Evelina deserved better (Dragon Age 2 spoilers)

Originally posted to tumblr on May 27 2017. Reposted here for archiving of posts I want to keep.

Evelina: Do you have coin to spare, messere? My children are starving.

On my first playthrough I either completely missed encountering Evelina in Act 2 or had forgotten about her by Act 3. So when on my second playthrough I still had vivid memories of her horror movie esque appearance in On The Loose, meeting her three years before that happens and while she’s still herself was a punch to the gut. Hawke can give her money, but it won’t make a difference. She will still eventually have to go beg the Chantry for help to feed her family, and they will respond by locking her up in the Circle, leaving the children she’s been looking after to fend for themselves.

And, well, I don’t like the On The Loose quest, more on that when I get to it, I guess. But about Evelina specifically, I feel like she’s also kind of a victim of the devs, too, dropping the ball on her, even more than Huon and Emile who don’t get a very fair treatment, either, because you know who I had in my party when I ran into her? Anders. Who grew up in Kinloch Hold. Evelina is a Fereldan mage, who spent eight years in Kinloch Hold, only escaping the Circle to flee the Blight.

I’ve seen people wonder about whether Anders and Cullen recognized each other in DA2 and why not, but I think that one makes perfect sense. Cullen had only been a templar for a year at the time of the mage origin in DA:O, Anders spent a year (!) in solitary confinement before escaping for the final time, probably not long either before or after the mage origin. It’s entirely possible they barely or even never crossed paths in Kinloch. But Anders and Evelina should recognize each other. 

I’m trying to come up with other explanations than writing oversight, but nothing else makes sense. Like did they forget when giving her a backstory where one of Hawke’s companions is from, or…

Does Justice’s focus on The Cause keep Anders from giving a shit about things like old friends/acquaintances? No, it doesn’t keep Anders from remembering and caring about Karl and Isabela, or Nathaniel, whom we meet as late as in Act 3, at which point Anders and Justice are even more withdrawn from “distractions”. Also, Evelina is a mage, so helping her is well in line with The Cause. It also doesn’t account for Evelina not reacting to Anders. Sure, she can’t know whether it’s safe to identify them both as apostates by saying she knows Anders from the Circle in front of Hawke and their other companions, but it’s not like the only way to indicate a character recognizes another is to have them explain in detail how.

Evelina is a blood mage by Act 3. What Cricket says about the templars having made her so angry she “changed” implies that’s something she only picked up after being locked up in The Gallows (gj, templars!), but for the sake of argument, maybe the kids just didn’t know, and blood magic is something she’d been up to already in Ferelden. Anders can be pretty judgmental about blood magic,

Anders, when randomly clicked in Act 1: I get so furious when mages try to oppose templars by turning to demons. There is no better way to ensure we will never be free.

Do Anders and Evelina have a history of disagreeing about her use of blood magic, and Anders is refusing to acknowledge her just to be a dick? Well, if this was the impression the player is intended to have, there should have still been some reaction from either of them. A change of facial expression as they recognize each other, maybe a bit of dialogue about how they specifically do ~not~ know each other. But none of that happens, so this interpretation is 100% headcanon.

And actually, when it comes to mages who need help and are have resorted to blood magic to defend themselves, Anders can still be pretty sympathetic and in favor of helping them if it can be done.

Anders, about the Starkhaven mages in Act of Mercy: They’ve raised the bloody dead. They must be truly desperate. Please tell me we’re not going to force these poor fools back into the Circle.

Anders, still about the Starkhaven blood mages: Better the death of one templar than so many innocents.

(This comes up in Anders’s relationship to Merrill, too, though personally I think Merrill doesn’t need help and Anders ‘splaning at her isn’t helping.)

I mean Anders even does have a few lines about Evelina after the fight with her-turned-abomination in On The Loose that I think counts as acknowledging the templars drove her to what she did and it wasn’t her fault:

Anders: This isn’t going to stop. The templars force our hand. They make us take drastic measures, just to be free.
Walter: Like Evelina did.
Anders: Exactly.

If they’re on bad terms because of her blood magic (which, again, we have no reason to believe she is already practicing), but not so much there’s outright hate, we should definitely have gotten some dialogue to indicate they know each other. Something sanctimonious from Anders about how she’s still making bad choices, I see, her saying she’s not too proud to beg for help because it’s not just for herself, so if you’re not too proud to help ~the wrong kind of mage~, a copper feeds my kids more than a lecture does… something like that. (And then Hawke would probably have to have been given the chance to ask wtf’s going on, you two know each other?) But we didn’t get that.

Just no indication they recognize each other or have any reason to pretend they don’t. Bioware really did just forget where one of their mandatory companion characters grew up when slapping a backstory on her.

AU where Evelina becomes a companion and doesn’t die.