For his part, Vanya experiences the impulse to ask about her world, in turn, never fully at ease with even the possibility that she might think him uninterested in a more equal exchange. He is checked, however, by the assumption that she'll just gently redirect them as firmly as she sets bowls of stew in front of him again and again.
The kinder thing, instead, is to answer her genuine question. "I wouldn't have said so then. I wasn't highly enough placed or ambitious enough to run into much in the way of internal politics," in fact, he may have studiously avoided them, "and I had good relationships with both other Templars and quite a few mages. I think the first seed, actually, was Kirkwall and its aftermath. Not me being here, but hearing about the Chantry explosion. News made it up even to Cumberland."
"We thought — I thought," a correction not to let himself off the hook, "that it was a freak occurrence. You heard about things going wrong sometimes, in Orlais or the Marches. Bad apples, I assumed, and I wasn't the only one. But things kept getting tenser." Quieter, a bit, but not hesitant: "The College of Enchanters met at Cumberland, you know, back when it still existed. The most senior mages from many corners of the South. So we heard rumors and." A pause. "Things got bad rather quickly. I was genuinely shocked when Lord Seeker Lambert broke the Templar Order away from the Chantry in 9:40. The theory was that the Order and the Seekers of Truth would put down the mage rebellion, and the Chantry would have to institute a new Divine who'd negotiate a new accord. I think it was."
She didn't only want a history lesson, after all. She wanted to know how his thoughts had changed. But it was hard to untangle them in a way he hadn't fully expected. After a short pause:
"I wasn't ready to break away from my oaths, but I think I thought even then that ... if the Order wasn't holding to the Nevarran Accord as an institution, what was the difference between sacred oaths and breakable ones? But we were plunging into war, it wasn't the moment for a crisis of faith when I was being sent to the front."
no subject
The kinder thing, instead, is to answer her genuine question. "I wouldn't have said so then. I wasn't highly enough placed or ambitious enough to run into much in the way of internal politics," in fact, he may have studiously avoided them, "and I had good relationships with both other Templars and quite a few mages. I think the first seed, actually, was Kirkwall and its aftermath. Not me being here, but hearing about the Chantry explosion. News made it up even to Cumberland."
"We thought — I thought," a correction not to let himself off the hook, "that it was a freak occurrence. You heard about things going wrong sometimes, in Orlais or the Marches. Bad apples, I assumed, and I wasn't the only one. But things kept getting tenser." Quieter, a bit, but not hesitant: "The College of Enchanters met at Cumberland, you know, back when it still existed. The most senior mages from many corners of the South. So we heard rumors and." A pause. "Things got bad rather quickly. I was genuinely shocked when Lord Seeker Lambert broke the Templar Order away from the Chantry in 9:40. The theory was that the Order and the Seekers of Truth would put down the mage rebellion, and the Chantry would have to institute a new Divine who'd negotiate a new accord. I think it was."
She didn't only want a history lesson, after all. She wanted to know how his thoughts had changed. But it was hard to untangle them in a way he hadn't fully expected. After a short pause:
"I wasn't ready to break away from my oaths, but I think I thought even then that ... if the Order wasn't holding to the Nevarran Accord as an institution, what was the difference between sacred oaths and breakable ones? But we were plunging into war, it wasn't the moment for a crisis of faith when I was being sent to the front."