re the Crows thing i think it kills me how they tried to justify that some bad crows (like Illario) still exist but the general system is improving so it's okay yay, Antiva belongs to the Crows and Treviso will be free, orphans who set houses and gets trained in the Crows is good now, and they're here to support the elves super duper true promise, is just how in every way it insults Zevran and therefore the conclusion is like "yeah there's some bad apples like what happened in house Arainai but this culture of grooming from childhood to kill and substain torture is Good Actually"
Like it's on the same level as not addressing or changing anything about Tevinter's slavery aside from... idk distributing pamphlets and voting hard about it, because you know some normal people are just here buying bread. We're not going to address the case of Zevran, or Rinna, or Taliesen, we're not even going to address the abuse Lucanis and Illario went through, which is described in the books. Those were isolated incidents, for real promise. The whole system isn't too bad. Teia and Viago are voting about it.
And the way Illario is framed as this bad type of Crow who represents this worst side of the Crows that was present in Zevran's backstory is... not even true, but also does a disservice to the fact you Did Set Up Illario Was Groomed And Tortured From Birth.
There was a proposition with Lucanis & Illario's story to treat how "Crows' royalty" were still crushed into this system, how they still had it as bad as what Zevran described happening to the slaves boys who were bought on the market, and kinda the way like.... where there is just about the same amount of free will for slaves and for people who were born into this death cult (let's call it what it is)
but instead it really was "well actually Royalty in the Crows DO have it better and tbh the majority of them are like Royalty and do it better, but if you don't stand abuse and let it get to your head like Illario you're part of the bad apples who let slavery happen, and since we're Good People we're rooting out the Bad Apples and there's no more slavery in this death cult about grooming and torturing children" and it's just. Even worse than just making the Crows to be better off than they were, but trying to reconcile what happened to Zevran is just bad luck that happened because he was poor and because of bad apples instead of this rotten system that has just found a way to get away with slavery on andrastian grounds.
And it's not even to mention that it made both Lucanis and Illario nothing characters, hell even Viago and Teia became pretty nothing characters. Viago had no choice but enlist into the Crows because he's the King's bastard and it was either he joined the crows or he was executed and he developped high paranoia because of attempts on his life, while Teia was genuinely one of the only Crows we heard who seemed to have joined willingly and clawed her way to the top. But since we're not addressing any of that they're just here to repeat that Antiva belongs to the Crows and Treviso will be free.
What a waste. Zevran didn't kill most of his assassination branch for the conclusion to be "well there were just some bad people in the crows but it's okay we have the idealist with us at the top"
