mikkeneko:

drawsshits:

inqy-hanalghilan:

thetapestryunwoven:

liaragaming:

fereldenpeach:

drawsshits:

Chantry: no, the mages aren’t slaves!! 

Chantry: but you can’t leave the tower

Chantry: or get married

Chantry: or have any family

Chantry: or hold titles or lands

Chantry: also you have to work to earn money but you don’t get to keep it

Chantry: and if you don’t pass test, we kill you or make you Tranquil

Chantry: in fact, if you get too rowdy, we’ll give you a spritual lobotomy

Chantry: you also can’t accuse anyone in the court of law so if someone does you wrong then ehhh

Chantry: we can’t give you privacy either

Chantry: you might be able to write and receive letters if you behave though

Chantry: Hey at least you get three solid meals a day!

Chantry: No mage has ever starved under our watch

Chantry: Cole, who????

Fuuuuuuck the chantry.

“or have any family” is a bit of a gloss over.

If you get pregnant and have a child, that child will be taken away from you. Intermediately. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hold it.

fun fact; that thing about taking people’s kids away is considered a war crime in the real world.

Agreed, but doesn’t this vary with circle to circle?

E.g. Vivienne has an estate, can leave the circle, and has money as well as status ( I don’t think this was all from her lover, and it’s not like she was born into wealth? so power and wealth was something she built? Id like to know how she did it. )

The no kids thing I think they all are required to follow tho.

It’s true!

Not only does it vary from circle to circle, it varies from individual to individual. As in that noble born mages, no matter the fact that they can’t inherit titles and properties from their family, look like they are treated infinitely better than mages from the alienages. Mage Trevelyans have the option of telling Josephin that their family’s money helped Templars to treat them better in the Circle. Classcist previleges is well and alive even within the Circle.

As for Vivienne, not much information is given about her rise to power but I can say that she’s an insanely talented mage. I might be wrong, but I think someone mentions that she’s had one of the fastest and cleanest Harrowing in her Circle (either Cole or the codex or an NPC..). But not only is she a genius mage, she’s also intelligent and incredibly politically savvy- something that she used to become the First Enchanter. It also helps that she is a staunch believer in the Chantry and Pro-Circle, can become a Knight-Enchanter, something that you can be only if you prove yourself to be loyal to the Chantry (I assume by the title, that it’s part of the Chantry militia, aka the Templars). She also believes that being treated like fashion accessories by the nobles was better for mages.

(I always find it ironic that becasue she is a mage, she can’t be a noble, which means the only position of power that she can actually get from that point is to become a Divine lmao)

But just because a talented and intelligent mage who had, frankly, had the previlege of not being in one of the worse Circles (LIKE THE GALLOWS), not be targeted by Templars like Karras or Alrik, can succeed inside the Circles, does not mean that the whole system hasn’t failed. The system of the Circle and the Chantry lets the lesser mages like apostates and elven mages be starved to death in dungeons, then have their deaths covered up. No one cares if a mage was in isolation for a year, no one cares if a Templar sneaks into an apprentice’s room night and night again. While a talented and loyal mge like Vivienne gets an estate and freedom to travel in and out of her Circle, someone else gets to become Tranquil for daring to write letters to their friends.

It’s one of the things that Solas calls her out for, that she would lord over the lesser mages (which are most mages, I think) and let them suffer in their Circles while she would get to sit in comfort and luxury, have power over them.

Mages don’t have rights- they have previleges that gets doled out and taken away at the whims of Grand Clerics and Knight-Commanders, and if you are a Circle mage, you better pray that they have a modicum of humanity in them or else no one would care if they slaughter you en-mass and blame it on the demons. (or having too many rights if you’re from Dairsmund!!)

And I think that is one of the biggest failings of the Circle

Honestly, I think the awfulness surrounding Wynne’s experience with losing her child automatically disqualifies her from being held up as a paragon of the Circle’s success. I remember being surprised, a few years ago, when I read that surrendering a child – even “voluntarily” – is a trauma way  up there on the charts, in terms of causing lasting psychological damage. In some ways it’s even worse than having a child die because then at least you can get closure, as opposed to always knowing that they’re out there somewhere but you cannot reach them or help them. And Wynne’s decision to give up Rhys was hardly voluntary, except in the sense that she didn’t actively get stabbed to make it happen.

Vivienne, on the other hand, is something else. She is the Golden Ticket. She is the example the Circle polishes and holds up as “see, this is what you can get if you’re a good  mage and you work hard  and say your prayers”  even though for 99.99% of Circle mages reaching that level is flatly impossible. The Circle could never function as it currently functions if every mage got the treatment that Vivienne got. It would require the revamping of the religious attitudes of every Templar in the Order, for a start, as well as torpedoing the entire economic model based on the unpaid labor of the Tranquil; it would require an exponential increase of Templar personnel required to keep track of all the mages and monitor them if they are no longer confined to a single building.
If every mage got the same chances and freedoms that Vivienne got, it
would no longer be the Circle as we know it, and we wouldn’t be having
this discussion.

I’m reminded of that Forbes article that circulated a while back titled something like “If I were a low-income inner city child…” which supposedly outlined a path to success and wealth, but actually highlighted just how scarce the resources are at that level – you can’t help a whole class with one single scholarship slot, but you can  keep them fighting each other for the chance, keep them invested in the current system and averse to the idea of structural change. You can keep them spending their money on chocolate bars, still hoping.

There’s only five Golden Tickets. There’s only a handful of mages that can win that prize. Except that in this case, the lottery prize isn’t “wealth and luxury,” it’s “a base minimum of human rights.”