Do you think the Dalish are too obsessed with the past?

My issue with them being mandatory is how it takes player agency away from you, since you are forced to only be a certain kind of Dalish Elf, in this case a super pro-Dalish Dalish Elf since you agreed to have this burned into your skin. Then the only way to get rid of it, if you are female anyway since males are stuck with it no matter what, is to literally sleep with the elven devil. 

So as I said, they severely limited it to you being stuck as being only a pro-Dalish Dalish Elf. I know Bioware has never offered complete blank slates, but they've never been this restrictive either. The other races can have a variety of views towards their background, for example a Trevelyan with a negative or positive view towards the Chantry or a Cadash or Adaar not happy with their past life or loved it, and all of those are equally valid, yet for the elf you can't since you agreed to have those marks burned into you so you can't be one who has reservations or a negative opinion or even one that just has questions. They allowed this with the Warden, just with a warning of you'll miss out on a little bit of conversations if you don't play with the Brand for a Casteless Dwarf or the Vallaslin for a Dalish Elf. 

Yes, in Orlais. They (Chevaliers) actually organize hunting parties, like it's a sport, because they consider them vermin.

It's one of the reasons Gaspard is against Celene. She curtails these "fun excursions."

Sometimes, they seem to live under the delusion that they can be like the ancient elves. "Oh, so the ancient elves used to do that? Then we must do it too!". As Abelas correctly states to a Dalish Inquisitor, "You are not my people".




Well... yeah, but only to impress her lover.

No, I think the Dalish are a flawed people as all are but I don't the problem with their current state lies with their wish to emulate the past. We see Dalish who do that and who are perfectly able to live and grow just fine as a society. For example, there is the Lavellan clan.

That said, I do think that there is a problem with how they view the past. The Dalish seem to approach it with the pre-made conclusion that Arlathan and Elvhenan must have been some idealised civilisation which was a flawed way of thinking even before Inquisition proved some of what they believed wrong. No civilisation that I have ever known have been utopia but that doesn't mean there's nothing worthwhile about them and that they should be cast aside for being imperfect. 

Example: The Aztec performed human sacrifice in a large number but they had an impressive civilisation and they were content to leave their conquests alone culturally, religiously and socially as long as they paid the tribute asked of them.

Solas's tales about the ancient elven city even reflects that: He talks about the negative attributes such as slavery but also exposits about its wonders. There is something to be learned for the past but we shouldn't repeat all of the past nor think it darker or brighter than it actually was. I'm completely behind the Dalish wanting uncover and preserve their old ways - it's part of why I wanted to play a Dalish mage - but their scholars need to remember that their old people are going to be flawed by the very nature of humanity (well, elvenanity but you get my point) because otherwise they are not remembering what was once. They're just creating a fiction of how they wanted things to be. 

On a final note, I know people think they should just move on but I can't quite express what it's like to be the descendent of a people who experienced a cultural genocide. It's not something that affects everybody, of course, we are individuals after all but there's a sort of loss that you feel when you are trying to pick up the pieces and learn about your ancestors and their world only to have to face the realisation that you may never know all there was about them. What it's like to wonder what could have been. What it would have looked like today. It's a sort of grief that feels recent even though it happened centuries ago before you were even born.

I imagine that is many of the Dalish must feel. That hollow of wanting to know more and realizing that you can't. That it was severed for reasons that will always seem petty to those that came after and wanting to fight with knowledge so it doesn't become lost - so the cultural genocide doesn't reach completion. That if you don't try to remember it then it may be lost and the only version that remains is what little was preserved by the conquerors who caused that cultural genocide in the first place and that those accounts will be influenced by whichever cultural lens its writers perceived the Dalish's past through.  

Note: I'm a bit sick at the moment so I may come back to edit this if it still seems like a jumbled mess when I'm back on top.

I must admit I do wonder who in the hell Abelas and his sentinels thought they were preserving the Well of Sorrows for? They stay in seclusion for millennia, repelling all intruders, even the Dalish when the Dales belonged to them, then along comes the Inquisitor and provided they danced on a few pretty tiles and say the right words, he surrenders the Well to them whether they are elves or not, apparently (according to Flemeth) because it was all part of Mythal's inscrutable plan. I dearly hope that at some point we will discover exactly what that would be.

What was also rather peculiar about that whole plot was that we originally went there because Morrigan told us it was the location of an eluvian and it was to prevent him using that that we did so. There was never any suggestion that the knowledge would be there that would enable us to defeat him. Meanwhile Corypheus always knew that the Well of Sorrows was in that location and his whole purpose in going there was to obtain the knowledge via his "vessel". He is also said to have discovered about the Well from the orb. That being the case, since it was Solas' orb, surely he should have known about the Well? So was the reason he didn't warn us about it or what Corypheus wanted in the Arbor Wilds is because he didn't want us to get hold of it? Or did he just assume that eventually we would go there so he didn't need to tell us to? Bear in mind that if you do Champions of the Just the idea that Calpernia is going to be the vessel to contain some sort of knowledge is made much more explicit. The Dread Wolf was clearly concealing a great deal from us the entire time.

Sure, I think the Dalish are overly obsessed with the past. There’s nothing wrong with a reverence for what came before, or heeding the lessons of history, but the Dalish allow their obsession to blind them to other possibilities for the future. As several folks have pointed out, they are disparaged, unwanted, and in many cases hunted by dominant cultures that, at best, simply don’t want them around and, at worst, would exterminate every last vestige of their culture and autonomy. There is no place in the map we’ve seen for them to settle and find the stability required to rebuild, and they lack anything remotely like the strength and unity required to take or negotiate for land from the current powers, yet they continue to wander the same places, over and over, whining and moaning about how much better things were in the good old days (maybe) and how terrible things are now. Yet we, and they, know for a fact that the Thedas we’ve seen isn’t the entirety of the Dragon Age world. We know there are more lands beyond the mountains to the North. We know there are, supposedly, inhospitable lands to the South. We know that humans and Qunari both are non-native to the southern continent we are familiar with. And yet the Dalish, even knowing that they are never going to do anything but go extinct by wandering around in their long lost past neighborhood, refuse to abandon it and take a chance on the unknown.

Their obsession with their past is a chain that binds them to their eventual death and prevents them from even considering taking a chance on making something better beyond the current map.

Actually in Origins the storyteller from the Sabrae clan actually says with regard to the City Elves that when they have a homeland again perhaps their city elf brethren can teach them about how to interact with the surrounding humans so they will be able to keep it this time round. So back then the idea was that the Dalish were prepared to learn from past mistakes and they thought the city elves might have something valuable to contribute to any future state. They also did not seem to want to see every human eradicated from the face of the earth.

Then along came Masked Empire and PW made it seem like the typical Dalish are stiff necked idiots who regard the city elves as "poor cousins, lost to us forever" and that with regard to humans "Your nature polutes us." The Keeper stated he would be happy to see every alienage burnt to the ground and every human dead. Of course, this was done entirely to make his leading characters seem less culpable for condemning the entire clan to be ripped apart by an ancient demon and also works in nicely if they decide to have the Dalish flocking to support the Dread Wolf in his plan to restore elvhenan even though it may result in the death of every other living thing.

Of course Solas is also the one who tells us that the Dalish, far from keeping their customs alive in a consistent way, are in fact growing apart with the years. How he is meant to know this from his limited interaction with them is never explained and it contradicts the very purpose for which they hold the 10 yearly Arlathvhen, which is to exchange new discoveries and keep the lore that is passed down consistent and faithful to their ancestors. However, it does mean that if this is the direction the writers are now taking, then asking if the Dalish are too obsessed with the past, always needs to be qualified with the question "which set of Dalish do you mean?"

Clan Virnehn were clearly unhealthily obsessed with the past and the need for purity in the future, whereas I would say that Clan Sabrae and Clan Lavellan seemed to have the right balance of wishing to preserve what was best of their culture whilst embracing new ideas that could benefit them. Clan Lavellen, if allowed to survive, show how the Dalish are willing to work with the human neighbours, provided they are allowed to maintain their own cultural heritage and not have the human culture forced upon them. It is also worth remembering that there is apparently a semi-permanent settlement of Dalish elves up in Rivain who are able to live peacefully alongside their human neighbours, probably because the Chantry's influence there is limited once you move beyond the capital.

Clan Virnehn's portrayal isn't a problem in itself. After all, there is great diversity in the clans' beliefs and behavior.

What bothers me is Felassan acting like that is what most Dalish are like. And he is depicted as the voice of reason in the story.

There isn't a great deal to admire in the attitudes of Clan Virnehn, although to give them their due, they did come to the rescue when Celene's party were being assaulted by silvans and given how poorly they were rewarded for their assistance, I have a certain sympathy towards the Keeper's attitude towards humans. However, their portrayal was predominantly negative and if the reader was unfamiliar with the game world, had never played the Dalish origin or paid much attention to the earlier codices, they would be led to believe, like Briala, that Clan Virnehn was typical. The Keeper even disparagingly says that some clans take in city elves out of pity but the inference is that those clans are the exception.

What was also peculiar was the fact that we now had a specific Hearthkeeper in charge of cooking and cleaning, which I don't recall before (I would have thought most clan members would multi-task rather than specialise in that way), and also a War Leader, which is also a role that had never been in evidence in previous Dalish encounters. Why would they need such a role? The title suggests a definite intention towards hostility rather than simply protecting the clan. Surely Chief Scout/Hunter and Guard Leader would be more appropriate to their situation? Even the Emerald Knights had a primarily defensive role.

I have also drawn attention previously on other posts to how the War Leader's taunting of his prisoner and saying they were planning on torturing him with "Fen-Harel's Teeth" was actually contrary to the Vir Assan (the Way of the Arrow) "Be swift and silent. Strike true; do not waver. And let not your prey suffer." It would seem that Clan Virnehn were possibly closer to how Andruil the Goddess of Sacrifice really was but how did they know this?

Thats because Lavellan is a video game protagonist and is protected by plot. Clan Lavellan only interacts successfully if you do everything right. In the war table, the clan gets blamed for a humans-only plague in Wycome, and can get wiped out by their soldiers. 

Indeed. Even if we ignore thier magical artifacts, the ancient elven society held traits like higher life expectancy and more advanced understanding on the world around them. It seems the elves had higher knowledge on a variety of subjects ranging from magical theory to architecture. All things that any society would see as a big improvement if they can implement it into thier own society.
Hell, even the more 'recent' history with the Elven Dales has things that the Dalish should aspire to. Like the fact that they had and could potentially rule, thier own country. The country had its problems (radical isolationism, Drakon, etc.) sure, but it is something that is better than what they have now. If nothing else, history should be looked at in order to remind them that the elves are capable of great things. No matter what the Chantry/humans say.

It's just when they add too many idealistic notions, and/or try to replicate that past to even the smallest detail that I begin to take issue with it.