eyes? What will I do, then?
Varric: Insist that they're blatantly copying you, and demand royalties. A good noble always has a complaint ready, Sunshine.
this is one of the most egregious examples of somebody interacting w bethany and completely failing to retain any knowledge of her personality or wants or needs or like. anything. i get that she's giggling. i get that it's all in good fun. i get that the joke is that bethany would never behave this way, and the comedy lies in the distance between the imagined noble lady and bethany. i get that.
however what varric is failing to acknowledge here is the elephant that's in every room ever: bethany is a mage. she doesn't get to complain. she doesn't get to be frivolous. she doesn't get to call attention to herself, period. varric is unintentionally underlining how much being a mage impacts bethany's womanhood, even a newly privileged womanhood.
and yeah, bethany enjoys this bc she enjoys imagining herself as normal. she enjoys the fantasy that she gets to be the type of woman who throws a fit over silk. but even varric's nickname for bethany — sunshine — implies a life of being visible that bethany has not lived and won't get to live until after da2 best case scenario, at least within the framework of freedom that varric has. being alive and visible as a mage means either her whole world becoming the circle or the wardens.
like she's barred from most womanhood. she wants pretty dresses, and she wants princes to call her beautiful, and she wants to be a daughter the way leandra was a daughter.
she wants to be uncomplicated! she wants to not be a problem! she doesn't want to need protection! but while all of those things are abt not being a mage, i think she'd be fine with being protected by a chivalrous prince — there is a fantasy there, for sure. a fantasy that requires her womanhood being prioritized over her being a mage.
milady sunshine. blech. nevertheless, while i think varric misunderstands her utterly, he does at least misunderstand her in the way she prefers to be misunderstood. varric can construct a fantasy-bit where bethany gets to just be a woman. but it is, ultimately, a fantasy.
andraste is wife-mother-bride-warrior-prophet-victim-saint. bethany doesn't have 'aspects' except in the realm of story; bethany fumbles personhood across the board thru absolutely no fault of her own.
i think that's why she gets squeezed into boxes that don't rly suit her. there's so much unwieldy stuff going on that it's easiest to slot her into a role that coincidentally!!!!!!! doesn't have agency. baby sister. crucially, she's not sexually agentive, she's vulnerable to corruption and in need of an older sibling or guardian to make sure the baby doesn't get into trouble, and this is an established enough dynamic that she will self-police. andraste as statue and icon, babyyyyy. emotionless, motionless, and emblematic of whatever you want to project onto her.
(but then da2 ends and actually she gets to spend her thirties being whatever type of woman she wants to be)
and if i said that the emasculation of the (mostly-male) templar order through being positioned as subservient to an all-female order of nonviolent chantry sisters in a setting in which men (and warrior men in particular) are otherwise expected to dominate the social hierarchy incentivises violence (including sexual violence) against the mages in their care, a class that is culturally seen as feminine and subservient through subjugation & the Only other kind of person a templar regularly sees, in order to reclaim dignity. which the non-violent order of chantry sisters is conditioned to disdain. which itself drives the need to reclaim dignity too. would that be something that made sense
ok hang on that’s not all though . because as a few people have mentioned (and a core idea behind this post) the relationship between templars and chantry sisters is actually like…. A Bit Complicated
because chantry sisters are positioned as hierarchically Superior to templars… the templar order answers to and exists to protect the clergy, and the knight commander outranks (and is directly within the chain of command of) the grand cleric. but outside of the chantry, andrastian nations are usually patriarchal, and andrastian men culturally understand themselves as Above the woman around them (and furthermore, templars are Warriors, and in many andrastian nations (think: battling for the throne in ferelden, tourneys in orlais) the Warrior role is also held in esteem; by comparison, the clergy is explicitly nonviolent and at least theoretically preaches peace and compassion). so that creates some dissonance in the chantry, where that dynamic is flipped and the new dynamic is strictly enforced, which might create resentment… which might lead a templar (who is likely to be a man) to want to put chantry sisters in their place. except that they Can’t. because chantry sisters are untouchable and violence against them will not be forgiven by the chantry.
but nobody cares what happens to a mage. and mages are completely under the templars’ power.
and from that perspective it’s understandable that chantry sisters and templars don’t always get on— templars because chantry sisters are symbols of their emasculation, their frustrated entitlement, their impotence (#lyriumimpotence mentioned)… and chantry sisters because as *women who are *specifically taught to see violence as sometimes necessary but also terrible… well. maybe they don’t always (or even usually) sympathise with mages, but it would be hard to watch the way templars treat them and not wonder if that violence is actually intended for You.
& this is like. text a bit also. i don’t have game screenshots but here’s some ambient dialogue from DAI:
and of course violence against mages as a way to reclaim dignity and gendered pride creates the implication that it is a mage’s responsibility to support that dignity and that pride to begin with; that a templar’s violence can be defused by a mage who is Meek enough, Subservient enough, Solicitous enough to soothe that injured pride.
which makes it the mage’s fault when it doesn’t work.
like, david gaider's stated justification for thedas' promiscuous mage stereotype is kind of laughably simplistic but also fascinatingly revealing, right. mages are outcasts, isolated outside of 'normal society,' and so not subject to the same cultural expectations regarding sexuality. which gets framed in his word of god comments and the few textual nods (like that one bit in the calling) as almost a freedom from the framework of (heterosexual) marriage for the purpose of childbearing as the ideal/only form of sexuality. they don't have to worry about passing down a family name (because they wouldn't get to raise a kid anyway and wouldn't have anything to give to them.)
but if we're honest about the power dynamics here, what it really is is that mages are excluded from having sexual relationships that are accepted and respected by society. you are watched at all hours and have to sneak off if you want to have sex in private. you cannot get married (not without permission that you'll never be granted). you should not have children, because they would be tainted from birth by the possibility of inheriting your magic. if you do have children, they will be taken from you.
all expressions of mage sexuality are sexually deviant, therefore all mages are conceived of as inherently sexually deviant, and furthermore mages as an outgroup can serve as a kind of dumping ground for members of the ingroup to blamelessly act out their own 'deviant' desires without it reflecting back on them. is it gay if you fuck a mage? he's not really a man like you are, is he? is it cheating if you fuck a mage? you could've been ensorcelled into it. they don't have morals and standards of behavior like us - we don't allow them to, of course, but they don't even try. so if you think about it it's not really possible to do anything wrong to them, is it?
trying to get across that dragon age has a problem with lesbophobia sucks so much because you'll say "it kinda makes me uncomfortable that the two canon relationships between queer women in dao are explicitly abusive and predatory. also the game was absolutely made with men in mind and despite leliana being bisexual, she has a lot more romantic interactions/reactivity with a male character, and overall it just makes a kind of uncomfortable effect where it feels like the intention was Saving this poor abused women from her evil bitch ex with the power of your manly heroic ways" and people will just respond with "yay toxic yuri i loveeeee toxic yuri!!! also leliana is bisexual just romance her as a woman lmao" and completely ignore that you were talking about. like. the intention of the writers. and then you'll say "It sucks that sera is so mistreated by the game and ends up getting paired off with a side character she has no interactions with if you don't romance her" and they'll respond "that's just because she's unlikeable" and completely ignore that part of the reason she's so "unlikeable" is because a lot of people just genuinely do not like lesbians
It really is so weird how none of the non-human companions in DAI let you bond with them about being non-human. The Iron Bull insults Adaar for thinking they’re Qunari, and then when your character claims the Tal-Vasoth title, he belittles you for it.
Solas and Sera insult Lavellan’s culture and religious beliefs, and rejects the player for trying to talk to them about being elven.
And while Varric isn’t as hostile to Cadash as the others are, it is very clear that he harbours his own insecurities and the game doesn’t let you have any lines at all about it, save in the beginning when you are identified as Carta, and that is it. Save some lines about «real dwarves» in Hissing Wastes.
It is just. Such an odd choice. And makes me sad for the non-human pc’s.
scout harding still works for the inquisition in villainquisition btw bc that’s how i can make her what she was always meant to be (read: the specific version of her character that i always wanted her to be in my mind)
character who signs up with the first militarised cult to look her way because she wants adventure and her skills have never been valued so highly and taken so seriously before, and you’re telling me the militarised cult just happened to be Morally Good Actually so the whole thing was fine. because you hate me. because you don’t want me to have fun.
the story of the dwarves in dragon age is so fucked up. they mine their own ancestors' blood for money while their whole social hierarchy spits on the unity the titans intended for them. and they have no idea
i don't agree with the take that cole, as a spirit of compassion, cannot dislike anyone. because cole does dislike people (see: adrian from asunder). cole isn't completely blind compassion because he withholds it from other people. what i think is going with him is his judgment is always influenced by the person's perception of their own actions. he likes cullen because cullen knows he treated mages terribly and feels guilty about it. in a similar vein, cole likes evangeline because she never thought her treatment of mages was bad despite evidence otherwise. unlike these two, adrian knew killing pharamond was a bad thing to do, but it was necessary and she felt no remorse over it. because of this, cole doesn't like her and thinks she just "wanted blood." i think cole having his own preconceptions on what is Good or not is way more interesting than him being compassionate towards everyone (especially since it's plainly not true)
i think it's important that cole never actually experiences what cullen and evangeline did to mages. his only information is from their own perception of what happened. when he meets the templar that killed cole, he does hate him because he saw firsthand what happened to the mage cole. the quest goes on to say that the templar does regret what happened to mage cole but that doesn't initially stop cole from wanting to kill him
i think cullen should've been able to remember cole so he'll always be a reminder of how mages are treated by templars like him. i think cole should have Spirit Freak Outs whenever cullen is near because he sees cullen's memories of hurting people. to have a spirit of compassion understand his suffering but can never stay in the same room as him. a reminder that him being victim to demons and lyrium addiction will never erase the hurt he's caused. fuck you
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