#one of my hawkes mairi is designed for selfishness to be her fundamental trait and im super excited to play that

[vigilskeep]

sometimes i get sucked into dragon age reddit and it's so scary over there.. anyway i saw a question on /dragonage which was like what are some choices your characters made for selfish reasons so now im curious on what ur ocs did selfishly

OUGH thats a fun question...

i would say minerva makes several selfish decisions. not betraying jowan during the origin quest is selfish in its way; at this point she’s settled in the idea that there are some acceptable losses to be made for the circle to thrive, but she reacts when her friend is threatened. as for her quest decisions hmm... siding with caridin over branka is a little selfish in an odd way even though it’s the “good” choice. she’s only just really gotten into blood magic and she’s terrified of the comparison between herself and branka prioritising ends over means, so she does it more to assuage her own self-doubt than out of any real morality. that’s why it’s actually the only decision in the game where she refuses to play the diplomat and persuade her companions who question her, and she snaps at them instead

sparing loghain is somewhat selfish. she does it because she’s desperately fearful of what her own reputation will be one day if she becomes the elven blood mage who killed the hero of river dane. that’s only partly for herself though... it’s also for the sake of people like her, the hope that if she’s remembered well she might save others from the judgement that’s always loomed over her. asking loghain to do the dark ritual was almost entirely selfish though. she knew he would have died to slay the archdemon without question, knew it would be a justified end for him, a tying up of loose ends... but she couldn’t let him sacrifice himself and steal the saviour’s title she’d fought so hard for. and she didn’t want to die either! so she chose to convince him to do the ritual, which is quite something to frankly manipulate a man (who she had never forgiven for his actions but who she also did honestly consider a friend, as she only realised as she was persuading him) into doing, without ever revealing her true reasons to him. not to mention releasing an unknown magic into the world despite all her circle training and maleficar’s guilt

keir is less obviously selfish because he’s the shield, the protector, fundamentally defined by what he can do for others. but leaving bethany behind for the deep roads expedition, not because she couldn’t handle it but because he couldn’t risk losing another sibling to the darkspawn, was selfish. or he thinks so afterwards, anyway. it’s hard to say in the end whether he did things to protect people or because he was afraid. as a rule there’s a fundamental selfishness to the way he is with his own people; anyone else’s loss is justifiable for them. he and anders sometimes fight bc ultimately keir can’t match justice’s absolute dedication, he would sacrifice the cause of mages to see his and only his people safe, he’s only a man and that’s who he is. it’s kind of a moot point bc half his loved ones are mages who will never be safe until they’re free, but it is also arguably what he’s doing in the act 2-3 break and the act 3 on the loose quest when he’s effectively shackled by meredith and hunting blood mages for her, bc she has bethany, and bc she can’t not know abt anders and merrill

i’ve always been charmed by da2’s description of reaver mechanics as “selfish sacrifice”, so that’s another one for keir, too

siding with the templars was a little selfish for helena. she did go to redcliffe at fiona’s invitation—she made that much effort, to placate her brother’s ghost—but ultimately it went too far for her pride to save those who had sold themselves to magisters, when the templars were also at hand. and she wanted so badly to believe for her own sake that there was something salvageable in the order. so she went to therinfal redoubt and told herself they would see what could be done for the mages once the breach was sealed