But i would like to hear you talk about alistair 🥺 please?
so i was going to point out that—saying this, as always, as someone who often spares loghain and who agrees that we have a fair bit of ground to criticise alistair and to absolutely show just as much understanding to the warden here—i think if you approach the issue of his reaction to sparing loghain purely as “the wardens recruit talented criminals, the HOF wanted to recruit a talented criminal, what’s alistair getting all upset about, did he not read the warden manual?”, i do think you’re being a little deliberately obtuse about the matter. like come on we know that’s not what it’s about. you’re omitting every bit of context about what makes this personal! that’s the fun stuff!
alistair had a lifetime of neglect and dreaded his future, and then along came the only group of people who ever gave him a real sense of family, self-respect, and worthwhile purpose. loghain abandoned those people to die, publicly accused them of intentionally and maliciously causing the disaster in which they died, and had alistair and the other lone survivor hunted as fugitives by bounty hunters, soldiers, and assassins. loghain is not just nebulously some guy who did some crimes. it’s intensely personal. but it’s also deeper than merely an issue of vengeance or principle. conscripting loghain threatens alistair’s very self-identity and cuts at his deepest trauma. allow me 2 elaborate
people focus a lot on what alistair says first: “joining the wardens is an honour, not a punishment! name him a warden and you cheapen us all!” that’s a really hard thing to swallow for some wardens, who have had a very different experience with the order compared to alistair. to have the wardens called an honour when you didn’t ask for this, when you were maybe taken utterly against your will? or equally to have him refute that people who have done bad things deserve the chance to join the wardens and do good for the world, when maybe you also had terrible sins on your hands before you were conscripted? it reads like alistair is glorifying the wardens way beyond what they are... and yes, i think he is doing that, and any warden reaction is totally fair. but in a less emotional scene where alistair isn’t grasping for straws in public, he knows the wardens aren’t cookie cutter honourable knights and he will tell you so. go up to him as a fresh recruit and ask him if the wardens are heroes, and he’ll be the first one to tell you otherwise. he knows what genre he is in. he is not expecting a fairytale. he may disapprove of the evils you can commit as the warden—and i should hope so!—but he will defer to you no matter what you do. so why draw the line here? why worry about the wardens’ honour now after potentially committing massacres?
i would say that even for alistair himself, honour isn’t really the issue. it’s mainly the easy argument to make in public. what he says after, and what he repeats, is this: “i will not stand next to him as a brother. i won’t!” “ask me for a pound of my flesh, or all the gold in orlais, but don’t ask me to accept that monster as a brother.” it’s the brotherhood that’s at issue.
alistair’s personal quest and fade nightmare are all about his desperation for family, seeking to fill the gap that left him insecure and unloved. his choices here imo have almost nothing to do with the honour of the grey wardens and lofty ideas about what they should represent. it’s that he believes the grey wardens are his family. this is the idea that’s entirely holding him together: that they wanted him, and found him worthy, and this legitimises him as person who can be loved or liked or accepted or respected or lead a meaningful life, when he’d never experienced any of those things
if loghain becomes a grey warden, then logically either loghain is his family—utterly unacceptable, poisoning the entire thing—or the grey wardens aren’t a family and he has no family. he’s out in the cold again. please draw a direct comparison to eamon, the authority figure he trusted, allowing him to be pushed out of his home by isolde, someone significantly older than him who had been the aggressor the whole time. please draw a direct comparison to how he sees everything bad in his life as a result of the relatives he didn’t want or choose. what he does is about this, it’s not about honour or principles or morals, it’s about his trauma and his self-perception and his last straw, it’s about him. which is exactly what makes it sympathetic and exactly what makes it selfish. AAAAGGGGGHHHH. so good.
i love that he does what he does SO MUCH. i love that it’s a niche option but it certainly doesnt require your player character to be some cackling evil monster, and it ties together so much of his character journey. him choosing to leave you no matter the consequences is such a shocking moment of agency for a character constantly led by others, more agency than he gets to demonstrate in a lot of more ‘normal’ ‘happy’ endings. i don’t know, i just feel like when i see people dilute it to ‘this is what the textbook warden should do, the logical way to respond, and he didn’t do it! what the hell?’ i’m like, come on! don’t you see how emotional and personal and gripping and selfish and understandable and human and real this is? why would you want him to do anything other than one of the best character moments in the whole series?
he’s 20 years old and nobody has ever done right by him and he is clinging to the one thing in his life that makes sense and makes him feel okay about himself, and if he loses it by not getting to lop one particular terrible old man’s head off then the companion you’ve had tanking for you the entire game is not even going to show up to the final world-saving battle bc he doesn’t gaf anymore actually and also fuck you. will not back down even if you hand him over to be executed. iconic. legendary. i don’t know how to not adore him for this. i do this to him out of love
