thekingofwinterblog

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Just a concept art drawing of Ganon for a story i had planned.

Heavily inspired by Undyingnephalim's: Hyrule Total War's take on the character, but with a few of my own touches.

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Reblog if you’re 30 or older

This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!

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So just a fun detail about Tolkien's intended look for middle earth, is that on one of the Return of the King editions, he drew both the throne of gondor, but also how the actual royal flag of looks, and it looks absolutely NOTHING like any other depiction of the flag i have ever seen.

If you ever wondered why the book put such an emphasis on how it was made with both mithril and gold, the actual intended version of the standard, the royal standard that Aragorn was bringing back for the first time in millennia, was coated with a golden outline that showcased the tree in full bloom, and the outline of how you'd see it from afar as every branch was covered in golden and white leaves.

The one used by the kingdom during the Stewards reign was instead a boring banner of white and/or black(which to be fair WAS the stewards colors from their coat of arms), but even when they used the royal standard, it was also a much diminished version of the flag, with just the tree and maybe the flowers at the end of each branch. Or maybe not even that.

Either way, it helps illustrate why it was such a contrast when Aragorn unfurled it at the battle of the pelenor field. There is white and black yes, Gondor's colors, but there is also a brilliant, shining gold that captured the eye immediatly.

A banner from an older day when Gondor was at it's height.

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Really good piece, and accurate to Tolkien's own writings. It's always nice to see when people only give his character mail given it was the main form of armor of the legendarium(plate being nonexistent), and it's nice to see Tolkien's often forgotten coat of arms as well.

My only real complaint is the helmet, as Tolkien described the dragon helm as gilded and golden, not black.

Túrin Turambar!

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You know, it's funny that with Inuyasha, the series where Rumiko finally just gave up and eventually just tried to make her artstyle match it's animated counterpart as closely as she could, this series was the one that ALMOST ended up matching her actual artstyle at the time when the series was first released the most.

This was ALMOST the series style we got for inuyasha, and it's an interesting what if?

Rumiko at the time had solidified her artstyle into what it is now, but after finishing up Ranma, there was a brief moment in time when she tried to go back to a softer style, more akin to her earliest days, just mixed with her more matured skills.

Obviously, this didn't stick, but it's interesting to consider that if this had been the kind of animation we got for inuyasha, that might have ended up being the direction she went in later, and Rinne, Mao, and inuyasha(and by extension Yashahime) itself would have ended up looking very, very different from what we actually got.

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So I just discovered that the famous Nabiki happy grin is actually just Rumiko redrawing/remaking an anime original expression from the early anime.

I like how Rumiko was never shy about taking inspiration from her own animated adaptions for her own art and character ideas.

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The recent mural in One Piece kinda makes me paranoid if a old post I made about One Piece and another series will come true and that it really will turn out that One Piece is or was "our" world - because a second older apocalypse, with imagery of leaving a planet etc does remind me of post apocalyptic cliches, and if that was Oda's idea since 97, it would have been less played out then now, where it is kinda a standard to think "oh maybe this magical wacky world is a consequnce of radiation"!

But I'm probably jumping the gun way too much lol

I very much doubt One Piece Earth is supposed to be our earth... it is way bigger for one. But the idea that One Piece was always planned as a post apokalypse story with it's humans being descendants of our Earth is actually something that has a lot of support, especially with the newest reveal of an Earth where "Death reigned".

in regards to religion, there are a lot of in universe religious ideas taken directly from the real world, which makes way more sense if they originate from that actual source in universe... But by far the biggest one is christianity.

christianity is pretty much taken directly from real life(just with every island doing its own thing compared to a more centralized church), is the seemingly dominant religion of the world, and as early as buggy's introductionary arc, he mentioned Judas Iscarot by name when he noted Nami methapohorically gave luffy the judas kiss.

Again, makes a lot more sense if these are all descendants from the original earth, rather than imagening a scenario where One piece had a literal jesus and judas somewhere before recorded history.

And the ancient weapons? Pluton, Uranus, poseidon? Named after "gods of old". Aka the greco-roman gods.

As for tech, originall Oda was planning on introducing mechanical limbs as early as East blue, with nami getting a spiffy new cyborg arm, presumably after oda's original plans for her stabbing her own arm scene, and Don Kreig was gonna be a cyborg.

So the idea that they were all living in a post apokalyptic world with anocronistic tech lying around was always gonna be a thing even from the first draft.

All this said, yeah it would indeed have been way more fresh back in the 90's when Oda first planned it all.

Honestly it's a testament to the strength of Oda's world that even after the travesty that was the way Egghead Island arc ended(Where any and all future tensions seemed to just be sapped completely with Oda's usual shenanigans) Oda was still able to make the mural reveal hit as hard as it did despite everything working against it.

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Lum's aunt always helping her in the kitchen when she needs instructions is an adorable, sweet detail that i wish we got more of.

Other than Lum and Ten, the entire Invader Family is painfully underutilized through the Manga's run.

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So one aspect about the final act of Urusei Yatsura i love, is how well Rupa and Carla fits as foils to Lum and Ataru... But also neither being mirrors of the other pair, while also making it clear that we are given just a glimpse into a much longer story that's been going on for a while, just like our main pairing.

Carla and Rupa are introduced into the story of being utter foils, about as dysfunctional a pairing as Rumiko ever wrote... But what they actually are, is just Lum and Ataru viewed from an outside perspective with a lot of context missing.

Nothing about what Rupa tells Lum about Carla's violent side is untrue... But it's safe to say he most certainly painted a very one sided image to make the idea of actually going through with breaking it off with her easier to do for him.

The story of the two pair of young lovers are mirrored in a lot of ways, but one thing that is the exact same point on all sides is that during the ruined wedding, lines were crossed that once stepped over couldn't just be swept away under the rug like all their mistakes before.

For Carla, this was Rupa declaring he hated everything about her, and wanting her to go away as something would make him happy.

Just like Lum and Ataru though, this was a very blatant lie.

Breaking off his actual relationship, which he'd been steeling hinself for the entire arc, didn't just not make him happy, but the exact opposite.

"Winning" his "final argument" with Carla did not make him happy at all, and even now he is still pining for her, as we see how utterly down for her he actually was, in spite of all her flaws.

Again, we are missing a lot of context, but it's safe to say that Rupa, despite his words adores Carla, and when given the opportunity to make up, he effectively jumps at the idea like a lovesick maiden.

Not that it goes particularily well for for their relationship, but it highlights one specific flaw of Rupa. Not only his inability to just be honest with Carla, but his insistence of putting all the blame for the flaws in their relationship on her, as shown at the point when their talk derails immediatly being when, rather than just be honest and apologize, he instead tries to guide the conversation onto the tracks that the extremely blunt, straightforward and honest Carla is just using the talk as a roundabout way to get back together with him(She isn't).

Just like Lum and Ataru, he is projecting his own flaws unto his pqrtner in order to "Win" the argument/fight he is having with her.

And just like Lum and Ataru, it doesn't work at all.

Throwing hurtful things at your partner due to spite and a desire to be the one in the "Right" doesnt do anything but hurt both of them.

I also love how the two of them end their part in the story.

At the end, Carla witnesses the final race between Ataru and Lum, and doesn't understand Ataru at all.

She doesn't get how he just isn't able to say words that she knows would be true from him, because those are words that she would say in a heartbeat in his shoes.

And she would mean it too.

However, when faced with her own boyfriend, reconciliation doesn't come nearly as easily as she imagines it could come between Lum and Ataru.

Rupa wont just come out and say sorry, just like Ataru wont, in large part due to his own pride.

But instead he lays out a sorta demand, a way of letting the humans get salvation, but also a way to get Carla to come back with him, withouth him having to apologize at all.

And Carla, straightforward and having taken her Man's exclamation that he hated her on face value, rather than something said in the heat of the moment, thinks he's just trying to pick a fight, to rub it in one last time that she needed him.

And so they fight, until he accidentally just lays out his feelings and hopes and dreams, what he actually did want all along, in another heat of the moment declaration, but now actually from the heart.

He says words that just like before, he cannot take back... Only now to much more positive results.

Just like with Lum and Ataru, their reconciliation, hinged not on the words "I Love you" directly, but instead another set of words that had the same meaning, but much more personal to the two of them speciffically.

In the case of Rupa and Carla, the declaration that he wanted her to be his wife... With the implication that Lum, the girl bethroed to him, who had been a shadow that loomed over their replationship since they were 7, now had no place in his life anymore, being loud, clear, and obvious.

Lum and the bethroal she brought with her is now gone from the equation, and it's just the two of them now. two very flawed people who despite each other's faults adore the other to their core, ready to start a new life together.

It's a very sweet mirror to Ataru and Lum, and though i do think we could have used another chapter to flesh out Carla's side of their relationship a bit more, it's an aspect of the series i really appreciate, not just for the writing, but also it's subtlety(From a series that less than any other of Rumiko's catalogue, did not do subtlety).

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Nica-Joy Boy-Luffy Three Sun Gods for Three Apokalypses

So there is a lot to unpack with the Harley painting, and what we learn of the world, so lets unpack it, and see how it explains the discrepancies between the Nica the benevolent sun god who spent his time liberating slaves, and Joy Boy, who seems to have lead his side into war with the goal of becoming "King" of presumably the entire world, leading to formation of the world government to oppose him, who's victory lead to the current despotic world government.

the biggest key to one piece's past we learn in this story is that the great war during the void century was not the first apokalyptic event the world went through.

As we learn here, the Devil fruit that would one day become known as the Gomu Gomu no Mi, began it's existence from the prayers of men, their desire for a great saviour who would liberate them from their bonds of slavery.

they created a myth of a mystical saviour, and as a result, one day the power for a man to become one such came into existence through the devil fruits.

However, as we see here, this ultimately all turned out in the worst way possible.

from what i understand, We probably have no information on whoever fought in this war beyond what we learn here, and the information that the first Nica was heavily involved in it.

Thats the point. this was a primordial conflict that ended with a near total extinction event as whoever nica was fighting unleashed dragons upon the world, and cast the world into ruin.

This also gives us an insight into the basis for their power to rule.

"The Earth burned in endless flames"

dragons in one piece are dangerous creatures, but compared to how much fear they awoke in monsters, it seems a bit disproportional compared to how relatively easily they are to kill.

however, if we use the information we learn here, we can extrapolate that the true reason they awoke such fear in the day of Ryoma, was due to a then still lingering cultural memory of when the rulers of the world used dragons to dominate the planet.

Nica challenged this, and though there is not a mention that he actually lost the war, the outcome made it irrelevant.

Nica and his followers reached for "The Forbidden star" whatever that was, and in some way, the consequences of that destroyed the world.

the world burned. darkness fell. death reigned.

thus the seeds for the next age was set in the distant future of that war.

this is the origins of the original nica, the savior of slaves who liberated peoples hearts and spread hope wherever he went.

the second apokalypse, is one we are far more familiar with.

The great war. Joy Boy's attempt to conquer the world, and his opposition eventually becoming no better as they decided to raise themselves as god kings after their victory.

In the text we learn a lot of new, cryptic details though.

Firstly, there seems to be a reference to the true origins of devil fruits.

We know how they come into existence, how their powers manifest from human dreams and desires, but what we do not know is the exact origins of the power itself, if there is such a thing.

This text might shine a hint to such a thing.

The God of the Forest wove their magic, nurturing it's devils.

This suggests that there is an entity of some kind that is indeed responsible for creating devil fruits at the source, and that in the period leading up to the great war, they were active in growing them for one of the two sides to bolster their powers in the upcoming conflict.

this also confirms the fact that it was indeed Joy Boy who started the conflict, confirming what we already kinda knew, that it was the number one son of the great kingdom that was the warmonger agressor in the war.

we also get confirmation that the people from the moon were heavily involved in this conflict, both through the imagery, and the moons being singled out as big players in the conflict. which if they were indeed the people of the great kingdom(as their technology would suggest) they would indeed be.

however, then learn something else, or at least the passage of events tells us something that completely flips what we thought we knew on it's head.

after slaying joy boy, the world government was formed and 19 of the original monarchs deified themselves and they now rule the world to this day.

however, the last event mentioned tells us that the 20 kings, by killing joy boy and deifying themselves, they "Evoke the wrath of the sea god." who was clearly the previous poseidon.

we have always known that the three ancient weapons have the power to destroy the world, but we have believed(as suggested by vegapunk) that it was the clash of those three weapons that destroyed the entire world of old and sank them into the sea.

if this text is to be believed though, then wasnt entierly true.

because it wasnt before joy boy's death that the 20 monarhcs actually "Awoke the sea god's wrath".

it was her wrath that was the final endnote of that era.

In other words, when her side decisively lost the war, and Joy Boy was slain, she sank the grand line in her wrath, and destroyed any and all spoils the new world government could have pilfered both from her side, and just the political reality that they now controlled the entire world... which she reduced to one, last continent that was beyond her power to sink, and a bunch of wrecked islands where once were continents.

it paints both her and joy boy in an entierly new light, and hammers in what rayleigh once told robing, not to be too hasty in her presumed judgements as ohara's scholars were.

whatever came after, joy boy was the one who attempted to conquer the world.

thus the image of the man who woke such fear into the victorious side that they have done everything they possibly can to erase the memory of the man and his entire side, because the idea that someone new could rise up is absolutely terrifying.

joy boy is thus the origins of the warlike, destructive legend of the sun god.

the third apokalypse, the one we're currently seeing unfold is the end of the current world order when the world is about to fall into the sea, and the sun god rises for a third time.

it's not exactly subtle, as the text rather bluntly references the "Final act" which is the arc after this one presumably, where the world will end, and a new day will break, and presumably the pair that has been referenced repeatedly at the endings of all of these stansas will finally reunite.

what is more interesting is "the voice of the half moon echoes through the ages" which is still rather unclear, as well as the big clash between luffy and his many allies(giants, minks, dwarves, fishmen, an angel, and samurai) against the big demon of shadow holding the sun isnt entierly clear wheter this is Imu or blackbeard isnt entierly clear, as the shadowy, ogre motif could fit both, and given the pirate's desire to take the ancient weapons for himself, it's not inconsivable that he might pull the rug out from imu to become the final big bad of the story with the supreme monarchs devil fruit under his own command.

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Winterfell's size in the books compared to kings landing using the sizes of it's godswood and the red keep's dimensions for comparison.

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Yeah the isekai connection basically confirms for me the theory that the twist will be that all the people went into the vr world, with the knowledge they will be there forever, of their own will, to escape their lifes - hence the digital circus being like the internet digital circus, where people reinvent themselves in weirder and weirder ways, forget themsevles, try to escape yet can't. So the truck kun thing is just Gangles way of wishing to escape her life, not realising she went into a deeper level of hell when joining the circus, maybe thats why hell got called out by name in last episode but also in this during the recap to make the point of "hell is inside your head" as good ol' Crona even knew.

The idea that all of the characters willingly went into the circus to escape their lives would be way better of a twist than the "Theyre just digital copies of the originals" that a lot of people seem to desperately want to turn out to be the case.

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So there is of course a lot of fans that takes Gangle and the truck as her deliverately attempting suicide, rather than an accident, but there is something way more meta about it, as some other people have pointed out.

The entire Thing is probably also a reference to Truck-Kun, a meme about a common story device within the Isekai genre, where the protagonist is killed in the mundane world by being run over by a sudden, out of nowhere vehicle(Often a truck), then reborn into a more fantastical setting.

Which is exactly what happens to Gangle. She accidentally trips into trafic and is immediatly hit by a suddenly there truck, then after her "Death" is immediatly "reborn" into a more fantastical setting.

In this case returning to her own actual isekai of the Amazing Digital Circus where she will shortly go back to reignite her desire to draw manga, thus making this a big, if dramatic, take on one of the Isekai stories most common tropes.

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So one thing i absolutely love about Gangle's episode, is how deep a look it gives into our lovable comic artists heart and soul, for good and ill.

Gangle manages to get the job of being in charge for an adventure, to shape it as she sees fit.

And she gets a mask that lets her act exactly how she wants to, with NO filter at all for the occassion.

And rather than actually taking advantage of this and having a nice, peacefull day with the crew as they work at a burger King, she instead goes right back to acting like she did at her old job as a mcdonalds manager, only exagerated, and BOY does it paint a picture.

She makes an interactive video where she blatantly tells the employees to give up on all hopes and dreams, and resign themselves to working the fast food joint forever.

And while it's clear projecting on her part, it's not hard to imagine her acting the exact same with people under her employee back on earth. Resign yourself to this life, like i did... Except resign yourself to being at the bottom, under me.

Gangle had her hopes and dreams of being a professional comic artist crushed, and gave up... And rather than try to balance doing a webcomic and being a manager, she basically just compensated by throwing herself into being a boss, because it was the only part of her life she felt she had control over.

When Pomni points out that it is all just a game, she really begins to crack, because it would mean that there really wasn't any meaning to it, or her job. It really was just a routine for a paycheck, one Gangle was never able to balance with anything else.

This entire section where Pomni was flirting with Gummigoo, could have been a fun time, one Gangle could have encouraged as the point of these adventures is to have fun with the scenarios, but instead she went right back to being a manager, to wanting to be the one in control.

She was miserable, and she wanted, subconciously or not, that everyone else working there had to feel just miserable as well.

Because if she was the only one who felt that way, then it was all "pointless".

She could not just see her role here as "just a job". It HAD to be something else, because she never had the maturity or life experience to balance and separate her "Job" and her "actual life" and so when her dream crashed and burned, the job was all she had left in her eyes.

She could not separate herself from her job "Mask".

And we also see that Gangle understood, and was fully willing to use her power to get what she wanted.

Jax being uppety? Use Caine, aka her superior to get the power to bring the hammer down on him, which she does with glee.

And of course there is the whole Ragatha in the fry hell thing, where Gangle(Who has very mixed feelings on Ragatha) leaves her in the frying misery to instead focus on stomping down on Jax, rather than helping someone who needed it.

Because rather than wanting to help someone, she wants to be in charge, to be powerfull. Because it hives her job meaning. It makes her feel big.

Except as she slowly begins to realize, it doesnt.

Gangle starts to crack over the course of the episode, as she slowly starts to realize that not only was she miserable at her old job(Which she already knew), but there wasn't any meaning to it anyway.

It was just a paycheck, but rather than acting like it was just a job she did to earn money, she used her power to take out her feelings of misery on other people, to try to force it to mean anything. She deliberately hurt other people to make herself feel like she wasn't a failure.

Rather than being a responsible and fair boss, she was the leader everyone hated because she was an absolute bitch.

Only at the end, after Pomni showed her kindness despite her awfullness, did she finally manage to discard the mask for good and all, and accept herself, flaws and all, and finally manage to feel free and alive again, and become ready to move on with her life.

After the truck crash, and the high wearing off though, reality comes crashing down, and Gangle suddenly realises that one, brilliant moment of selfawareness and growth does not make up for everything.

She treated everyone like garbage, and showed her absolute worst traits for all to see.

And so she thinks everyone hates her now, just like she thinks(Probably more accurately) that every single person under her at her old job hated her... And yet she accepts that's her own fault. Her responsibility.

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So with a bit more context from the newest episode, we learn that Ragatha used to be a owner of horses, and judging by the context, it sounds like she speciffically was a horse breeder.

Now, with that bit of context, we now know that Ragatha was probably a farm girl, a type of proffession that is generally passed down through family...

Which in turn also ties in with the speculation that Ragatha was a mother, given she in turn probably would have wanted to pass on her lands, and the horses that lived there, to her own children in time... Only to lose everything.

Her family, her Horses, her job, her lands... It all adds to the tragedy of her existence, and why she tries to cope with it all, by being the mother figure for the group, but withouth that direct familial connection that she would have had with her own flesh and blood, we see how awkward that can be.

As she says, the truth is that she hates Jax, and she does kinda find Gangle acting withouth any mental checks with her happy mask to be kinda annoying, and finds Pomni having fallen heads over heels for Gummygoo to be stupid.

The fact is, while her motherly attitude isn't bad per say, and has probably done more good than bad, it beguiles a very obvious point for her.

The Circus crew AREN'T her kids, and the NPC's aren't her horses.

And she needs to accept that fact.

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Allright, since you wanna dance, lets break this down completely, by going over the full quote.

"I do agree that the elves have had their place in the sun at this point. We're never going to stop telling stories about the elves, but I think there are plenty of interesting stories to tell in Thedas where the Evanuris are tertiary characters at most.

I think that's a fair reaction, but I'll answer the question in two parts.

First - Bellara assumes she knows everything about magic. She probably knows more about the way ELVEN magic works better than anyone else in the world who isn't an Evanuris - but that doesn't mean she actually knows how magic itself works. The thing about the Evanuris is that, ultimately, they were able to take a very specific type of magic and shape it into doing what they wanted. But even their understanding of magic was only skin deep.

Bellara and Emmrich get into this a little bit in their banter, but so much of the rest of the world - the magic of death that the Mourn Watch wield, for example, or the magic of the deep Fade that Bellara feels when she does some of her experiments in the lighthouse - is not the same as Elven magic. Even the magic that Tevinter wields, the magic of the Southern mages, is different from what the Evanuris used. The magic of the Evanuris is powerful but it's sterile, and it's constrained.

So while the Evanuris have made magic work in a way that's more predictable and understandable, it's not the only kind of magic out there, and even then, I'd say they understood it at a very surface level. People were confidently describing how the natural world worked back in the 16th century. Very few of them were right."

Alright, so with the full quote in mind, lets go over it, and how Dragon Age has previously portrayed the elves.

according to Gaider, the lore, Dorian and solas banter in inquisition, and EVERYTHING before Veilguard, the Tevinters stole pretty much everything they knew about magic(other than blood magic) from the elves, or used it as a foundation for future studies.

Even with the caveat that they might have branched a bit off from the original, the claim that the magic the elves used, and the tevinter imperium used are unrelated is just a massive retcon.

Throw it on the pile of things with the rest of stuff that both soften tevinter and shit on the elves some more.

No the Tevinter imperium didnt steal the elves magical knowledge and stuff for themselves and build their society off of that, what are you, an elven revisionist? The tevinter imperium is a glorious magocracy that built everything from scratch off of their own sweat and hard work!

Hey you think these floating palaces might work on similar principles?

FUCK YOU, THEYRE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!

also, speaking off, i could make a whole list just dedicated to the "Contained" and "Sterile" magic of the elves, such as the golden city, the eluvians, crossroads, and so on.

Regardless, if you do take his words as 100% on the money, that means that Epler is also saying that the elves WERE an inherintly weaker and "inferior" culture whose fall was indeed inevitable, given they apparently had no capacity to create anything of worth with their sterile magic, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Also, there is the claim that Belara's magic of the deep fade is not in fact like the magic of the ancienct elves at all... despite the fact the entire magic system of the elves of old was that they used the fade unhindered.

Also doesnt she use that fade magic on the blight tentacles?

you know, the same kind of magic that the totally different evanuris use?

The argument that epler uses here, is that despite everyone claiming that the ancient elves knowledge of magic was impressive, unsurpassed by anything in modern day, and that it's only now, thousands of years later that magic is beginning to catch back up again(The elves had teleportation mirrors, while short range teleportation was only reinvented after the breach for example) the elves magical understanding was in fact, NOT more impressive, or thourough than the basic theodosian circle. it was in fact, inferior.

They had NOT discovered any of the secrets that any of the later magical societies delved into, despite having thousands and thousands of years to do it, despite the fact that Tevinter uses techniques that use the old elven ones as the base, the elves had no knowledge at all comparable to all the rest.

in other words, they were "inherintly weak", and their downfall was "inevitable", and "Deserved", and a good thing.

You know, the same kind of bullshit narrative that imperial powers through history has always used as the moral justification that their culture(whatever it might be) had the moral highground over whatever other culture they conquered.

The Elven Gods Weren't Good At Magic

ok so i have seen some chuckleheads try to defend this Epler, but holy shit...

Im very much NOT the guy who tends to jump on Bioware's take on the dalish/elvhenan(and to a lesser extent the Qunari) as Racist or unfortunate... but MAN this is just flat out... no not unfortunate implications, this is basically the argument the people who have been complaining that the elves were portrayed as a "Weak" people who's defeat to the tevinter imperium was innevitable due to inherint weakness on the part of their culture, and rather than showcasing the reality was a bit more nuanced and complicated than that, they instead said:

"Yeah that's about right. The Elven Gods, the cream of the crop of Elven kind, their god-kings who knew more than anyone about magic, the very nature their society ran on, the thing they used to reach such heights, knew absolutely nothing impressive about magic at all."

Like... this is so bad. because it says that no, the elves WEREN'T good at magic they DIDNT have any more innate understanding of magic than Tevinter. They were actually shit, and the only reason they were able to make anything impressive at all, is because they lived in the age before the veil, and they were able to mooch of the power of the titans.

The Elves who led their people to victory over the titans were not good magic users, or at least they didn't actually understand magic at all.

Now im not saying the titan's powers werent THE driving force of the Elven Empire greatest heights, but what Epler says here is that the elven rulers, after using magic for millennia, had no greater understanding of it whatsoever, which would put them beneath the most lowly circle apprentice who beat his harrowing.

It is, in fact, saying that the Archons who conquered the Arlathan remnants WERE superior mages to the greatest heights the elves could ever hope to reach, and yet another showcase of bioware shitting on the Dalish for daring to try to believe that their ancestors actually was great.

No Merill, the Elves were never great, they just had an inexaustible battery, Epler said so.