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funny how I thought that I would get more confident while posting in 2025 only to end up deactivating my account in twitter and deleting everything except reposts on my tumblr because I felt progressively worse after posting something.

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Lucanis character art

by VOLTA studio

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Character Art

by VOLTA studio

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I'm a weak person and this works on me every time.

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This! I read a lot of people saying that the Crows are shown only like the good guys in the Veilguard, even though, if we pay attention in the game, we can see and hear that they are not as heroic as they seem in the Veilguard.

Antivan Crows Hot Take

Why I think it's short sighted to say that the Antivan Crows were sanitized in Veilguard (because I keep seeing that take and it keeps driving me nuts). There will be Spoilers in this for both the game and the tie-in materials pertaining to it!

Tl;dr: Remember that story about a bunch of blind guys describing an elephant? It’s like that.

Dragon Age is pretty great and consistent about always showing us the world of Thedas through the eyes of unreliable narrators. Much like real history!

Even the historical footnotes we find in codex entries are penned by individuals with very clear biases. Like Brother Genitivi, one of *the* sources for general and historical information on the various regions and people of Thedas, was/is a devote chantry scholar, so everything he wrote has to be viewed with that bias in mind. (There is s whole story in Tevinter Nights about how the authors of these texts will on occasion deliberately shape their recollections to influence popular opinion.)

Up until Dragon Age: Inquisition, Zevran Arainai was our only true window into the Crows (if you ignore the early tie-in materials, which I do, because they don't play nicely with the game canon).

Zevran was born to a prostitute and sold to the Crows, like some expendable object, to be trained as an Assassin against his will. After surviving his deadly training, he was used as the equivalent of a footsoldier, only to be discarded and (attempted to be) hunted down as soon as he failed a contract and started making his own decisions. Zevran has always known that he was expendable, both to his mother and the people who purchased him, and doesn't seem to feel any great affection for either of them. Of course he would have a *very* different view of the Crows than the ones we meet in Veilguard (I will *not* be ignoring the tie-in material explicitly referenced in the game, i.e. Tevinter Nights, The Wake, and The Missing) :

Lucanis Dellamorte, grandson and heir apparent to the First Talon, who was born into wealth and priviledge and knew he wanted to become a crow like the rest of his family ever since he was a little boy (even after watching his parents and most of the rest of his family get brutally murdered in a war of succession).

Viago de Riva, a literal bastard prince who chose the harsh life of a Crow over a comfortable life in exile and is hinted at harbouring designs on the crown of Antiva.

Andarateia Cantori, who started life as a street urchin and clawed her way up to the seat of seventh Talon as the youngest Talon in the history of the Crows. Teia is described as viewing the Crows as family, even going so far as addressing Caterina Dellamorte as Nonna, which is not all that surprising if you consider that joining the crows probably pulled her out of a miserable life with very little prospects. Becoming a Crow allowed her to shape her own life as she saw fit, attaining rank and priviledge thanks to her own skills.

Of course these people will see the Crows more positively than one of their discareded foot soldiers! And yet they *still* mention, both exlicitly and implicitly, that the Crows are a deeply flawed organisation.

Lucanis mentions both the harsh, torturous training even he lived through as a fledgling both in-game and during The Wigmaker's Job, as well as the Crows' unfortunate tendency to stab each other in the back. He also acklowledges how Zevran's desertation lead to the deaths of several 8th Talons and ensured that the Crows no longer take contracts in ferelden. Teia and Viago have a conversation in 8 Little Talons that highlights how different Talons (and thus different houses) have very different ways of approaching a contract - with many of them having very little reservations when it comes to killing innocent bystanders (see also Illario's reaction to Effe in TWJ). That entire story makes it pretty clear that they are both outliers among their peers, and not just because at least Teia refuses to hurt servants, but also because they recognize the threat that awaits Antiva if the Crows cannot find common ground and forget about their petty squabbles for a time. Them being such determined patriots is an exception, and not the rule for the Talons of the Crows. Heck, Emil's whole betrayal and his reasoning for it underline both the changes the Crows have gone through over the centuries, their inherent corruption (it's all about the bottom line) and their backstabbing nature!

Ivency goes into this, too, and yes, they're a traitor and all, but they're not entirely wrong in their judgement of the Crows, either. (Though neither is Viago when he says that the Crows *are* the oversight.) And yes, you may complain that a lot of this is only really accessible when you've read Tevinter Nights, but it's not like it's necessary to follow the plot of the game - it's really only relevant if you are interested in and care about the lore and the development of the world of Thedas. And then you might as well read the explicitly referenced tie-ins to answer your questions.

(I might do Tevinter next, because that's the other one people keep complaining about being sanitized.)