The next DRAGON AGE™: Behind the scenes at BioWare

You don't need the content from the books to see that she totally sold out the people of Ferelden after they gave the mages sanctuary. Asunder just explains how she came to be leader in the first place but also shows how different she is in DAI. After we are in Skyhold, Fiona tries to explain her decision that she was outvoted by Venatori infiltrators but surely the majority of mages were still from the Circles and respected her leadership, so if she recommended rejecting the offer by Alexius, they would have listened. To be honest, though, I wouldn't even have put it to the vote because it was a total betrayal of our hosts. I'd have said that any mages who wished to take up Alexius' offer were free to do so but as a group were would stand by our alliance with the monarch and people of Ferelden. She wouldn't back track on her agreement to serve Alexius when we turned up, so why wasn't she equally loyal to the people who offered her sanctuary?

I wanted to go with the mages because of all those that expressed unhappiness with what Fiona had done, although surely there were enough of them they could have opposed Alexius and his Venatori the moment they seemed likely to take over.   The problem I always have with it is that I get stuck with Fiona as the leader of the mages.   The only way I can neutralise her is to conscript them but then the game thinks I'm pro Circle and I ended up with Vivienne.     It was ridiculous saying on the allied mages path that they were on probation.  No, you idiot, they are free to do as they please, including stab you in the back like they did the monarch who helped them.  Conscripting was putting mages on probation in my eyes.

I'm going to have to try another run with conscripting them and seeing if I can rig it to still get Leliana as Divine.    The problem is that meta knowledge means I know that ultimately the Inquisition is eventually going to be disbanded (I would never put it under the control of the Chantry after what happened previous time round).   This means everything I put in place is going to be at risk, including making Gaspard the puppet of Briala (which is a pre-requisite to get Leliana as Divine I would think on the conscription run).   So with the Inquisition gone, Briala is going to be killed off and then Gaspard will take total control, putting Ferelden at risk again.   In order to avoid that, I would keep Celene with Briala, which means Gaspard will be executed.    Between them they should last a fair number of years but at the end of it, Celene won't have any children to succeed her, so Orlais will be tossed back into civil war again over the succession, giving Ferelden even more time to  build up its strength.   Trouble is putting Celene back in power is a sure way of getting Vivienne as Divine.

They absolutely weren't. They were being shielded by Fereldan nobility inside a friggen castle. There was absolutely not need for desperation unless they really thought a group of Templars, who have no real special fighting abilities outside of anyone else trained in combat, would somehow succeed at a siege of a castle that had never historically fallen to anyone.

The only way Fiona makes sense is if blood magic has fudged with her decision making abilities. And some of her responses are odd enough to support this theory, although it's never confirmed.

I always enjoyed making Vivienne Divine, my great big FU moment to the Chantry. A mage Inquisitor, no problem. The Hero of Ferelden and Champion of Kirkwall were mages? No issue. But a Mage Divine?! Truly scandalous.
The fact she is a competent politician makes her all the better, as opposed to the action-oriented Cassandra, (who always has her hands full rebuilding the Seekers) and emotionally unstable Leliana, whose competence as a Spy Master is questionable at best.
The Chantry is heavily tied to Orlais and is as much a player of the Grand Game as any other institution in the Empire. Might as well have someone who can play it and who knows the Imperial Court in charge of the Chantry.

There was an explanation of sorts that ruled out blood magic influence. She tries to blame it on Venatori infiltration which influenced the vote to join up. I know Fiona does seem to value democracy but on this issue I think she was wholly in the wrong. As I say above, give individuals the option to go and join Alexius if they wish but the mage rebels as a group should have remained loyal to the monarch of Ferelden. She has no real excuse since when the Inquisitor turns up she seems to think that having signed up to Alexius she can't go back on it. She didn't put that to the vote. That being the case, why didn't she feel the same way with regard to King Alistair/Queen Anora? What made it worse is that King Alistair at least and probably Anora as well, had been helping runaway mages since before the rebellion kicked off. Meredith was chewing out Alistair over this during his visit in 9:37, which means he was probably doing so before that. The reason he didn't just free up his Circle at the time was that he feared invasion by Orlais as part of an Exalted March. By the time of DAI, Orlais was in no position to invade anyone, so the monarch could be more bold. The combined forces of the monarch and the mages should have easily been able to deal with the Templars.

So the mages had a choice between a monarch with a proven track record of supporting the mages desire for freedom who has been offering sanctuary with no strings attached and some Tevinter Magister whom they don't know from Adam and the best he is offering is indentured servitude. On no level did choosing Alexius make sense, let alone seem justified.

It does have a nice sense of irony to it I'll admit. Vivienne is apparently a pen pal of at least one mage in Tevinter, so probably there are others, and she also respects Dorian. In fact in Trespasser I even recall her warning him to be careful when he returns home with something like genuine concern. So she is definitely going to make ties stronger with Tevinter, even if there is still a Black Divine in opposition. Still I could almost imagine him congratulating her on her appointment and the pair of them exchanging carefully crafted political letters to each other thereafter, whilst conceding nothing.

Genuine question because I don't remember, but had he post-DA2/Anders? He seemed utterly enraged with them in Inquisition after their subplot was over, so I figured he was in the process of turning against them even without them going to Alexius. Or am I getting Alistair's response mixed up with the Wardens?

Heh, thanks for that bit of info. I knew that she's out of the election if not recruited, but I did not know that she can be actively turned down at her party.

Well I've never had him on his own yet but I checked the epilogue on the Wiki and ruling alone he does seem to manage to remove all his detractors, although that was with the Inquisition's help. So without its aid, with any luck no matter who you put on the throne, it will ultimately lead to civil war again in the not too distant future, effectively neutralising Orlais. Then if you disband the Inquisition, the Divine will have a hard job enforcing anything. To be honest if the aim was to neuter the Chantry, you can feel it is pretty much job done.

They don't though. That is what is peculiar about the whole business. If Alexius turns up with his offer, then go with him, heading for the coast and a ship out of there. Not invite him into the castle and chuck out the rightful owners. If you are going to dig in at the castle then they could have done that without Alexius. The other odd thing is that Fiona is confident enough to leave Redcliffe in the original timeline and travel all the way to Val Royeaux to meet up with the Inquisitor. So clearly the monarch wasn't pressuring them to leave and she felt it was okay to make an extended trip away.

Then Alexius winds back time and suddenly Fiona is panicking about their situation. The only thing that changed in the timeline was the arrival of Alexius, which was extremely suspicious so soon after the explosion at the Conclave. Everything else was relatively the same. So why has she become so desperate that she'll take the first dodgy offer made to her when in the original timeline she seemed calm enough when inviting us to Redcliffe. You see, Fiona isn't just inconsistent from Asunder to DAI, she is inconsistent from one timeline to the next.

While discussing the failures and follies of Fiona is a fascinating subject, I wonder if we get more details on Tevinter society. We got a fairly detailed account from Fenris, Dorian, Krem and plenty in the comics, books and other media. Indentured servitude for citizenship that Fiona bargained for seems like something Tevinter would only do if they needed to. Also recall that Alexius was a member of the Venatori, a Tevinter supremacists cult/terrorist organisation not an official organisation of the Imperium (as opposed to the Siccari, which 'do not exist'), so how legal this seemed is suspect.