I think of the term vhenan as quite sacred a word - to me it has always felt like a declaration of commitment, like a vow. And so I researched the use of it in Thedas and found it was a very rare term indeed.
There are only three instances across Dragon Age where the term vhenan is used for someone.
Merrill to a romanced Hawke.
Solas to a romanced Lavellan and vice-versa (Lavellan is the only protagonist to use this term)
The spirit preserving Telana's memories crying out for Ameridan.
Sera never uses it for a romanced Inquisitor, Veilguard gives us two elven companions who don’t use it and even elven Rook never uses it for their LI. A non-elf Rook acts as though they have never heard of the term before when talking to a romanced Lavellan - so rare indeed.
And naturally my brain started looking for patterns between Merrill, Solas, and Telana (aside from all being mages and elves) and why, do they reserve it for only one person in their romanced narratives?
The first thing that stood out is that all three are stubborn people. Once they've decided something is worth pursuing, they're incredibly difficult to sway. Merrill obsessed with restoring the eluvian, Telana refusing to leave Ameridan and Solas spending years pursuing veilfall.
The second thing they share is that love and loyalty sit at the centre of many of their choices. None of them are primarily motivated by power, status, or personal gain. Their lives are shaped by devotion, whether that's to a person, a cause, their people, or a belief.
The third is their willingness to go it alone. Merrill becomes clanless and is willing to endure solitude for her goals. Telana dies alone searching for Ameridan. Solas repeatedly chooses paths that leave him apart from the people he cares about (ending the relationship with a romanced Lavellan to walk the din’anshiral).
Merrill, Telana, and Solas are all characters whose stories revolve around holding onto something despite great cost, and all three choose someone they remain devoted to through hardship, distance, pain, and time. (And yes, I include Solas in this. Even after years of separation, he writes to Lavellan, vows never to forget her, and slips right back into calling Lavellan vhenan.)
Considering vhenan is 'my heart' there is very strong symbolism. We may love many people throughout our lives, but we only have one 'heart' and it's required for living.
Solas seems most 'alive' when he's with Lavellan. Lavellan draws him into the present moment, out of the Fade and into the physical world, a world he’s trying to deny. Lavellan is someone who pulls Solas back toward living rather than merely existing or heading down a path of death. There is a second layer of symbolism as well: Solas refuses to let Lavellan witness what he will become. In a sense, it’s almost as though he leaves his heart behind for safekeeping, that Solas, who he wants to be, can remain beating with Lavellan.
When Ameridan disappears, Telana refuses to let him go. She waits, enters uthenera in the hope of finding him through dreams, and dies still searching for him. The heart is the organ that sustains life, and Telana spends her final days searching for the person she considers hers. She dies with her search unfinished, her body unable to live without her heart.
For Merrill the heart symbolism is a bit different, I think it lies in what a heart does. A heart sustains the body by continually sending blood through it. Hawke occupies a similar role in Merrill's life. Her ambitions, and pursuit of the eluvian remain unchanged, yet Hawke becomes woven through it, a constant presence that helps sustain the life she's chosen to live.
Merrill's use of the word is particularly interesting to me because she's one of the modern elven characters most invested in recovering the knowledge and traditions of ancient Elvhenan. She also recites In Uthenera, an elven ballad that contains one of the only other uses of vhenan in the series. Given her fascination with preserving the past, it feels fitting she'd use a word for Hawke that appears so rarely and carries significance.
For an ancient culture that was both spirit and form, there may have been few declarations more intimate and more sacred than telling another person: you are my heart. You are the thing that keeps me living in this biological form. In this sense, Solas' denial of Lavellan almost feels like a denial of himself, he regrets manifesting so much that to accept his love for Lavellan is also to accept the world and himself physically in it.
In all three cases, vhenan is given to someone who is so woven into the speaker's life despite distance, hardship, pain, or time. That's why the word feels sacred to me. Much like the heart itself, they have become so woven into the being of the person who bears them.
Note: When a term appears this rarely in officially written narratives, I can't help looking for patterns and symbolism in who uses it and why. Whether that was the writers' intent or not, those patterns become part of how I interpret the word and then integrate it into my own world state.
2nd Note: In Uthenera is about loss, mortality, separation, and the approach of death, which I find fascinating given that those same themes run through these 3 relationships associated with the word.
*Also if I'm missing any use of vhenan elsewhere in the universe please let me know.
While the Inquisitor carries many titles, the least spoken of is the one given by the spirits. When the Augur calls them “the one who blazes like fire and mends the air,” it feels less like his wording and more like the words the spirits themselves gave to him. And they insist on seeing this person when they arrive.
But I'm particularly interested in how the Inquisitor is percieved by spirits and some dialogue gives us a clue.
Augur: How do you think you appear to the gods of the Fade? To those beyond the Veil, your hand burns like the watchman's bonfire.
The one who mends the sky is here, the one who closed the Breach has arrived - and they press what they know upon the Augur, recounting what the Inquisitor has done: Hushed Whispers, Champion of the Just, the Well of Sorrows. In the Fade, nothing about them is hidden. Their deeds travel ahead of them, and their light gives them away wherever they stand.
Inquisitor: Are you saying every spirit in the Fade knows where I am?
Augur: Only those nearby, but thoughts spread quickly among the gods.
Awareness travels among spirits - the one who blazes is near rippling through the Fade as spirits watch.
But spirits also feel the Inquisitor and recognize something familiar in them, perhaps that's part of what draws them - yet they don't quite know what the Inquisitor is.
The Spirit of Command: "What of you? I felt your coming. Is there something alike in us?"
They feel their coming before they even see the Inquisitor - they know that great blaze is drawing near. Command senses something familiar but also knows the Inquisitor isn’t a spirit. So what's it noticing?
The Anchor is rooted in ancient magic from Solas, Solas' own power stored over a millennia through his orb created the Anchor - that power which now weaves itself through the Inquisitor's body. It connects them directly to the Fade at all times. If spirits respond to what something is at its core, then reacting the way they are suggests the Anchor has changed the Inquisitor , being a part of the Veil changes them (metaphysically, physiologically).
In my own interpretation (as I've shared before), I believe the Inquisitor is a changed, liminal kind of being (all versions of the Inquisitor):
So, when I think of the Inquisitor and how the Spirits, with their spirit eyes might see them in the waking world while they are in the Fade - these are the images I have in my mind:
I’ve decided as headcanon that the three remnants in the regret prison were trials Solas actually attempted to get out. While he’s working to manipulate Rook into swapping places, it doesn’t make sense that he would just wait and do nothing else. The Wolf does not sit idle in a cage.
I wrote awhile back what I think each remnant represents, so building on that, I see each one and each item as tied to a trial he faced - and failed.
Remnant of Parting
Solas remembers Mythal with rose-coloured glasses, something he curates. He separates what she meant to him from what she did, the decay of their relationship and never brings the two together.
I could see this trial tying directly to that Skyhold rotunda mural, the unfinished one of the wolf standing over the slain dragon.
The trial has Solas with the dagger in his hand. He tries to drop it, but it won’t leave him. It keeps returning, because the moment won’t resolve. One instant Mythal is there, whole, speaking to him as he remembers her. The next, the blade is in, she’s fallen, and he’s standing over her having taken her power. Then it resets.
It keeps looping because he clings to the version of her he prefers - the version shaped by his guilt that he wasn’t there to stop the Evanuris from killing her. He carries her death as his fault, but also resents her, because if she had stayed with him, if she hadn’t taken it upon herself to accuse them alone, she might still be alive - and the Veil, his greatest mistake, may never have had to happen.
At the same time, he can’t fully face how she used him, that he wore her vallaslin, something he later burned from his own face. And he won’t fully accept what he did in return - killing her fragment and trapping the other in the Crossroads. I mean, it's a multitude of things.
Remnant of Failing
This one is about the Inquisition. Trust runs and breaks in every direction. He misplaces it in Corypheus and in his own plan. The Inquisition trusts him without knowing him. He trusts himself to stay detached and doesn’t. He relies on them to clean up his mess but also to get him further in the game.
This remnant holds the contradiction that one of his worst mistakes also brought him closest to what he once was - Wisdom. It’s the period where he experienced new things, new people, listened, learned, and allowed himself to care. Where others treated him as "Wisdom" all while he was deceiving them.
I see the trial as him having to put the pieces of the orb back together but it never holds. It's whole for a moment, then breaks again and every time it breaks, he sees all the people who are paying for it.
The trial forces him to relive the Inquisition, to rebuild those bonds while knowing he’s using them and will be the one to end them. Each time the orb comes back together and breaks, the cost shifts - onto the people of the Inquisition (onto Lavellan if romanced), and onto Flemythal, because the loss of the orb also leads him to kill her and take Mythal's power.
Remnant of Reflection
The description in the text carries a sense of something sickly about how he "sees" the mantle of the Dread Wolf (unsettling scarlets, and choleric ambers) and it's something he doesn’t want to claim - “I prefer to be known as Wisdom.”
Maybe this trial has Solas painting himself, trying to control how he’s seen - Solas, the rebel who freed slaves, the protector. Every time he paints over it, trying to make it closer to how he understands himself, a mask keeps appearing on the face. He scrapes it off, repaints, changes the colours - but it comes back, again and again, no matter what he does.
Or maybe he’s pulled into a painting he paints. He has to move through it as that version of himself, as the Dread Wolf others see, not as who he wants to be (“to stay with you as Solas, as I wanted").The spirit, the man, the companion, the lover are still there to him, but they don’t change how he’s percieved. It echoes the Dalish clan turning on him, his bitterness at how history has "painted" him.
Why Solas fails all these trials is best summarized by the Varric dialogue variations in regret prison:
Varric: Because if he doesn't end the world? Doesn't restore the ancient magic? Then he's not the misunderstood hero, fighting for the greater good. He's just someone who's hurt a lot of people. And he'll never let himself be that.
Varric: Solas wants to be a hero. That's who he is, deep down. But it's easier for him to play the villain. Because that means he didn't fail. All the damage he's done, the people he's hurt - it becomes a choice.
Solas chose this path, and people died for it. If he lets himself be “just someone who’s hurt a lot of people,” then the idea of being the hero falls apart. He keeps his intentions separate from the outcome so he never has to face them as one. And that’s why he fails the trials because he keeps dividing himself, compartmentalizing everything to keep functioning.
Morrigan: The first elves were spirits, and when a spirit is broken, it may shatter into pieces, each holding part of the original.
I believe the Solas we see in DAI and VG is a Solas who is dying a spirit death, he just can’t (or won't) see it. That death slowed down a bit in DAI since I do see that time for him as him reconnecting with who he truly is deep down. It's why Varric says to remind him who he is.
I could see then, after the atonement ending, these sames trials there waiting for him, and eventually he does pass them, one by one.
I'd love to hear if anyone has any other ideas around what these trials could entail.
The idea of Solas being aroused by Lavellan calling him all his names during sex is so sexy to me.
Lavellan never flinched when Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf, the great adversary of the Dalish, eyes blazing with magic kissed Lavellan - and Lav just took it full on. Can you imagine how he felt? Kissing Lav with the knowledge of who he is and wasn't turned away?
Lavellan accepts Solas as a whole, sees all his layers, saw more than most and continued to do so. Lavellan takes all of him in. So him hearing all his names through Lav's moans and groans, switching between them as effortlessly as he moves within Lavellan. I see it being very arousing for him. And for Lav.
(I know my Saethre enjoys crying out all his names to him as he devours her.)
Spirit-Speaker was a title only Solas held among the Evanuris. He carried it with more pride than Fen’Harel and held it in higher regard than even his title of Second to Mythal. It's why it appears first in any of his correspondence and was how he preferred to be addressed, if titles were necessary at all.
I headcanon that this name was given to him by the spirits themselves, as it reflects his deep ties to the Fade and to spirits and his desire to stay connected to his spiritual side. It speaks to what he was known and respected for and why others addressed him as Spirit-Speaker before any of his formal titles as well.
In ancient Arlathan, if a spirit or elf had issues with each other, it was Solas they would turn to.
Solas is bound to the Veil and I very much believe it's a parasitic type binding. His life force is the only thing keeping it up now and we know from the Inquisitor how much power the Veil will take away from and affect someone.
But there is one way that Solas and Lavellan have found to help Solas maintain some balance.
Tantric sex.
I mean, if you think about it, Dragon Age metaphysics actually makes all of this make sense. Emotional and spiritual states have real energetic vibrations and that energy will vibrate in the Fade. We know spirits flock to emotional intensity which is why Solas tells Lav they shouldn't even kiss in the Fade, implying that just their feelings of desire and attraction give off a lot of energy. Then you have Dreamers who can influence the Fade, shape it and Solas is the Dreamer of Dreamers. So all of this to say that, in theory, the energy created between him and Lavellan during tantric sex moves through both of them, providing energy back to Solas that the Veil strips away.
Tantric intimacy is about energy building and circulation rather than a depletion of it. It focuses on aligning and sharing breath, attuning the senses and bodies to each other and to promote an emotional and spiritual flow of harmonic energy between two souls.
In a world where emotions shape the Fade, that kind of intimacy becomes magic in it's own sense - literally an anchor and stabilising field that keeps Solas from burning out under the Veil constantly feeding off him.
And like - you just gotta give it to Lavellan. Once again saving Thedas, but this time, with sex.
Solas didn’t just burn Mythal’s vallaslin from his face - he burned his hair away as well. I always found the line "he burned her off his face" - so violent. It's not a gentle act and implies a rageful removal of her from himself.
There had been a time when affection and love existed between Mythal and Solas. Long before constant disappointment and betrayal entered in, long before manipulation and attempts at control. For a while, they found moments apart from duty, away from court and its constant scheming.
In quiet moments he would lie his head in her lap while she stroked his hair. She would braid it, brush it, run her fingers through its length. Solas, in turn, would tend to hers. It was a quiet ritual, a closeness between them set apart from the rest of the world. Those moments they shared were simple. A way for two former spirit companions to connect to one another beyond titles and roles.
But, over time, that changed.
As Solas’ loyalty to Mythal began to loosen, and his distrust of both her and the Evanuris deepened, affection slowly became something else. He grew more argumentative with her, more impatient, increasingly disillusioned by her choices and by what she had become. Over time, she stopped treating him as an equal and began treating him more like something she possessed, her second, her weapon. And as she grew increasingly impatient with his rebellious nature and his disrespect towards her, the warmth and affection she offered often depended on how willing he remained to carry out her will.
Solas had once relaxed beneath her touch, sought it out to remain connected to her and Mythal learned how easily that could be used against him. Her hands in his hair, her gentleness, her affection - all of it became a way to soothe him into compliance, to pull him back to her side whenever she needed her weapon again.
Things started to spiral fast when Solas discovered the truth of the Well of Sorrows. After that he started pulling away from her and really took to his rebellion in secret. But it was Mythal’s decision to take on the mantle of divinity alongside Elgar’nan and the others that finally pushed him over the edge. He saw then that her rise to power and everything within her reign, including the power of the other Evanuris had, in some part, been built through and with him.
By then, Solas knew Mythal used affection and love as a means of control, something he had chosen to ignore for too long. Her hands in his hair, the gentle stroking that had once comforted him, became just another expression of that manipulation.
So it wasn't enough for Solas to burn the vallaslin from his face as declaration of his willingness to stand against the Evanuris. He burned his hair away as well. Where burning the vallaslin away was a rejection of the power and slavery it represented, burning away his hair was a rejection of Mythal, and an acceptance that their spirit bond was beyond saving.
As for the hair shown in his memories - these are after Mythal’s murder, when guilt and regret come crashing down on him. He sees himself with hair in those memories because it’s his way of compartmentalizing that guilt, of hiding from the belief that her death was his fault, that he turned away from her. It also symbolizes how he sees her in the past tense, through those earlier rose-coloured glasses. Though what we don't see in those memories? The vallaslin - that's still too much shame for Solas to bear - shame of bearing the markings of a slave, Mythal's markings.
Ages and ages later, as Solas travelled with the Inquisition, the spell he had used to burn his hair away - and keep it from returning - continued to serve him well:
Solas: “This is when I appreciate learning the magic to prevent sunburn on a bald head.”
