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

Keep in mind, all of this may be handled in season 2 and be just a story Varric brings up to the new protagonist in DA:D

Whats funny to me is this is the only dragon age that feels like a direct sequel to the previous one, so this time keeping the same cast for the most part makes sense and we will probably just end up with Varric and dorian. And I really do not like either of them.

I have said it in other discussions. I don't read it like that.
Got your back. Mean nothing more than we are there for you. For that you don't need to stand next to each other. He can as part of the Inqusition stay in the shadow and help if the new MC get in trouble. I see him at the beginning at the game and at it's end. Nothing more.

everything about Varric briefly summarized.

Let's face it, Cullen's appearance in DAI, together with his rather surprising "character arc", were simply fan service. For some reason which has always baffled me, based off DAO and DA2, Cullen had an enthusiastic set of supporters who seemed to find him attractive as a personality. So, the writers decided he could be one of the continuity characters for DAI and then developed his story to fit those fan expectations. This resulted in a character who seemed very different from the one we had encountered in the previous two games. I don't think it was ever explained why his attitude altered to that extent. True, he witnessed Meredith going so crazy that even he was forced to rebel against her but ultimately that was proven to be down to the effects of a dangerous magical artifact, which surely would only reinforce his prejudices concerning mages and magic.

The Cullen character in DAI could just as easily have been a completely different Templar, either from Kirkwall, Ferelden or anywhere else for that matter, who had always had more moderate views and so had remained loyal to the Divine. This could have brought him to the attention of Cassandra and that is why he was drafted in to organise their military forces. The sub-plot of weening him off lyrium could have followed just the same.

As a side note, one thing that always puzzled me about Cassandra, Leliana and Cullen is how they avoided being blown up along with everyone else. However, at least with Cullen it could be argued he didn't originally attend the Conclave but was appointed in the aftermath of the explosion. The purpose of Cassandra and Leliana was to protect the Divine. Yet, apparently after the Conclave had started, they both left for Kirkwall to find Varric, leaving security in the hands of people who clearly failed in their duty. Surely, if finding Varric and Hawke was so important, why didn't the Divine send them on their mission before the Conclave? I can only assume that the Conclave had quickly hit the buffers when it came to any sort of compromise and so the Divine was searching around for some sort of solution. Except that we also know she had already authorised the formation of the Inquisition to carry out her "vision" for the future. This being the case, I would imagine that Cassandra and Leliana were already recruiting people with a view to running this private army of the Divine. So, the Divine never expected the Conclave to succeed but saw it as a useful way to get the leaders of the various factions in one place so she could enforce her solution upon them. It would seem that the actual leaders smelled a rat because neither Fiona, nor Lucius, were present at the Conclave, which is how they also survived.

I perhaps should have said it was never adequately explained in game, so it was a case of having to fill in the detail and make certain assumptions as you have done. However, he has a huge entry in WoT2 which does pretty much back up your theories. In fact it does suggest that trying to hold together the Templar order and bring some semblance of order to Kirkwall in the 2 years following the finale to DA2 seemed to be what really restored him to something like he had been before the awful events of Kinloch Hold and Kirkwall changed him. In addition, his sister played her part, whom we do learn about in DAI, as he had lost contact with his family through his own neglect of the relationship but she never gave up on him.

I also liked Cullen in DAI. His change in attitude just came as something of a surprise. However, since my Inquisitor had never known him prior to that, they could only base their relation to him on what they encountered personally and I simply ignored my own previous knowledge of the character. In some ways, though, it did reinforce my idea from DAO that the Templars were often as much victims of the Chantry as the mages were, particularly when it came to the use of lyrium. Naturally I supported him thoroughly in overcoming his addiction and was glad he succeeded.

I entirely agree. I think the problem lies in the fact that we move from game to game as players in the DA universe but our PC does not. So, as a player I can wonder what led to this character development in someone I previously knew but because our PC is not aware of the change, there is no real need to explain it, which also applies to new players. It would obviously be more pertinent if the PC had carried over from game to game as with Shepard and Mass Effect because it would make sense for them to question the cause if a character seemed to have very different attitudes to before.

This is where DA:D is going to be interesting bearing in mind we will once again be playing a new hero. Varric, of course, could be pivotal here. If they do decide to have him as the link to the Inquisition, I wonder if they are going to assume (as they did with DAI) that the PC is familiar with his reputation and had read his literature. It is noticeable that at the end of Trespasser he had apparently produced his history of the Inquisition for publication, so I wonder if that is going to be referenced in much the same way as the Tale of the Champion was in DAI. Actually, it has occurred to me that this would have given the PC some insight into Cullen's character depending on how much Varric actually revealed in his narrative within the book. I rather think it would likely only cover the compulsory events that caused him to cross paths with Hawke in the field, rather than the optional dialogue you can have with him in the Gallows.

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Ok Varric is a big player in this game. More than Dorian as it seems.

Thank god not a companion (well atleast not a full one). But i fear that Bioware will kill Varric off at the beginning or so for some drama.

Shouldn't he be ruling Kirkwall right now? Lol. 

I mean isn´t this terrible and lazy writing if such major story moment is so obvious?