The following post is pro-Sera, so if you don’t want to read then skip. If you don’t want to see any interpretation of Sera as anything other than a self-hating racist abuser I also suggest you skip.

So I’ve been compiling a long ass rant about Sera, using facts you learn from various ingame sources. I’ve pretty much started dragging her along to places I normally don’t - I even replayed the first part of the City Elf warden origin and watched gameplay videos of the alienage quests.

Honestly, I didn’t like Sera at first - I tend to play diplomatic, conciliatory characters which don’t mesh well with her personality . But as I’ve dug more and more into her past and the environment that shaped her I truly feel I’ve gotten a better taste of the real meat and complexity of her character. (And for an idea of what I mean, I’m nearly 8 pages into my writeup with her and I’m maybe ~50% through of what I want to cover; possibly a little bit less).

But even with what I had my understanding of Sera always felt a little patchwork, like I had the pieces but not the core of what put it together. So I rushed a female Dalish inquisitor through the game up to Skyhold to play with Sera’s flirts to see if I could glean anything from that. And just like how Sera’s surprised comment over my human Inquisitor treating her with acceptance despite their disagreement over Verchiel sparked my interest in her as something other than a bratty character, her reaction to my Inquisitor’s interest in her suddenly snapped the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Sera into place.

One of Sera’s core concepts outside of her mold of a commoner and outside her robin hood-esque trappings is fear. More specifically it’s her fear of being worth nothing. (Take a look at her tombstone in the fade if you don’t believe me)

Her attitude toward elves isn’t born of simply racism - racism can’t explain her anger over the death of the dalish elves near the tomb in the Emerald graves, it can’t explain her disagreement with Vivienne that the death of the Halamshiral servants is just a part of “the Game”. It certainly doesn’t explain her disgust at Briala being a jilted lover and using the “elven cause” as a way to get back at Celene. And it clashes with the end of the Emerald graves dungeon where she gives the opinion that the lost elven lore you find should go to the Dalish rather than agreeing with Cassandra’s suggestion to give it to the chantry instead.

But if you view it through a fear of rejection instead, it makes sense. Her getting upset at you emphasizing how different she is from other elves makes sense. She’s been told all her life she’s not “elven” enough by both humans and elves. For example, in one of her conversations with Solas (who manages to skate by with minimal hate despite being a complete race supremacist who doesn’t view the elves as his people) after a tired-sounding comment from her about how he was now going to make a comment about her (Sera) being the same yet different he tells her directly to her face “You are different. You are the furthest from what you were meant to be.” - In other words that who she is is wrong, that who she is shouldn’t be. And then to add further heartbreak her response is “Well, I’ve definitely heard piss like this before.”

This is not the first time she’s been told that who she is is wrong. This is not the first time that people who should be accepting of her (both her human mother and other elves) have rejected her. Is it really any wonder, then, that she rejects them every turn? Is it really any wonder that she built up thick walls around herself, that she pushes people away because it surely has to hurt less than to let people in and watch herself fall short of their expectations again and again?

I mean, I’ll fully admit to possibly projecting here. I have a really bad history with the really Catholic side of my family (even before coming to the realization that I’m queer). We’re talking full on my Grandmother bluntly disowning me for being christened protestant. Regardless, the point is that as a defense mechanism I’m completely prejudice against people I don’t know who identify as Catholics and against anybody being “religiousy”. And it’s not that I think people who are into religion or who identify as Catholic (in a bit of irony my longtime girlfriend is Catholic) are bad people, it’s just that it’s those scenarios which set red flags up in my head and have me figuratively searching for the nearest exit because in my experience the chance of these people hurting me if I get close to them and open up is too high to be worth it.

And I believe Sera’s reaction to be the same thing. It’s been fairly well established through all three dragon age games that elves can be very prejudicial against other elves (the insult “flat ears” is just an example) and I can easily see them turning that on Sera, an elf with a human mother. It gets especially worse if - like I suspect - Sera was adopted and raised by her human mother first and then dumped in the elven orphanage later when Lady Emmald died.

It’s also Sera’s fears that lead her to cling to Andraste. In her conversations with Iron Bull she brings up her convictions that Andraste is for everyone. And in Skyhold if you ask her the right question she’ll admit that part of the reason she joined was because she wanted to see that the Maker is real. Because if the Maker is real, then Andraste is real and if Andraste is real than Andraste’s acceptance of everyone is real. And if her acceptance is real it means that everyone, including Sera herself, is worth something. Which feeds into her rejection of the elven gods because the elven gods are not for everyone - they’re for elfy elves - and if they’re real then the Maker isn’t real, Andraste as the Bride of the Maker isn’t real, the acceptance isn’t real and Sera is afraid of that.

And Sera wants desperately not to be nothing. It’s why she injects herself into everything, it’s part of why she’s so in your face and loud even if she doesn’t get it right all the time. She wants to be something to somebody even if it means being hated. Hatred is better than nothing.

And then the Inquisitor comes along. And it’s strange at first when the Inquisitor flirts with her a bit (watch her when you do, her speech stumbles a bit and she looks surprised) but it’s so mild it can easily be misinterpreted as something else. Time passes, the Inquisition gets to Skyhold, and then the Inquisitor flirts with her in a way that is harder to write off as misinterpretation. So what does Sera do?

She asks the Inquisitor to wait. She wants to travel together first, to get to know her better. She wants to make sure that the Inquisitor isn’t a prick, is someone that she could see herself being in a relationship with.

So that time passes and they’ve traveled together. She’s seen how the Inquisitor acts and she’s gotten to like her, gotten to be accepted. Some of Sera’s walls have come down and she’s eager to jump in with both feet (though there are better ways to describe my character as bony, Sera. Chicken necks, really?). This is someone who might accept her, someone who might view her as someone rather than nothing and Sera grasps it and holds it tight like a man discovering water in the desert. She doesn’t want to let it go, she doesn’t want to share it, she wants it to be real and hers.

More time passes and Sera gets the Inquisitor a gift, just because. Only since it was on impulse she later looks on it and realizes it’s ugly and rather than give the Inquisitor an ugly hat wouldn’t it be more fun if she made it into something else? And she gets it for her without even a thought on a gift in return - which starts Sera’s gift quest where the Inquisitor asks everyone for gift ideas because she’s clueless about what Sera would like.

And while it might just be me, in the start of the next scene Sera starts to look a little bit nervous when the Inquisitor silently summons Sera to her chambers - something backed up by Sera’s next line of “What is this? You look serious.” This gives way into a scene where the Inquisitor admits to what she did - she went to everyone for gift advice. And Sera is shocked - and thrilled and ecstatic, yes - but mostly shocked that the Inquisitor would admit to her inner circle all full of people with worth according to other people that Sera is her lover.

It’s a rather chilling bit of characterization that is downplayed by the levity of the scene. Sera is honestly shocked that the Inquisitor admitted to being her lover - she fully went into this relationship thinking she would be unacknowledged, like a dirty little secret. As Sera put it, albeit in a crude manner, there’s a difference between knowing and being told - one is an open secret, the other is recognition. And right here and right now the Inquisitor not only thinks Sera’s worthy of being in a relationship with she also believes that Sera is worthy enough to be recognized.

And just like that the Inquisitor knocks down more and more defenses, gets more and more entrenched in Sera’s heart. And now it isn’t just a matter of fun and liking because now things are becoming deeper. And it’s scary and Sera is starting not just to like but to love, and to love someone who believes that Sera isn’t nothing who might even love her back. And it’s scary because if she says it if she recognizes it then it’s real and what if she loses her? Because the Inquisitor is like someone come out of a book or a chant maybe even just like Andraste herself. And so Sera starts to have nightmares - only now it’s not just being nothing it’s having that something and having it taken away, it’s having that person who accepts Sera for who she is and believes Sera is worth something suddenly leaving her alone with her fears and the possibility of being nothing again.

So she lashes out - she tries to push herself away from the Inquisitor out of fear but her lover isn’t having any of that and it’s just too much and so she lets it slip. And despite it being stupid the Inquisitor still doesn’t judge, just throws that love right back at her and that’s when the last of the walls come down. That’s when Sera starts to believe that this is not just a thing, not just a recognized thing, but that it might just be a recognized forever kind of thing. It’s when Sera really starts to think that she can be herself and be something and be happy.

And then the temple of Mythal happens.

And maybe the Inquisitor disbelieves or is suspicious of what happened and it’s all good.

But maybe the Inquisitor does believe or is willing to believe, and that’s when it all starts to fall. Because the Inquisitor cannot believe she’s the Herald of Andraste and if the Herald believes the elven gods are real just like she believes Sera isn’t nothing then the elven gods might be real. And if the elven gods are real then the Maker isn’t and neither is the only constant acceptance Sera got to keep from her early life.

And now the Inquisitor is acting elfy. And elfy people (especially elfy elves) always end up judging her, always finding her wanting. And Sera doesn’t want that, not from her lover, and she can already feel the pain in her chest as her fear grips her tight. She had nightmares about losing the Inquisitor and while it wasn’t about exactly this she can now see the beginning of the end. And it’s better to end it now end it before the Inquisitor burrows even deeper end it before it hurts even more because there is no way this could ever become a forever happy ever after thing. Sera doesn’t want to see the person she loves, the woman she finally opened her heart to, to see the look on her face when she finds whatever had everyone else found wanting and judges Sera just the same.

And it hurts even more that the Inquisitor doesn’t understand, hurts that she can’t grasp something that is so important to Sera. And if she couldn’t understand this then how well did she truly know Sera, how well could the Inquisitor have known her to judge her as someone worth something? And that’s really all her fear needs, that one tiny crack.

And everything she began building up

starts

slipping

down

Well, I’ll admit that’s probably not exactly what her writer had in mind with that romance. But it is a good lesson on perception. I went searching for the romance story with all the warnings about abuse and all the declarations that Sera was a bastard forcing you to abandon your clan and everything that made you you in order to satisfy her own racial hatred.

Instead, where others saw abuse, I saw someone flailing about as they tried to learn how to love again and be loved in return. Where others saw childish demands I saw a woman who was already hurt so many times before set up a boundary out of fear of being hurt deeply and facing the very rejection of what made her her yet one more time.

The lens of perception is a powerful thing. (And I still have to finish that long ass writeup of Sera =/)