Hawke - the ultimate fan thread! "We sure do a lot of walking, don't we?"

Is this blood mage Hawke?  Is blood mage a good spec for the player?  Anyway love your two pieces of art you posted above.

Did anyone's Hawke decide not to take the sibling to the Deep Roads expedition because s/he already lost two family members and doesn't want to risk losing another?

Wasted? Hawke still the best hero with the best story!

Isn't it a bit hypocritical for pro Circle Hawke to protect Bethany from being taken by the templars?

Probably. Though I could see Hawke thinking their sister is different from other mages because she had Malcolm to teach her. Or maybe Hawke does think the circle is better for Bethany, but isn't willing to go against their parents' wishes. Either way is still a bit hypocritical, but I don't think it's uncommon for people to be hypocrites in some issue or another, so it could be a solid way to give Hawke some character flaws if a player so desired.

Family trumps principles, in my book. 

I'm with the Box on this. Hypocrisy is completely natural when it comes to your family. Realizing the value of Circles to society is a political stance, while protecting your little sister from the big faceless armed men who want to lock her up is a duty you've been raised with. The two can exist perfectly well together, and the hypocrisy of it just makes Hawke a bit more human.

Think of it like this: You may support gun control and believe with all your heart that your country would be a safer and healthier place if nobody could privately buy guns. However, let's say you lose some income and have to move to a poorer neighborhood. You get into a heated argument with a neighbor, only instead of coming to a solution he threatens to call his gang friends, whom you realize you've read about in the papers, to beat you up if you don't back down. You're now aware that dangerous and unpredictable people occasionally visit the apartment beside yours.  

…Maybe you'd feel a bit safer if you had a gun in the house, just in case? It's still not necessarily a good idea to have one, but your caveman brain is nonetheless looking around for something effective to defend itself with if it comes to that, regardless of your macro-stance in the wider political debate.

Things like danger, poverty, imprisonment and unfair privilege tend to affect us very differently up close, when they happen to us or people we know than they do when we're told they happen to some arbitrary reference group we've never had much contact with. If that wasn't the case, human society would look very different.

And there's something to be said for keeping issues separate. Bethany is a single and exceptionally decent mage who had a good and responsible tutor in her father. The Circles keep thousands of mage children who never had a chance of learning to control themselves otherwise safe and supervised. Their collective threat to society is much greater than Bethany's personal one. You can appreciate the Templars doing their jobs without feeling compelled to turn your sister in.

The best scholars and scientists today spend years learning how to think in impartial terms, separating their own feelings and biases from what they see and do. Expecting the same from a Fereldan country bumkin running around like a headless chicken to keep his/her family safe and fed isn't very realistic. 

On another note, does anyone else appreciate Hawke's feel as a strictly working class adventurer? I didn't think much of it when I played the game in 2011, but now it really echoes with me.