Oh my god I’m so glad we get to put “read more”s on asks now. R.I. fucking P. mobile users.
Well, this wasn’t how I was expecting this night to go, but apparently I have Things to say, so all right, then, let’s do the whole manifesto here.
Content warnings: Look, this is an anti-Templar pro-mage rant. Expect the whole slew, including but not limited to institutionalization, rape, lobotomization, Tranquility, murder of both a filicidal and non variety, solitary confinement, suicide, various forms of abuse, and all the other things that Templars do to mages in canon and people do to neurodivergent/mentally ill and/or queer people IRL.
On Mage Rights and Uncomfortable Real World Parallels
Here’s a fun thought experiment for you: I describe, without going into detail, a group of people. Due to a difference in their abilities from the average person that manifest at varying ages but typically in childhood or around puberty, they are sent to institutions to be confined for the rest of their life. This is in part because it is meant to be “for their own good”, and in part because they are considered dangerous. After these people are institutionalized, They’re subject to a great deal of fearmongering, and many parents will do terrible things to their children out of fear of their children developing this or in an attempt to “rid” them of it. When they do, they may turn on them, sending them away to institutions never to be spoken to again, or worse, killing them. And once they are institutionalized, things only get worse - they are completely at the mercy of their supposed “caregivers”, and while their unique situation may often require non-standard forms of support, the institutions themselves are wildly abusive in their power over them. Rape, physical abuse, you name it - those in charge of this institution have nigh carte blanche to do all of this to those within their care, and are in doing so lauded for their “charity,” as “noble protectors” making the world a better place. You can tell those in charge of these places to their face about the abuses perpetrated by the institution, and they will assert their own position as defense of their rightness. People on the outside may know full well what happens in these places, may even fight against them, and yet still they may persist.
While those institutionalized may have nominal legal rights, they frequently have no way to assert them, as those in charge of enforcing them rarely do so, nor inspect to ensure that conditions are appropriate. Beyond which, their rights under the law are lessened, anyway - it is, after all, the law that allowed them to be brought here. And what’s more, official policy proscribes a variety of abusive procedures, ones that do more harm that good and frequently leave those upon whom it is inflicted traumatized. Perhaps they are even subjected to a procedure that severely affects a large part of who they are, one used in order to make them easier to handle while still capable of productive work.
And what sort of bind does that leave these people in? They need support for their situation, but disclosing it may bring the worst upon them. And if they try to hide it, they go without needed services, and may ultimately collapse on themselves. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Have I just described mages, or mentally ill/neurodivergent people?
(A brief note regarding terminology here: “neurodivergent” was originally coined to mean anyone with a pathologized, medicalized brain structure, including both mentally ill people and non-neurotypical people such as autistic people who did not classify themselves as mentally ill. However, not all mentally ill people choose to identify as neurodivergent, and as such I will be continuing to use the “mentally ill/neurodivergent” notation throughout.)
I don’t know for sure that, when writing the mages in the Dragon Age universe, the writers were deliberately writing a parallel to mentally ill people. They may have come up with the conceit of a world where magic was stigmatized (or, at least, added some twists of their own) and knowingly borrowed from real-world mentally ill/neurodivergent people and the tropes surrounding them. They may have come up with the conceit and then unconsciously inserted tropes they had internalized in an effort to make the mages seem less “reasonable” and the sides more “equal.” I have no idea - certainly, the parallel between Tranquility and lobotomies is almost one to one (and, again, I can’t emphasize enough that IRL, lobotomies were intended as a means to get “productive” menial labor from mentally ill/neurodivergent people otherwise not considered “useful” *glance at use of Tranquil mages for labor), Merrill is heavily autistic-coded, and Anders was explicitly written as bipolar.
The metaphor isn’t perfect - there’s no real-world equivalent to Tevinter for mentally ill/neurodivergent people, for example, and certainly mentally ill/neurodivergent people do not have the ability to throw fire at people or become possessed and go on a rampage that kills a bunch of people. (We just get blamed for every mass shooting by a white person ever.) I do know that other parallels have been made - I’ve seen some good commentary pointing out potential parallels between queer people and mages, particularly with the use of the term “abomination” and the repetition of an out-of-context quote from the Chant about “magic was meant to serve man, not to rule over him” both paralleling the old “man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination” rhetoric we know and hate. This is in and of itself a bit of a complicated situation - it’s not like the history of institutionalization of mentally ill/neurodivergent people isn’t thoroughly entangled with the history of the medicalization of queerphobia, with many queer people being institutionalized for their sexuality (plus conversion therapy and conversion camps as a thing, which are even religiously motivated as a rule), and also queer people being at higher risk of a variety of mental illnesses, some evidence of a potential correlation between autism and queerness, etc., etc. I won’t say it’s wrong, merely that it has elements of both and I don’t know that it can be analyzed without considering either.
All of which is to say - look. This is a video game. We know it’s a video game. We are under no illusions that we are “Defeating Oppression” by siding with the mages. Nor is the pro-mage community without its faults (I swear to god if I ever fucking find out who started “Mage Lives Matter”…). But there are people for whom the question of “hey, what if society just locked up an entire group of people ‘for their own good’ because they’re ‘dangerous’?” is terrifyingly non-hypothetical, and people whose stories are their own to tell who met Anders in DA2 and went “Oh my god. That’s what happened to me,” and people whose power fantasy where they get to crush the people coded as those who hurt them and defend the people coded as like them has become a frustrating echo of screaming fruitlessly into the void about their own humanity IRL.
So, as you can imagine, this is a bit of a sensitive subject for a lot of pro-mage people. We proceed with this context in mind.
Both Side Have Faults (And The Templars Are Still Wrong)
This is an argument I hear a lot. “Both sides have faults.”
Well, yes. Obviously. The mages are people (like you and me), and like people, they’re not fucking perfect. Some of them are going to take things too far. Some of them will practice blood magic. Some of them react to their situation by deciding Tevinter must have the right of it. There are some terrible people among the mages.
And?
See, this is the thing of it - by saying that “both sides have fault” as an argument for siding with the Templars, you (general you, not you-you) are implicitly saying that the mages have to be perfect.
Imagine that. Imagine trying to go your whole life without a single flaw. Without giving anyone a single reason to look at you and find something wrong, and in doing so not only condemn you but everyone else who’s been locked up and beaten and raped and worse because they’re like you. If you slip up the slightest, you’ll let everyone down. If you fight back the wrong way, you’ll be Just As Bad. Imagine living with that.
And then imagine it doesn’t even fucking matter, because someone you’ve never even met, someone with no ties to you but being from the same Circle, goes off and kills a bunch of people to summon a demon, and now even the marginal freedoms you have at the Circle have been curtailed.
(Isn’t collective punishment a war crime or something, again?)
But Mages Are Dangerous
Magic is dangerous. Magic can turn on those who wield it and harm those around them. These are all facts.
You still don’t get to lock up someone who hasn’t done anything wrong.
I understand wanting to save lives, but locking up people who have never done anything is the opposite of the thing that we should be doing (particularly given that the stress of institutionalization typically makes them more prone to possession.)
The people who you lock up for no reason count as lives, too. They don’t deserve to have their lives taken for something they’ve never even done, and if you stack up all the people who might be killed by abominations against all the people killed, directly or indirectly, by the institution of the Circle and Chantry? I don’t think you’re coming out ahead.
Plus, of course - the thing about “all mages are dangerous” is that people are dangerous. People kill people all the time. Non-mages are generally less capable of killing as many people at a time as mages are, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of them don’t. If someone murders someone, arrest them. If someone has expressed criminal intent to murder someone, arrest them. If someone has hurt someone except in defense of self or others, arrest them.
“But mages are harder to arrest” is the natural argument that typically follows this, to which I say - really? Because I’m pretty sure literally all the templars do is kill and arrest mages. In fact, I’m pretty sure that locking up all mages is actually harder than arresting them when they actually do something wrong? I suppose it’s technically easier on an individual level to shackle a scared child, shove them into a cell and take their blood to track them down if they ever try to run, then potentially kill them later if they fail their Harrowing (or leave them to starve to death in the first place). Of course, I suppose it suddenly gets much harder when situations like Broken Circle happen - hey, what did the Templars do in that situation, again? Did they do their jobs? Did they evacuate mages? Was there a single mage who made it out to safety? Or did they lock them all in and shrug? One might aaaaalmost imagine that that sort of chain-reaction worst-case scenario might not happen if you don’t have a large number of mages locked into one Tower together (and in the process likely attracting more demons to the area, given that the Fade is said to be loosely tied to geographical location) and so desperate for escape that a small group starting shit is enough to light the match under the powder keg.
Of course, either way, given that, once again, the “greater good” includes mages, I’m gonna go ahead and say that maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to lock up literally every single mage in Thedas, we might want to take that specialized training that Templars get, train some guards, also have some mages in the guard ranks (since, you know, when you don’t specifically make them into an isolated and mistrusted group separated from the population, they’re going to naturally integrate into various walks of life), and just. Be guards?
“But in Redcliffe, Connor-”
Would have gotten actual schooling and never have had any of Redcliffe happen if his mother had been able to get him a better teacher than Jowan and supportive environment without losing him forever. Redcliffe happened because the Circles are prisons, not schools. Redcliffe is entirely the result of the current Circle system, not proof of its necessity.
Look. Mages need training, including mandatory schooling. There need to be guard forces capable of dealing with powerful mage criminals. I acknowledge and support both of these things. But the current system goes so far beyond that it’s looped back around into being counterproductive. If I’m starving and someone intentionally hands me a sandwich full of glass shards, I’m still allowed to complain? I’m still allowed to say “What the fuck, this is the opposite of what a sandwich should do”. “Well, you need to eat, so it’s fine!” is a terrible fucking argument. Perhaps that metaphor’s a little stretched, but my point is - yes, mages need training. Yes, there need to be people who are capable of handling mage criminals. No, that doesn’t mean that the current system isn’t broken beyond the point of repair. Throw it out and make actual fucking schools and guards.
The Chantry Is the Real Villain (But the Templars Still Suck)
I’d like to make something explicitly clear here - the Chantry profits from the Circles and Templars, and has a vested interest in keeping them in place in order to maintain their own power. Alistair in DAO is not even a little shy about outlining that exact thing, in fact - one of the first things he tells you when you get to talking to him is that he’s not entirely sure that lyrium is actually necessary to fuel templar abilities, and the Chantry might just be giving it to the templars in order to keep them addicted to something only they control so that they can keep their army in line. He chases this shortly after, IIRC, by saying that when he was recruited, the Grand Cleric made him swear never to teach anyone else how to use Templar abilities, hence why the specialization requires so much approval with him to unlock the first time through.
Here’s the thing - why in the actual FUCK would the Chantry do this if the ultimate motivation behind the Circle system was to keep people safe from magic? Wouldn’t this be helpful? If every City Guard had a specialized unit in case of mage criminals? If small villages far from bastions of Templar power might still have a recourse if a magic-related emergency happens?
But of course, if knowledge of it spread, then the Chantry wouldn’t have control of it. The Chantry controls the templars. The Chantry controls the lyrium. The Chantry needs people to depend on them to keep them safe from abuses of magic - after all, the doctrine of the Chant is to spread itself across all of Thedas, isn’t it? And those already in power in the Chantry’s folds are loath to lose it.
Which means they have a problem. They need to keep people afraid of magic. They need to integrate themselves into the infrastructure so thoroughly that everything to do with magic has to go through them. Enter: the Circle and its Templars.
And oh, really, it is such a clever solution when you think about it. Look at all that it accomplishes:
It establishes an active standing army for the Chantry who are kept loyal through indoctrination, daily performance of duties to establish commitment to the Chantry, specialized training, and addiction to a substance on which they have almost complete control.
It establishes a second standing army for the Chantry in the form of the mages, kept under control by the first, kept captive so that they have to fight when commanded, set against the first in order to allow the mages to be manipulated by promising some modicum of freedom and the Templars to be manipulated through the aforementioned means + “Duty to the Maker” + hatred of mages
It allows the Chantry to establish themselves as a source of enchantment competitive with the dwarves through the Rite of Tranquility, which is a large source of income
It allows the Chantry to almost wholly control magic services, such as healing magic, any crop growth magic, etc., something that can be easily used as a check on and for profit from the nobility (particularly given how many noble families have at least one member in the Circle).
It allows the Chantry to establish itself as Protectors, incurring the gratitude and loyalty of the common folk
Here’s where it gets really fun - the existence of the Circle is self-perpetuating. Mages aren’t allowed to keep any children, so they are of course placed into Chantry custody, where they typically grow up to either fill its lower ranks (if female) or fill its Templar ranks (for any gender). Unless they manifest magic themselves, in which case, hey, that’s another profitable Circle mage who comes prebuilt with a lifetime of Chantry doctrine.
It’s no coincidence, after all, that the Templars’ rebellion came at the same time that Corypheus offered them a new source of lyrium outside of Chantry control.
I can, to some extent, sympathize with individual Templars. They’ve been indoctrinated, they may not have had other choices, they’re at the whims of their lyrium suppliers to a large extent, etc. But that doesn’t excuse the Templars as an institution. As an institution, the Templars are corrupt. They abuse their charges, and promote zealots and cruel bullies while ostracizing those who (like Samson) showed any sympathy to the mages. Calling myself pro-Templar for sympathizing with the situation and acknowledging the ways in which the Chantry did them wrong is like calling myself pro-Circle for siding with and supporting the mages.
(Which, now that I think about it, is a point in and of itself - outside of the Templars as an institution, what the fuck is a Templar? There’s no Templars as we know them without the Circle system. But without the Circle, there are still mages.)
On The Anders Conundrum
You probably think I’m about to go into the Chantry Boom, but actually, I’m not even gonna touch on that, because even if you disagree with it it still falls under section “Both Side Have Faults”, particularly since I’m not entirely sure Anders even used magic to blow up the Chantry.
Nah, I’m talking here about serial escapee Anders, and his year of solitary confinement.
So here’s a question - what do you do with a mage like Anders? Anders wasn’t dangerous, really - he was (I’m using past-tense here because I’m talking about past game events; he’s still very much alive and well in my worldstate) a very talented mage, by all accounts. He doesn’t seem to have been particularly violent - I find it astonishingly unlikely that, Irving’s favor or no, the “skinny blonde headache” (per World of Thedas 2) wouldn’t have been run through and left for dead if he’d given anyone the slightest excuse to. (Consider, for example, Wynne’s apprentice from DAO), particularly given that (again as per World of Thedas 2), it was darkspawn and not Anders who killed the Templars whose corpses you find with him, plus he kept trying peaceful means throughout the entirety of DA2 before the Chantry Boom, whether Friendship or Rivalry path (“Perhaps I should try talking to the Grand Cleric. Maybe she’s more reasonable than I thought,” the incessant manifestos, etc.).
But he just kept escaping. For increasingly long periods of time. And what do you do with that? If he succeeds, it undermines the system. Mages start thinking they can escape. Mages start actually escaping. That’s no good. You can’t kill him, because he’s really good at a rare school of magic and this is one of the Circles where you actually have to bother to hide the beatings from the Chantry mothers (AKA, “one of the good ones”). So you throw him in a cell for a year and hope it breaks him.
(Is this a good time to link this article? I think it’s a good time to link this article.)
And then he goes off and gets recruited as a Grey Warden! The one legal path left to mages to escape the Circle! All completely by the books, right?
Or, oh, no, actually. You go after him anyway. Because he has to be made an example of. Because the mages have to know they can’t escape. And if that doesn’t work, you send a Templar into the Grey Warden recruits to find a way to get him.
Here’s the thing - the Circle cannot exist as a kind and benevolent institution as long as it involves mandatory life sentences (or, all too frequently, death sentences) for people who haven’t done anything wrong. There will always be people like Anders. There will always be Templars like Ser Alrik. As long as the mages remain in the complete power of those who
The Circle cannot exist as a kind and benevolent institution as long as it denies self-determination to the mages within its walls. Not only in terms of freedom of movement, but in terms of family and relationships - recall that Anders and Karl were separated against their will because Kirkwall needed more talent and the Templars didn’t give half a shit about who they were tearing apart. Recall that Wynne’s child was taken from her at birth, as happens to all mages in the Circle who bear children. Recall that Anders’ romance exchange explicitly says that mages avoided being open about long-term relationships because the Templars used it as leverage. You can’t leave, but you can’t have stability. You can’t have people you care about. You can’t learn how to interact in a healthy way. You can’t learn how to take care of yourself. You have no control over your own life, ever, from the moment you enter to the moment you die, and yet you have done nothing wrong.
The Circle cannot exist as a kind and benevolent institution as long as it threatens its charges with death and spiritual lobotomy at the threat of any mistake. You can’t learn in that sort of environment, and you can’t come out of it without scars, one way or another. You learn to live your entire life like that, afraid of the smallest mistake, and then when it happens (and it will always happen), you have no idea how to deal with it. And you become the thing everyone feared. Or they take away all your emotions before you can.
The Circle cannot exist as a kind and benevolent institution as long as it uses violence, abuse and torture to keep control of its mages. And the Circle cannot exist as it is in the game without resorting to just that. They showed that full well with Anders, well before he even set foot in that Chantry.
And the Templars cannot exist as any remotely benevolent or, frankly, non-evil institution as long as it’s responsible for enforcing all that.
(And this argument cannot be reserved to the sphere of a simple thought experiment when all of this has happened to real people involved.)
A Conclusion
To circle (yes, I know) back around to the beginning here - the arguments used to support the Templars are ones that hit uncomfortably close to home for a lot of people. I’ve heard, many times, that that’s why pro-Templar people freak so many pro-mage people out - because when someone staunchly argues that yes, this is right, this is a thing that can be done to fictional people in a fictional context, it’s hard not to wonder - would they support the same thing in the real world?
Me, though? That’s not the case for me. Nah. I already know most people support that shit in real life, even a lot of pro-magers. That’s one of the reasons that Dragon Age appeals to me so much - in it, I get to deal with all this stuff in proxy. I get to be powerful, I get to change things, I get to see all the problems that we have here, externalize them onto a more easily dealt with fictional context, and beat them.
But it does rather kill the buzz of retreating into my neat escapist queer revolutionary fantasy when someone reminds me why I need one in the first place.
You see, I often hear pro-templar confessions that fandom makes them afraid to admit it because they’re worried they’ll be thought of as terrible people, and I’m just over here laughing hysterically because, wow. I wonder what it’s like to have things about yourself you’re concerned about disclosing because someone might think less of you for it?
Must be nice to know they’ll still think of you as a person at all, though.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to loading my bipolar bisexual apostate boyfriend’s romance outfit changes so I get visual confirmation we fucked before he blows up the Chantry.