I see Cullen x Amell or Cullen x Surana a lot in the Cullen tags, I'm a Cullen x Lavellan shipper and I haven't played Origins, what is the deal with him and the mage warden? Some people say he was obsessed and stalked her, I don't wanna believe that bc I love him but I'm confused about what's canon. I know some people hc they had a relationship but I can't seem to get a straight answer what actually happened in canon? Sorry for random ask 🦁
From what I’ve seen, this topic can get a bit spicy because people have opinions on Cullen’s history with Amell/Surana (hereby referred to as f!mage because I’m lazy). I’m active on the Dragon Age subreddits and I’ve had a lot of discussions with people who genuinely believe that Cullen is an abusive, stalking rapist, and Bioware did a lazy retcon on his history to turn him into a whitebread vanilla love interest for DAI.
I’ll put my cards on the table: Amell was my first playthrough and subsequently canon Warden, I got attached to Cullen early on, and I love me a bit of Cullen x f!mage fic and art, though my preference is post-Inquisition reunion. I don’t agree he’s been retconned from an abusive stalker into a poor little meow meow (and I’ll be going into a detailed breakdown of why in a minute). HOWEVER, despite my personal bias I’m going to try and present information fairly so people can draw their own conclusions, and I can definitely see how the less flattering opinions of Cullen wrt f!mage ended up being formed.
There are several explanations for the, ahem, strong views on Cullen’s relationship with f!mage during their time at Kinloch Hold, some entirely reasonable and some less reasonable. Some examples of the range I’ve encountered:
1. People have difficulty emotionally separating the character of Cullen from his VA, who holds some utterly loathsome alt-right stances and has historically used the character to try and spread those disgusting views. (Can’t really blame anyone for this, fuck that guy.)
2. People haven’t actually played through Origins as f!mage and only have second-hand knowledge of his canon interactions, going off hearsay that gets escalated and distorted like a Thedosian game of telephone. Well, lucky for you I gathered every single interaction between them into this post, so now you have the facts to make an informed decision.
3. Information from abandoned writing concepts and dev interviews often conflicts with what’s actually presented in the game itself, muddying the waters with regard to Cullen’s character vision. (This one is genuinely complicated, but I’ll try and present everything fairly for your consideration.)
4. A lot of fans understandably started disliking Cullen based on the choices he makes and the viewpoints he espouses in DA2. This doesn’t directly affect his relationship with f!mage at the Tower, since all their interactions happened before that point. However, some people argue that his behaviour during DA2 indicates tendencies that he would have had from the beginning, including during their time at Kinloch Hold together. It also affects his post-Circle opinions of her, which is relevant to whether or not he could be termed as obsessive. This, too, is complicated, and I’ll try to be as fair and unbiased as possible.
I’m going to tackle your ask by breaking it down into two main parts. Firstly, what is the canon evidence of exactly how involved Cullen and f!mage were at the Ferelden Circle? And secondly, what canon evidence is there that this involvement was characterised by obsessive/predatory/stalker behaviour, and in what way does that behaviour develop through later games?
actually i’m thinking about writing a tododeku sns-au because i can (probably…) but i can’t decide what language should i use and if i’ll be motivated enough
