Divine Justinia V was the head of the Orlesian Chantry between 9:34 and 9:41 Dragon. Given her wordly past and her dealings with the bards of Orlais, Justinia V was reputed to be one of the finest players of the Grand Game.
[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]
Justinia
As we explore the fade, we find Justinia, or what I think it’s a spirit of Faith that took Justinia’s shape to help the inquisitor in this place, guiding them along the Fade, protecting them to avoid worse spirits and teaching them things needed to be whole again. Pretty much like the spirits claimed by : Walking the Fade: Frozen Moments, in The Raw Fade - Part 1.
We can talk to her. The main goal of Justinia is make the Inquisitor recover their own memories. By the kind of answers she gives, very Cole-like, she seems to be a spirit of good nature. I speculate it’s a spirit of Faith. Why? With Wynne we learnt these are the strongest good spirits [information reinforced explicitly in the World of Thedas, Vol 1], even though they are more passive in their hosts. I speculate that Justinia had been possessed by this spirit in a similar fashion as Wynne was, and for that reason Corypheus needed her power to unlock the orb, and not just kill her like he wanted to do with Celene to produce political instability.
She informs us about Nightmare, a demon that works for Corypheus and feeds on the fear and darkness. This may explain why this Fade has so many keepers of Fear: here is where the food for this demon is exhibited.
We are informed by this spirit that this demon Nightmare is the one responsible for the apparent Calling of the wardens.
The inquisitor does not remember what happened in the Conclave, and it’s here where they recover by gathering the small wisps of memories.
She explains that the Fade is “made of” the mind of mankind.
What changes in the mankind’s world, changes here in the Fade.
Due to the evasive nature of this Justinia, whose behaviour is similar to Cole’s, we reinforces the idea that she may be a spirit like Cole, in particular: Faith [mostly because she asks for forgiveness to Leliana for having failed her, and even though it may be a posthumous regret of Justinia, it fits well from a narrative point of view, since Leliana starts the game with her loss of faith.]
She claims she is what the Maker made her. But if the Chantry Maker doesn’t exist, this may be a typical misuse of language of the spirits: a Maker can be any person who creates or maintain spirits in the Fade. She may as well call Maker to the real, human Justinia, whose faith kept her stronger over time.
We follow a conversation about the Maker. This is quite challenging since we have the confirmation of Corypheuys already claiming there is no Maker, as well as Solas ignoring completely the presence of any. Justinia claims that the Maker can be seen all around us, implying that a Maker can be anyone who can create spirits or reflection of emotions in the Fade, if we take this spirit in a more poetic way.
It’s curious how she describes the anchor: It’s the needle that pulls the thread, as well as a key. Meaning a key to something locked, the door to the Fade: the Veil. It creates [sew] the Veil, and it’s also the key to access to the Fade. If we assume that the Veil was made with this energy trapped in the orb/inquisitor’s hand, and it was a means to seal a bigger danger, it’s also the key to unlock it.
When we recover the memory, we realise Justinia was used by Corypheus to unlock the orb. He required a sacrifice, and for unknown reasons, she was chosen, despite not being an elf, a dragon-blooded humanoid or a mage [all more suitable victims which blood or sacrifice has more power, lore-wise]. Even the way she is sacrificed does not implies blood magic.
She is restrained with red lines of power, which represent the bound Grey Warden’s power or maybe Corypheus’. And the Green energy coming out from her to the orb may suggest “similar Fade energy”. This is why, from a visual point of view, I suspect that human Justinia has been possessed by a gentle spirit for a long while, in the same fashion that Wynne was. [For more details, even though this speculation is a bit old, read What is Justinia?]
Once recovered the first set of memories, we have a comment from the mage companions: Solas, who has always spoken about the spirit nature, suggests this Justinia is pretty much a similar case to Cole but staying in the Fade. Dorian, also says an adequate comment: if they would have been a demon, they would have asked for something in return. Vivienne, of course, remains wary about the nature of this creature.
The second set of memories happens nearby the Humanoid Mythal statue. We see the inquisitor climb a rock towards the Breach to return to the Waking World. Justinia is helping him, as spiders follow him.
Here more or less is confirmed that she is a spirit of some kind, as the orange glowing, typical of the spirits in this game, turn into the intense yellow glow with the Divine hat [detail that reinforces the idea that the essence of this spirit is related to Faith]
We can have some discussion with other companions, but there are no concrete answers about the nature of this creature. Lore-wise, it seems reasonable to think in this situation similar to Wynne’s [Wynne was not always possessed, but she always noticed the presence of that spirit, taking care of her]. It’s not clear if Justinia was or was not possessed by a gentle spirit, but in either case, this one keeps reinforcing the idea of a spirit of Faith. Her dubious answers also fit perfectly her potential Faith-nature: she asks you to believe in whatever story you want to create to justify her decision of looking like Justinia.
So, in a short series of speculations:
This spirit takes the shape of Justinia. It may imply a situation similar to Cole’s in Asunder.
This Spirit may have been to Justinia like Faith was to Wynne: a spirit that took care of her until she died, and in wynne’s case, Faith possessed her in mutual agreement to save the lives of the Mages that were trapped in the tower.
It’s not clear if Justinia was or not possessed. But since Corypheus needs her energy to unlock the orb [which needs a lot of energy that Solas didn’t have when he awoke from his slumber, said by himself at the end of Trespasser] it seems natural to assume that Corypheus used her energy because she was more powerful than an elvhen [when elven blood is special for potent magic] or than even a mage.
The way the spirit of Justinia evades the requests for answers, and always suggests you to believe in whatever you want, it seems to be a fitting behaviour for a spirit of Faith
Her shape of light loses all details except the typical hat of the Divine, meaning that the spirit has kept a modern, powerful religious icon into herself. An icon of contemporaneous Faith.
The Seekers of Truth is an institution which has always had a deep relationship with Faith spirits that they used in order to awake seekers from their tranquillity vigil. The Seekers is an Order close to the Divine as well, so there is a natural approach of Faith spirits to the Divine just by her proximity to this Order.
Leliana seems to be immune to Red Lyrium, like Seekers are. There is a potential implicit connotation that she may have been touched by a spirit of Faith. Since Justinia and Leliana have always been too close, this speculation seems to have a bit of room for this event to happen between the Divine and the Left Hand. However, the most natural and obvious explanation of this is if Leliana dies in DAO, at the temple of the Sacred Ashes, and she is revived by a spirit, as it’s implied in her speech if we play in a world where the warden killed her. The problem with this is that it depends a lot of the player’s choice.
When the spirit fights the gigantic spider, she tells the inquisitor to ask Leliana for forgiveness of “having failed her”. This is so ambivalent that it could be interpreted as a last regret of the real Justinia, but it could also be a genuine apology from the spirit of Faith for having let Leliana lose her Faith [as we saw in the beginning of the game] or even an apology for not having protected the Divine that Leliana loved so much.
obviously celene is fully to blame for choosing to commit fucking genocide, but tbh, justinia’s little ultimatum really pisses me off. like first of all, templars and mages are under the direct pervue of the chantry, of which she is the head. handling issues with either mages or templars is literally her job, she shouldn’t have issued any ultimatum, she should have just done her fucking job
second, there was no need to make celene handle the issue of the halamshiral alienage either. you know who started alienages? the fucking chantry. justinia could literally just dissolve the alienages or fucking make laws to end the discrimination of elves since chantry law supersedes the laws of individual nations
the elves were protesting being fucking slaughtered and the highest goddamn authority, who LED the people in their hatred of elves in the first place, should have fucking CARED
