King Cailan Theirin

Yes. After I saw the accusation that Cailan left bottleneck, I went and looked over that battle scene. Nothing points to that fact - made screenshots in my previous post with them and don't see him deviating from strategy. I'm open to screenshots or viable source quote type proof to say otherwise as this hugely interests me.

We see a sequence that darkspawn come out of the forest and do their battle cry and then DS charge - meanwhile Cailan is holding his troops in place and encouraging them to be steady as DS runs towards the Ferelden army. He only says 'archers' 'hounds' at a certain points like he was waiting to the letter for the enemy to position itself where he planned - for example if DS has reached a certain landmark then he issues an appropriate order. He does eventually charge after doing all the previous steps and crippling the enemy as much as possible, but that simply means he charged, not that he left bottleneck.

I think the Ostagar tragedy lies in a fact that the Ferelden army and Grey Wardens did their 120% best in that battle. But, it was simply a no win one. In the battle sequence we are presented with I don't see any evidence of Cailan being a bad commander at all. He did more than expected under the given circumstances and he did it while following a strategy devised by a much more knowledgeable, experienced general.

Cailan gets assigned all this blame - yet before the battle, Ostagar was filled with all sorts of veterans and generals. Plus a bunch of Grey Wardens who while aren't the army generals - still are hardened warriors. NONE of them were assed to give him a better advice than Loghain strategy which he ended up following. It's easy to be a doom sayer and then conveniently claim 'oh I was right' if it goes bad. But - had ANYONE - approached Cailan with a realistic - and satisfying enough for ALL allies so none would turn their sniffy nose up and abandon them - down to the letter plan to do something other than that strategy proposed by Loghain? Nope. Everyone kept bugging him and nagging him how they're all doooooooomed without proposing anything more realistic. He ended up going with a tangible plan because nobody proposed anything better - while Cailan was open to listening to suggestions. He is inexperienced, but he's wise enough to listen to the people who are. Yet, they fail him.

I believe his reasons for wanting to enter the battle were immature and he was naive in creating that romanticized heroic vision of how Ferelden will defeat darkspawn (then again if you fight you have to believe in victory or how do you fight without any belief at all? - not saying his wasn't exaggerated). However - during the battle and even in planning he did not behave like a fool as Loghain wishes everyone to believe to assign the blame. Prior to that specific battle, Ferelden had won a number of smaller scale battles - nobody at that point was fiercely claiming that Cailan must stay out of it. It's after the one he had lost that everyone dubs him stupid who shouldn't have fought. Yes, there were the mandatory You shouldn't risk yourself warnings - which all kings get as a part of the routine before every single battle. I'm going to side with Cailan here if you knew only what he knew. Um... actually by Ferelden tradition YES HE SHOULD HAVE FOUGHT if he's says he's a military leader or no one would respect him. It WAS his place to be with the army.