Cullen and Lyrium

The only time I told him to keep on taking lyrium was when I was playing a traditionalist Trevelyan who valued a certain amount of efficiency from her commander. In her mind, if Cullen didn't take lyrium, he would loose his ability to effectively combat demons/mages and thus loose battle efficiency. The fact that he was obviously experiencing fatigue/withdrawal didn't help either.

But in that play through I basically told him to keep on taking lyrium at least until Cory was defeated, not to keep on taking it indefinitely. After all, it is his right to choose weather he wants to take the drug or not. I just advised him to do it after Cory is defeated.

That being said, the majority of my playthroughs encourage Cullen to fight his addiction. I usually feel bad if I tell him otherwise.

As a "good" mage, I can't see any reason for keep him in lyrium addiction. Always I support his decision. Maybe as a not too good, non-mage I will try to choose his "benefit".

Does he actually stop after Cory?

Does he still break up with you?

That waters down the decision even further doesn't it

I made him keep taking it once on a playthrough I could not even bring myself to finish because the character I had conceived was just so generally awful. Her whole thing was basically, "The Inquisition needs stability, so take it and deal with it". I've done a lot of questionable things in various games, but this felt like one of the worst; this sequence made me feel like a complete piece of crap:

imgur.com/a/FXbDo

Ugh. I'm a monster!


My personal canon Inquisitor is a Cullen-mancer, so obv won't make him take it, although I usually play it out as her being a) freaked out at the possibility that the withdrawal could kill him; resulting in disagreement that he should have done this; followed by c) swiftly backing down when he says he would serve on his own terms out of loyalty rather than obligation. It feels like enough of a compromise between her having worries while still allowing him his agency.

On the one hand, I do think it's a bit of a missed opportunity that there is no real fallout from either choice throughout the rest of the game (besides the devastating Trespasser epilogue slides in the event that he's made to take it), and shunts the entire 'lyrium and its terrible effects on the templars' thing firmly into "tell, don't show" territory. At the same time--and for purely selfish reasons--I'm glad there isn't because I like the character and the romantic pairing so much.

I think in terms of "bad choices that make me feel bad", making Cullen keep on taking lyrium forever is almost at the same level as sacrificing the Bull's Chargers for me.

It would be nice to get a letter, similar to the Trespasser letters, of updates about our old characters. But I don't want more resources than that spent on it.

I was thinking about my Cullenmance and how I kind of don't want her to go after Solas. She disbanded the Inquisition. I liked my sweet hero mage settling down, married. Pop out a couple of gorgeous Cullen babies and get to know his sister. She'd heavily regret being dragged out of her happy ending life into the fight with Solas. She feels responsible but...they just seemed so happy at the end of Trespasser.