Sorry…just imagining the Inquisitor standing in the great hall of the Archon’s palace as Dorian makes his ascension; watching the north celebrate its narrow victory while the south is but a smoldering ruin. And to watch it all as a DALISH ELF…the slave Capitol winning once again while you mourn your incalculable losses…I know Minrathous is more than it’s sins and Dorian’s rule will bring about a great deal of change, but there is no undoing the harm that has already been inflicted.
Idk maybe I’m just a bitter loser, but it was actually stunning to me that joining Solas in the fade was locked behind his romance. It would truly make more sense for an unromanced inquisitor to join him out of doubt that he would succeed alone. Their home, their beloved forests and babbling brooks and farmlands and cities and cultures have already begun to fade from memory in the clutch of this dark power…and they’re just supposed to sit back and take Solas at his word? The man whose mistakes saw to the erasure of his own world? I do love him, but when has Solas ever successfully achieved anything good on his own?
It can very well be read as a sappy ending, too good to be true for a solavellan Inky, but for the others? Tragedy…just tragedy. They would see the blight peeled back from their home. They would see the animals and crops return. After fighting the corruption so hard and for so long…idk, I would certainly have a hard time just letting go of the south. This is part of why I believe the writers flopped massively by trying to spin similarities between Solas and Rook’s characters when Solas and the Inquisitor already shared the same reflection.
We saw how little of a difference their politicking made as the south was falling. The Inquisitor’s name still holds some influence, but evidently not as much as it once did, not enough to shine light back on the south again. Going with Solas and making sure that he gets the job done and in record time was truly the only ending I felt my Inquisitor would accept, even though she had fallen in love with him.
Joining Solas in the regret prison would be hell for any inky, but I doubt going back to the current state of Thedas would be heaven either…not after you’ve spent over a decade fighting just to lose. This is also why I feel like we should have gotten to see Inky and Elgar’nan clash at least once. He lost…but not before taking everything (except maybe your romance) from you.
Romanced, befriended, or foe…I like to think that Solas and Inky could have found some peace in this final journey together…what is it a befriended Inquisitor says to him at the end? “We saved the world together once. Can’t we do it one last time?”…and who’s to say the Inquisitor would have to stay with him forever? A romanced Inquisitor may swear to accompany him always, but the others? After seeing the effects of the blight start to recede…maybe they could choose to retire at last…to see to the world’s physical healing in their mortal skin, age finally catching up to them, while Solas toils ever on in the fade…his life force sustaining the veil for all eternity and his spirit self singing softly to the mad titan minds he’d severed all those long years ago.
Me outside the boarded up writers room 50 years from now:
