HMD

[rowancrowned]

 think i could improve on how i write thranduil? please tell me so!  screening on, no ip tracking. 

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[rowancrowned]

sure! first, are you ok with me unscreening this? i assume you have to in order to see that i've replied, but if you want it back under after, just lmk.

this is going to be long and i apologize, the events leading to this have been building for a while!

first, thranduil doesn't know that any of the three were tortured. his only exposure to the situation was the network post itself and the knowledge of who was sent on the mission. as far as he knows, they're all in good enough condition to joke about setting fire to a camp made of mostly non warriors and children.

he was wary of herian going from the start, they've spoken at least three (?) times before about the dalish and her thoughts about them. she thinks they're violent animals, and also she ostensibly has a grudge on that specific clan given how they attacked the alienage elves she lead to safety AND just before she set off, witnessed that same clan attacking the group going to gwenaelle's home, resulting in the death of gwen's 'maid'. she knew they were likely to be violent going in, having encountered them before, and yet brought no back up OR excused herself from the mission, despite the likelihood that she was primed to want to go in for vengeance's' sake.

the last time he spoke with sina was when he visited her clan. sina previously stumbled upon thranduil, galadriel, velanna, and merrill performing a blood/elven magic thing to grow a mallorn tree in halamshiral. during that conversation, sina appeared to be frightened and unsure of what she had done, possibly being consumed by guilt and likely considering confessing what had happened to inquisition leadership, which would have totally gotten galadriel, on thin ice with the advisors and given a templar escort, killed, also thranduil possibly killed, and bad things happening to both velanna and merrill. again, she's someone who maybe should be, at the moment, not doing delicate diplomatic work. he's far more fond of her than the others, and so less likely to blame her for things going so poorly.

as for pel, she seems very unstable to thranduil. they have met once before this, where thranduil asked clan ashara if he could see the halla and pel offered to take him. during the course of this visit, she suddenly went from cold to extremely angry with her, ordering him to leave the halla pen when he asked if he might be trusted with them alone. after, he did not speak with her, but during this time various rumors were spread in skyhold about her sleeping with various men. at the time of the post he finds out she's pregnant and risked going on an obviously dangerous mission while in that state. furthermore, when he criticizes her jovality when she brags about setting fire to what at least is partially a civilian encampment, she bursts into tears and ends their conversation. pel has also (as it appears to thranduil) been passing herself off as clan ashara's first, for reasons unknown to him.

this was a delicate, dangerous mission with a hostile dalish clan, and the inquisition made it worse by sending three people who (thranduil believes) were ill-suited to the task. they proved him right, but also people died. pel and herian are also much closer and easier to reach for thranduil than the dalish clan, with whom he's also angry. yes, the dalish did start it- as far as he can tell, given that the only time he's witnessed the clan in action was for five to ten minutes before being knocked unconscious. he has yet to speak to sina about it, but he knows her better, and will be far gentler. meanwhile, a cycle of violence is continuing. the clan that was already hostile to shemlen now has even more reason to be so. he doesn't know the specifics of what, exactly, burned, but it's fair to assume they killed clan members who would have been responsible for hunting/gathering come the winter. they have, in his eyes, doomed part of that clan to starve to death, as well as put pel's child at risk.

the betrayal does figure into part of his reasoning, but everyone in thedas is apparently a bloodthirsty asshole (see: halamshiral, the templars, whatever happened in kirkwall) and elves don't seem to be any better. he expected pel and sina to hold herian's hatred in check (again, can't say anything for sina, haven't gotten to write that out yet) and they didn't. in arda, kinslaying is a HUGE crime, no matter who starts it, and tends to be its own punishment. revenge isn't generally something you go after, unless it's against a dark lord. none of thranduil's people ever started a war with the group that sacked and burned thranduil's home, killed his king, that king's son, that king's twin sons, etc. you can go after orcs like that, but... not other people? so all this death just seems ... wasteful to him. they aren't accomplishing anything, this isn't helping defeat corypheus, not only is gwen's mom maid dead, but so are all these other elves, and then whomever they go after. herian, sina, pel, or her child could have died. it all seems utterly void of meaning to him. the inquisition's leadership could have handled this differently, but why would they? life means- especially elven life- as little to them as it does to anyone else in thedas. he's tired and angry- revenge killing on revenge killing is doing absolutely nothing, and everyone seems to think acting like that is normal and acceptable. that's what hits him hardest-- all the murder and kinslaying and slavery, and herian, pel, and sina- two of whom he expected better of, as elves-  were sent into a situation where they only made it worse.