I am married to the idea that Orsino is around the same age that Malcolm Hawke would’ve been if he had lived. Or at the very least, within the same age range. We know Orsino is the youngest First Enchanter to hold the position in Kirkwall, so it’s entirely possible.
I can’t stop thinking about how Malcolm and Orsino had a very similar approach about underperforming in public so they were left alone, and while I don’t doubt it’s an approach taken by many mages in Circles, you’re going to let me have it as it makes sense that Orsino, as an elf, was more or less allowed to get away with it. The Chantry isn’t kind to elves, but the chantry also thinks elves are inferior, so if Orsino appeared as more average it didn’t matter as much. Not to mention I think Orsino was generally more reserved and less boisterous than Malcolm ever was.
You would never heard Orsino’s laugh resonating in the halls because of something Ser Carver (or another tolerable Templar, if such thing is possible) said, or him swearing during silent study time in his native accent because he dropped him. That was all Malcolm. Orsino couldn’t have said they were friends, but they shared a room in the Gallows, maybe, and when you’re united by such an experience you cannot help but to feel some camaraderie in all of it.
Don’t get me wrong, perhaps the basis and the spark of the Orsino we knew existed before all these things happened. He was a City Elf after all, and I believe the bones remember. Yet Malcolm left first. All that remained of him was a note explaining to Orsino, the only room-mate he had that he trusted on not ratting him out, that he would not have his life used against him. Along with asking him to bury this note immediately after reading it, because he would’ve hated to get him in trouble, he made a joke at his own stake, saying that if he took all the laugh from the Gallows with him then Orsino would have to find another reason to make their fellow mages smile on his own.
Orsino has never been a class clown, nor he understands Malcolm very much in that moment, but he feels something decidedly. He doesn’t discard that Malcolm could afford this because he’s human, not an elf, but if the commotion and the rumours coming from town are anything to go by (and Ser Carver’s constant look of dread), perhaps it wasn’t so easy as Orsino bitterly thinks it was.
Yet, the First-Enchanter-To-Be has no place for bitterness or any emotion whatsoever, because the Templars feed on that, so he takes a deep breath and moves on. He knows nothing, Malcolm never said anything, and he has, absolutely, never had a conversation with him (where no else could hear them) about whether they would escape the Gallows if they could.
Then Maud died, and Orsino felt like he no longer could afford his practised neutrality, his careful measure and ever present composure.
(Ser Carver was made an example of too, but a Templar is a Templar and all Templar, even the tolerable ones, are bastards. Some Templars did not like that he was made an example of, or the Knight-Commander’s actions, but Orsino saw none of them making a stand against Meredith. Not that Ser Carver ever said anything, but he is starting to believe actions are louder than words.
Only speaking is an action too.)
Between Maud’s “this is no life” and Malcolm’s “I will not have my life used against me”, Orsino begins confronting things he already knew: Elven Mages have it worse than Humans, but they all have it bad. He isn’t thinking about this when he pushes back, however; there is no agenda behind his actions, only what is right to him in that given moment. And what is right is pushing back and not letting his fellow mages fall into the endless pit of despair that is the Gallows and the Kirkwall Templars.
If they want to label him a trouble maker, they’re allowed to. He’s a mage, he’s an elf, they won’t be the last, let alone they have been the first.
Maybe, one day, he’ll get to be none other than Bethany Hawke’s First Enchanter. Maybe there will come a day when he will call her to his office, and say that while he will not play favourites, so she has to earn her ranks like everyone else, as long as he is the First Enchanter she will not be alone. It is a shame that Malcolm's daughter has to return like this, because he is sure her father did not do what he did so Bethany ended in the Gallows, out of all places.
Bethany will not turn into another Maud, or so many others who died by their own hand if he has any say in it.
(And when he meets Rowan Hawke, future Champion of Kirkwall, he will confirm what he already thought from the rumours he has heard: that she is the spitting image of her father.
Maybe not all is lost in death.)