Does anyone else always side with Meredith?

Yeah - Carver as a Templar makes for great drama, but I'm happier with him as a Grey Warden.

warden This is what will happen if Templars will ever face Qunari. Tevinter can hold them off, but Templars can force them to submit!

yeah both sides had good and bad points fo rwhat was going on even if Meredith does go to far at the end. As fo ralways siding with Meredit hno I don' talways side with her some of my Hawkes do some don't it just depends on the kind of character I'm RP'ing .But I think it was definitely an interesting choice story wise especially in trems of how it leads in to the start of Inquisition I think.

That always bothered me: Meredith was right there, when Anders blew up the church, he confessed afterwards and waited for his punishment. Yet Meredith did - nothing. She turned around, accused Orsino as if Anders wasn't even there ... what the hell? I mean, even if she wanted to pin Anders deed on Orsino and the circle mages too, she could have dealt with the one standing there confessing first and then accuse Orsino of helping. That always seemed highly illogical to me (to quote a favorite Vulcan)

But no, none of my Hawkes ever sided with Meredith, she is just too batshit crazy. And to be honest, after reading the Band of Three codexes, my solution would not be to lock the mages up, but to evacuate this sorry excuse of a city and start somewhere new, where the veil isn't that frail. Has no one ever asked, why there are so many serial killers, murderous gangs, blood mages and crazy templars (did I forget something? Short tempered Qunari maybe...)in Kirkwall?

"Tell me, son. How many of us will you kill to keep us 'safe?'"

Unsurprising given we've had years to do so, whereas they had what, 18 months? to get the game out.

DragonEffect
Meredith's the Knight-Commander, and at the moment, seems the Templars support her.
Who was not with Thrask, was with Meredith. Including Cullen.
Meredith declared at the beginning of the Act3, she doesn't want a new viscount, the Templars rule over the city. Hawke can't expect any benefit from her and her Templars' support.
And you said: Cullen knew, she's mad, but still supported her, and while he seems a little bit shaken, still defended her and her methods (even in the Inquisition...). Yes, he compared Meredith to Uldred – and even when she said, she invokes the Right of Annulment, Cullen remained with her.
At the moment when Hawke should choose, can see a madwoman, who want to kill every mage (if Hawke's not a mage, his/her sister as well), and seems the Templars support her – as always in her crimes.
King Alistair is clear about that a secular ruler can't do anything against the Chantry/Templars.
It was also clear from the first moment, when Hawke arrived in Kirkwall, that Dumar is Meredith's puppet, she don't want to work with anyone, who doesn't want to be her puppet. There's nothing suggest this will change. How Hawke's able to hope, after s/he helped to kill every mage, Meredith will go to the prison just because s/he asks her... (At the moment Hawke can't see, there a chance to protect anyone – including Bethany). So: Meredith is the Templar Order in Kirkwall herself. And Hawke is the Champion, not a prophet.
A madwoman with a dishonest army against the city.

Ohhh... kinky

Too hard? Not the red lyrium caused her crimes and tyranny – the red lyrium was only the consequence of that, and not the cause. We saw it even in Act 1. If there would any possibility, my Hawke would confront and kill her without a doubt. She tranquilized mages just for show her power and to keep the others in fear. Ruled over the city with her Templars – that also not a Templar's authority. She abused her power. We can't judge hard enough a person like her.

She's clearly a villain, that's not even a question. The decent, reasonable person who probably she was, in her childhood, killed by the system, what remained just the cruel criminal tyrant. The red lyrium isn't an excuse.

None of which escalated out of control until the red lyrium came into play, which it did because of Hawke and Varric and Anders, not her.

Kirkwall is essentially a blood mage and abomination factory, after what's been done to the veil there. That's a fact. The Chantry essentially taking possession of the city and trying to tamp down on that could easily be argued to be exactly the reason they exist, and entirely within their purview as a matter of common sense, superseding both ordinary laws and human rights such as they are.

The relative discomfort of a few dozen mages and the abject misery of a handful means little compared to the suffering that would occur if nobody tried to keep the city in check, and Anders' speculations about why she does anything are worthless given how hopelessly biased, not to mention possessed by an irrational extraplanar entity, he is.

Ideally the population should have been relocated and the city razed to the ground, but that would have required that people actually talk to each other about their dark secret prisons and whatnot. In lieu of that, I don't see that much to complain about.

Most of the things you're accusing her of, such as her rationale for tranquilizing any given mage, we don't actually know anything about. And the rest might well be far better than the alternative.

I'm not saying she was a particularly good person, or even that she did a particularly good job. But it's pretty obvious that you hate her mostly because you're in love with the idea of mage freedom and she got in the way.

 
Who said "it was just the red Lyrium"? Is anybody denying that Meredith was messed up on some level? That her actions were brutal and inexcusable under most normal circumstances? That the situation in Kirkwall was illegal and definitely created a lot of hard feelings? Did anyone accuse Hawke or Varric of intentionally bringing evil to the world?

Hawke and Varric went into the deep roads knowing they were full of disease and buried horrors, with the intention of bringing whatever shiny thing they could back with them. That resulted in an evil, poisonous object that nobody understood being brought back to the surface world, which wasn't an entirely unpredictable outcome given what they set out to do, and they did it anyway. They deserve some blame for that, and at least partial blame for Meredith's sanity slippage as a direct result of their actions. 

So far as we know, Meredith had no way in the world of knowing what it was. The material hadn't been seen for over a thousand years, and I somehow doubt Bartrand mentioned the fact that it had made him insane or even that he'd found it in the Deep Roads when he sold it to her. You could argue that making a sword out of the stuff and carrying it around on a daily basis wasn't a brilliant idea, but there's no indication that it was either malicious or that stupid either. Weapons made from exotic materials, including lyrium infusion, is pretty standard in the setting. For all we know she just really fancied the colour. 

Her decision to annul the mages wasn't made until she'd been carrying the substance around for years. It made Bartrand try to kill his little brother after a few minutes. The idea that the idol had no meaningful effect on her and she was entirely herself and accountable for her own behavior after all that time is beyond ludicrous. As is the idea that it could only affect her because she was already somewhat unhinged. There's no evidence for that whatsoever.

She might well have deserved to be called a tyrant beforehand, although I would still argue that Kirkwall's nature as abomination central demanded a lot more of that treatment than people are giving it credit for. She might even have been a maniac beforehand, although we certainly don't see enough of her to be able to say that for certain. But she sure as hell wasn't genocidal until the red lyrium, and even then it took years of exposure and the bombing of a church right in front of her to push her to that point.

Nobody is saying that she was a good person, but you're definitely being too hard on her.

And yup, the binary mage/templar dichotomy has been terrible right since DA2. The issue itself and its hypothetical solutions are fairly complex and take a lot of discussion to unpack, and the games' dialogue has never really lived up to that, even in Origins.

Noxluxe
It was absolutely clear in Origins as well: The prison-Circles are bad. No question. And the fact, the Circles were prisons mentioned in DAO, in the narration. Again: not Anders said, not anyone else – it was the part of the narration, and the experience of my first Warden in my first PT.

Also: Neither Kirkwall's situation, nor anything else doesn't justify Meredith's methods, BEFORE and after the red lyrium. Nothing justifies that tyranny and madness, crimes whose were her methods. Those were wrong – as you said as well, don't you? So: it's very binary situation.

Buckeldemon
She was never on Anders level: Her standpoints are inherently wrong, while Anders standpoints were always right and if he was "obsessed" he was obsessed with the right – you can't put to the same level an aggressor and a freedom fighter. And it's not about the Act 3. We can say, that Anders' act was morally questionable. But we speak about ONE desperate act, while Meredith didn't anything good, and never served the good, since she was appointed to Knight-Commander of the Gallows, or rather she joined to the Templar Order.