Hints of Beyond Thedas in DA4?

This is more as i would see antiva clothes for the merchant princes.

As I said above, Dorian is very original in his style and quite different from Alexius and Felix, which is why I thought that perhaps he was being deliberately different from the norm. I wouldn't mind if the fashion generally was along his lines.

I know a lot of people seem to like that concept art but I don't think it is different enough from what we have had before. However, the Iron Ring design is totally how I might have imagined a Tevinter Magister or just Altus generally. Yes, there is black but also vibrant red with gold trim The last image from Robe is also amazing, although without the fur because whilst ermine would likely be rare and expensive up north, it would be somewhat impractical in such a warm, humid climate. I also think those hoods are too close to what the Crows wear. Unlike the Orlesians, I imagine the Altus would not be averse to showing their faces; they want people to know who they should fear.

This outfit is probably suitable for an adventurer in Tevinter but without that wide belt unless it is actually meant to be protective.

Even without labeling Antiva having an association with Venetian Italy, I would see their fashion as being more south European Mediterranean rather than Near Eastern because they have been more influenced in recent years by the Freemarches rather than Tevinter. However, just for good measure, I include some Byzantine fashion for your consideration. Same area as the Ottoman Empire, just an earlier era.

I was more thinking of other hints. Been at war with Tevinter/Byzantines for centuries, rest of Thedas/Europe helping resist them, the Rivain/Spain occupation, more advanced technologically and scientifically, etc.

Are you sure? I don't see there any connection. The only connection with Germany i see in Free Marches.

When I said the Qun, I meant Qunandar the nation not Qun the religion.


That’s one of the parallels I referenced before. Centuries ago Thedas/Europe launch Exalted Marches/Crusades to aid Tevinter/Byzantine. Later, they went back to focusing on their own problems while the one was left to deal with the other.

Antiva is not Arabia.

German names for example. From the wiki:
The name Anderfels is of German origin, roughly meaning other rock (anders = other/different; Fels = rock). Similarly, other Ander names such as Weisshaupt and Kassel are actual German surnames and city names, respectively

This is something that I really want to explore. As you say, to do this would presumably mean going beyond Thedas because even if we were to delve into the archives of Tevinter or Par Vollen that would only contain their version of history. For example, the Qun claim their ancestors were brutal and savage, needing the strictures of the Qun to control them. They then point to the savagery of the Tal Vashoth to reinforce this view, ignoring the fact that this might be due to the kick back against the life they have just escaped from rather than an innate aspect of their race, plus the difficulty the Tal Vashoth having in living in a world that is prejudiced against them because their race is equated with the Qun. Where did the Kossith originate? Are there still any of the original race left in the world? Why did the Qun feel the need to migrate to Thedas?

As for humanity, their existence is even more mysterious. According to the Dalish, the elves first became aware of them when they arrived on Par Vollen from across the sea. What we know about the Neromenians as a sea faring culture would seem to confirm this. However, what about the other humans across Thedas? Did they all start with the Neromenians? Where did the Neromenians come from? Why did they leave? Are there still other humans civilisations somewhere across the sea?

There is plenty of scope there for a game of exploration; may be even more than one. Antiva would also be a good jumping off point for such a game because of their sea faring history, including previous abortive attempts to answer some of the questions above by embarking on exploration of the ocean to the east.

This is not necessarily a true reflection of what the rural population of Antiva look like. Josephine comes from a merchant family and their ancestry may well have been influenced by marriage to members of other ethnic groups. Just look at Queen Asha Campana who is credited with advancing the interests of Antiva more than anyone else. By birth she was Rivaini, a member of a wealthy merchant family, and her marriage to the Crown Prince of Antiva was a political match arranged by the matriarchy of Rivain. Queen Asha probably looked a lot like Josephine and it may be imagined that such marriages between the merchant families of the two nations were commonplace, thus explaining why the ruling class may look slightly more Oriental than you would expect for a nation based on Venetian Italy.

Nevertheless, this mosaic from an Etruscan ruin, who were the rulers of Italy before the rise of the Romans, would suggest the native population were olive/darker skinned as well, unlike the much fairer skinned Europeans to the north.

This parallel doesn't work really. In our world, the Muslims conquered Jerusalem and the eastern Mediterranean, which was originally part of the Byzantine Empire and started to progress northwards along the coast towards Constantinople. At this point the Emperor, feeling under threat, called on the Pope and western nations for assistance. When they turned up with rather more forces than he was comfortable with, he suggested they continue over the Bophorus to confront the hostile army head on in what is now eastern Turkey/Syria and the crusades went from there.   The following Crusades largely by-passed Byzantium entirely and sailed directly to the eastern Mediterranean, so far from returning to their own problems, those were their problems.  Finally, a Crusade that was intended to retake Egypt instead re-routed to sack Constantinople, leaving it badly weakened so it was subsequently easily conquered by the Muslim forces from the east.

Now in Thedas, in 6:32 Steel the Qun simultaneously launched an offensive on both Seheron (which was Tevinter territory) and Rivain, which was considered an independent nation loosely aligned with the south because the monarchs in Diarsmund were Andrastrian. From 6:42 the Qun spread westwards into Tevinter proper and southwards into Antiva, after which they continued on into the northern Freemarches. All this was allowed to happen without any intervention from the southern Chantry. Tevinter was conducting the resistance in the eastern Imperium without any outside assistance, whilst the southern Chantry aligned nations were largely on their own as well but would seem to be holding the line. Finally, in 7:25 Storm, over 90 years after that initial assault on the mainland, the southern Chantry finally decided to call an Exalted March to free Antiva and Rivain. Simultaneously, the Imperial Chantry launched an Exalted March to retake Seheron. So, whilst fighting on two fronts probably halted the Qun advance, the fact is that the southern Chantry never called the Exalted Marches against the Qun (3 in total) to aid Tevinter. All the presence of the Qunari did was stop any further Exalted Marches against Tevinter by the south.

A further indication that there was little co-operation between the southern and Imperial Chantry was that in 7:84 when a truce was called and the southern nations met with the Qun to negotiate a peace treaty, Tevinter declined to attend. Then the southern nations effectively stabbed Tevinter in the back because they ceded the islands of the Boeric Ocean to the Qun, even though they were not theirs to give, and whilst the Qun withdrew from Seheron in 7:84 either as a prelude or result of the Llomerryn Accord, clearly they did not consider that Tevinter, either the island or mainland were off limits because, of course, Tevinter was not a signatory. Hence they relaunched an offensive against Seheron in 8:55, successfully retaking the island and have been at war with Tevinter ever since, both on the island and also periodically on the mainland.

I struggle to see how the Exalted Marches against the Qun in any way reflect the Crusades in our world with respect to the relationship between the western Catholic church and the eastern Orthodox Byzantine empire. Yes, they reflected a similar schism in the faith (though never serious enough to warrant a crusade against them as happened in Thedas) but the Chantry never ordered an Exalted March directly to aid Tevinter.

If the Nazis were communists because of their party's name, then North Korea, a.k.a. the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is obviously a democracy. Fascists hated communists and in fact used fearmongering about the supposed communist threat to come to power, not just in Germany but also in Italy, Japan, Spain, Chile... Everywhere, really. Which is why, despite having been raised in an allegedly communist country, I have no patience for Red Scare hysterics.

One could just as easily draw parallels between the Qun and fascism, Plato's Republic, or Confucianism. At times it seems to reflect American stereotypes about communist regimes more than the real thing, e.g. the idea that commies wished to abolish the family, which I've never heard of any state of whatever political persuasion attempting to implement or even expressing as an ideal, but a striking feature of the Qun. I think it's more appropriate to think of the Qun as an amalgalm of collectivist ideologies or even a hyperbolic expression of collectivism, which works for a fantasy culture.

There's certainly no particular similarities to Islam except perhaps in a geopolitical sense: the rest of Thedas' relationship with and views of the Qun are roughly analogous to the late medieval and early modern European attitudes toward the Ottomans. I would not read too much into the historical basis for Thedas, however, since it is slight at best. DA owes far more to the Standard Fantasy Setting than to history.