For your Dailan post I'm confuse, didn't he made a last for the dwarves, how is that bad unless I'm missing something?
No that was good, it’s just the way he treats the Casteless (and more importantly the framing around that) which I have a problem with it.
Like, the basic story is, Darkspawn are attacking Kal’Hirol, there’s too many of them, everyone needs to flee, but the evacuation’s going to fail unless someone stays behind to fight the Darkspawn and give them time, Dailan volunteers, good job Dailan, very brave of you. Except he doesn’t have enough men with him to buy any substantial amount of time for the swarves fleeing Kal’Hirol.
But then! It turns out that during the evacuation, no one cared about the casteless and they’re all still down here, abandoned in this thaig that’s soon going to be attacked by Darkspawn. And Dailan, instead of trying to evacuate any of the casteless, goes “hey maybe I could get the Casteless to fight Darkspawn? In such a dire time, I could maybe let casteless have weapons and fight for all the proper dwarves!” And like, okay, this was probably better strategy than trying to evacuate them, maybe it would save the greatest number of lives, and generals have to make tough choices like that. But he didn’t even consider evacuating even some of them. There were casteless children down there and he did nothing to help them.
What Dailan did do, was act as if he was generously offering the casteless worth. Like, the first words we here from him are, in an Inspiring Speech to the casteless, “For generations they have told you you were nothing!” and urges the casteless to show they’re not nothing. Like, please “they” told the casteless they were nothing? Don’t act as if you didn’t do the same thing until you realised they could be helpful to everyone else, Dailan. He refers to himself as “the one person who thought you worthy to bare arms for Kal’Hirol” because sure, he’s such a great person for offering them the rights every other dwarf already has. And??? there’s a dialogue between a mother and her sobbing terrified child where the mother says Dailan told them that if they fought, the Ancestors would forgive them. Basically, the game frames Dailan as this great hero who was Nice to the Casteless for telling them that if they fought to defend people who’d oppressed them their whole lives, they would finally have worth.
The dwarves who want to try to escape and save themselves, or who aren’t charmed by Dailan telling them he can give them Worth are framed as selfish assholes. One of the ones who stays to fight declares “I’m going to do something right for once in my life”. The casteless are treated as automatically worthless and bad people, who need to selflessly give up their lives for people who’d never lift a finger to save them. And sure, the casteless willing to do that are amazingly brave and noble, but.... the ones who didn’t still have worth. Because they’re still people.
Honestly it’s just another case of why bioware need to stop writing oppressed groups if they’re going to continuously put those groups down and act like they need to prove they’re worthy of the same rights everyone else has. It ties in with Sigrun’s subplot too, which I wish the game expanded on. She says in a banter with Velanna that okay, maybe she doesn’t need to prove her worth to Orzammar but she needs to prove it to herself, but you can’t really reassure her that she has worth, she’s always had worth. There’s no way to go “hey? you know the way you were treated in Orzammar just because you were casteless? That wasn’t okay.” You can’t say, “Sure, Dailan wanted these casteless who fought to be remembered as a warrior caste, but how about instead of that we just admit casteless people have worth, and the caste system is inherently bad.”
tl;dr I dislike Dailan and the quest he’s in because he’s presented as a great guy for telling the casteless they have worth only when it’s suddenly useful to the dwarves, and the casteless are presented as worthless unless they throw their lives away to help him.
