Some thoughts about the Black Chantry
ISTG worldbuilding for Tevinter. Every step I take, I step into a hot pile of class tensions between the mages and the Soporati that didn't get a chance to be explored in Veilguard.
Now upon the tapis: what does the Black Chantry have to offer to an average Soporati citizen if its clergy from the Revered Father/ Mother upward must also be Circle Enchanters? How does the Black Chantry obscure its nature as a tool of mage interest whilst trying to salvage the scraps from its origins in the period of the Transfigurations, when Andrastianism was allegedly met with support from the Soporati?
Why was it met with the non-mage's support in the firts place, though? Did it happen through the sheer dread and hatred of the common people towards the Old God cults? What kind of rhetoric did Hessarian sell to the Soporati? Was he goaded into cleaning up after the Old God cults once the commoners saw Minrathous nearly sieged by an army of barbarians and slaves?
What is the allegorical message of Andraste, really?
Aside from the Maker going "This one lass is slightly less disappointing than the rest of your lot. Try realizing me in every corner of the world, and we'll see. Until then, sayonara, you weaboos"?
"You can't bounce back until you've reached the bottom"?
It feels like her army was really everything there was, until someone else decided to meddle with the story and fabricate a counterweight for the Old God cults. But what does that have to do with the Soporati? What kind of a rhetoric did Hessarian offer them, to gather that alleged support (and, implicitly, redirect some form of Soporati unrest towards the Old God cultis?) The first answer that comes to mind is some link with blood sacrifice as a statistically significant cause of death in the Imperium. Perhaps Hessarian was ready to attack that.
And even then, whatever Hessarian's rhetoric was, it can't be still working in the Age of the Dragon, when the Black Chantry very clearly serves the righteous and charitable self-image of the new, virtuous Altus (see snippets of Halward Pavus ticking off all the boxes for an ultra-religious patriarch, all while unabashedly corresponding with Mother Giselle of Jader). Between the lines, everything still seems to be relying on the implicit antagonism between the Andrastians and the Draconians, with the latter being ever-present through Aurelians Tituses, Danariuses and other evilly cackling scum and villainy that culminates in the Venatori faction in the latter two games.
But what does any of it have to do with the Soporati, who aren't much better off, regardless of whether the Altus are predominantly Draconian or Andrastian? Would presenting the Old Gods as The Great Adversary have a strong enough effect then?
What are the points in "Andraste's" vision that could appeal to the Soporati?
A god who doesn't require a living sacrifice; Andraste's death isn't even really framed like one. She was betrayed and executed, and the hindsight couldn't undo the wrong.
All souls are, allegedly, metaphysically equal (however, the Chantry at large doesn't seem to turn that into any soteriological incentive, especially for those oppressed "in this world"? It doesn't even have a concept of "the other world" as a trove of eternal restitution. Where is the proverbial carrot for Krem's dad breaking his back to stay out of debt? Why would he care about gods when mages are the unquestionable source of his suffering?)
Shartan seemed to be an inspiring figure for a while, until the Chantry dogma writers remembered he was an elf.
What might get in the way of the Soporati adopting Andrastianism?
Tevinter pissed on the "magic exists to serve man" tenet, and then, in a pro gamer move, it also pissed at effectively separating the Old God cults from institutions of power, since the Circles were supposedly adapted from the old temples (and the people likely stayed exactly where they were). I might even put my tinfoil hat on here and hallucinate a scenario in which Hessarian's reforms actually faked the dissolution of the Old God cults to protect the Altus from the potential revolt of the Soporati, and set up a system where the Old God cults can exist in perpetuity as the constitutive outsiders or boogeymen or something, while in reality the Altus at large only need to adjust their facade.
One seems to practice their Andrastianism through faith and discourse only. There seem to be some extra points for supernatural visions. With the Imperial clergy being, to a great extent, Circle Enchanters, there will be an inevitable skill and knowledge gap. There is a possibiltiy of the Enchanter-Clergy deepening that gap through having their own writing system, language, exclusive access to education (if they aren't keeping the Soporati illiterate altogether), or claims of esoteric insights and revelations from the Fade that aren't available to the Soporati. In short, the element of "Cultural Andrastianism" really makes more sense among the Tevinter mages than their non-mages. The Black Chantry's clergy doesn't seem to be incentivized in any way to make the message more concrete and palatable to the Soporati. My tinfoil explanation for it is that it was, indeed, composed by scholars for scholars. With this in mind, it's hard to imagine the Chantry being popular among non-mages, at least on its own merit. On the other hand, we haven't really seen any proof of the Altus needing to constantly enforce Andrastianism as the state religion. There's a lore gap here that needs more thought.
There isn't really any individual soteriology either??? Only the prophecy of the Maker's global return, which, again, doesn't seem to offer anything special to individual souls, since the Maker from Threnodies is notoriously disappointed with imperfection.
All of this while I'm trying to figure out how much my human Soporati OCs would convincingly be sold on their version of the Chantry.
