What we learn about spirits in Inquisition makes Merrill's story so much more upsetting in hindsight. I keep thinking about how Solas explains that if someone expects a spirit to be a demon, that's what they'll see, and relating that back to her. She always called Audacity a spirit. It was everyone else around her that assumed it was really a demon, because it taught her how to cleanse the mirror with blood, and everyone knows mages learn blood magic from demons (thanks, chantry). But what of it never was a demon?
Marethari trapped Audacity inside of her to protect Merrill, because she was convinced she needed protecting. She wasn't willing to consider that maybe Merrill was on to something with the eluvian, or that she was smart enough to keep herself safe when dealing with spirits, and Merrill even tells Hawke that they're always arguing with one another. Maybe Audacity was once a spirit of wisdom, trapped in that cave so it couldn't help the ancient elves fight against Tevinter as effectively, and Merrill saw it for what it really was, but Marethari assumed it was a demon, so she saw a demon. And because she saw a demon, and her pride prevented her from considering that she might be wrong, the spirit became a demon when she had it possess her.
Inquisition also established that eluvians can't be used unless they're unlocked somehow. That means the eluvian Merrill pieced back together didn't work because it was still locked. She didn't know this because Audacity didn't know, even though it had seen the mirror's creation and told her how to fix it. Even if it wanted the eluvian as an escape route, it couldn't have used it without unlocking it first. Wouldn't it have told her she needed a key to use it if it really intended to do what Marethari said it did?
If that's the case, Marethari got herself possessed and died to protect Merrill from a spirit that was never able to hurt her in the first place. It was trapped. It couldn't have just jumped from the statue to her without Merrill deliberately letting it possess her, like the Keeper did. It didn't know how to make the eluvian work, just how to put it back together. It's very possible that it wasn't even a demon until everyone started calling it one.
DA2 is very special, the way hindsight just makes it even more tragic than it already is. Truly one of the games of all time.
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