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blighted-cinda · 7 years

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Okay so my friend and I were discussing the timeline between Origins and DA2

And what the frick-frack-paddy-whack-give-a-dog-a-bone is hAPPENING????

I know tons of people have gone through just how impossible it is that Anders ended up in Kirkwall by the time Hawke meets him, but let's go through the main points, and THEN I'll explain my ridiculous headcanon of how the heck he did it.

Okay, first off: TIMELINE

- The wiki lists 9:30 Dragon as the beginning of the Blight, so let's assume it starts right at the beginning: the first day of Verimensis/Wintersmarch (also the holiday First Day) 9:30.

- It also lists 9:31 as the defeat of Archdemon Urthemiel, and the Warden canonically defeated the Blight within a year, so let's say the Blight ended after exactly a year, on First Day in 9:31, and Hawke's year of servitude ended a negligible amount of time afterwards.

- The events of Awakening begin six months afterward, putting the attack on Vigil's Keep on the First of Solis/Solace: Anders is at the Keep on this day. - It's unclear exactly how long Awakening takes in-universe, but the general consensus seems to be six months, putting the death of the Mother on First Day 9:32, meaning Anders is still with the Warden-Commander at the beginning of 9:32. This ALREADY puts the timeline out the window because the wiki lists the Deep Roads Expedition as occurring in 9:31, and Anders is recruited by Hawke by this point.

Even assuming Anders lost his cat and left the Keep IMMEDIATELY after the Mother's death, the EARLIEST he could have been in Kirkwall at all, let alone a well-known healer, is halfway through Wintersmarch 9:32, by which point the expedition would be almost if not totally finished.

So... teleportation??

NOPE STRAP INTO THE CRAZY TRAIN KIDDOS

Two words: Duplicate. Anders.

I KNOW, I KNOW, JUST BEAR WITH ME

Let's take a look at a few epilogue possibilities in Awakening:

Anders

Anders will remain with the Grey Wardens to train the Order's next generation of mages. When he is called by the Circle of Magi to deliver a lecture on the nature of the Architect - much to the templars' dismay -, he tells the Commander of the Grey that his time with the Wardens is over. However, not two months later, he returns and the Wardens remain his home and lasting companions.

If left to defend the Keep, Anders will be hailed a hero by the few survivors of Vigil's Keep by using his magic to hold off hundreds of darkspawn. He gets invited by the men to engage in a drinking contest. He loses.

If Anders' companion quest is not complete, he will be captured again when he resigns from the Wardens (whenever he did in the first option, which seems like a few months at least). With his phylactery secure, he is unable to evade the templars. After two subsequent escape attempts, he vanishes for a third and final time.

If left to defend the Keep without enough upgrades to it, he is found dead with an arrow through his neck with hundreds of darkspawn dead in a circle around him; none were touched with a blade, but all were felled by magic.

Justice

(I'll leave some unfinished after they refute DA2's version)

Justice serves with the Order for many years, keeping in touch with Kristoff's wife, Aura, during his stay...

...he will serve the Order for many years, fighting darkspawn resistance pockets...

Once the darkspawn threat was ended, Justice left the Grey Wardens to pursue other injustices. Years later he appeared on the doorstep of Kristoff's widow and, smiling, simply dropped dead...

...Justice will fight valiantly, but, before the victory horn is sounded, a darkspawn sword removes Kristoff's head. It is unknown whether the spirit perishes or simply departs...

...Justice will stand in the ruins of Vigil's Keep looking in to the sun and saying "Now I know what to do." The ghost then disappears leaving behind the rotten body of Kristoff...

...Justice is killed by the Warden. It is unknown whether the spirit survived...

A mysterious figure in Grey Warden armor is occasionally seen in the marsh, erecting gravestones to honor villagers of old...

So Anders either "dies" (which I believe is explained away in DA2), escapes (there is no way he escaped three times in a short enough timeframe to get to Kirkwall) or remains with the Wardens, and Justice stays with the Wardens, loses Kristoff's body during Awakening, runs off with his body, or stays in the Blackmarsh and never travels with Anders. They CANNOT have merged and left for Kirkwall by the time Hawke's expedition leaves, if ever, in at least several if not most worldstates that might be imported.

Now we COULD just say that the devs changed their minds and rewrote the timeline and the Awakening epilogues aren't really canon and Awakening was shorter than six months and Anders just got to Kirkwall really fast.

BUT THAT'S NO FUN SO LET'S MAKE A REALLY CONVOLUTED EXPLANATION AND TRY TO PROVE IT WAS ALL INTENTIONAL

My theory:

When the Commander's party (which we'll assume contained Anders) escapes the Fade in Blackmarsh, the magic at work drew spirits towards the point of the escape. Spirits tend to imprint and alter based on their surroundings, so what if the spirits were affected by the magic at just the moment they were adapting and then pulled through with the party? And WHAT IF they were affected in such a way that they FULLY imprinted on the minds of the party, making DUPLICATES (or at least very close copies) of the party's minds? And then, when taking on forms in the physical world, they each unknowingly took on the forms of the member they imprinted on, creating full copies, body and mind, of the companions?

The escape happens in the Baroness's courtyard, returning the minds of Party1 to their bodies in Kristoff's clearing. The SPIRITS (Party2) are not limited to those bodies, and so are pulled through in the courtyard. It's possible that, since time is not a concept in the Fade, Party2 didn't actually take form until AFTER Party1 had left Blackmarsh. They may have known they were duplicates, or they may not have, but eventually they would have figured it out. And Justice2, with the memories of at least one spirit, might have guessed that the forms were not stable and would eventually disappear. SO, depending on the personality of each companion, the duplicates might have sought out Party1 (especially the Warden), and since they knew they would disappear anyway within months or years or whatever, they took the place of the originals. They would know that Person2 would vanish within months or years, giving Person1 enough time to go off on their own without being tracked. But Cinda, there’s no way the Warden would/could just disa-

...A few years later, the Warden vanishes...

...After a number of years, however, neither she nor Alistair were seen again...

...But some years later the Warden vanishes...

...But a few years later, the Warden vanishes, and nobody knows why...

...he never returns to Vigil's Keep again...

...might simply just vanish for reasons unknown...

Etc. etc. The Warden vanishes in pretty much every epilogue. Key word: vanishes. How does the Hero of Amaranthine, Commander of the Grey, likely the Hero of Ferelden, and possibly the fucking king or queen just up and vanish?? Unless that’s exactly what they did - they literally vanished. At least, the duplicate Warden did, possibly being able to go back into the Fade. The original, however, was long gone, using the extra time to head off on other adventures without being tracked.

But Anders2, he wouldn’t want to switch. Why would he want to go back to the Wardens and the Templars? He’s like “oh I’m finally free!!” because the Wardens and Templars both think he’s at the Keep, AND his phylactery (if not destroyed) probably wouldn’t track a spirit in Anders’s shape, so he could not be tracked. But he knows he’ll vanish, so that’s one of the reasons he merges with Justice2 - they think it might stabilize them both for a time and give them the time they need to get justice for the mages. So Kirkwall Anders is the duplicate, which explains the timeline (he left before the end of Awakening) and maybe some of the personality changes that can’t be explained just by Justice, like the really weird flirting things.

The spirits are both still degrading, so even at the beginning his mind is already under some psychosis, which only gets worse and more unstable as the years go on. So by the time the Chantry happens, Anders2 is in full on degradation. He knows that he’ll disappear soon, so he needs to do something BIG - no more one-drop-at-a-time stuff, he needs to make a STATEMENT. So in his psychosis and desperation, he decides on the Chantry. All while Anders1 (who is still snarky and hates Templars, but is not nearly as much of an asshole as Anders2 - Anders1 would probably want to open that clinic if he could) is living or rotting in his epilogue.

B O O M

Okay, that’s enough conspiracy theorizing for one day. Thank you. *gets down off of soapbox*

#dragon age #dragon age 2 #dragon age awakening #anders

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