Logain Mac Tir Thread - "The traitor Teyrn. Yes. I've heard all the names"

Yes I've thought about all that and it is understandable how he come to that conclusion, but it still is a lot to put at steak just because of your suspicions

I thank Origins for creating this brilliant and deeply controversial character whom I love analysing and picking to the bone. Yet, in my books still a villain.

When I played my first game as a novice Warden, I spent majority of it anticipating how I'll run my sword through Loghain eventually the way I do with Howe. Yet, at the crucial moment the unexpected happened and the great general surrendered. Because I was playing a good guy (who didn't know what might happen to Alistair) who was willing to give everyone a chance at redemption, I've stalled my sword and through it gained an understanding of a highly complex man because once you recruit him and enter the camp to speak with Loghain you will find it difficult to hate him.

On a side note, I find it fascinating how the mabari in our party finds ways to uncover humanity of the 'evil' characters. It becomes so much harder to dislike someone who treats animals with such kindness.

My luck based rogue with a level four coercion is a snotty noob in comparison to Loghain when it comes to persuasion. Loghain can talk complete hogwash and make it believable. Once you begin asking him about his reasons, you realise there was strong rationale driving his actions - immoral in execution but no less powerful.

Yet - immoral it is. One of the biggest lies that angers me about it was the battle of Ostagar itself. Loghain is attempting to present his retreat as a spontaneous decision made in battle. It was not. Just like he had poisoned Eamon in advance, Loghain went into battle never intending to engage the enemy. This was a cold blooded, planned in advance Regicide, which he said he would do again. Did he enjoy killing Cailan? No. But, he viewed this murder as one of the hard choices necessary to 'save Ferelden' in his build up delusions.

Sometimes good intentions lead to Hell? Well sometimes accidental good comes out of the corrupt intentions - which most assuredly doesn't make the person who made that decision a good human being. Do I doubt that an army he had preserved became instrumental later on? Not at all. But the reason it had gotten preserved came at the cost of a massacre and emerged out of the corrupt planning, not out of a sudden brilliant tactical move as Loghain is presenting it to be.

His following actions to support his crumbling power kept adding more and more to his crimes. Our Warden spends months, even years fixing all his wrong doings - Eamon, the circle of magi and Templars too, slavery. Just one of those crimes for anyone is pretty much enough to earn an execution.

I find it hugely symbolic that Loghain used to have a mabari and then the poor hound was literally sacrificed. These hounds are perceived as granting honourable qualities to the owners. This represents what happens to his morality - at first heroic and then wounded so badly that it doesn't survive.

Does Loghain have admirable qualities? Oh yes. So many. Was he in the past a hero of Ferelden? Yes. He WAS. But - I will not hail him a hero after Ostagar or weave excuses for his actions. Whether he saves a part of the army or not - after Ostagar he becomes a traitor and a murderer because he was instrumental in devising a battle strategy heavily dependant on him without intending to engage the enemy.

This is his quote if your Warden asks Loghain about 'A last grab for glory' when Loghain proposes to take out the Archdemon.

"Glory? No... but forgiveness... perhaps."

I don't hate Loghain. I forgive him. But, I don't think he deserves a big heroic statue in his honour. I don't think his crimes should become ambiguous in the textbooks and lost in history with just the good deeds remaining. Those sins were too severe and too many.

She defends everything Loghain did and calls you trash she intends to slay if you skip the persuade option outside the Landsmeet. Which tells me everything I need to know about her and also tells me Loghain's statements about not knowing are utter lies.

She can rot with her little Loghain crush next to Loghain's corpse.

I noticed that in ME2. I was onto him from the get go.

Was not surprised (just horrified) to watch him go down with the ship as he doomed teh quarian race to extinction over his pride.

Heh, I am a simple person, and I don't read EU, so I liked both Ser C, and King C. And Alistair for that matter. Loghain... not really.

Is there any reason why the Warden can trust Loghain not to cut his/her throat when s/he is sleeping at camp after he is recruited?

There is something called revenge and men become more dangerous when they have nothing to lose.

This post is filled with misinformation:

Anora is capable to be a good partner and in fact her marriage with Cailan was interrupted by his death not by any other reason.

She never betrayed Loghain,so can't understand of whom you're coming from,but it was the other way around,of Loghain which ordered her imprisonment without any reason.

She doesn't betray the warden at Howe Estate but is the Warden who may be dumb enough to reveal to SR Cauthrien that she is there with them after her request to keep that as a secret for her safety.

Same for the Landsmeet if Warden outright stated that they wanted her help to kill her father.

I think some people analysis are poor by nature.

We can't foreknowledge the future of differents course of actions, therefore any judgment about Loghain's actions towards the Orlesians in DAO can't really be safely judged.In short if we presume that without Loghain (or with a different Loghain in behaviour)things would have gone better we have no way to prove that hypotesis.Imagine if Loghain wouldn't have been paranoid about the Orlesians in DAO,and therefore wouldn't have bothered to invest resources to secure the borders during the blight,how can you prove that the Orlesians wouldn't have really invaded the country?Afterall it's exactly what they did in the past...taking advantage of a blight to conquer Nevarra.

There is no way to safely judge his tactical decisione,that's way I say that is more easy to just focus on his crimes which Ostagar is not parte of.

There is a direct dialogue option with Teagan who says that Eamon fell ill before Ostagar. It's a fact confirmed in game.

As soon as you play DA2 introduction it says in that nice narrative voice - 'King Cailan died on the field betrayed by his most trusted general.' The lore and the game details and narrative voice uses phrases that call Loghain's act - treachery. In fact if you haven't played DAO and are using the top most default story to start DA2 during character creation it also calls Loghain a traitor.

Very true, no-one can fault him from not being properly paranoid about the Orlesians using the idea of a Blight as a pretext to invade.

It's not hard to imagine them sending troops in under a banner of peace and then refusing to leave, claiming that they're trying to ensure the stability of Ferelden and the Blight won't spread to the rest of Thedas. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book.

(Actually justifies some of Teagan's paranoia about the Inquisition during Trespasser. Why does the Inquisition continue to have soldiers occupying forts in Ferelden and Orlais long after the crisis had ended, unless it was never about stopping the crisis at all? As the Inquisitor, we know that's not the case, but they don't.)

But throughout the scenes at Ostagar, we see that Loghain seemed to focus more on imagined enemies around him, than the actual Darkspawn in front of him. He never seems to take the threat of a new Blight very seriously and seemed to think the Wardens were taking advantage of Cailan's naivety. ("This is no true Blight, Anora. Only Cailan's vanity demanded it be so").

I don't blame him from being suspicious of Orlais and their intentions, but he should have held the same due diligence about the Darkspawn. It's not that he ignored or didn't recognise the threat, but severely underestimated it, while being overconfident in his ability to handle it.

It is really hard to gauge the timeline in Origins; they play very fast and loose with how long it takes to traverse that country.

Anyway. Wanted to drop a post in this thread as Loghain remains my favorite character in the series.