whispers i volunteer. if u ever want to rant B)
{ oKAY come come sit on my lap i’m gonna talk for a while probably. like i just, the fact that so few have played Leliana’s Song make a lot of people forget that Leliana actually does mention to the Warden (after enough approval) that she was captured and tortured after Marjolaine’s betrayal. Sure, she didn’t tell the tale exactly as it was but the key elements are still there.
We literally find her in a pool of her own blood in the cutscene that opens in Raleigh’s dungeon?? I mean, she suffers extreme emotional abuse, physical abuse, at the same time as she has a revelation of the horridness she has actually, unwittingly, participated in. The Game had only been fun and games to her until she overstepped Marjolaine’s safety borders and realised the terrible potential of bards.
And the fact that only a single nudge in the right direction from one stray source of hope when Dorothea drops her the dungeon key is enough to get her up and moving after all that — The fact that in the middle of this, when she’s fueled on hurt alone because she does not necessarily seek revenge, and her view on her own core is challenged, she still stands against Marjolaine when she claims they are the same person, because she knows what Marjolaine is doing through the Game is not for the good. She could literally have started a war between Ferelden and Orlais, she got one of her agents killed, almost two, and her most trusted apprentice sold to another bardmaster.
And so she spends five years in the Chantry, wanting to find peace with this extreme internal conflict to the point of ignorance, an escape, because it’s too much to handle. I think this period is vital for Leliana’s character, not just that it installs the faith to the Maker and restores her faith in humanity, but it gives her time to think. I think it’s super important to show that a character is human and can’t handle everything at once, can’t just go on easy as that when something awful happens.
But Leliana is Leliana, a woman who truly loves intrigue and excitement, and when she has healed she realises she was not made to lead quiet life. She knows her own potential, even if she is not entirely willing to accept what it means during the Blight. She is so afraid of slipping and becoming what she saw in Marjolaine, and it’s because the conflict in her personality is so well done that I’ll accept whether a Warden “hardens” or “softens” her. At the end of the game she will have found a balance, nonetheless.
It’s the decade between Origins and Inquisition where she shows what she can achieve with that balance (it’s actually interesting how she’s becoming very much alike Marjolaine at this point, only for “right reasons”) — but that’s a rant for another time probably. Especially since I haven’t finished Inquisition. br ea th es. sorry friend. pls rant to me about brosca when ever you like }
