Solas has dialogue with Dorian about how he can’t be that sorry about what Tevinter did to the elves if he’s not willing to free all the slaves in Tevinter and it’s literally the epitome of “the worst person you know just made a great point.”
Yeah. Like... This is the part of Dorian’s quest/focus in Inquisition that aggravates me when I’m NOT focusing on how I, a gay person, didn’t need this anvil straight out of a mid-90s after-school special on “why homophobia is bad.” It’s the fact that, sure, it’s great that Dorian wants to change Tevinter. It really is. BUT the problem is, from what we see in Inquisition proper, his concerns about what ails Tevinter goes only so far as blood magic.
He compares slavery to poverty, says they’re no different in practical terms. And that’s the end of his remarks about slavery in terms of what you directly speak to him about. The game treats his comment of “They’re really about the same thing, and I imagine you know no better than I do about it anyway” as the final word.
Dorian will potentially face an escaped elven slave from Tevinter who chose the Qun rather than return to slavery, and his response to Gatt is to simply get catty at this representative of the Qun, rather than this moment open his eyes. There is no encounter with Krem, whose father sold himself into slavery after slave labor undercut his business. There’s no banter where Varric calls out a Tevinter magister branding the skin in lyrium tattoos in the name of having a more powerful bodyguard, and Dorian’s complacency with the magisterium compounding it.
Hell, his father is assassinated, and the way he talks about his ascension is that he intends to find those “giving Tevinter a bad name” and deal with them, when the fact of the matter is, the people “giving Tevinter a bad name” are not the few bad apples spoiling the bunch. They’re the whole tree, and any “good” apples in the bunch are the exception, not the rule. The problem is the Magisterium in its entirety.
Frankly, I can’t see Dorian as truly being “the redeemer” he was advertised as when it comes to Tevinter, because if Tevinter is going to be redeemed, it’s going to come from a revolution of the Fenrises and the Krems of Tevinter society, those who have been stepped on and pressed into the mud - by the Dorians of Tevinter society. This piece of fanart and attached meta pretty well sum it up - Dorian was hyped as the redeemer, but he never looks down to see who he specifically has been stepping on to be able to have the experience he did that made him want to change Tevinter - if he’d been soporati, born without magic, to a family without magic, he would likely have never had the pressure to be married off. And before Halward Pavus tried to make him marry, how critical was he of Tevinter’s status quo to begin with?
Dorian is a privileged rich kid on his first social justice endeavor, who believes that the thing that wronged him, that managed to pop his privileged bubble, is the only ail of Tevinter. While it’s not like I condemn him for wanting to change, his motivation only seems to go so far as ‘this affected ME, and therefore it’s the only problem of note, and is the only REAL problem.’
And if people want to read him as being open and willing to open his mind beyond that one issue, that’s great and all, but BASED SOLELY ON WHAT HAPPENS IN INQUISITION, Dorian is presented by the game’s narrative as having reached his pinnacle in terms of learning and unlearning his privilege and what needs to be changed about Tevinter. Because he’s better than his peers, that makes him the best, so far as Inquisition cares.
