still working plotting for my main fic and yknow. i see a lot of posts laughing at cassandra/the inq/justinia/whoever for wanting to recruit hawke as the inquisitor but like there's actually a lot of really disturbing tones to it, when i thought it through.

cassandra recruits cullen into the inquisition. and yeah, he comes in as a military commander, despite the fact that he has no military experience, but i think that's more related to like. the roots of the first inquisition. they later became the templars and the seekers -- cullen is military commander not because they expected to have to fight anyone but because justinia was going to use the writ to build the chantry's military strength if the bloody conclave didn't work out. cullen was hired because he's the fucking knight-commander of kirkwall, and justinia wants him to rebuild the templars. i know people like to laugh about it because it makes "no sense" but the military commander was never meant to do the kind of fighting they ended up having to do in the game -- it was intended to remake the templars. cullen trained hundreds of templar recruits in kirkwall and he's one of the only few that hasn't broken away from the chantry despite the dissolution of the nevarran accord. he's the most obvious pick for commander, when you consider what the inquisition wants.

bw canon hawke is a mage hawke who sided w the mages in kirkwall. they recruited a templar that knows him personally, that has had an antagonistic relationship with him in the later years, that knows how he works and thinks. if they had gotten their hands on hawke, do you actually think they wouldve politely asked him to lead the inquisition?