Anders (Act 1, Tranquility): But my anger... when I see templars now, things that have always outraged me, but I could never do anything about...
He comes out. And he is no longer my friend Justice. He is a force of vengeance. And he has no grasp of mercy.
Justice (Act 2, Night Terrors): I am Justice. Anders has told you of me.
Or in other words,
Anders: Justice is no longer Justice. I corrupted my friend by being too angry about the oppression I face, because I ruin everything.[TW: death, suicide, abuse, mention of blood]
Justice: Nope, still me. Please love yourself.
[post contains spoilers throughout the Dragon Age series, mostly DA2.
Also note, I use singular they/them pronouns for both Anders and Justice outside direct quotes from canon, not because they’re a 2in1 deal but because agender headcanons, I trust this will not be a problem.]
Anders and Justice merged with good intentions, but with neither knowing very well what they were doing. They have both had strong influences from ideologies that treat being what they are now as something inherently wrong and threatening to both their kinds, which hardly alleviates their doubts about whether what they are now is deserving of a label like “abomination” after all. I doubt it helps that the language they mostly speak doesn’t seem to even have a more neutral term for a being resulting from a spirit and a mortal merging, or that the merging in particular was extremely traumatic.
Most of the doubts they voice seem to come from Anders, though. Which is complicated in itself, because they are in many ways the same person now. Indeed, many of the lines of dialogue that seem to be said by only one or the other actually have both voices speaking, even if one may be quiet enough to be easily missed (cw: video includes lines from the rivalmance). But they are not a completely homogeneous mix; they can disagree, and which one has more hands on the wheel does seem to vary, so I assume the lines with Anders’s voice coming through more clearly than Justice’s are thoughts coming mostly from Anders, and vice versa. Though there are exceptions to that, too:
Bethany: I know it didn't work the way you wanted, but... it was brave, what you did with Justice.Justice has been out of their element since ending up outside the Fade, and got a bit of a test run on what it’s like to be in a mortal body while possessing Kristoff’s corpse, in which memories of the man’s life still lingered. To some degree, I think Justice knew to expect the difficulties in adjusting. It’s only to some degree, though, because Anders is alive and experiencing those confusing, messy, mortal things right now, and rather than lingering traces you get the full dose, everything happens so much.
Anders: It was meant well. I don't know if that's enough to forgive me.
Bethany: It must have been hard for him, being trapped outside the Fade. In a place where no one's like him.
Bethany: I bet he appreciated having a friend.
Anders, or more like Justice speaking of themself in third person judging by how sure they sound: He did.
Did Anders corrupt Justice, or is Justice not what Anders expected? You form a certain image of your friends, but the complete picture is always more complex, and especially if you tend to put people on pedestals, seeing them from inside their own head would feel like looking at a very different person. Vengeance has been part of Justice for as long as we’ve known them—one of Justice’s main goals in Awakening is avenging Kristoff, after all, and they are even introduced “avenging and freeing” the Blackmarsh villagers, before any potentially corrupting possession of a mortal body happens.
Anders was already afraid of their own emotions, particularly anger. Does Anders have “too much anger”, or just view any at all as too much, and is anger even a problem? There’s plenty in Kirkwall and their life in general that warrants getting angry. Anders also has a pretty terrible self-esteem, despite working hard to appear otherwise. If something went wrong, of course it’s Anders’s fault, according to Anders, especially when asked in a moment where no one should reasonably be expected to be at their most optimistic—that conversation from Tranquility is hours at most after Karl’s death. Anders has probably not even stopped yet to wash his blood off their hands.
That said, I think merging did change them both, and their concerns about it shouldn’t be dismissed. Justice may very well operate on a more blue-and-orange morality than Anders thought, and trying to adjust that to mortals’ way of thinking is a change, too, and one not without crises. Merging with a spirit doesn’t erase your flaws, it turns out, though it may tweak them—self-centered streak becomes more of a self-righteous one, for instance—but I can easily see someone raised on the Andrastian dichotomy of Fadefolk believing it should have. Anders’s self-blame and expectations of Justice’s purity leave little room for self-forgiveness for either of them, especially when sympathy for the other’s hurt is hard to distinguish from feeling both the hurt and the guilt as their own. Justice’s willingness to be ruthless may not be a corruption and be even necessary at times, but it is a change in themself that clearly unsettles and frightens a healer used to talking their way out of trouble. Merging with a spirit has also forced Anders to overhaul their methods of coping with mental illness, yet again. Anders and Justice’s confusion and fears feed into each other’s crises and escalate them, and if they could before work through their worries by discussing them, that’s more difficult now, too. I don’t think it’s either one’s fault, and the effects include positive ones, too, but also a lot of things about their situation are not healthy or beneficial for either of them.
Was it a mistake for them to merge, then? Even if it’s no one’s fault, are they doomed to burn themselves out unless there’s a way for them to separate?
I think there are definitely factors in Kirkwall that make things worse for them. The place is basically Trigger City for Anders, not to mention full of constant, real danger. A spirit is happiest when getting to fulfill their purpose, and years of trying and making no difference are more than simply frustrating. For ~7 years they also have and allow themselves few chances to stop and just take time to adjust to being who they are now.
Hawke’s emotional and political support or lack thereof makes a world of difference, as well. Though both friend!Anders and rival!Anders end the game willing to die, the former unanimously has faith in their actions, and considers their death a balancing of scales that can also be achieved by protecting the mages they’ve had to put in harm’s way, while the latter is afraid of themself and actively suicidal, with Anders putting all responsibility for the plan on Justice and begging to die for having had any part in it. They are clearly at a very different level of equipped to deal with the fallout of their actions depending on how Hawke has treated them. Friend!Anders actually seems pretty at peace with themself there.
We hear little about their life after DA2, but it’s possible just getting out of Kirkwall and the fact they have and are finally changing things up does them a lot of good, especially with people or a person (whether that’s partner(s) or friends) they can trust at their side. Would Justice never let Anders retire to a quiet life out of trouble, and demand continuing to further the cause of mages, or find a new cause once satisfied that that’s being taken care of? Possibly. Anders might not even be opposed to that, the thing that’s draining them in DA2 is less the fight and more its seeming futility. Do retiring from a life of battles and continuing to further the Cause need to be mutually exclusive in the first place, though? Definitely not, here’s one way. There is the matter of the Calling, but with the Hero of Ferelden apparently searching for a cure, and the fact that while figuring out how to replicate those results might still take some work (or might not, who knows), multiple cases of living beings or objects being cleansed of the Taint do already exist.
If it becomes necessary, can they still be separated without harming either? Who knows. Safely reversing possession is a thing in Thedas, even if Anders’s Circle upbringing has conveniently left that out of the curriculum. Their situation is more complicated than “regular” possession, so some methods may not be applicable, but as far as I know canon hasn’t given us a definite “no” on that, either. They will never go back to the exact same people they were before merging, but it doesn’t have to mean the resulting individuals can’t be both whole.
I’d argue that they are whole now, too, however, and problems don’t mean it’s impossible for them to find a balance that works for them, in being the being that’s part a human mage called Anders and part a spirit of justice. As much as good intentions don’t on their own guarantee a good outcome, it should make some difference that rather than to use each other as a means to an end, their merging came out of two friends’ mutual desire to help each other. I believe it’s possible for them to eventually be fine the way they are, happy even.
The real problem of Anders and Justice is, I think, not the people the characters are being incompatible or unable to grow and adapt. That’s not why they supposedly corrupt into “Vengeance” and are beyond saving.
In fact, rather than of vengeance, shouldn’t a corrupted spirit of justice be a demon of sloth, of choosing inaction in the face of injustice. There are hints in the game that support this (in addition to the ones mentioned in the linked post, Justice also accuses rival!Hawke of having “given in to sloth” at least once), but it’s left at hints, of questionable intentionality, and turning into Vengeance is still treated as the real threat of corruption.
Anders is afraid of that, too, having grown up in an abusive environment that conditions its prisoners to value compliance, and fear getting “out of control”. Anders is afraid of being angry at the Chantry, even while they know there is cause to be, not even just because of the threat of consequences but as a persistent feeling of wrongness at defying the institution, because that conditioning stays at the back of your mind. But the real problem is that we are kind of expected to agree with that conditioning.
People with magical powers are never a perfect metaphor for real life oppression, and one can feel however they like about Anders and/or Justice as a person(s), or about whether they would be an ideal choice for the face of social progress anyway, but the message that their ending being inevitably tragic by their own fault as well as the choice of Vengeance as the boogeyman sends is still an uncomfortable one. “Getting revenge on your oppressors makes you a monster, but doing nothing about oppression is of no concern”. The biggest reason we are expected to accept Anders and Justice’s story not to have a happy ending is that they are being used to tell a cautionary tale against going too far in wanting your and your marginalized group’s basic rights to be respected.
So, you know, even if canon indisputably said otherwise, headcanon all the happy post-DA2 scenarios you want. Authorial intent only matters here in that the author is wrong.
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