Samson for the character break down!
How I feel about this character:
No but for real I am apparently a massive emotional masochist, and have enough feelings about Raleigh Samson to fill up an entire manifesto 😅
Seriously, sorry y'all, this is about to be LONG. Lara what have you done.
Here are some brief highlights to start I guess:
I really love his gritty sort of down-to-earth attitude. He doesn't see himself as better or worse than anyone else. He is where he is in life, and so are the people around him, and he doesn't really seem to get hung up on the pretenses surrounding all of those things.
If you haven't read Paper and Steel you really should, because a lot of my feelings about Samson and his values really just magnified a whole lot after reading his story. He has such a profound sense of loyalty to his men, and it's really apparent the further you get just how much of a sense there is that he made his decisions and he's doing the best with the lot he's been cast. Maybe they weren't the "right" decisions, but knowing why he chose the path he did and what he watched happen as he went down it rips my entire heart clean out of my chest.
This man risked everything to help the mages of Kirkwall retain some sense of normalcy in their lives, and I always wonder how much he carries the responsibility/blame for what happened to Maddox.
All the people I ship romantically with this character:
Hawke. Any Hawke, but especially a jaded, chantry-hating red Hawke. Bonus points if that Hawke is also a mage. One of the big themes that sticks to me in Dragon Age 2 is this idea that Hawke is this magnetic force of chaos that draws people in. Hawke is a beacon for people who are just sort of untethered and floating in life. I think a mage or mage sympathetic Hawke would have a lot in common ideologically with Samson, especially pre-Corypheus. I think had Samson been allowed to canonically interact positively with Hawke, he may have directed his energy elsewhere during the events of Inquisition. A romance born of that sort of dynamic to me is just. Hnnnnnng spicy.
I think there's also something to be said for Samson/Inquisitor pairings, especially the really well done redemption arc ones. Samson is a man with a good heart and solid intentions who got fucked by the system at every turn, and there's so much potential there for a compelling ship with someone with a strong personality/sense of self who gives him some room to grow. I'm also a huge sucker for a solid redemption arc. There is SO MUCH POTENTIAL HERE. *flail*
My non-romantic OTP for this character:
Personally, I think my lines between this category and the previous one blur tremendously. Most of what applies above can also apply here sans romantic feelings. I can very easily picture a variety of AUs where Samson and Hawke or Samson and the Inquisitor bond over, among a lot of things, their shared frustrations towards the corrupt and injust institutions that tenuously hold society together.
My unpopular opinion about this character:
I did these questions out of order and I just realized my answer for this is actually the thing I wish could have been a canon option so uhhh...see below. 😅
One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon:
I'm gonna preface this by saying I adore Cullen and this is in no way an anti-Cullen take. Anyone who's talked to me in this fandom for more than five min probably knows Amellen is one of my biggest OTPs. I still think an alternative possibility that would have been really fucking cool is to have had him and Samson switch places. To me they just seem like two sides of the same coin, and it really feels like a part of what determined where that coin landed was just. Circumstance.
They both have a strong sense of duty. They both struggle with a lyrium addiction thrust on them by the Chantry that controls their decisions. One of the ways in which they diverge is how Cullen's motivations are fueled in part by trauma that colours the way he views the mages under his charge. It would have been really cool if, depending on decisions made by the player in DA2, the advisor and antagonist roles could have been flipped between the two of them.
This IS canon:
What if proximity to Meredith had also infected Cullen with the red lyrium corruption? What if Cassandra had sought out Samson due to his aforementioned acts of valor? What if Corypheus had sought out Cullen instead because Cullen had already been exposed to red lyrium and would have been easy enough to manipulate? He's already been burned by the system once in Kinloch. If the events in Kirkwall had gone a slightly different way, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say he would feel utterly betrayed by a system that he once believed in. Possibly enough to be willing to turn against it all in such a hugely profound way.
Samson would have made a great advisor in Inquisition, Cullen would have made a great villain, and that is a somewhat unpopular hill I will happily die on.
Also we would have had a whole ass game's worth of additional Gideon Emery dialogue. A second Gideon Emery romance. Come on. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
