Anders approval drama never dies, does it? It's a big button pushed whenever Anders is being enjoyed too peacefully and someone wants to resurrect the Abhorrent Anders vs. Flawless Fenris agenda. (Look, Fenris is flawless but it's not a zero sum game).
Here's the thing, though, in over 10 years the desire to discredit Anders has only ever gone hand in hand with trivializing what he represents within the larger themes of the narrative and that's the main reason for the pushback and frustration. It's unsurprising Anders and Fenris are both loved and prioritised, they're two sides of the same dented and downtrodden coin— a mirror of each other (not a trigger for each other)— people are right to relate to their struggles and flaws, and desire the best for them.
However, Anders (as with most DA2 characters) is also a rushed series of sociopolitical metaphors stuffed into a passionate and traumatized activist whose mental health is deteriorating on screen in a game that doesn't know how to say anything salient without also giving fascism a soap box. He's inconsistently written because DA2 is careless with its allegories and metaphors. (That's not even getting into how Anders/Justice is based on a irl person with bipolar, particularly dark considering you can choose to mercy kill him).
Anders is mage rights in a game about mage rights. His deterioration parallels the deterioration of the 'relationship' between the mages and templars in Kirkwall. His whole character arc asks the question of where the line is between Justice and Vengeance. He blew up a symbol of his oppression. All this makes him a iconic and memorable character. Yet he's also serving as allegory for historically marginalized identities imprisoned by authoritarian governments. His innate magic, its treatment, and his ostracism serves generally as metaphors for queerness. This is to say that a formally enslaved character shouldn't have been the biggest mouthpiece for being pro mage internment and abuse, and neither Fenris' or Anders' trauma should have been used to two-sides an argument that is very clearly one-sided.
Whether Anders approval is in character is besides the point because it shouldn't have been an option in the first place. It was a trivialization of Fenris' enslavement (thus of slavery overall), their relationship (they don't hate each other that much, God), and Anders' cause (making him a monstrous hypocrite is justification for killing him and dismissing the mage cause). What's more, their rivalry itself— without development, resolution, or catharsis— leaves less thoughtful players feeling vindicated in hating, abusing, or discarding both of them in ways that mirror how they are treated textually. It was irresponsible Dragon Age storytelling and DA2 shouldn't get a pass for its careless aspects because of a neverending compulsion to throw Anders under the bus.
Well, my piece is said and now I'll keep loving both Fenris and Anders in peace 😅❤️.
Question: when we first meet anders in Awakening do you think he killed the templars that we see on the ground, or is that not something he would do because he could be punished if he did get captured later?
(sorry it’s taken so long for me to answer this!)
Anders says the darkspawn killed the templars and I think he’s telling the truth there. He also says he doesn’t feel sorry for them that they died, and he’s also telling the truth there, lmao - and I don’t really blame him for that. But I don’t think he killed them.
Anders is smart. He’s impulsive sometimes, he’s faaar better at short-term planning than he is at long-term planning, and he’s defiant as hell (often recklessly so), but he’s very aware of his position in the world.
He pushes just far enough that he can get away with without being killed or made Tranquil. He pushes far enough that he will be punished for it with physical abuse and (ultimately) a whole year of solitary confinement, but he stops short of doing things that would give the templars an excuse to kill him. He even uses those exact words - “give them an excuse”. He’s well aware that he’s walking on a razor’s edge, and he’s also well aware that he won’t be able to get away with it forever, but it doesn’t make him back down, because the minute he does, they win, in his mind.
To him, this is the most defiant thing he can possibly do: disobey and then have the audacity to survive no matter what they throw at him. He knows they have power over him, but he isn’t going to make it easy for them, even if he’s repeatedly punished for it. And I think it’s what keeps him going - if he stopped fighting, he would lose the will to live.
But we also see that he knows he’s at the end of his rope. The templars who arrive to apprehend him accuse him of killing his templar guards, and he knows there’s nothing he can do to make them believe he’s innocent - that even with no evidence, they’ll seize the opportunity to get rid of him once and for all, because as much as they say he’s just a nuisance, they also see him as a threat to their power and control. He’s an example of a mage who won’t bend to their will, and it hurts their ego and threatens their status. They are looking for an excuse to kill him.
Last time he was brought back to the Circle, he was put in solitary confinement for an entire year. He’s looking at more solitary, or worse, if he’s brought back to the Circle again, and he knows it. It’s no wonder he’s so willing to join the Wardens despite the risks. It’s a choice between death now or death later (which is a theme that comes up again in DA2).
I think it’s also something that contributed to his decision to merge with Justice, tbh. Once the Warden-Commander left and he didn’t have their protection anymore, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the templars came after him again. He knew that the Wardens probably wouldn’t be bothered to protect him if it became too troublesome for them. Then Rolan, an ex-templar Warden showed up, and Anders figured (probably correctly) that he still had ties to the templars, which made Anders feel cornered, and - well - it was probably one of the final deciding factors making him want to merge with Justice and desert the Wardens.
Why would DA2 Anders spout the chantry's explanation of demons and spirits? Wouldn't his merger with justice allow him to know better?
In my interpretation?
Anders has endured pretty much an entire lifetime of abuse,and a lot of that abuse was spiritual abuse. That means he’s internalized a lot of toxic beliefs about himself and the world that he’s still struggling to unlearn. A lifetime of indoctrination telling you to fear everything you are is just not something that goes away easily. And one of the things the Chantry and Circle harp on the most is how scary the Fade and spirits are and how mages can never ever let their guard down even a little bit or they’ll get corrupted by demons or their own power/temptation/sin/weakness/whatever. Because mages just get held to a higher standard of scrutiny when it comes to this stuff than non-mages ever do.
Even before the Circle, he was taught to fear magic and spirits and demons. He was raised by a devoutAndrastian father who disowned him the moment he found out he was a mage - in Anders’ words: “My father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon.”
Then he was forced into the Circle, which is an incredibly abusive environment for mages. The only perspective they get is an Andrastian perspective, specifically the Chantry’s interpretation of the Chant that tells them that mages are basically the source of evil in the world. They’re treated as abominations waiting to happen, taught to hate and fear themselves, and told they have no place in the world or at the Maker’s side, except as tools for the Chantry to use as they see fit. That they’re not allowed to have freedom, love, family, or community - that those things are not for them, that they don’t deserve them. That they don’t count as people. That the Circle is the only place for them, because they can’t be trusted to know what’s best for themselves, and they can’t be trusted around “normal” people. That they should count themselves as lucky for the Circle’s and the Chantry’s abusive brand of paternalism and forced helplessness. That they’re alive because the Chantry allows them to live, and that they should be grateful for it. They’re never allowed to forget that.
This is the sort of thing that children are subjected to from the moment they arrive at the Circle. Under that sort of strict indoctrination, it’s no wonder so many of them turn out to hate and fear themselves. One of the most striking examples we see is Keili in DA:O, who literally thinks the best thing she and her fellow mages can do for the world is kill themselves - that they’re inherently sinful and their only chance for salvation is to just disappear from the world (some screenshots of things she says here). We also see mages in the Gallows talk that way, too (screenshots here).
That is the kind of environment Anders spent many of his formative years in - he was forced into the Circle at age 12, which means he spent his teen and young adult years (during which identity formation is a key part of psychological and emotional development) hearing this and only this: you’re lesser; you’re more prone to temptation than non-mages (and if you do fall to temptation you will be held more accountable for it than any non-mage would); if you’re not constantly on guard against yourself, you will become a monster; if you’re victimized by a demon, it is your fault and you’re the monster, not a victim (even though a non-mage would be seen as a victim under similar circumstances - e.g. Cullen, when he’s victimized by demons during ‘The Broken Circle,’ is seen as victim, even though none of the mages systematically thrown at the mercy of demons during their Harrowings are seen as victims); etc.
Like, so much of a mage’s supposed “education” in the Circle is basically being told over and over and over again that at any given moment you could “fail” to be a “good” mage and be overwhelmed by demons - and that, if that happens, it’s your own fault for being too weak and not faithful enough. They aren’t encouraged to try to understand the Fade or spirits or magic - they’re only taught to fear them and hate the part of themselves that connects them to the Fade. Alternative beliefs are censored and stifled. All they hear is that the Fade is scary, spirits can never be trusted, and demons are everywhere. And questioning those beliefs could be a death sentence, because any sort of curiosity or doubt or anything else that can be singled out as ‘temptation’ or potential weakness can get a mage killed or made Tranquil without even a chance at a Harrowing. If the fear of demons by itself isn’t enough to keep a mage from questioning, the threat of death or Tranquility often is.
The existence of the Harrowing only drives that point home. It serves no functional purpose aside from terrorizing mages, keeping them in line, and creating a hierarchy among them, to keep them divided and alienated from one another. It does absolutely nothing to make a mage immune to demonic possession or to strengthen their control over their magic. It doesn’t do anything to predict or change how they might use their magic in the future or under varying circumstances. It doesn’t prepare them for anything (they aren’t even told ahead of time what the Harrowing entails, or even when they’ll be taken for it - they’re just woken up in the middle of the night by surprise and taken to the Harrowing Chamber and told they’re going into the Fade to prove themselves). Literally all it does is throw them at the mercy of a demon to scare the hell out of them and give the templars an excuse to cull the “weak” - if a mage takes “too long” (which seems arbitrarily defined), they’re killed. Mages aren’t even the only ones who can be tempted by or possessed by demons - we see non-mages get tempted and possessed by demons all the time throughout the games - but mages are the only ones forced to undergo a Harrowing, and they are never seen as victims for being targeted or possessed by demons, even though non-mages are.
All of this is to say: Anders was raised to live in abject fear of demons. He’s a spirit healer, too, meaning he works with benign spirits frequently and he has to be even more hypervigilant about what he lets in and what spirits he interacts with. Beyond just being afraid of what demons could do to him, he’s also very fixated on the need to be a good mage, to prove to himself and everyone else that he’s not weak, that he does deserve to be treated like a person. Now, no one should ever have to prove their personhood or that they should have basic rights, but that’s the position mages have been put in: they have to prove that they’re as deserving of basic rights as anyone else - and even then, as Anders says in Awakening, there’s nothing a mage can actually do to prove themself. They’re condemned because of what they are, regardless of what they actually do.
But this mandate of ‘proving’ themselves is really effective in keeping them suppressed, too - the Circle presents itself as a faux meritocracy. The Chantry defines what counts as a ‘good’ and ‘respectable’ mage, praises those who are appropriately submissive (gives the ‘good’ ones slight privileges over other mages, but never so much privilege as a non-mage would have), and punishes those who rebel too much (with death, Tranquility, or torture - e.g. a year of solitary confinement for Anders, or lashes for any Gallows mage who so much as speaks to a civilian). You get mages fighting amongst themselves - blaming their fellow mages who don’t toe the line for how mages are treated, rather than blaming the templars and the Chantry for oppressing them in the first place. It’s a very effective divide-and-conquer way of keeping mages subdued and having them turn on one another instead of on the oppressive institutions keeping them subdued. Tie obedience to self-worth, teach that from the time they’re children, and you effectively declaw a large portion of mages, so to speak.
Especially when religion is brought into the mix, because then it’s not just about self-worth, it’s also about faith and what the Maker and Andraste think. The dehumanization of mages is framed as something divinely ordained rather than orchestrated by everyday people, which gives it authority above and beyond mortal matters. It’s not just the Chantry or templars or non-mages in general who see you as lesser: it’s your own god. Being told time and time again that your Maker thinks there’s something about you that is inherently wrong and bad, that there’s no place at the Maker’s side for you unless you submit and be perpetually apologetic just for existing? That takes a toll.
Anders internalized a lot of this stuff. How could he not? Again, this is the echo chamber he grew up in. And he struggles against it. He really, really does. He’s in a constant process of trying to redefine his faith to make room in it for people like him. In Awakening, he talks about how Andraste - an ex-slave who led a violent rebellion against her oppressors - wouldn’t approve of how mages are treated under the Chantry. In his manifesto, he talks about how magic should be seen as a gift of the Maker, not a curse. He’s a devout Andrastian who has been rejected from his faith and is trying to reframe it in a way that accepts him and people like him.
But he also has a lot of self-doubt. There are times when he does refer to his magic as a curse, even though sometimes he argues it’s not. Faced with even the possibility that Corypheus really was an ancient magister immediately throws him into a crisis of faith - “if the Chantry was right about this, what else are they right about?” basically translates as “if my abusers were right about this, were they right about me?” He’s been rebelling his whole life, but it also doesn’t take much to make him doubt himself, especially since he doesn’t even think highly of himself in the first place - he’s always talking about how he doesn’t deserve friendship or love or care.
This stuff is really, really hard for him to shake. And on the surface, he does a good job at challenging and questioning at least some of what the Chantry taught him, but on a deeper level, a lot of this stuff is going to take a lot of work (and support!) for him to unlearn. And the things that are hardest for him to unlearn are these basic beliefs about spirits and demons, because again, demons pose a very real threat to him, and the Chantry and the Circle emphasized that threat to be even more frightening than it already is by itself. Demons are always on his radar, it’s an ever-present threat - which must be exhausting. But in his mind, fearing demons is what has kept him safe, not just physically but also spiritually and in terms of his own self-image. Falling to a demon doesn’t just mean death, it also means failure in his mind - failure to be a “good” mage, failure to prove himself as being just as much a person as any non-mage. It’s all very much tied up in his insecurities and self-loathing.
So it’s no wonder merging with Justice throws him so much. Justice challenges what Anders thinks he knows about spirits and demons and the Fade - and what Anders thinks he knows is also what’s been, in his mind, keeping him safe all these years. Loss of control - whether it’s being able to control himself and his own power, or being controlled by others like he has for most of his life - is arguably one of Anders’ biggest fears. It makes sense given how much of Anders’ life revolves around control as a concept - control over himself (against demons, against templars), control over his magic, control over his own life and future (something he never had in the Circle, and to some extent still doesn’t have). Demons are probably one of the first things that come to mind when Anders thinks about losing control of himself - it’s what the Circle taught him, after all. So when Justice ‘takes over’ and it feels to Anders like ‘losing control,’ Anders starts to question whether Justice might be becoming a demon (even though, imo, that’s not at all the case).
Anders has trouble moving beyond that spirit vs. demon dichotomy. He tries to fit Justice into an either/or category, but it’s just not that simple. That’s why Anders goes back and forth so much - sometimes he gets defensive about how Justice isn’t a demon, and then sometimes he catastrophizes over what if Justice is a demon? Anders has trouble finding peace with that grey area (and it doesn’t help that Anders doesn’t even have the most stable sense of his own identity). Those shifts in perspective are also often linked to Anders’ mental state at any given time - when he’s depressed or anxious, he tends to catastrophize more and slip into that “I ruin everything” rumination spiral (and those are the times he starts up with the “I’m an abomination/Justice is a demon” thing).
When he first tells Hawke about Justice, it’s almost like he’s idealizing a memory - “he’s not my friend Justice anymore, he’s vengeance now; my anger corrupted him” - because Anders is prone to catastrophizing and blaming himself anyway, and it’s just what he defaults to when things don’t turn out the way he expected. But Justice was never flawless in the first place. Justice always talked about vengeance as a possible form that justice could take. This isn’t something new that Justice got from Anders - it’s just that Anders has a tendency to blame anything he perceives as negative on himself.
What also scares Anders, I think, is how readily Justice embraces Anders’ anger. Of course he does. To Justice, Anders’ anger would seem righteous - it’s an entirely valid response to oppression and abuse. It isn’t inherently destructive - it can be channeled to change things for the better. But Anders associates his anger with loss of control - how often did the Chantry talk about the dangers of rage demons, of losing control of your emotions and making yourself vulnerable to demons? - so the fact that Justice is so okay with that anger is probably a red flag in Anders’ perception, even though it’s… not actually a bad thing (imo).
Anders has trouble processing the fact that spirits just aren’t as black-and-white as he was taught, so when Justice shows signs of things that Anders was taught to associate with demons, instead of saying ‘maybe this isn’t as simple as I thought,’ he stays within the Andrastian framework and jumps right to ‘does this mean Justice is a demon now?’ (Merrill is right when she points out that Anders might benefit from questioning the Chantry’s rigid teachings about spirits.)
I think that Anders can learn to challenge these beliefs, but it’s just gonna take time and support. He doesn’t suddenly ‘know better’ just by merging with Justice because he doesn’t actually have straightforward access to Justice’s thoughts - he admittedly has trouble even distinguishing between his own thoughts/emotions and Justice’s a lot of the time, unless it’s something they’re in direct disagreement about (e.g. Anders’ romantic interest in Hawke, lmao). Anders can’t talk directly to Justice anymore to sort through this stuff, so he jumps to conclusions that (imo) are distorted by his own negative self-image. He used to be able to talk to Justice when they disagreed (which they did often, and they both grew from talking through those disagreements and explaining their differing perspectives). But now, when Anders doesn’t understand something, all he can do is just assume (and what Anders tends to do is assume the worst). He ends up pushing Justice away instead of trying to understand him, which is obviously unhealthy for both of them because they’re sharing a body and mind now.
Then consider also that one of Justice’s biggest fears is probably becoming a demon, and... well, it would be easy for Anders to be influenced by that without even realizing it. And honestly, Anders constantly worrying about whether Justice is a demon is not good for Justice, either. Which is why it’s important for Anders to be able to let go of some of that fear.
tl;dr - What’s holding Anders back is a fear of questioning what he thinks he knows. Justice’s presence doesn’t solve that - and in some ways, it makes Anders cling even harder to his sense of certainty about spirits and demons, because otherwise he feels vulnerable.
It might seem strange for someone who is otherwise so willing to challenge the Chantry’s doctrine, but there are just some things that Anders is hesitant to challenge too strongly, and the spirit/demon thing is one of them. Believing that there’s a strict dichotomy between spirits and demons, and that he has a good handle on which are which, allows him an illusion of safety - and safety is not something he has much of in his life. Admitting that it’s just not that simple is a scary thing for him by itself, and that’s without factoring in him being an abuse survivor who is still trying to shake the toxic things his abusers forced him to believe about himself and the world.
I think he can learn, though. It’ll just take time and support and patience, and he needs to be able to feel relatively safe enough to begin seriously challenging these beliefs. He’s just not in a safe place in Kirkwall, physically or psychologically - at least not as far as we get to see in the game itself. (I have headcanons about him and Justice learning to coexist better over the years, but the game doesn’t reflect that.)
Hopefully that makes sense - was kind of distracted by construction noises outside during most of this so hopefully it’s not incoherent or too repetitive or anything. :P
So I adore and really relate to Anders and think about him and Justice a lot so probably half my headcanons are me projecting onto them. I was thinking about how in the rivalry route Anders says that Justice turned into Vengeance (or so I've read off the wiki, I would never go the rivalry route) and I was wondering about your thoughts on why he does that? I personally think that he honestly believes it (but doesn't want to) because of the abuse he goes through because (cont in next ask)
(continued from previous ask) I have been abused and made to think negatively of myself + big parts of my life by people I considered to be close friends and I'm very very easily swayed by what other people think of me. (Also, an unrelated and much happier thing: please think about modern AU Anders going to a cat cafe and a cat (or multiple cats) choose to sleep on him)
Even in the friendship route, Anders worries that he turned Justice into Vengeance, but on the rivalry route he’s a lot more convinced of that, yeah. (I’ve never been able to do the rivalry route, either. It’s basically just Hawke gaslighting Anders and dehumanizing mages. And the only way to get Anders to 100% rivalry in the first place is to consistently side against mages, which I’ve never been able to do, haha.)
But yeah, Anders has an extensive abuse history and I think that’s a major contributing factor to why he’s convinced that he changed Justice for the worst. Like, on the one hand he’ll pretend he doesn’t care what people think of him, but it also doesn’t take much to make him start doubting himself. That’s because he’s been taught to believe that he has nothing good to offer and breaks everything he touches, and... well, if you tell someone they’re a monster enough times, they’re going to start to believe it.
Pretty much his entire experience with the Circle was traumatic. A lot of his abuse was spiritual in nature, which is where a lot of his self-loathing comes from, I think, bc he’s Andrastian and a lot of his self-worth hinges on his faith. Like, his faith can definitely be a source of strength for him -- part of what keeps him going is his belief that Andraste wouldn’t approve of what the Chantry does to mages, and that the Maker doesn’t hate mages for being born with magic, and those beliefs factor heavily into his politics (right down to the wording of the manifesto).
But still, the Circle subjected him to a very toxic version of his faith. He was basically told that in the eyes of his religion’s savior figure and god, he and people like him don’t count as people no matter what they do, and that had a big impact on his self-image.
That’s true for other mages, too, not just Anders. Keili from DA:O is probably the most striking example of what the Chantry’s indoctrination does to mages (screenshots here):
It gives me hope that one day, the Maker will hear us. That maybe I’ll be forgiven, and my curse will be lifted. Magic causes such misery. It’s dangerous and vile and wicked. The Chantry must protect the world from us. Being born with something so terrible must be a punishment. I wish I could be rid of it.
I keep thinking this is our punishment for being mages. That’s why the templars have to… do away with us. Their swords are like the… the sword of mercy that sent Andraste back to the Maker… Andraste only died because of man’s foolishness and pride. We need to atone for this. We should let the templars come. Only then can we be cleansed of our wickedness. I will pray. May we abandon our tainted bodies to find peace with the Maker.
And she’s not the only one -- other mages at Kinloch Hold and in the Gallows (screenshots here) call it a curse and think of it as divine punishment, too. Even Anders, who describes magic as a gift from the Maker in his manifesto, also still refers to it as a curse occasionally. Those beliefs are taught.
Anders was twelve when he was taken to the Circle, but some of these kids are as young as five and six when they’re brought in. They’re abducted from their families and communities (often after being disowned, sometimes violently so), they arrive at the Circle traumatized and terrified of demons and powers they don’t understand and can’t yet control, and instead of receiving support or reassurance or protection or any kind of practical education or humane treatment, they just get abused and taught to hate and fear themselves even more. The Circle just makes it harder for them to master their powers and more emotionally vulnerable to demons, and on top of that they have virtually no privacy or safety. It’s an environment ruled by fear and suppression and dehumanization, and Anders is a product of that.
As much as he consciously disagrees with the Chantry’s doctrine on mages, he still internalized a lot of those negative things he was taught about himself in the Circle (and even before the Circle, bc his father was very devout and that’s a big part of why he disowned Anders after learning he was a mage). That indoctrination is why he’s always saying he’s undeserving of friendship/love and why he’s so hung up on the idea that he has to be a ‘good’ mage to prove himself even when he knows that there’s nothing he can actually do to prove himself in the Chantry’s eyes.
And what he defines as a ‘good’ mage is heavily influenced by his Andrastian upbringing, as are his beliefs about the Fade and spirits and demons. Circle mages -- even non-Andrastian ones -- have the Chantry’s teachings about magic and the Fade practically forced down their throats, which is what makes it so difficult for Anders to accept alternative beliefs and makes him so worried that Justice is a demon. He’s afraid he’s just one step away from being an abomination because that’s what he was taught to believe, and he’s afraid of letting his guard down long enough to question those beliefs (esp since as far as the Chantry’s concerned, doubt = temptation and temptation for a mage = demons). There’s plenty of canon evidence that not all spirit possession is bad or irreversible -- the Avvar, Rivaini seers, and possibly the Chasind all regularly interact with spirits and have traditions involving possession -- but all Anders knows is what he’s been taught by the Circle, and that contributes to his fears.
Anders also has a very conflicted relationship with his own anger. He associates it with loss of control to an extent, and has trouble accepting it because he’s afraid of losing himself to it (and he associates that with demons and ‘bad’ mages). But Justice accepts that anger, because he sees it as justified and righteous (and fwiw I think it is, too). That scares Anders -- and it’s also probably why he associates Justice with loss of control. And granted, Justice does lose control a handful of times (during their initial merger; during “Dissent”; and during “Legacy”). It doesn’t help that their initial merger was in itself particularly traumatic -- it was violent, it was an experience where Anders felt like they both lost control, and it scared the living hell out of him (and possibly Justice, too). Going forward, Anders’ perceptions are colored by that first experience.
But the key is that it was a handful of times over a long period of 7+ years, and those few instances where Justice loses control all have something in common: Anders is both in immediate danger and is in acute emotional distress. Two out of three of those times, templars are the cause of the danger/distress, and Anders already admits that templars are a trigger for him (understandably, given his experiences with them). The third time, during “Legacy”, it’s when Corypheus is attempting to forcefully take over Anders (and Anders is already pretty much in the midst of a panic attack even before that moment), and Justice is reacting to that. Under circumstances like those, Justice has trouble processing Anders’ emotions and is easily overwhelmed by them, and I think he ends up misattributing threat, which is what causes him to lash out indiscriminately.
But other than that, Anders and Justice actually demonstrate a remarkable amount of self-control and restraint, for the most part. Anders is an abuse survivor, both in a primary sense having been personally victimized in many ways himself and in a secondary sense having been a witness to the trauma/abuse of others like him (he talks about what goes on in the Circle -- the Harrowing, Tranquility, physical abuse, rape, suicide, etc.).
In Kirkwall, he’s being exposed to all of that yet again -- he saw what happened to Karl, he works closely with survivors and escapees, he hears their stories on a near-constant basis. It’s amazing he can walk into the Gallows and keep his composure. Especially Justice. He’s a spirit of justice witnessing extreme injustice and abuse happen right in front of him without being able to step in and stop it. Anders even says that Justice has trouble understanding concepts like picking one’s battles or waiting for the right opportunity to act (and that makes sense, given how linear/consistent time as mortals conceptualize it doesn’t really exist in the Fade). Justice would probably see every moment an injustice continues unchecked as an injustice in and of itself. It’s probably so frustrating and painful to not be able to just act.
A good specific example is Karl and Ser Alrik. Anders knows from Act 1 that Ser Alrik is the one responsible for making Karl Tranquil against Chantry law. If he and Justice were motivated solely by anger and vengeance and lack of self-control, they would’ve gone after Alrik a lot earlier. They know for a long time that he’s advocating for making all mages Tranquil and that he’s using Tranquility (and threat thereof) to exploit and abuse mages. But they wait for three years, which is a long time considering how important Karl was to Anders. Anders didn’t go into “Dissent” looking to kill Alrik -- he wanted to expose him, find enough physical evidence to act against him through official channels, and use that as impetus for systemic change. That only changed when he saw Alrik threatening Ella with Tranquility (and implied sexual abuse), and that acted as the trigger for Justice’s manifestation there.
So, although Anders believes that his anger somehow corrupted Justice, that’s... not really accurate. They’re not as out of control as Anders seems to think, and beyond that, Justice was never a stranger to anger. In Awakening, there are multiple instances where he talks about injustice making him angry. And he’s always seen vengeance as a possible manifestation of justice -- he talks about avenging the Blackmarsh villagers, Kristoff, and other victims of injustice on more than one occasion.
These aren’t new developments after merging with Anders, but I think Anders tends to idealize Justice without even realizing he’s doing it. He tries to preserve this memory of Justice as a pure spirit who has only recently been corrupted by his (Anders’) anger, but it’s idealization more than it’s reality. His friend isn’t gone, but Anders does still feel like he lost a confidante and he feels alone since he can’t actually talk to Justice directly anymore. So he has a ton of regrets, but he ends up assuming the worst and blaming himself (and assuming that Justice would blame him, too).
Unfortunately, saying “this isn’t Justice anymore, this is only Vengeance now” is really bad for Justice, because it denies him his purpose, and that presents an existential threat for him. Spirits can become demons when denied or turned against their purpose, and they’re heavily influenced by mortal perception and expectation. So while I don’t think Justice ever becomes a demon, I think that Anders seeing him as such is unhealthy for both of them. Anders doesn’t mean to hurt Justice, but it’s still hurtful when he claims that Justice is no longer the friend he once knew. Similarly, I think Justice doesn’t mean to hurt Anders, he just has trouble coping with his new circumstances -- he was still very gradually adjusting to being stuck in the physical world when they merged, and now he’s sort of alone in dealing with that since he can’t directly talk to Anders (or anyone else, really, with very few exceptions).
Since they can’t directly converse, they have trouble communicating at all. Anders has trouble even distinguishing between himself and Justice except in those instances where Justice disagrees, and even then it’s not like Justice is telling him so in words -- Anders is just getting a vague feeling of cognitive dissonance that he interprets as ‘disapproval,’ and I think that sometimes he might actually misinterpret Justice’s meaning/intention.
Like, Justice not letting Anders get drunk anymore could be for a number of reasons: yes, it could be about Justice generally disapproving of drinking, but it could also be that Justice himself doesn’t like the feeling of being drunk (I have a feeling he wouldn’t like having his sense of inhibition or judgment impaired), or that Justice sees drinking as an unhealthy coping mechanism on Anders’ part (and Anders very well might have a history of using alcohol to cope). Anders thinks “oh, of course he disapproves of drinking,” but it might not be that simple.
Or, what Anders says about Justice’s feelings about Hawke: “he doesn’t approve of my obsession with you” and “he thinks you’re a distraction”. Anders interprets it as disapproval, as Justice thinking that a relationship would distract from their cause, but there are so many other possible interpretations of that sense of discomfort/disagreement. Justice could be worried that Anders’ “obsession” is, again, unhealthy for him -- Anders does get very attached to Hawke very quickly and it’s implied he falls in love with them regardless of whether he’s romanced or not. This is very worrisome on the rivalry route and I can absolutely see that being a red flag for Justice and him feeling like Hawke is bad for Anders.
But even on the friendship route, Justice might see that sudden infatuation as cause for concern. Anders has an established habit of running away rather than confronting his problems head-on, which is entirely understandable (and it’s a coping skill that has helped him survive so far, even if it’s maladaptive sometimes too). But Justice is a very direct and active person by nature -- running away isn’t a feasible coping skill for him, and if he perceives that Anders is using Hawke as a distraction, that might make Justice uncomfortable. Anders doesn’t pause to let himself grieve for Karl, he’s not very good at self-care (he spends more time taking care of others than looking after himself), and he would rather overwork himself than spend time with his own thoughts. Those are all things consistent with Justice, too -- he doesn’t exactly seem like the type to relax, he’s not used to the needs/limitations of mortals, and he very well might be the reason Anders is able to push his own limitations so far in the first place, so Justice definitely isn’t innocent when it comes to the “poor at self-care” thing.
But I can still see Justice looking at Anders’ huge crush on Hawke and interpreting it as a distraction or as running away, in which case it’s not that he’s just disapproving of it, it’s that he’s concerned about it. Especially since Justice probably takes longer to trust Hawke than Anders does. Hawke needs to prove that they’re a good person by Justice’s standards, that they don’t condone injustice (and, better yet, that they’ll actively fight against injustice), that they care about mages, and that they’re not going to hurt Anders (bc Justice has access to Anders’ memories -- he knows all of Anders’ close relationships have ended in loss). I can easily see Justice being uneasy about Anders’ feelings toward Hawke bc he’s worried Anders is going to get hurt.
Anders just assumes it’s straight up disapproval -- and that makes sense, because he’s used to people disapproving of him and he’s not used to people caring about him, and he doesn’t really see himself as deserving of care in the first place, so his first thought isn’t going to be “maybe Justice is concerned about me”. Anders figures Justice only cares about the cause -- and, on his bad days, that he only cares about vengeance. (Anders sometimes goes back and forth with that last bit, bc it depends a lot on his mental state -- when he’s depressed and anxious, he’s more likely to catastrophize.)
Not to mention, Justice is still getting used to the whole ‘mortal needs and desires’ thing. Even being trapped in a physical form in Awakening was difficult for him, because the mortal world isn’t his home and he has limitations there that he doesn’t have in the Fade -- and that was when he was inhabiting a corpse, probably with faded sensory experiences and no living consciousness to share it with. But after merging with Anders, he’s not only confined to a living physical form but now he’s got a roommate, so to speak.
And Justice even says in Awakening that being corrupted by desires and attachments is one of his biggest fears (because he thinks that’s what happened to demons to make them what they are). So if Justice is feeling what Anders is feeling, that could kinda freak him out, too, especially if he has the same problem that Anders has with distinguishing between his own thoughts/feelings and Anders’. So it could definitely be less “I disapprove of you, Anders” and more “this is unfamiliar and frightening to me”.
So, I think there’s a lot of internal miscommunication and confusion between them. I think Anders frequently misreads Justice’s intentions and Justice has trouble coping with Anders’ emotions and limitations as a mortal. And it makes sense -- it’s a new experience for both of them, and it’s not like they’ve had any down time to adjust to their new circumstances, and Anders doesn’t feel safe physically or psychologically (I mean, he’s a possessed rebel apostate in a city crawling with templars and home to one of the most blatantly abusive Circles in Thedas), so he can’t afford to stop and figure it out.
On the rivalry route, Anders is even more convinced that Justice is a demon, though, because on that route Hawke basically reinforces everything Anders was taught by his abusers, which only exacerbates Anders’ self-doubt and self-loathing. And in Act 3 Justice will actually come out specifically to tell Hawke off for how Hawke has treated Anders and mages in general, because while Anders might not feel like he deserves to be treated well, Justice can see Hawke’s treatment of Anders as an injustice even when Anders can’t. It’s not at all surprising to me that Justice confronts Hawke on the rivalry route -- he’s a spirit of justice who’s been watching his friend and host be mistreated for seven years by someone he (Anders) loves. The only surprising thing is that Justice doesn’t physically attack Hawke there (and I don’t think he’d be unjustified in doing so, tbh).
(If you can’t tell, I really hate the rivalry route, lmao.)
But yeah. tl;dr -- I conceptualize Anders like you do, that his abuse experiences have contributed to how he sees himself and thus how he sees Justice, and I think all the “Justice is a demon” thing is mostly a result of Anders’ skewed perceptions. Anders has a lot of self-doubt, he constantly goes back and forth between “I need validation -- but I don’t deserve it” and “I’m not an abomination/Justice isn’t a demon -- but what if we are”, and it’s why he’ll like... get really defensive in one breath and then turn around and berate himself in the next, or actively flirt with Hawke one minute and then five seconds later be like “no wait nevermind it’ll only end in disaster” (and, I mean, that has been his experience w/ most of his close relationships). He’s always had to hide how he really feels and he’s never been allowed to feel secure in his own perceptions, so the result is this unstable sense of self and disconnect between what he wants to believe and what he feels like he has to believe. And on top of that he’s mentally ill and has extreme mood swings and other symptoms, so it all contributes to his tendency to catastrophize and see himself in only negative terms (and Justice ends up getting included in that).
Even just knowing Justice doesn’t blame him would mean a lot to Anders, because he can’t ask Justice his opinion so he just assumes Justice would be angry with him, and I think that’s a big mental block keeping Anders from moving forward. I think that, and unlearning some of that negative self-image, would probably do wonders for his and Justice’s relationship. It’d probably be easier for Anders to believe he didn’t turn Justice into a demon if he stopped thinking of himself as all bad.
Basically, there’s a lot of “it’s not you, it’s me” going on, and that sense of everything being self-directed just... isn’t feasible when he’s literally sharing a mind and body with someone. It should be a partnership -- and on their good days it is, but Anders does have a bad habit of trying to take on the world alone. Makes sense -- he hasn’t had many people he could rely on or trust, and all those he did have, he ended up losing in one way or another.
Fwiw I don’t think Justice and Anders are doomed to always have an unhealthy relationship or anything like that. Kirkwall’s a toxic place for both of them -- between the shit happening in the Gallows and the thin Veil and the multitude of stressors they’re under while they’re there, it’s probably the worst possible place for them to be. But I think given time and space and the right support, they could find ways to communicate and clear up misunderstandings between them, and hopefully start to trust each other (and themselves) more. (I headcanon that they start figuring this stuff out while they’re still in Kirkwall and the game just doesn’t show it bc it’s an anecdotal account by Varric the unreliable narrator and unrepentant liar, lmao. Varric knowsfuck-all about spirits or magic and as far as we know his only experience w/ Justice is that small handful of times Justice loses control, so of course the impression the audience comes away with is ‘yikes, he’s scary’. But it’s not like Varric’s with Anders 24/7 or privy to what goes on in his head, so. There’s probably plenty he doesn’t know.)
AAAAANYWAY, happier note: I’m 100% here for a modern AU Anders in a cat cafe. He would be in heaven, lmao. (One of my favorite things about Anders is how much he loves cats, hahaha.)
spirits of compassion and such are drawn to people who are hurting/distressed, yes? Maybe that's why anders has a knack for healing. Idk if you've thought of this before
yup. I think it’s one of the main things that lead Anders to spirit healing in the first place.
according to lore, spirit healing can draw on a number of beneficial spirits (like fortitude and hope) but I think they probably end up working with compassion spirits the most frequently -- it would make sense, since compassion spirits find purpose in directly helping others. they probably don’t need much convincing to collaborate w/ spirit healers and I wouldn’t be surprised if they actively seek out healers.
spirit healers are actually supposed to be rare, specifically because it requires an ability to gain the trust and assistance of spirits, which can be difficult, since sometimes spirits require that a person prove themself first (e.g., in the case of compassion spirits, they probably wouldn’t be drawn to someone who didn’t care about others -- they’d be attracted to someone who they think lives up to compassion as an ideal). and supposedly for some spirit healers, it’s more of a calling and they were ‘chosen’ for it so to speak, rather than pursuing it on their own. like, sometimes spirits will take an interest in a person and guide them to that specialization.
I think that’s what happened with Anders. he’s naturally a compassionate person. as much as he tries to pretend he’s selfish in Awakening, his actions just don’t match up with his words. one minute he’ll say he only cares about his own freedom, and the next he’s risking his life and his freedom to help others -- e.g. in the beginning, if the Warden-Commander tells him to run rather than join them when they first meet him at Vigil’s Keep, he ends up coming back to help anyway (if the Warden-Commander asks him why, he says something like “I’m bad at the whole ‘fugitive from justice’ thing,” which... sums him up very well tbh, lmao). and let’s be honest, if he was selfish and only cared about his own well-being, there’s no way he’d be able to earn cooperation from compassion spirits.
arriving in Kirkwall and immediately opening a free clinic in Darktown, revealing himself as an apostate and risking capture in a city crawling with templars just so he could try to help others -- that wasn’t Justice’s influence, that was all Anders. it’s who he is. he can’t ignore people suffering. he’s always been willing to help people in need, though he’s used to doing it on an individual level. what Justice wanted him to do was to fight for systemic change, which is a lot different from healing one person at a time, and that’s why Anders was initially reluctant to fight for mage freedom. it had nothing to do with selfishness or a lack of compassion, it was just that he’d been oppressed and disempowered his entire life. he didn’t feel like he of all people could do anything to make a difference, til Justice convinced him otherwise.
plus, he had only just been released from solitary confinement not long before we meet him -- canon says he ran away again very shortly after getting out of solitary, so during Awakening he’s still just barely starting to recover from that and he’s in no shape to jump right into being a revolutionary. hell, the templars are still hunting him even though he’s a Warden and technically no longer under their jurisdiction. if they catch him again, he’ll probably go right back into solitary again, at the very least. he tells the Warden-Commander he thinks it’s only a matter of time before they brand him a maleficar, even if it’s not true, and just kill him outright. he’s scared. and it’s a lot easier to pretend he doesn’t care than to admit that he feels vulnerable. (which is a theme in his DA2 romance route, too. he tells Hawke about how he’s always had to hide any potential weakness just to survive, to the point where he couldn’t even love openly. all that ‘I don’t care’ stuff in Awakening is just a front.)
but anyway, yeah, I think maybe early on, he might have first captured the attention of compassion spirits because, like you said, they seek out people who are in pain and try to help. the Circle is kind of a demon buffet, given all the suffering going around and how emotionally vulnerable many of the mages are, but I think benevolent spirits are drawn to the mages there too, especially the kinds of spirits that find purpose in helping mortals. we also know that sometimes the Veil is thin in places where there has been a lot of suffering and death, which is why I wouldn’t be surprised if the Veil is thinner at Circle locations.
that’s one of many reasons why I call bullshit on the Chantry’s and the templars’ claims that the Circle is supposed to ‘protect’ mages and society against the dangers of magic. if anything, it increases the dangers of magic: continuous abuse makes mages more vulnerable to demons, makes them more likely to take desperate measures to escape their abusers, and makes it more difficult for them to learn how to control their magic -- abusing people doesn’t exactly make for a good learning environment. but lbh, the Chantry doesn’t actually care about protecting against the dangers of magic -- all they care about is that the Circle provides them with a free labor source to exploit and a very convenient scapegoat to justify the Chantry’s doctrine.
sorry, got off topic there. I can never resist an anti-Chantry rant.
anyway -- yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if compassion spirits initially sought out Anders because he was suffering. he’s an abuse victim and he’s already mentally ill, which probably made him a beacon for any spirits wandering around looking for someone to help. (probably made him a target for demons, too -- and spirit healers in particular are frequently targeted by demons, given their direct interaction with the Fade, so spirit healers have to be constantly on guard when they’re using their skills -- but that’s another topic.)
once he attracted the attention of benevolent spirits (probably inadvertently at first), it wouldn’t take them long to figure out he’s a compassionate person and try to lead him down the spirit healer path.
I can see him being wary of even benevolent spirits at first -- the Circle teaches mages to be distrustful of spirits and the Fade, and that demons will do anything to trick you -- but they might’ve been some of his only sources of genuine support in the Circle, at least early on. and he’s always been desperate to prove himself -- if you read between the lines it’s very clear that he has a serious hangup when it comes to proving that he’s a ‘good’ mage. it gets to the point where it can even be self-destructive, esp since a lot of it has to do with the fact that he’s a devout Andrastian who was subjected to years of spiritual abuse in the Circle -- his faith taught him he should hate and fear himself, and he internalized a lot of that, and even though he fights against it, he’s still grappling with it even in DA2 (I think it’s where a lot of his ‘I’m an abomination’ and ‘I don’t deserve love/friendship’ thinking comes from). in the Circle, becoming a healer probably gave him a way to try to prove himself and it would’ve given him a purpose, not to mention a sense of positive identity he could latch onto.
I’m rambling. tl;dr -- between his own pain and how he naturally channels it into helping others, yeah, compassion spirits were probably attracted to him even before he took on the spirit healing specialization. I wouldn’t be surprised if they guided him to it in the first place. he was practically a shoo-in for it. and I’m pretty sure it was his saving grace, or one of them anyway. spirit healers aren’t too common. the Circle sees mages as tools, and the fact that Anders had a rare talent made him a valuable asset, no matter how much of a headache he may have been to them. I don’t know if they would have let him get to escape attempt number seven if they didn’t see him as potentially useful.
hello again, I thought you'd be the best person to ask this. Do you know if there's much canon on Anders' life before the circle? He came to the circle at 12, which is rather old, so I had headcanoned that his parents had tried to protect him - thinking that they were perhaps both apostates on the run who left the circle when his mother was pregnant with him because they were unwilling to give him away? I imagine that's probably not what happened in canon, if there is anything there. OH WELL.
yup, there’s some stuff. I’ll talk about canon and some of my speculation/headcanons as a result of canon.
World of Thedas Vol. 2 tells us the following:
[He] was born and raised in a small farming village in Ferelden…. Cheerful and good-humored, young Anders was well-liked by the people of his village and was often seen surrounded by a gaggle of village children. That was, until he turned twelve, when he accidentally set the family’s barn on fire with magic. Anders’ father feared his son’s newfound abilities, and though his mother still loved and wished to protect him, the templars were called. Anders was clapped in irons and taken away to Kinloch Hold. The only thing he was allowed to bring with him was a small pillow, hand-embroidered by his mother.
There’s a short story (here) written by his DA2 writer Jennifer Hepler where Anders tells us about it from his POV (content warning for violence and gore). It’s about what happened when he first merged with Justice. I have mixed feelings about the story itself – I really don’t like how Hepler writes Anders, especially since she’s so ableist about him – but I’m pretty sure it’s considered canon, so it’s still relevant. Anyway, from Anders:
The Circle, the templars, they’ve shaped my life. I was no more than twelve when they came for me. My mother wept when they fixed the chains to my wrists, but my father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon.
That’s all we really get. It’s not much, but it’s enough to make some speculation about his home life. It sounds like he had a good relationship with his mother (which goes along w/ why that pillow his mother gave him before he left is so important to him – it’s his only physical reminder of her and his life before the Circle). But the way he talks about his father in that last sentence, and how quick his father was to turn him over to the templars, suggests he didn’t have a good relationship w/ his father.
It also suggests that his father was very devout, which makes sense considering his father’s origins. Anders’ nickname actually came about because he has dominant Ander heritage. We’re told in World of Thedas Vol. 2 that his father “was originally from the Anderfels, but had come to Ferelden when he was just a boy”. In that context, his devout religiousness makes sense – the Anderfels is known to be a “highly religious nation” and it’s suggested that most people from there are devout Andrastians. That doesn’t necessarily mean all of them are, or that non-Ander people aren’t devout (we see very devout people from all nations), but I’m just explaining my reasoning as to why I think his father was the most devout one in the household and the most strongly influenced by Ander culture.
His mother could easily be the same way, too, but I headcanon that while she was Andrastian, she was a bit less strict about the Chantry’s dictates, at least where her son was concerned. I headcanon that Anders actually got his willingness to reinterpret the Chant and challenge Chantry doctrine from her – or at least, even if she didn’t do those things herself, he felt like she wouldn’t condemn him for doing so like his father might.
In any case – like you said, twelve is pretty old for being taken to the Circle. All the other Circle mages who actually tell us what age they were give much younger ages: Jowan says he was 5 or 6 (and he came from a very abusive household); Wynne says she was “very young” but doesn’t give an exact age; Emile de Launcet in DA2 says he was 6; Minaeve in DA:I says she was 7 iirc. There are of course apostates who manage to avoid the Circle until they’re older (like Bethany Hawke), but it’s heavily suggested that most mage children are handed over by their parents or neighbors the moment their magic manifests, because people are so fearful of mages – and that’s if they’re “lucky”, because a lot of mage children face mob violence (Vivienne and Wynne both talk about this) and violence from their families (like Jowan and Cole) and can be killed before being taken to the Circle.
Anyway – children are young when their magic manifests. I’ll (somewhat shamefully) plug a ficlet I wrote here, because the last section pretty much sums up my headcanons for how his magic manifested and the years leading up to his capture by the templars. tl;dr, my headcanon is that he started hearing demons as young as 8 and started having instances of magic manifestation from then on but managed to hide it until he was 12, which is when he accidentally burned down the barn and his father figured out he was a mage. Obviously none of that is explicit canon, but it’s my headcanon based on the fact that most mages who talk about their early lives suggest their magic manifested in prepubescence.
That’s all the pre-Circle stuff. I have no self-control though so I’m going to go into his Circle life too, bc those years were clearly formative for him. I’m just gonna go ahead and type up the rest of his World of Thedas Vol. 2 entry:
Anders refused to speak when he arrived [at Kinloch Hold], not even to tell other apprentices his name. They began calling him ‘the Ander,’ referring to his Anders heritage. ‘Anders’ would become the only name he’d use. The young mage rebelled against the Circle’s rules and restrictions. Having known friends, a loving family, and a life free of constant supervision, he was keenly aware of what he’d lost.
Anders made his first attempt to escape less than six months after arriving at the Circle. When he was caught, he was brought immediately to Irving. When asked why he escaped, Anders replied that he simply wanted to go home. Irving took pity on the tearful boy and decided that punishing homesickness was unnecessarily harsh and would only serve to deepen the child’s hatred of the Circle. Irving had Anders escorted to his room and counseled the templars to treat him with greater kindness.
After his first try, Anders made no recorded attempts to escape for more than a year. But the second time Anders slipped away from the Circle it took the templars three weeks to find him. The next time, it took over a month. To elude the templars, Anders displayed an ingenuity and resourcefulness far beyond his years and was described by Ser Hadley, one of the many templars assigned to hunt him down, as ‘a skinny, blond headache.’
Luckily for Anders, his friendly manner and easy charm had by then endeared him to many at Kinloch, including First Enchanter Irving. Most saw him as nothing more than a spirited young boy with a troublemaking but mostly harmless streak in him. Irving in particular looked upon Anders with sympathy and made valiant attempts to help him become adjusted to life in the Circle going so far as to arrange some time outdoors for well-behaved apprentices.
Pausing to note that in the Witch Hunt DLC, Finn talks about that last bit – specifically, the fact that Anders took that opportunity to stage yet another escape attempt:
During my apprenticeship, they thought getting fresh air and exercise at least once a week would do us good. Luckily it didn’t last long. One day, an apprentice made a break for it. Jumped off the dock and started swimming for the shore. The templars couldn’t jump in after him, not with the armor on. Finally found him a week later. We stopped having to go out after that. That mage, Anders, never stopped trying to escape, though. Haven’t heard from him since his last attempt.
Anders is a clever smartass and I love him so much. And the best part is that there’s a “No Swimming” sign at the shore of Lake Calenhad and I’m pretty sure that’s because of Anders, lmao.
Anyway, back to WoT2:
There is no indication that Irving’s good intentions had any effect on Anders. Years later, the first enchanter would remark that perhaps his approach had backfired. The kindness he showed to Anders every time he returned to the Circle simply proved to the boy that he could get away with most anything. When asked if he regretted not punishing Anders more severely, perhaps with Tranquility, Irving only sighed and would not discuss the matter further.
Pausing again to say fuuuck this. I mean, talk about victim blaming and abuse apologism. This is a child attempting to escape his abusers, and here it’s being insinuated that he was just ungrateful and selfish.
Anders actually says in Awakening, “I wish I could tell the First Enchanter I’m a Grey Warden now. Maker, I hated that bastard.” Seems unusual considering what we’re told in WoT Vol. 2, that Irving was so kind and understanding. But here’s the thing: to Anders, Irving wasn’t kind, he was patronizing and invalidating. To him, Irving was probably just another adult complicit in the abuse, mage or no, because he stood by and let it happen. Anders was forced into the Circle as a child in need of protection and validation, and he didn’t get it.
Granted, there’s not that much that Irving can do – he’s First Enchanter, but at the end of the day, he’s still a mage and he doesn’t have power over the templars. But also, Irving is sketchy as hell. I have a bunch of screenshots of things he says/does in DA:O here. He makes Surana/Amell to betray their best friend and essentially uses them as a tool; he uses guilt and implied threat to force them to do so, even if they don’t want to. He throws Jowan under the bus. He throws Lily to the wolves just to take a minor jab at the Chantry, essentially using her as a pawn in his game.
Then there’s this codex entry, suggesting that he and the other senior enchanters baited apprentices to see who showed curiosity for forbidden magics. The aim is presumably to screen those who would give in to temptation – to cull the weak, so to speak – but to me it seems like if someone does take the bait, it could have just as much to do with simple curiosity, or fear (e.g. someone like Jowan, who wasn’t skilled with magic – in a place where “not good enough” can mean Tranquility or death – and wanted to get better), or, hell, even just trust (because presumably apprentices should be able to trust their mentors and instructors).
Irving also played favorites. He definitely did with Anders. (And I’m pretty sure that Anders’ good humor and charm is in many ways a deliberate survival skill – he knew it was keeping him alive.) But what about mages who weren’t able to use humor and charm to survive, who weren’t fun and amiable, who didn’t have ‘acceptable’ social/people skills. I think that the fact that Anders is human also was a protective factor for him – I have one post about that here (which includes speculation about how maybe another protective factor is that he was a spirit healer and spirit healers are rare). Given the extreme racism against elves in Thedas, elven mages would probably be at even higher risk for violence and abuse, would be punished more harshly & more frequently, and would get fewer chances than human mages.
Point is, Anders is already a troublemaker and mentally ill (he’s canonically bipolar, for anyone who doesn’t already know that, and he also shows signs of C-PTSD, anxiety/panic, and possibly dissociative symptoms). If Anders was elven, not likable, and not ‘valuable’ (as a spirit healer), there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have ‘gotten away’ with so much.
And speaking of his mental illness, like… I’m mentally ill myself and I have a lot of thoughts about what it might have been like for him growing up in the Circle as a mentally ill person. I have a headcanon/speculation post about it here, but I should warn that it’s pretty depressing and involves discussion of abuse, suicidal thoughts, harm to Anders, etc.) Neurodivergent and disabled mages are probably at greater risk for abuse, Tranquility, etc. than their neurotypical and abled peers. The templars are always looking for signs of weakness.
Being perceived as ‘too vulnerable’ to demonic possession, having one’s symptoms misinterpreted as demonic influence/possession… being neurodivergent or disabled is absolutely a risk factor for a Circle mage, especially un-Harrowed apprentices, since the templars and/or senior enchanters get to decide whether a person is too ‘weak’ to undergo a Harrowing and should just be made Tranquil outright. And on top of that, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if demons do hunt down mages who are emotionally vulnerable, and if a mage has no support in coping with that, and has to hide it because they know that they’ll be killed or made Tranquil if anyone knows, they might be in danger from both demons and the templars.
Anyway. It’s worth mentioning that Anders probably didn’t ‘get away’ with things without any punishment. Jumping from ‘no punishment at all’ to ‘a full year of solitary confinement’ seems highly unlikely. He probably did receive escalating punishments for each time he escaped, eventually leading up to solitary. He absolutely didn’t have an easy time in the Circle, and yet in DA2 he still downplays those experiences, saying that he could have had it worse. Who knows what all he witnessed happening to others in the Circle? He alludes to some of it – rape, Tranquility, suicide, physical abuse. He says he’s seen more mages die from suicide than demons. It’s no wonder, considering what we see of the Circle.
Sorry, I got way off track. Basically – Anders realized young that his superiors did not have his best interests in mind. What they cared about was making him comply and submit, and his value as a tool – that’s all. And he was having none of it.
Back to WoT2 again:
When Anders was still an apprentice, he met and befriended an older boy, Karl Thekla. Karl and Anders would commiserate about life in the Circle and joke bitterly about being templar slaves. For years the two were inseparable, and Anders later disclosed that there was more than a simple friendship between Karl and him. The two shared a deep love, and their relationship was a sanctuary, an escape from the harsh realities of life in the Circle. Anders would often tell Karl that he was the one good thing about Kinloch Hold. In the years when Anders and Karl were together, Anders made no attempts to escape the Circle.
Another pause, bc I just need to highlight the significance of this. What is it he says to Hawke? That Hawke is “the one bright light” in his life in Kirkwall? Yeah.
Anders will say during his romance route with Hawke that he’s never dared to fall in love before, but it’s painfully obvious that he’s lying to himself, especially considering everything that was confirmed in WoT. The rule he’s breaking with Hawke isn’t “don’t fall in love,” it’s “don’t admit it when you do”. He has never been able to love openly, and he’s been taught his entire life that love, family, and freedom are not for him – that he doesn’t even deserve those things in the first place. He was indoctrinated into a version of his faith that teaches him there is no room in the world for people like him – that no one can accept him, not even his god.
And that has shaped him. There’s a reason he’s always telling Hawke that he doesn’t deserve their love/friendship, and it’s because it’s what he’s been taught through years of spiritual and emotional abuse. He might rail against Chantry doctrine, but deep down, he didn’t escape that indoctrination. He has internalized a lot of negative things about himself.
Shortly after both Anders and Karl had undergone their Harrowings, Karl was transferred from the Ferelden Circle to Kirkwall’s Gallows, where more experienced mages were needed. Anders did not take their parting well, and he would not see Karl again or many years, though the two would continue to write to each other.
In the weeks that followed Karl’s departure, Irving worried that Anders would likely try to escape again, cautioned him that there would come a point where even the first enchanter would not be able to protect him. Irving requested that Anders be watched carefully, hoping increased templar scrutiny would discourage the young mage from doing something regrettable. The pain of losing Karl was too much, and Anders broke out once again. He was recaptured on the docks in West Hill, trying to buy passage to Kirkwall.
Pausing to say that “keep an eye on him so he doesn’t run away” is not an appropriate response to someone who is grieving, ugh. And unfortunately, DA2 really doesn’t do a good job at highlighting how much of a loss Karl’s Tranquility and death were for Anders. He doesn’t even mention the nature of his relationship with Karl unless Hawke is male (which is bullshit on his writer’s part, imo). Anders has a habit of running away – it makes sense that he would have difficulty pausing to grieve for Karl or confront it directly, but it still would have been nice to see that grief highlighted more clearly in the game.
(Also, quick note re: Anders’ Harrowing – there’s a codex entry that can be found in DA:I, a personal account of a mage’s Harrowing, and it’s pretty heavily implied to belong to Anders. I have screenshots of it here.)
Anders endured several more years in Kinloch Hold before making his final escape. After his sixth escape attempt, he spent a year in solitary confinement, locked in a small cell that was watched day and night by the templars. Anders’ only company that year was one of the tower’s mousers, a cat he named Mr. Wiggums. According to Anders, Mr. Wiggums was possessed by a rage demon and killed three templars before being put down. There is no mention of a possessed cat anywhere in the Circle of Magi’s records.
Screenshots here of Kinloch Hold’s dungeons and of what Anders says about his experience in solitary. Solitary confinement is literally a form of torture. He underwent an entire year of it, just for trying to escape his abusers.
It’s incredible he’s on his feet at all during Awakening. And it’s no wonder he’s claustrophobic. Or that he tells the Warden-Commander that it’s only a matter of time before he’s branded a maleficar, even if it isn’t true. I actually suspect that the main reason they kept him in solitary confinement for so long is because they hoped he would succumb to demons and they’d have an excuse to kill him.
He has to wonder what the next step is. If he gets recaptured, he’s probably going right back into solitary confinement, and that’s a best case scenario. It’s against Chantry law to make Harrowed mages Tranquil, but we see that there are templars willing to break that law (the Gallows templars do it regularly, and Grand Cleric Elthina never steps in even though it’s her duty to do so) – and he admits in DA2 that even though he’s Harrowed, Tranquility has always been one of his greatest fears. And maleficar, if they’re not killed outright, get sent to the Aeonar, the mage prison, which is practically a drawn-out death sentence – execution by demon, basically. If he gets labeled a maleficar, he’s screwed.
Shortly after emerging from solitary confinement, Anders escaped again. He’d learned that his phylactery had been moved to Amaranthine, and he traveled there, thinking he would destroy it once and for all. The templars anticipated this move and captured him in the cry. They were passing through Vigil’s Keep on the day it was to be handed over to the Grey Wardens, when the keep was attacked by darkspawn. The darkspawn quickly overwhelmed Anders’ templar guard, leaving him to defend himself.
I’ll stop there, because that’s where Awakening picks up – the Warden-Commander conscripts him, the templars keep chasing him even though he’s a Warden and out of their jurisdiction, he eventually merges with Justice, etc.
Basically, Anders went from having a loving mother and friends to being dragged to a prison in chains when he was just a child. From then on, he has a really extensive abuse and trauma history. Pretty much every single adult around him essentially told him to get used to it and submit to it. Many mages brought to the Circle young seem to know no alternative, but Anders knew exactly what he lost.
But he’s also incredibly resilient. I mean, he spent a year in solitary confinement, probably with demons promising him freedom and revenge and Karl and who knows what else, but he refused. For a year. He jokes after “Night Terrors” in DA2 that Justice keeps him on the straight and narrow, but honestly, even without Justice, he was the least likely of all the companions to betray Hawke or make a deal with a demon. That man is stubborn. His life has been hell, and if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s surviving.
ANYWAY. Sorry for my rambling. I know you were just asking about Anders’ backstory prior to the Circle, not a damn essay, but I got carried away. I have a lot of feelings about Anders’ character development, haha. His past just provides such important context for how he developed his beliefs and why he says/does what he does in both Awakening and DA2, but so much of it happens offscreen.
How do you think DA2 would have played out without Justice? Like if the HoF or whoever talked them out of merging, but Anders still ends up going AWOL and heading to Kirkwall and meeting Hawke so he can rescue Karl.
I think about this sometimes and I’m not entirely sure.
I think Justice was a big influence on Anders even before they merged. I mean, they wouldn’t have considered merging if they weren’t on the same page – they changed each other long before they merged.
Anders was always angry and always wanted things to change, he just didn’t have any hope that it would happen within his lifetime and he didn’t think he of all people could do anything to change the status quo. Justice convinced him otherwise, inspired him and empowered him – and I do think that even if they hadn’t merged, Anders would have eventually gotten involved with the Mage Underground one way or another. Justice didn’t make Anders into something new, he just nurtured what was already there. Anders definitely would’ve ended up in Kirkwall either way, at least, because of Karl – he’d already tried to get passage to Kirkwall during a previous escape attempt, and I imagine he would have drifted there eventually even if things had gone differently.
The question is whether the endgame would’ve happened the way it did. I’m not sure Anders would have had the resolve to do something like that if he didn’t have Justice’s certainty and conviction to help him along. Anders grapples with a lot of self-doubt as it is, and that’s with Justice helping him combat that. Without Justice, it might have been difficult for Anders to take that final step.
What would be really interesting is if Justice and Anders didn’t merge, but Justice still came with Anders to Kirkwall, possessing a different host. I think they’d continue to work together and influence each other even if they weren’t literally sharing a body/mind/soul, but Anders would have probably preferred that, because you can tell that he misses being able to sit down and have a conversation with Justice. Justice didn’t disappear when he merged with Anders, but Anders does still feel like he lost a confidante. It doesn’t help that Anders is convinced that he hurt Justice and changed him for the worst, and he can’t directly ask Justice how he feels about everything that happened.
I think Justice also makes Anders feel trapped to an extent, like he doesn’t have anything that belongs to just him anymore, since he can’t even fully separate his thoughts/feelings/identity from Justice’s most of the time. So them being separate might have been easier on Anders. I mean, I don’t think their merger has to be an inherently bad thing. They’re unhealthy for each other initially, but I think they do have the potential to bring out the best in each other. They’re just in really shitty circumstances in Kirkwall, and they need to learn how to communicate better, and Anders needs to learn how to trust himself and Justice. (Anders being nicer to himself wouldn’t hurt, either – I still think Anders’ own poor self-image is one of the main things making it difficult for him to accept Justice.)
And arguably there are also times when being merged was actually a good thing – @apostaterevolutionary wrote a post awhile back (here) about how Anders may not have been able to resist Corypheus’ influence without Justice’s help. On top of that, he’s a Warden so Corypheus could have chosen him as a vessel instead of Larius/Janeka, if it wasn’t for Justice. So, Justice was probably the only thing keeping Anders safe from Corypheus if he’s brought to the Deep Roads during the Legacy DLC.
But anyway – tl;dr, I think that even if they hadn’t merged, the two of them would have ended up in Kirkwall and working together in some capacity. Where that would lead, I’m not entirely sure – things would probably go down at least somewhat differently – but I have a feeling they would’ve had a hand in Kirkwall’s mage rebellion some way or another.
do you ever think that maybe anders doesn't get taken by the templars in kirkwall because of his grey warden status since the chantry can't touch mage wardens? yeah technically he left the order but that doesn't really stop him from being a warden (at least i like to think) & it isn't like he's quiet about his time with them (even the refugees he helps know he's one). idk i was just thinking about it the other day & i've kinda accepted it as my headcanon lol
It’s possible, but I don’t think his Grey Warden status would be enough to protect him from Kirkwall’s templars, unfortunately. It wasn’t even enough to protect him from Ferelden’s templars, and Kirkwall’s templars are even more willing to break the law and overstep their boundaries than Ferelden’s were, it seems.
Meredith regularly abuses her power and Kirkwall’s templars flagrantly break Chantry law by making Harrowed mages Tranquil. Grand Cleric Elthina could step in and enforce Chantry law and put an end to Meredith’s power-grabbing, but she doesn’t because she doesn’t care to. She doesn’t even step in for something as serious as the Chantry’s laws about Tranquility being violated, or Meredith literally trying to functionally become ruler of Kirkwall by stalling the election of a new viscount. So Elthina probably wouldn’t bother to step in to defend a single Warden (especially someone like Anders, who is a thorn in a lot of people’s sides in Kirkwall). :/
Laws and precedents mean nothing unless they’re being enforced. Anders is only safe if the Wardens and others with authority actively keep him safe. Ferelden’s templars certainly didn’t care that Anders had been conscripted and had been through the Joining. Rylock and her templars were there when he was conscripted, when the ruler of Ferelden overruled their protests and approved of Anders’ conscription, and they still kept pursuing him anyway.
Him being a Warden and outside the templars’ jurisdiction didn’t matter to them. The Warden-Commander can even say “screw it” and give Anders to Rylock with no fight – being a Warden doesn’t in itself protect him, because the templars don’t respect it unless they’re forced to do so. And if the Warden-Commander does protect him, Anders says he’s surprised, because very few people think he’s “worth the trouble”. He didn’t think he was worthy of the Warden-Commander’s friendship any more than he thinks he’s worthy of Hawke’s.
So, the Warden-Commander was probably the only thing keeping him safe in Amaranthine. After they left, Anders was vulnerable again, and he didn’t expect anyone else was going to step up to decide he was “worth the trouble” of protecting, because in his experience, people rarely do. The Wardens were trying to rebuild their ranks in Ferelden. They had more to worry about than protecting a single Warden from the Templar Order and the Chantry. In his mind, they might not see him as worth the resources or effort – and he’s probably right.
Because Anders is troublesome. He wasn’t just an ordinary mage. He escaped the Circle seven times, he was an outspoken malcontent, they believed he was dangerous (and that he killed his templar guards, bc they wouldn’t believe his innocence) – letting him go would undermine the templars’ authority and make a mockery of them, so they weren’t about to let that happen. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some personal grudges against him (that certainly seemed to be the case for Rylock).
So when an “ex”-templar Warden (Rolan) came to Vigil’s Keep and started keeping an eye on him… Anders probably figured it was only a matter of time before he was either killed, betrayed, or left to the templars’ mercy. It probably factored into his decision to merge with Justice and leave Amaranthine. Being a Warden never helped him feel safe from the templars. In DA2, he’s still saying that he “has no illusions” about being free and believes either the Wardens or the Circle will eventually drag him back.
And by Kirkwall, he’s not even an active Warden anymore. It doesn’t prevent him from doing a Warden’s job if he chooses – Hawke can bring him to the Deep Roads no less than three times throughout the course of the game – but Anders is still a fugitive and deserter and the Wardens have no obligation to him. Even if they did, there isn’t even much of a Warden presence in Kirkwall. He doesn’t have their protection anymore, if he ever did.
On top of that, he doesn’t exactly lay low – he runs a free clinic where he regularly uses healing magic, so a lot of people know he’s an apostate, and the main thing keeping him safe is the discretion and protection of the refugees and other residents of Darktown, plus his own wits (bc he does have extensive experience with running and hiding from capture).
And as time goes on, he puts himself more and more at risk. He’s a vocal supporter of mage rights, he’s writing and distributing a manifesto that suggests outright rebellion, he’s working with the Mage Underground (to the point of personally going to the Gallows to help mages escape)… he’s painting a target on his back, and on top of it all, he’s possessed, an abomination in most people’s eyes. Most people don’t know that part – which is good, because in that case few people would defend him, the templars would be less likely to let him be, and even Hawke wouldn’t be able to protect him – but it still puts him in danger.
So his Warden status would probably only be able to protect him so much, and only to the extent that the Wardens care to enforce it. If Meredith and her templars don’t even care about openly breaking the law with the full knowledge of the Grand Cleric, they probably wouldn’t be deterred by Anders having been a Warden. And once Anders was in their custody, nothing would be stopping them from killing him or making them Tranquil. He wouldn’t be given the chance to appeal to Weisshaupt or any other authority that could try to protect him.
So I think Hawke’s status is probably the main thing protecting him in Kirkwall – and even that has its limits, and Anders is really pushing his luck by Act 3 (Meredith even tells him that directly). Even if he didn’t destroy the Chantry, it was probably only a matter of time before his luck ran out.
