So will we be getting Varric back? Plus good news about dorian.

From what I recall, Dorian never said anything detrimental about Tevinter Circles. In fact he pointed out they were places of education, not nasty "mage prisons". What he had some reservations about was giving mages their complete freedom if that is what the Inquisitor decides to do. It will give them licence to become like the mages back home and he acknowledges that many mages do abuse their power there.

Now he maintains the set up in Tevinter was once like the south, with Templars and "proper" Circles. I'm not clear what he means by that. According to WoT, the idea of having Circles to train mages was Hessarian's idea. He re-purposed the Old God temples to this effect, which is why the Circle in Minrathous is the old Temple to Razikale, and intended that they should train mages to serve the interests of the Imperium first and foremost but that would entail them being free to do this, not wheeled out once in a while when a major threat like the Blight presents itself, as is the case in the south. The Archon was also head of the Chantry (or whatever it was called back then). The big difference in Hessarian's time would seem to be that the Soporati were admitted to the clergy of his religion, which had not been the case with the religion of the Old Gods where all the clergy were mages, usually Altus mages. As a result, because the clergy of the Imperial religion qualify for seats on the Magisterium, this meant Soporati had seats on the Magisterium too.

However, Altus clergy who had converted to the new faith instead of resisting it and being slaughtered were able to gradually steer things back to the original status quo after Hessarian's death, so within a generation the Altus were back in control of the state religion. This being the case, it seems highly unlikely that they would ever have approved of the Circles effectively being used as general mage prisons, as they were in the south, although of course they could use the Templars against political opponents on the grounds of corrupt practices, which Dorian says is still the case. The Tevinter elite are quite willing to use the Rite of Tranquility as a punishment for political opponents. Dorian alludes to this as well, which is why he is interested to hear that Cassandra has discovered a way to reverse it.

I'm not sure if Tevinter Templars have ever used lyrium in the way the southern ones do but that is not the case now, which is why sending southern Templars north to help protect Maevaris really flummoxed her assailants. In any case, Templars have always been tools of the state, with very little autonomy to act outside the diktats of their masters. In Tevinter Nights it seems that important families can easily stop an investigation with a word or bribe in the right ear.

Anyway, Dorian quite clearly says that whilst what happened in Tevinter should be a cautionary tale to the south, it is no justification for locking mages away entirely. There just needs to be checks and balances in the system to ensure that doesn't happen. It probably helps that there is not the same link between mages and the ruling class down south. In Tevinter the ruling Altus have always been mages, whereas down south, whilst the children of nobility did get preferential treatment in the Circles, the majority of mages are from commoner families, so their allegiance would be to them. So competing self-interest of the non-mage elite should help to keep mages from automatically taking power, whilst the mages would enable the commoners to be better protected against abuses of the nobility (I'm particularly thinking of Orlais here).

Also, Dorian's faith amounts to a belief in the Maker and that is it, because he feels that is preferable to believing there is no one out there.   He doesn't seem to have much knowledge about the Andrastrian faith, apart from what he has picked up since coming south, and tells us little about the Imperial Chantry, which is understandable if he is not particularly devout.  He claims that people in Tevinter always denied they had anything to do with the origin of the blight, which of course could be true, but this extended to denying any connection through the Magisters Sidereal, which is odd considering the Canticle of Silence, that is the chief source of information about this, was written by Hessarian and thus you would think would be an integral part of Imperial Chantry texts.    It was a southern Divine who rejected it from Chant as being too full of Hessarian's propaganda but as this was done before the split with the Imperial Chantry, I suppose it is possible they did take her at her word, since it was in their interests to do so, and that is how the Altus came to maintain they had nothing to do with the blights.