I doubt you came here for a lecture

The most cherished constant of my life.

[thechildofmythal]

Hi ya, it's me, Inari! I'm 37, she/her, Northern Europe. English is not my first language.

This is my Dragon Age insanity blog with a recent splattering of TES4: Oblivion brainrot.

Underneath you can find my my masterlist for my fanfics and snippets:

Dragon Age Inquisition: Cullen fanfics and brainrot

Dragon Age Origins: Alistair fanfiction

TES4 Oblivion: Martin fanfiction

Inari's DA:I Cullen Masterlist of Slowburn Fics on Tumblr, in some sort of chronological order:

First looks (Properly written. The Commander’s thoughts on meeting The Inquisitor-to-be for the first times, and later beginning to fall for her. Very much Lavellan. Featuring also Cassandra, others mentioned.)

A game of chess (Properly written. Cuteness, jealousy, misunderstanding over Dorian)

The Inquisitor’s diary (Dialogue only funtimes. Featuring also Josephine and Leliana)

Library Books (Properly written. Nerds flirting awkwardly in the library.)

Dorian brings the Inquisitor to watch Cullen train (Dialogue only, funny.)

Feelings of Failure (Properly written. In the first chapter The Siege of Adamant comes to an end, the Inquisitor is injured, Cullen is angsty. The second chapter is around Cullen’s lyrium outburst, and deals with ptsd and withdrawal.)

Leaving the Winter Palace (Properly written. Pining, cuteness. Supporting acts from Dorian, also Leliana, Josephine and Cassandra)

Unsatisfied morning (Dialogue only, NSFW foul language, funny. Dorian and Sera discuss The Inquisitor’s and The Commander’s very private things, pre-desk scene.)

The Lakeside (Properly written, when Cullen takes the Inquisitor to the lakeside. Complete with funnies in the beginning, the lucky coin, feelings, slow burn towards the next piece)

Morning Habits (properly written, the Holy Mother of Smut, includes the scene on Cullen’s desk.)

It felt like a good idea at the time (Properly written silly solo-smut, NSFW. Horny!Cullen tries to work by his desk. The desk he had recently made love to the Inquisitor on. It's very distracting.)

Come downstairs, a morning encounter (Dialogue only, funny, featuring also Vivienne, Leliana, Josephine and Dorian. Post-desk scene.)

Inari's DA:I Cullen Headcanons on Tumblr

DA:I Cullen Headcanons part 1: Dining

DA:I Cullen Headcanons part 2: Flirting

DA:I Cullen Headcanons part 3: NSFW

DA:I Cullen Headcanons part 4: Ex-Templar

Inari's DA:O Alistair fanfics on Ao3:

Unforgettable camp by the River (3 chapters, first time HoF and Alistair spend the night together, NSFW)

All the Roses in Ferelden (2 chapters post-Origins with King Alistair proposing to HoF, NSFW)

Inari's TES4: Oblivion fanfic on Tumblr

Martin Septim x Hero of Kvatch

Kindred Spirits, chapters: 1 2

[magicvicky2]

✨The Advisors of the Inquisition✨

[vulvalini]

i just don’t think it’s interesting to think cullen ever got anything out of the order, personally speaking. nor professionally.

nice armor, but it wasn’t his. nor his sword, nor any horse he rode or lyrium he used. vow of poverty, remember?

didn’t get a title (or rather, no longer wanted any titles he’d had). wouldn’t have left kirkwall with any money, aside from maybe pocket change. no lands, no pension, not even a goddamned letter of recommendation, seeing as how the local chantry… exploded.

“he took advantage of the opportunities the templars offered” what fucking advantages? learning to fight with trained professionals, leadership skills, and courage tempered by experience? advantages other templars didn’t take? how does that reflect poorly on him?

fine. cool. cullen rutherford has chantry/human privilege and got to learn fun dangerous things in the templars, as opposed to elves in the lowtown alienage just trying to survive and unable to join. whatever. take that for granted. IT IS KNOWN.

but privilege means fuck-all if you’re a poor kid from another wholeass country who’s in so far over his head he can’t even believe his coworkers would harm mages, like. on purpose. that boy never enjoyed a single moment of being in kirkwall, except maybe the one (1) time hawke smiled at him without aggressively showing off her canines.

and more importantly, he didn’t ask for any of that shit. he didn’t want a promotion to knight-captain at age twenty! he didn’t ask to be obeying a woman who makes mages tranquil if her tummy’s a little upset. cullen signed up with the templars to be kind. it breaks the fucking heart. eight years of waiting, training, yearning to be a True Templar, to protect mages from magic they couldn’t control, and what?

he gets locked in one jail after another, facing the possibility he may have to murder a mage during a harrowing. no travel: stuck on inaccessible islands. a traitor to ferelden pulls some shit, the kid gets tortured for weeks or even months by despair demons, and the entire course of his life changes thanks to a scheming political tyrant wannabe in another country, who demands the right to leave an equally mage-intolerant tyrant in her place, and all of a sudden he’s a fuckin knight-captain. he didn’t ask for it. he probably didn’t even want it.

aaaaaaaaaand it’s also just such a waste.

meredith gets nowhere with him in the following seven years: he inevitably turns on her in the end, if course. but in the meantime he spends seven years trying to manage absolute monsters, who all have seniority but not rank on him and constantly slither out of accountability. he criticizes meredith openly by the end. he lets samson rejoin the templars fully knowing why samson was kicked out and, later, expresses pity for both maddox and samson, particularly the time the latter spent as a lyrium addict begging in the kirkwall streets

we do not see cullen beating or torturing or using (or even threatening) the brand on mages. you want to headcanon he did: have a party. but what we see in kirkwall is a stressed-out, prematurely promoted executive officer whose submarine is leaking and he’s racing around with a single hand-operated pump because the other guys are busy drilling holes in the fuckin hull

he gets to watch his dreams catch on fire and blaze until they’re ashes. the templar order is corruptible and biased. the circles do not work as designed. cullen got nothing from the templar order, aside from skills he could have gotten in the ferelden army (like aveline, carver, & warrior hawke). seventeen years of nonstop devotion to a cause and all he got was a lifetime’s worth of trauma & guilt.

fuck, at least anders got to carry out his wildest fantasy and blow up the kirkwall chantry, even get away with it if hawke is not a monster

plus, the only IAB at the chantry is the seekers. i find it EXCEPTIONALLY fascinating that cassandra didn’t hold cullen “instant yapper” rutherford accountable for a single institutional abuse he knew (or feels he should have known) about which occured under his “leadership.” he would have spilled his guts. she probably interviewed him after varric and threw her hands in the air - finally, somebody who gets to the fuckin point. she could use a man with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail.

but. hmm. maybe it was because he clawed what remained of the good templars back into a little group to clean up & rebuild the city??? along with varric and a few others????

like he wanted to…. hmm… do penance and redeem himself???

(and i don’t want to hear about alistair and “well why didn’t he quit once he realized templars were locking up children.” alistair was disillusioned with the chantry and templars VERY early on thanks to growing up in a fucking dog kennel and, consciously or not, recognizing himself in the order’s dehumanization of mages

crucially, he also hadn’t taken a philter yet. and the only cullen we’ve ever met is either under the influence of lyrium or in active long-term withdrawal from it. i guarantee you that shit made cullen see everything in even starker black & white than a teenaged ferelden choirboy already would. i do not understand why people think he ever had an ounce of true agency before he kicked that shit for good on the way to skyhold)

[thechildofmythal]

Do I need to replay Dragon Age 2 to get a better grip on Cassandra just so I can write more Cullen angst? Because once again, sun is shining outside, is nice and warm, but what am I doing? Sitting at home, thinking about angst!Cullen and sighing longingly.

[thechildofmythal]

Lyrium Leash

The 29-year-old Knight-Captain Cullen is trying to not only hold Kirkwall together, but also himself.

TW: Thoughts of self-harm, memories and depictions of torture and addiction.

Lyrium Leash, part 1

Night in Kirkwall never truly quieted down anymore - not after the Chantry explosion. Even at this hour there were hammers somewhere in Hightown, repairing stone and scaffolding blackened months ago. Somewhere in Lowtown a drunk shouted. Somewhere farther off, someone screamed briefly before the sound vanished into the harbor wind. The city had always been restless, but now it seemed to whimper and pant like a wounded animal.

Knight-Captain Cullen Rutherford sat alone in his office in the Gallows with a report open before him that he had not read in many minutes. His eyes remained fixed on the parchment, but he saw none of it.

Three templars injured in Darktown. One apprentice missing. A suspected blood magic site near the docks. Food shortages among refugees. Another complaint against an overreach by patrol officers. It was neverending - there was always another fire, another death, another failure. 

Slowly Cullen lifted his hand and ran it over his face, exhausted. He pressed thumb and forefinger against his eyes until sparks burst behind them. The office was getting cold, he hadn’t bothered with stirring the fire in the stove in the corner of the room. His heavy armor was set on the armor stand haphazardly, putting it away properly had felt strangely beyond him tonight. His sword in its sheath leaned against the desk within easy reach - it was never more than an arms length away from him.

Cullen stared at the sword for a long moment. Then he turned his gaze down. Then he stood abruptly. His body had become incapable of stillness over the years. If he was not engrossed in his work, it was difficult for him to sit still for long periods of time. Stillness left the door open for the memories.

He crossed the room and stood by the narrow window overlooking the harbor. The moonlight painted Kirkwall pale as a corpse. For one terrible moment he imagined simply walking out into the night alone. No escort, no caution, no armor, outside the patrol routes. Most likely to Darktown, or perhaps the side alleys near the docks. Kirkwall was full of desperate men ready to do anything for the next meal, the next bottle of booze, the next hit of some illicit drug. It would not even be difficult or take very long. Cullen lingered on that thought, but he came to focus on the realization how it didn’t frighten him as it should have. 

He rested both hands against the stone window frame and bowed his head. I don’t actually want to die, he tried to convince himself. I’d just like… a moment of relief. 

A year ago he would have called such thoughts weakness, but now he didn’t have energy left to judge himself. He had once come to believe surviving Kinloch meant something, that having endured that had made him stronger. Instead it felt as thought something inside of him was simply hanging in mid-air, waiting to shatter completely. Like holding your breath once your lungs are already empty. Like pushing an invaluable vase off a table and watching it, as if in slow-motion, fall to its inevitable destruction.

The memories of those two terrifying months in Kinloch Hold never arrived cleanly. They came in jarring, stuttering images, voices, breaths, blood rushing in his ears. The memories staggered in fractured, but always dragging in more. A Templar in heavy armour sobbing and begging. He had been a few years older than Cullen, called Willard, and Cullen still remembered him. The smell of blood and excrement. A beautiful woman smiling at him with unbearable tenderness. Promises whispered lovingly moments before the torment began anew. The Desire Demon. The blood mages. Uldred.

Now, in his office at the Gallows, Cullen’s jaw clenched sharply at the memories, and he shook his head at himself. In the years following Kinlock Hold, he had taught himself to treat his inherent romantic idealism as a threat to be snuffed out. He guarded himself against being used like that ever again. And yet the loneliness in Kirkwall had become so vast that sometimes it physically hurt.

People respected him now - some even feared him, he could see it in their eyes, walking in Kirkwall in full uniform. He was listened to, his opinion was valued. He was depended on. But nobody knew him. No one knew of his nightmares, not of the panic clawing up his throat at sudden loud noises. Not how every report of blood magic still made his pulse spike with cold animal terror before reason quickly took over. And Cullen kept it that way. The acting Knight-Commander of Kirkwall could not afford fragility, so he carried it alone. All the while terrified above all else of becoming just like her. Just like Meredith. 

Cullen turned from the window and his eyes drifted toward the wooden box on his desk - his lyrium kit. It was high time for his evening dose. Now that Cullen opened the kit and looked upon the blue vial, only one word came to his mind. Leash. Cullen wasn’t sure when it had begun, but the doubts had started creeping in sometime during Meredith’s last year in power, before he finally challenged her and turned his sword against her. 

For a long time, Cullen had taken comfort in lyrium. It had brought focus, power, stability, purpose and certainty. Now he only remembered how his own body and mind had felt in Kinloch hold, tortured and without lyrium. Now he couldn’t stop thinking of the older Templars whose minds were scattering and eyes becoming vacant. Slowly the Order had started to look different to him than before, like wallpaper peeling off and revealing something else underneath. Something that made him feel sick. He had promised his lifetime to the Maker and to the service before he had been old enough to understand, and most never came to understand. Men went through their entire lives in the Order without understanding that they exchanged everything they were for dependency and obedience. 

Cullen turned the blue vial around in his fingers, and wondered, not for the first time, what was left of him underneath the lyrium and the service to the Order. Who was Cullen Rutherford, really?

Cullen knew he had no answer for it. But he took his evening dose of lyrium before dwelling on that thought, lest he really walk out into the jaws of Kirkwall’s night alone.

The hit of lyrium felt like it expanded his lungs and his blood vessels. It focused him. Everything became sharper, colours in the room more saturated in his eyes. And at the same time… something dulled away in his heart. Something dampened. Like muffled under a pillow held over a face.

[thechildofmythal]

It's spring, it's nice outside, flowers are blooming. You know what I'm going to do? That's right, I'm going to listen to Radiohead and write about Cullen between Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition. The man is brooooken. Let's get into it.

[varggies]

Hit a point where I'm going through the Cullen Critical tag on tumblr cause I really like Cullen, but in a fucked up way and I hate that the writers overlooked some of the more egregious things this guy did (or, more accurately did *not* do) while serving in Kirkwall

Mostly i think im mad that the writers fucked up the chance to take a guy who spent a long time turning a blind eye to and justifying a fucked up system of abuse, and actually have him held accountable for it

Instead of him just. Feeling kind of bad about it but not actually addressing it in a real way?

I mean, dont get me started on how Inquisition fumbled pretty much everything that happened in DA2 (the fact that there's no option for Hawke, Varric, or even the Inquisitor to agree with what Anders did? You can either condemn it or like... waffle around it?), but like. Cullen was actively looking the other way when Mages were getting whipped in the streets, SA'd and fucking lobotomised

The templars turned Kirkwall into a police state by the end of it, and all the writers have him saying is like "man, i feel bad :("

Cant believe im saying this, but Blackwall actually does have a better redemption arc than Cullen

I just

There is gold. Right there

They had a fucked up guy and completely squandered the opportunity to have him SO fucked up about the shit he's done

They still could've had their poor little meow meow of a commander! Just make him so much more fucked up about his mistakes man!

But we already know bioware is full of cowards so im pretty much talking to the wind here

[vulvalini]

sometimes i honestly don’t know what game you guys were playing when you talk about cullen. “turned a blind eye”? he was twenty-two, hooked on magical heroin, had horrific ptsd, and was grieving the loss of his parents when he arrived in kirkwall. he says he let anger dictate his actions and isn’t proud of it.

so let’s fucking recap. almost all of this is explicitly written into inquisition, and the rest can be inferred by a reasonably intelligent player.

he accepts command of a second broken circle after betraying his commander and (depending on player choices) allowing the apostate who blew up the chantry to walk out of kirkwall alive

i’m gonna need a source from DAI/asunder before you can claim mages were being “whipped in the streets, SA’d, or lobotomized” AFTER meredith was dead. most of the mages were GONE and the templars were off doing other things - such as laying brick and hammering nails

because despite having family alive in ferelden, cullen stayed in kirkwall for months/years after the explosion, leading cleanup/rebuilding efforts

(this despite, assuming the player didn’t side with the templars and annul the circle, not actually being named its knight-commander)

during that time, says he made an effort to keep as many templars gathered under his command so they didn’t go off indiscriminately murdering mages and using red lyrium

this is later confirmed by Rylen, sent from starkhaven to provide relief, who lauds cullen for basically doing the work no one else would

rightfully criticizes kirkwall’s rebel mages for abandoning their tranquil**

when cassandra extends her invitation to the inquisition, he immediately gives up lyrium at exceptional cost (painful, neurologically damaging withdrawal. for months) because being on the chantry’s lyrium leash is no longer something he can morally accept

leaves behind the only career he’d ever had or wanted, says the Templars have “nothing further to offer”

clearly bones up on military strategy after the disaster of being unable to protect haven (not his fault but he assumes it was) and subsequently runs what krem (ex tevinter soldier) calls a textbook siege of adamant fortress.

oh, and iron bull (ex qunari soldier and actual ben-hassrath) repeatedly compliments his command of the soldiers, but specifically because they’re well-disciplined (i.e. are expected to act with integrity)

rallies troops behind an inquisitor of any race, gender, or background. like. that is a FACT. this dork will obnoxiously stab the sky with that oversized sword for a qunari apostate just as enthusiastically as for a fellow templar warrior

treats maddox with compassion and genuine regret; and assuming your inquisitor requests it, he has soldiers retrieve maddox’s body from the shrine of dumat for proper burial

expresses regret for his prejudicial attitude toward mages and a resolution to examine his biases (“i shall try not to be so in the future”) and says he’s not proud of the man his experience at Kinloch made him

has a LITERAL meltdown in front of the inquisitor while in the throes of a withdrawal episode, at which point he asks the inquisitor (who may or may not be an apostate mage with an axe to grind) to decide if he should start taking lyrium again

caught between his desire to excel in his role and his horror of being reliant on the chantry/inquisition for lyrium again, but still so loyal to the inquisition that he leaves a matter of extreme personal autonomy to the one person (aside from cassandra, who is inadequately equipped to provide the support an addict would need) whom he feels must have a say in the matter. and again. if you say “take that shit,” he takes it. even knowing it will eventually lead to a painful, agonizing death.

during In Your Heart Shall Burn, speaks to allied rebel mage troops the same way he speaks to allied templar troops - with encouragement and clarity

does not refuse to send soldiers to support Quiz in redcliffe, or to work with the rebel mages, and his arguments against choosing redcliffe involve a COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED anxiety over the impossibility of being able to rescue the inquisitor if things go wrong with alexius because redcliffe castle is unassailable (we learn during hushed whispers that the inquisition’s military forces, i.e. cullen, spent MONTHS trying to get them out. he is absolutely right to worry about this possibility.)

although he does complain (not incorrectly! anybody remember that circle apprentice in Origins accidentally setting himself on fire in front of the future HOF? yeah) that some mages may need to be watched to ensure their magic is under control

HANGS OUT WITH KNOWN TEVINTER APOSTATE DORIAN PAVUS AND CLEARLY LIKES HIM

expressly pursues samson on a series of missions through the dales because samson is causing other lyrium-addicted templars (recruited in kirkwall while in a state of extreme vulnerability to rhetoric and the temptation of “even better” lyrium rations) to suffer excruciating pain and mental anguish, most of them before dying a horrible death, all to get revenge on the chantry by allying with corypheus

(please remember that at the point samson was recruiting templars to infect with red lyrium, cullen was recruiting them in his efforts to help rebuild homes damaged in an explosion that did, in fact, kill and maim hundreds of people.)

AND DESPITE ALL OF THAT: if instructed to do so, he will take on samson as an agent to help the inquisition. one must realize this would be a sort of personal hell for cullen. but he does it uncomplainingly and states that samson deserves the same second chance he himself got

exceptionally respectful towards blackwall as a soldier and servant of the people. later disgusted to find he’s a lying orlesian slut, but will let him live if the inquisitor says to***

if permitted to continue sobriety, sets up detox centers where other ex-templars can hack off their own lyrium leashes and leave behind chantry dogma and fear of magic

repeatedly states that the chantry/templars were supposed to protect mages along with “ordinary people,” but didn’t.

????? will literally marry a mage inquisitor if you let him.

** says he “doesn’t understand” tranquil, despite having lived with them in circles most of his life. this is a morally neutral statement and says absolutely nothing about his willingness to treat them like human beings…. more than can be said for some mages.

*** this is a completely reasonable position, given that blackwall only fesses up IF the inquisitor pleases him enough (he LITERALLY does not confess if your approval is not high enough???), and even then not until all the way after halamshiral.

like, this statement pissed me off a bit. blackwall doesn’t have a redemption arc. he has a “lie to player for 2/3 of game, then confess when feeling bad about lying to an inquisitor who was nice to him” arc. was he doing good things? sure. was he fighting for a good cause? sure. but he was still actively deceiving the entire organization. and if your inquisitor doesn’t kiss his ass he KEEPS lying until endgame!!!!

what’s more, it endangers your party to have him in the group.

during an expedition to valammar the inquisitor shouts to him, asking how many darkspawn to expect. he doesn’t know.

during an expedition to the storm coast, he’s asked for the best way to kill darkspawn. doesn’t know.

when asked about the Calling by hawke and loghain/stroud/alistair, he bluffs and pretends he can hear it, too, remarking something incredibly unhelpful

when asked for advice at halamshiral on orlesian chevaliers and other military knowledge he definitely has, demurs and says something else unhelpful

……he’s literally pretending to be a heroic warden to the point where he endangers his colleagues in the field

please compare this to cullen, who traumadumps when suffering, arrives in haven with his self-regard six feet underground (he criticizes himself almost as much as the templars), actively BEGS cassandra to relieve him from duty if the lyrium withdrawal affects him, and quite literally tells the inquisitor his life story and a terrifically neutral recounting of the events in kirkwall. if you ask.

[sweetjulieapples-deactivated202]

@vulvalini Thank you. Thank you so much for this.

[the-arcane-archivist]

So much yes.

Let’s add a few more:

Accepts the Inquisitor’s decision to have a possible abomination or literal demon join them in the form of Cole. Cole continuously tries to help Cullen. While Cullen rejects this help because he doesn’t understand what Cole is trying to say, eventually Cole breaks through and Cullen willingly goes to speak with him.

Here’s just a few things Cole, a Spirit of Compassion, says to and about Cullen:

“They try to protect people. Like Cullen. The good ones remember that mages are people.” This is a direct contradiction to Cullen saying “mages cannot be treated like people”. It’s not saying Cullen didn’t say that, he did. What Cole is saying is that Cullen remembered. In the World of Thedas, it talks about how Cullen began to see fear in the eyes of his charges. Yes, Cullen lost his way, but he found it again over the course of DA2. That was made most poignant when he stood between Hawke and Meredith and drew his sword on his Knight-Commander. Should he have done so sooner? Certainly. Does it make the fact that he did any less significant? Nope.

“They didn’t hang you there, you can walk away.” This is obviously talking about the Gallows. It points at Cullen’s internal struggle. He thinks he should’ve been strung up for his failings in Kirkwall. What happened there tears him up inside and he doesn’t think he’ll ever atone for it. But everyone seems to forget that Cullen is a private and reserved man. He’s not going to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness as he weeps. He’s going to deal with his pain and guilt in private. He’s also strong. He’s not going to breakdown publicly until he literally can’t keep it in anymore. The one time it happens, it’s because he’s in the middle of withdrawal. He’s also a man of action. Words mean nothing. It is what one does that matters.

“The center never changed, kept safe like a coin in your pocket.” The coin that Cullen kept in defiance of the Order. It points to the fact that Cullen was never wholly the Order’s. Did he come close in Kirkwall? Sure, but any time Hawke asked him to go easy on the mages, he did. He was not Alrik or Karras. He was not Meredith. Could he have become her? Cullen himself acknowledges he could’ve become a Red Templar. He knows how close he came to losing himself completely. But he didn’t.

Directs mages and templars to work together to eliminate threats to the Inquisition via the multiplayer.

Asks the Inquisitor take precautions when an actual abomination is paraded around by the Inquisition “for science”. He’s understandably upset by it, but he doesn’t stop it from happening.

Continually chastises himself for worrying about magically related things.

Let’s a magical mirror be stored within Skyhold despite suspecting that it is a threat to their security.

Willingly works with an apostate in the forms of Morrigan and Solas even if the Inquisitor is not an apostate.

What more do you want??

Seriously. It is the question I beg all the time of people who claim Cullen doesn’t make up for his supposed past.

Do I wish there were some things more explicitly stated? Sure. But more for the people who don’t or refuse to get it to not have an excuse. Do I wish we could’ve challenged him a little more? Maybe. But we do get to challenge him and he readily admits his guilt. Do I wish he could’ve been a companion instead of the commander? Yes, but more because I wanted more time with him.

Could it have been more? Yes, but it would’ve required BioWare to actually commit. To have actually made the mages and templars face each other and deal with the problem. They’d never do that, so Cullen’s story—as great as it is—was prevented from going as far as it could by their own narrative.

Stop blaming Cullen.

He did the best that he could do in the circumstances they caged him in. And even then he broke that cage when he could.

It’s all there. All of it.

In his words. In his actions. In the unspoken words. In the subtext. In the tiny details of him. Even off-screen. But it is there. And it began in DA2 even before he drew his sword on Meredith.

You either see it or you don’t.

If you require him to be down on his knees begging for forgiveness to finally be satisfied, you don’t get it.

You don’t get him.

He didn’t do anything he’s accused of. He is not guilty by association. He did not commit the atrocities that Alrik and Karras did. His only crimes were inaction, indifference and blind obedience. His direct actions always led to interceding on the behalf of mages for lesser punishment. He is not the one who needs to beg for forgiveness. That was Karras. That was Alrik. That was Meredith. And all three of them are dead.

Yet Cullen begs for a chance to atone anyway.

One of those men was honest from the beginning about the kind of man he let anger twist him into and the wrongs he believes he committed.

Consequences of being honest be damned.

The other lied through his teeth to escape a heinous crime and only owned up to it when he couldn’t live the lie anymore.

Consequences of lying be damned.

Can I forgive both men because they were seeking the chance to start over and redeem themselves by serving a greater purpose? Yes. And I do.

I like Blackwall.

But Blackwall didn’t earn his redemption. The Inquisitor hands it to him after questionably saving him from a rightful execution. (I’m not saying that we shouldn’t give him a second chance, I’m just saying it was a time where it felt like the Inquisitor was throwing power around.) Before that, he lied time and again while pretending to be a different person altogether.

Cullen earned his redemption the moment he drew his sword on Meredith. And he did that himself.

It was after this, after helping Hawke to stop Meredith, after becoming acting knight-commander and leading the templars to help rebuild Kirkwall, after refusing to enter the Mage-Templar War that Cassandra came with her offer. And she knew the man she was offering it to.

He came to the Inquisition with all of his sins bared and a humble desire for a chance to atone. Under no falsehood, under no pretense. And he did the work himself. He left the Order that had indoctrinated him. He stopped taking the lyrium that bound him to that indoctrination. He constantly checked himself to separate indoctrination and fact. He gave his all to a cause that sought to right wrongs he had a hand in letting come about through his inaction. And every single step of the way he is honest. And doubts himself. He struggles. But he keeps going.

And in the end, he walks away an even better man than he already was.

[the-arcane-archivist]

@varggies And you’re welcome to your monstrosity ;) We all have our predilections XD And thank you for your response. I did get where you were coming from on a level. It could’ve been more, but let’s not dismiss the things Cullen did do. Within the narrative BioWare wrote, within the restrictions BioWare placed, Cullen’s actions and redemption were the best they could be and it seems we can agree on that.

As for Going Through It, there’s plenty of fanfics to choose from that’ll give you what you seek :)

[varggies]

Reblogging this again cause its getting notes again and I think its important that people see the version reblogged by @the-arcane-archivist

[vulvalini]

i just don’t think it’s interesting to think cullen ever got anything out of the order, personally speaking. nor professionally.

nice armor, but it wasn’t his. nor his sword, nor any horse he rode or lyrium he used. vow of poverty, remember?

didn’t get a title (or rather, no longer wanted any titles he’d had). wouldn’t have left kirkwall with any money, aside from maybe pocket change. no lands, no pension, not even a goddamned letter of recommendation, seeing as how the local chantry… exploded.

“he took advantage of the opportunities the templars offered” what fucking advantages? learning to fight with trained professionals, leadership skills, and courage tempered by experience? advantages other templars didn’t take? how does that reflect poorly on him?

fine. cool. cullen rutherford has chantry/human privilege and got to learn fun dangerous things in the templars, as opposed to elves in the lowtown alienage just trying to survive and unable to join. whatever. take that for granted. IT IS KNOWN.

but privilege means fuck-all if you’re a poor kid from another wholeass country who’s in so far over his head he can’t even believe his coworkers would harm mages, like. on purpose. that boy never enjoyed a single moment of being in kirkwall, except maybe the one (1) time hawke smiled at him without aggressively showing off her canines.

and more importantly, he didn’t ask for any of that shit. he didn’t want a promotion to knight-captain at age twenty! he didn’t ask to be obeying a woman who makes mages tranquil if her tummy’s a little upset. cullen signed up with the templars to be kind. it breaks the fucking heart. eight years of waiting, training, yearning to be a True Templar, to protect mages from magic they couldn’t control, and what?

he gets locked in one jail after another, facing the possibility he may have to murder a mage during a harrowing. no travel: stuck on inaccessible islands. a traitor to ferelden pulls some shit, the kid gets tortured for weeks or even months by despair demons, and the entire course of his life changes thanks to a scheming political tyrant wannabe in another country, who demands the right to leave an equally mage-intolerant tyrant in her place, and all of a sudden he’s a fuckin knight-captain. he didn’t ask for it. he probably didn’t even want it.

aaaaaaaaaand it’s also just such a waste.

meredith gets nowhere with him in the following seven years: he inevitably turns on her in the end, if course. but in the meantime he spends seven years trying to manage absolute monsters, who all have seniority but not rank on him and constantly slither out of accountability. he criticizes meredith openly by the end. he lets samson rejoin the templars fully knowing why samson was kicked out and, later, expresses pity for both maddox and samson, particularly the time the latter spent as a lyrium addict begging in the kirkwall streets

we do not see cullen beating or torturing or using (or even threatening) the brand on mages. you want to headcanon he did: have a party. but what we see in kirkwall is a stressed-out, prematurely promoted executive officer whose submarine is leaking and he’s racing around with a single hand-operated pump because the other guys are busy drilling holes in the fuckin hull

he gets to watch his dreams catch on fire and blaze until they’re ashes. the templar order is corruptible and biased. the circles do not work as designed. cullen got nothing from the templar order, aside from skills he could have gotten in the ferelden army (like aveline, carver, & warrior hawke). seventeen years of nonstop devotion to a cause and all he got was a lifetime’s worth of trauma & guilt.

fuck, at least anders got to carry out his wildest fantasy and blow up the kirkwall chantry, even get away with it if hawke is not a monster

plus, the only IAB at the chantry is the seekers. i find it EXCEPTIONALLY fascinating that cassandra didn’t hold cullen “instant yapper” rutherford accountable for a single institutional abuse he knew (or feels he should have known) about which occured under his “leadership.” he would have spilled his guts. she probably interviewed him after varric and threw her hands in the air - finally, somebody who gets to the fuckin point. she could use a man with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail.

but. hmm. maybe it was because he clawed what remained of the good templars back into a little group to clean up & rebuild the city??? along with varric and a few others????

like he wanted to…. hmm… do penance and redeem himself???

(and i don’t want to hear about alistair and “well why didn’t he quit once he realized templars were locking up children.” alistair was disillusioned with the chantry and templars VERY early on thanks to growing up in a fucking dog kennel and, consciously or not, recognizing himself in the order’s dehumanization of mages

crucially, he also hadn’t taken a philter yet. and the only cullen we’ve ever met is either under the influence of lyrium or in active long-term withdrawal from it. i guarantee you that shit made cullen see everything in even starker black & white than a teenaged ferelden choirboy already would. i do not understand why people think he ever had an ounce of true agency before he kicked that shit for good on the way to skyhold)

[lokri-art]

Just Cullen sketch

[lyanachaan]

TWO OF SWORDS

(full)

[nateeseart]

[thechildofmythal]

I love fighter/rogue Lavellans. 🥰

[lyanachaan]

my heart has changed//destiny of our own making

[decodingcipher]

Also, I always always do this in my Inquisition playthrough, but I will never not have my inquisitor and Dorian not be friends.

I headcanon that they’re actually best friends and get up to a lot of chaos together and I just really love Dorian ok

[thechildofmythal]

This is the way.

[dragonagegallery]

Morrigan Illustrations By Casper Konefal

Concept Art 1, 2     Game Appearance 1, 2, 3       Coloring Book 1, 2, 3

[animezinglife]

Cullen: I've done terrible things that I'm haunted by every day. I was captured, tortured, and they tried to break my mind. I'll never be the same. You should be questioning what I've done!

Also Cullen [in a relationship]: [the biggest walking green flag of a man in history, kicks addiction, is shy and sweet and a little inexperienced, consent king, "Not yet" when asked if he's married, is deemed noble in character by a dog who chooses him to be his new dad, becomes Thedas's #1 Certified Wife Guy, "I'm yours."]

[zwercchhau]

did this cullen recently, hoping to make a print eventually

[pythiart23]

Cullen Rutherford, a man who most definitely does not style his hair...