HighCastle

xelestial:

First of all…

I have to disagree with one thing though. The very last sentence. “He still has the capacity to love someone deeply and completely.” He doesn’t seem to have that capacity. He has the capacity to TRY, but no matter what, he can’t let that love take him over, he can’t let that love save him…

Like he said (reciting from memory) “Being with you, loving you, I thought it would be enough. But Justice is too strong.” If it were just Anders in there, I think he’d be capable of it, but as the result of the merging of Vengeance…no, he isn’t capable of completely living for and surrendering his soul and life to Hawke. The mages’ cause will ALWAYS be more important. And it really hurt to realize that while playing as Hawke.

Now I could be wrong, but I believe that line comes up on the rivalry path. Or else I’ve never picked the dialogue options that led to it or am simply misremembering things. On the friendship path, he says something along the lines of “I didn’t want to break your heart.” He also says, “You’re the most important thing in my life. But some things matter more than my life.”

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love Hawke completely. He just values other things—like freedom for all mages and an end to oppression—as being more important than his life or anything in it. Now this is definitely a gray area and depends largely on personal beliefs. To me, that doesn’t mean he lacks the capacity to love Hawke with all his heart. It’s just that he believes he has to serve a greater purpose.

Remember what Wynne said in DAO? “Love is selfish.” It’s true in many respects. Anders knows this, and it tears him up inside to put his beloved through the events of Act 3. You can see his anguish in his facial expressions, in apologies he makes, int he hunched way he sits at the box in the end, resigned. This moment is so powerful not because he doesn’t or can’t love Hawke, but because he does. He willingly faces death in the hopes of building a better world for Hawke. That’s made explicit in the Gallows when he says, “Ten years, a hundred years from now, someone like me will love someone like you and there will be no templars to tear them apart.”

So I’m going to stand by my opinion that Anders absolutely loves Hawke completely. Championing a cause—even to the degree Anders shoulders this burden—doesn’t obliterate his love or lessen it in anyway. They’re two separate issues.

(Source: impressioniste)