Leave it to me to find a beautiful Solas moment when I’m not even looking for one.

This dialogue happens in the last part of the cutscene after Solas fails to bind Cole to an amulet to protect him from being used by Corypheus. I actually went into a small fit of hysterics when I was recording footage and realized that when he glances away from Varric he looks right at the Inquisitor. He does this for any race, romanced or not. Why? Because the Inquisitor is what is throwing a wrench into his whole “the people of Thedas aren’t real” belief set. Cole is something he can latch on to, something he understands: A spirit grappling with its nature and trying to acclimatize to the Waking World in a form that is foreign to it. He wants to guide Cole back to his previous nature, show him his true purpose again because he understands that. Modern day Thedas? People who are stripped from themselves in the Fade? These things are upsetting to him, and he put everyone in a box to help focus his goals and help him understand. Then the Inquisitor came along and tore that box asunder by defying all of his expectations, doubly so if he falls in love with a Lavellan Inquisitor.

He states something that he has always “known” to be true, that being wistful cannot change who you are. When Varric challenges that notion (as he should,) Solas immediately looks at the Inquisitor because they symbolize everything that has defied what he thought he understood about a world with the Veil. He then promptly changes the subject back to the matter at hand, because he knows he can’t win that line of questioning. He is not strong enough in that belief anymore to argue for it.

It’s the little things that make Solas such a wonderfully complex character.

Solas Gifset Masterpost

