mllemaenad:
I resent, thoroughly, the characterisation of the Arishok in World of Thedas II as ‘the Mad Ox’, an unstable individual who should never have occupied a position of authority in the first place.
There seems to be a push, in material produced after Dragon Age 2 to depict the events in Kirkwall as resulting from the actions of various ‘crazy’ and extreme individuals, all of whom are as bad as each other.
I’m not saying it started after DA2. Some of it is evident in the game itself – for example, the game’s start screen depicts Meredith and Orsino facing off, as though the two are equal partners in conflict, rather than she a brutal tyrant and he her increasingly desperate prisoner.
But still, I think the game itself allows more leeway to see the problem in Kirkwall as one of institutionalised abuse than much of the material that came after it.
The problem in Kirkwall is not Meredith per se, or Grand Cleric Elthina, or Mother Petrice, or Knight Captain Cullen – although all of these people play their parts. Rather it is that the Chantry is assumed by default to be good, and it is deemed right and just that it should have power over the lives of others. That means that no one checks what they’re doing, and if they do (see: The Seekers of Truth) the general assumption is that, if they’re doing awful things, there must be a good reason for it.
Granted, the game will turn around and give you mages bent on pointless vengeance or world domination for ‘balance’, but even then … these are people who have been abused by the Chantry. Many of them have come from the Circles, and have been told their whole lives that they are evil and dangerous. I’m not saying these are accurate or fair depictions of mental illness or of abuse survivors – just that these things are depicted as reactions to oppression. They didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be supervillains because mages are zany like that.
And the Arishok … I rather like the Arishok, as far as these things go. He’s not a hero. He believes some things that are typical of his culture that I find repulsive. He believes that forced conversion to the Qun is acceptable, and indeed desirable if people won’t submit ‘freely’. He fears magic so much that he is unperturbed by the deaths of a number of his men, as long as the ‘Saarebas’ dies as well.
I’m not going to try to excuse these ideas, because they are inexcusable. But still – he believes the ideas with which he has been indoctrinated, but still looks at Kirkwall and doubts that a Qunari invasion would help. There’s no point in bringing everyone to the Qun if they lose the city again a year later. There’s no point if most of the city dies in the process.
He does care about Kirkwall, even if I think his ‘solution’, the solution he has been taught, just as the Chantry believers have been taught their way is the only right one, wouldn’t help at all. He acts through Hawke when he can, his actions mirroring the Viscount’s (and Marlowe, while undeniably weak, is not evil either; he and the Arishok are both doing a dance, behind the back of the Chantry, to try to prevent conflict), and as he says here, he makes no threat.
He is in an extremely difficult position here. Granted, being a general does require some knowledge of diplomacy, but this looks more like Ben-Hassrath territory. The inability to recover their sacred book would be a psychological blow for the Qunari, and a victory for the Tevinters (and this is perhaps the only situation in Thedas where everybody else will be on Tevinter’s side). He can’t easily ask for help or explain why he’s here.
Calling in the Ben-Hassrath might sound like a plan, but here he’s hamstrung too. The Qun values mastery, and frowns on failure. Sten’s quest, in Origins, was to retrieve his sword, because his people would kill him if he returned without it. Murder they can look past, but the fact that someone nicked his sword while he was unconscious means he has failed as a warrior, is ‘soulless’ and must die. Qunari also rarely speak local languages, even if they know some of it, because it is shameful for them to appear inferior at something.
There would probably be consequences for these soldiers if they returned as failures. Qunari are not unfeeling monsters. They have friends, they have loyalty to one another. I’m not going to think too poorly of the Arishok for wanting to spare those under his command that.
Kirkwall as a place is extreme. The Veil is thin there, and the city is constantly neck deep in spirit-and-demon weirdness. Corypheus is just over there, thinking bad thoughts. It is a slave city, architecturally designed to oppress and disorient most of its population, while giving absolute power to whoever is on top (right now, the Chantry).
That isn’t … exactly the problem either. The same horrors happen elsewhere: elves oppressed, mages brutalised, Qunari demonised, dwarves and their tragedies largely dismissed … but maybe not all at once, all the time, without pause, and right out in public. Kirkwall just revels in its horrors, and it isn’t very good at concealing them. Dragon Age 2 was set up like that: a small story that shows you, in a short space of time, how bad it is everywhere.
After four years of kidnapping, torture and murder, the Arishok can have little hope of maintaining a large enough force to effectively search for his book. He has converts, whom it is his role to protect, and they are in terrible danger every day. He has made no threats, he has sent a delegation to the Kirkwall government, he has kept his people – who must be angry – from retaliating. It’s made no difference.
No one comes to Kirkwall thinking violence is the only way out. But hang around there a while and … well.
You could tell a similar story in Par Vollen, I’m sure. Pick a place and demonstrate the evils of the Qun. There are plenty of them to demonstrate. But that’s not this story. This story is about the evil of the power of the Chantry.
I’m not going to defend the Qunari uprising. I’ll defend the mage rebellion happily, because what the mages want is perfectly reasonable. The Qunari want to convert everyone to their way, and, nope, sorry, not okay with that. The Arishok does cross a line, and stopping him is the only option.
But he didn’t attack the city because he’s Crazy! And Unpredictable! And a Gambler! And why the fuck not, right?
He did it because he was a man pushed to his limit. He watched his people die in droves, and every other attempt to stop that happening failed. He found that talking got him nowhere, and discretion just gave his enemies the upper hand. He had reasons that make sense, if you’ve spoken to him and considered his predicament.
So … lay off the ‘Mad Ox’ stuff, all right, Bioware? I can’t believe you’re forcing me to defend the military leader of a bloody religious organisation, because that is not something I want to have to do.
The only thing I’ll add is that the conceit of The World of Thedas II is that it’s a bunch of records the Inquisition amassed on all these various people and places. Meaning the text will be, ultimately, Chantry-sympathetic, just like DAI was. In that context then, it’s not all that surprising that the Arishok would be called “the Mad Ox”. Still, you make a bunch of really interesting points.