actualtrashkan:leliaana:tbh that’s what really gets to me - that they spent such a large portion of

actualtrashkan:leliaana:tbh that’s what really gets to me - that they spent such a large portion of the games and books (origins, awakening, legacy dlc, the calling, the last flight) establishing the significance of the wardens and how important they are in the fight against the blight  … then come inquisition, they just tossed all that established canon aside and made the wardens look incompetent and clueless so the inquisitor could swoop in and take charge (that last scene where the wardens are looking around like “we dunno what to do o might inquisitor please guide us” is so fucking embarrassing…the rationale apparently being that ~~all senior wardens died~~ which lol i’d find easier to believe if ferelden hadn’t been saved from the blight by a literal fresh recruit (not to mention all of awakening crew being prominent wardens even though they were new members) but ok bioware whatever u say … rolls eyes)sweaty :))Dragon Age Inquisition didn’t retcon any canon about the Wardens, and not all Wardens are the same. In fact, DAI at its core was about addressing corruption in the ranks of all major factions in Thedas, Grey Wardens included.It is canon that the Grey Wardens are a secretive order who’s adamant belief of “anything goes” as long as it’s for the greater good, and this has gotten them into deep shit before. This includes but is not limited to: withholding vital information about the duties and structure of the Grey Wardens to recruits, making deals with demons and blighted magisters (the so called source of exactly what they were created to fight against), and violating the rights of living highly intelligent/sentient beings and forcing them to undergo painful and traumatizing blood rituals. I don’t know what media you experienced but Legacy, The Calling (to a lesser degree), and Last Flight were about Wardens doing morally reprehensible things for the “greater good.”Legacy: forced Malcolm Hawke to perform a blood magic ritual by threatening to kill his wife.Last Flight: forced Griffons (the symbol of the Grey Wardens and their trusted friends & faithful partners) to undergo an invasive, terrifying blood ritual that would make them accept the taint into their bodies as a type of Joining. Griffons cannot be Joined through normal means because they hate the Blight so much if they become tainted, they will literally beat themselves to death so they don’t have to live live like that. And in the end, it lead to the entire extinction of their species, through a horrible plague sickness. [If you think this is a morally acceptable thing to do to a living creature, you can unfollow me right now.]The Wardens are ruled by their fear of the Blight, and being a secretive, extremely hierarchical organization, what happened in Inquisition makes complete sense. Our Warden (bless their heart) is not the average example of a Warden. They were Joined for all of a day before an entire country of Wardens was wiped out in battle. They were the authority, and they did what was necessary to stop the Blight. However, everything the Warden did was against Warden protocol. Wardens are under no circumstance to become involved with politics, and ours influenced the leadership of two kingdoms and happened to solve everyone’s problems.If Duncan and/or some of the Wardens had survived Ostagar, you know what would’ve happened? He would have declared Fereldan to be lost and would have brought the order to regroup in Orlais and plan for the next attack. (Slightly off topic, that’s probably what the Warden and Alistair would have done if Flemeth had not intervened–saving their lives so they could fight to begin with and influenced them to use the treaties and stay in Fereldan.)In Inquisition, we have a faction of Wardens who started simultaneously hearing an artificial Calling. This scared them immeasurably, and they started to Panic. Warden Commander Clarel made a deal with a Magister of her own free will to practice blood magic and bind demons to all of the mage Wardens. In fact, their plan (not Erimond or Corypheus’s) was to awaken and kill all remaining Old Gods. This could’ve had drastic consequences. What happens if they accidentally end up tainting one and starting another Blight? What happens if they unleash something worse by killing the last of the Old Gods? In fact, the only other person who has expressed interest in killing the Old Gods prior to them becoming Archdemons is one of the original Magisters who are accused of having started the Blight in the first place, but that’s okay! He’s potentially working with the Grey Wardens already! Also, he wants to put every living person through the Joining (effectively killing off every species in Thedas) so the newly sentient darkspawn can live on the surface…and he’s responsible for starting the Fifth Blight!Anyway, to do this, they willingly sacrificed dedicated members of the Order and in one case, an innocent recruit who believed in their cause and idolized them for saving her life. This wasn’t even her choice. They murdered her. And you know what, this all sounds awfully similar to the events of The Calling and Last Flight. Not new to DAI.The Grey Wardens have a leadership problem. Communication amongst members is very slim (especially with the junior Wardens & recruits). Combine this with the type of people who frequently join (prideful warriors, people with hero complexes, and criminals escaping justice or seeking redemption), you get an organization that will do literally anything regardless of morality as long as they perceive it as the right thing to do. And what is right is often determined by those at the top of the hierarchy and everyone else follows blindly. An example of which is that Stroud/Alistair/Loghain are deemed traitors of the order for questioning the bad decisions the authority were making. And they aren’t just normal Wardens, Alistair and Loghain are respected heroes of the Fifth Blight and Stroud is a respected senior Warden who was responsible for training most of the junior Wardens in Orlais. They’re all still turned against. Just because Clarel deemed it so.And the two Wardens that you run into at Crestwood mention the good character of whichever Warden they’re hunting and how they want to help the people in the village but “orders are orders,” so they abandon them to their fate.At the end, the only remaining Wardens are the junior ones, people who were not ready to die and sacrifice everything for something they weren’t even sure about. And they potentially just lost the only leader they have left (the man who they were just days ago hunting). Of course they’re going to be looking for guidance. Wardens are naturally lost without leadership; it’s just how their organization exists. And regardless of your personal feelings about the Inquisition, they do have the authority to exile the Wardens from Orlais if they so choose. 1) because they already have the support of many nobles and factions (potentially including the current ruler of the nation if you completed Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts first) and 2) because if the conquering army still on your doorstep says “leave the country,” you leave the country. Anything else is suicidal.TL;DR Just because the Wardens fucked up in Inquisition, it doesn’t mean their canon has changed, especially with the overwhelming amount of evidence we’ve seen leading up to this. Our Warden in Origins is not the norm for all Wardens, and we can’t treat them like they are.fun fact: condescendingly prefacing your essay length but completely unoriginal arguments with “sweaty :)” does not motivate anyone to fucking read it -- source link

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