The Cole Meta
Published: 09/02/2022
CWs: Despair, Spoilers for DAI and Asunder
Dragon Age Inquisition: Cole, Humanity, Trauma, and Fandom
Part 1 - Who dis?
Cole, from Dragon Age Inquisition, is a traumatised spirit allegedly[1] of compassion, caught between the material world and the ephemeral world of the Fade.
He's naïve in human terms, very sweet and kind, very solid in his ideas of justice and morality, is a creative thinker, and really just wants to help people.
He is also a recovering serial killer.
As a spirit, he has magical abilities, but not like those of a mage. He can teleport[2], he can read minds[3], and he can drift through the world unperceived and unremembered as he chooses. (Murderbot would vibrate with envy.)
Cole has a human body that is his own, unlike every other spirit in the franchise that is possessing a human in order to live on the material plane, Cole has made his own form into a duplicate of a human boy: the original human Cole. In this way, Cole is somewhat akin to a doppelganger.
Cole's relationship to humanity is inherently fraught. His body is human, but he is a spirit. He works by spirit rules and yet is bound to the mortal plane by his own trauma and memory.
For the first eight years he spent on this side of the Veil, he believed himself to be the ghost of the original Cole haunting the White Spire, and spent those eight years killing in order to stop himself from "fading away" entirely. Arguably, he either was a demon, or he was very, very close to becoming one. He did not realise that he was a spirit until the end of the book Asunder.
Inquisition takes place one year after Asunder. In that time, Cole gained full control over his powers, gained a much firmer sense of morality[4], and has dedicated himself to helping others.
[1] Solas is the one who suggests that Cole is a spirit of compassion, but although Cole never confirms this for himself, the game treats this as absolute.
[2] Teleportation is limited by line of sight and is not an in-game combat ability unless you count the little dash that comes with the Assassin class kit.
[3] His mind reading ability is specific, he can read surface thoughts and he can hear pain, both emotional and physical, and can dive through painful memories to root out and untangle the source, like the world's least privacy respecting therapist.
[4] Interestingly, Cole's morality started not with a conscience or sense of empathy, but with the very practical "Rhys wouldn't like it if I did this".
Part 2 - But what is a spirit?
Spirits are embodiments of ideas, reflections of the mortal plane. There are spirits of rage, of justice, of desire, of valour. The spirits of negative emotions or ideals are referred to as demons, but there are also demons which are spirits corrupted and twisted through pain into the worst version of themselves. Wisdom becomes pride.
Spirits latch onto one specific purpose and will do everything in its power to fulfil that purpose. A hunger demon will attempt to feed on anything it crosses, a spirit of justice will stop at nothing to uphold justice, a sloth demon just wants to fucking sleep.
Dragon Age as a franchise has beaten it over our heads that hey, spirits and demons are actually people no matter what the humans of Thedas think. And the humans of Thedas really don't think they are.
The common idea is thus: All spirits are demons, and demons are mindless monsters that fixate entirely on one idea and also want to eat your mind and possess your body.
This is partially true, many demons do want to possess humans, as that is the only way they can experience mortal reality.
But the idea that they are mindless is challenged even within the first few minutes of the first Dragon Age game, if you play the Mage origin.
The spirit of valour says, of itself "I am no demon, preying upon helpless mortals to steal their essence! I am a being of honour and valour!"
Mouse (seemingly a mage who failed his Harrowing) says that he never thought that Valour lived up to its name.
Mouse refers to the sloth demon as a spirit.
Sloth itself is slothful, as its nature and name indicate, but it also says that it finds dreaming mages annoying, that it collects riddles, and finds riddle challenges amusing.
There are more examples of spirits exploring ideas outside of their supposedly rigid purview:
In Awakening we have Justice, who ponders love and romance and what it all means, and wants to meet the wife of the corpse it's possessing.
Although they're not human or mortal, and they don't think like humans or mortals, they are sentient beings. They are people.
Part 3 - Cole's Personal Quest: A complete lack of agency, a false dichotomy, and a ham-fisted attempt to tackle trauma.
The quest begins simply: After Adamant and a whole host of demons being mind-controlled by blood mages, Cole has a panic attack and demands that Solas binds him first so that he can never ever ever be forced to hurt people against his will. We grab a Fancy Magic Necklace to stop bindings from being possible, it doesn't work on him for Reasons, and the nebulous fade-feelings lead Cole to the Templar. The idea being that its the unresolved feelings and trauma from both Cole and the Templar that are stopping the amulet from working.
The Templar is the person who is ultimately responsible for the death of the original human Cole.
How you deal with this quest leads to one of two possibilities, either you let Solas encourage Cole to forgive the Templar and try to ease his guilt, in which case Cole becomes more spirit, or you let Varric pretend he's gonna let Cole kill the Templar give him a little chat about how vengeance won't actually help, in which case Cole becomes more human.
The idea is not a terrible one. How do you deal with trauma? Do you forgive and forget? Or do you hang on to the memory and process it, working though the pain?
Apart from the fact that this is one tiny part of Cole's massive and layered trauma.
And also apart from the fact that human and spirit is a false dichotomy.
The idea is this: Varric believes that the amulet doesn't work because Cole is not a spirit, he's a person. Solas agrees, but comes at it from the angle that being a person is actually kinda shit and being a spirit is so much nicer.
In earlier dialogue with Solas, he argues very firmly that spirits are 100% people and to think otherwise is to argue that you are completely immutable to change, after all, do you not act just a little different depending on the crowd you're in?
But during this quest, he does not argue with Varric's phrasing.
See:
Solas: "Regardless of Cole's special circumstances, he remains a spirit."
Varric: "Yes, a spirit who is strangely like a person!"
and
Varric: "He could have been a person."
Solas: "Possibly. Would that have made him happier, child of the Stone?"
But, as we've just spent an entire section explaining, spirits are people and even Solas knows that. Comparing "Human" and "Spirit" is less like comparing apples with oranges and more like comparing red apples with green apples but you're calling the green apples 'oranges' anyway.
Cole's opinion on all of this is "Please just let me kill this guy."
We don't get to actually kill that guy, we don't get to even suggest it. There is no third option, and no way to try and talk to Cole yourself during this quest.
Letting Cole kill him might be bad idea anyway because killing a person in rage might actually corrupt him into a demon in a ‘the straw that broke the camels back’ kind of way.
But the point is still that while this is Cole's quest, and the choices we make have very real and literal consequences for Cole's powers and state of being, he has no agency during this quest at all.
And here we get back to the part where Cole has ridiculous amounts of trauma:
- He carries the memories of the original Cole, and has never talked about it with anyone.
- The original Cole was horribly abused, accidentally killed his little sister, and on purpose killed his abusive father.
- The original Cole was shortly thereafter discovered by the Templars to be a mage, and chucked in a dungeon and forgotten about until he starved to death.
- The original Cole was twelve.
- This Cole ran around being completely unseen and unremembered by anyone for eight years.
- During this time he didn't know what he was, he thought he was a ghost and didn't remember any part of being a spirit, or the fade, or anything.
- He had to steal food to survive.
- He believed that he was fading from reality and murdered in order to prevent that from happening.
- When he finally made a friend who could see him, he spent almost the entire time terrified that his friend would forget him.
- He was made to relive the original Cole's trauma in a very literal way when he was forced into the Fade.
- Still in the Fade, he fought an Archdemon (huge terrifying dragon abomination) in order to save his friend. He nearly died.
- The Lord Seeker Lambert cast the Litany of Andrala on him, and then dropped the bombshell that he actually was a demon the whole time.
- And then he faded. The same thing he was terrified enough of that he murdered innocent people for eight years.
So, as you can see from this very long list, Cole is Traumatised As Fuck, and the Templar responsible for forgetting about the original Cole in that dungeon is just one small piece of the problem.
In fact, the only way that any of this gets addressed, accidentally and still only addressing part of the problem, is the Spirit!Cole path. This is despite the purpose of the Human!Cole path being the resolution of trauma.
Solving that one piece of this issue, no matter the method, is not going to actually untangle Cole's own hurts that are binding him to the material plane.
When you actually choose a path, here is what happens. With Varric's advice, Cole walks up to the Templar, shoots at him with an empty crossbow, screams a little, and walks away. With Solas' advice, Cole scares the shit out of this man, and then makes the Templar forget his original crime.
Solas is attempting to get Cole to forgive the Templar and embrace his nature as compassion.
Varric is attempting to get Cole to face his trauma and process it, and realise that revenge won't actually make him feel any better.
These are both terrible ideas, and neither of them actually work.
Spirit!Cole says of the Templar in a party banter "I don't know if I can ever forgive him, but I can live with him."
So he didn't even do what Solas wanted, which was to forgive this Templar.
Human!Cole is given no support and no resolution. He is told to deal with his pain, but given no real advice on how, and talks about it all precisely once. We'll get to that.
In the direct aftermath of this quest, once we've decided Cole's future without any real input from him and without actually addressing Cole's problems, we get one more scene.
In Solas' rotunda, everyone gathers to have a chat about what happened.
When Cole is more human, he walks in limping and clutching at his stomach, saying "It still hurts. When do I stop hurting?"
He then says, "The left hand misses a friend with two different names. She's hurting, sad, alone, but... Everyone can see me now. They remember. How do I put honey in Leliana's wine without her noticing?"
Him being easily perceived and remembered is a real and detrimental consequence to this course of action, Cole isn't sure how to do his job anymore.
Varric reassures him, "I can help with that."
He understands what Cole is saying, and he will teach him how to sneak the old fashioned way.
When Cole is more spirit, Varric complains and freaks out that Cole is speaking more cryptically. Cole appears on Solas' desk, cryptically reassuring Varric. Everyone, including the Inquisitor, acts like Cole is being cryptic and unfocused and strange. Varric asks if he's still angry with the man who hurt him and Cole says no, that the man's pain no longer pulls at him since he helped him forget.
"No. I helped him forget. His pain no longer pulls at me. A woman with two names slips a knife in the darkness to a left hand. Honey stirred into Leliana's wine. Faith, not revenge."
A clear statement, he's chosen the high ground, he isn't going to be motivated by revenge, and the Templar's side of the trauma is severed. This statement is mirroring Leliana's own story.
To which Varric responds, "He could have been a person."
Just to tie this up, I want to point out that the original problem is barely addressed.
If you choose the spirit path for Cole, the amulet works, and he is safe from blood magic. (Not that anyone else is. Blood magic works on everyone, not just spirits and demons, it's just easier to bind spirits and demons than humans.)
If you choose the human path, you're just kinda hoping that he'll be fine. Solas even points this out.
Part 4 - The Café Scene
A while after making this choice, we get to invite Cole to a café for a chat. How this goes differs depending on the choice made.
When Cole is more human, he sits on the chair, he is seen by the waiter, he talks about how he thought that change was what drove Rhys away. Cole states that he now knows that people won't abandon him if he changes.
This is a nice take away, and the one that Cole as a character and the narrative in general want to give you, but in the overall context this doesn't seem like a statement that change is okay, but rather that humans, even if they're nice to you, won't actually accept you until you're like them.
It is also interesting to note that Cole is so uncomfortable with being perceived. He spent so many years unable to be perceived, which does make it his default state, but it was also a source of pain until he learned how to turn it on and off at his own whim. He can't do that anymore.
I would argue that its the loss of control over whether he can be seen or not that contributes to this particular discomfort.
When Cole is more spirit, he is light and happy, and a little off. He doesn't sit, he remains unseen, he flits around the café, whispering small assistances to people. He suggests that one man try bondage with his wife. It's adorable.
He thanks you for accepting him, for believing in him.
The difference in demeanour is the most jarring part about the change in Spirit!Cole. Cole is always a somewhat melancholy character, so to see him light and energetic feels somewhat strange, but that isn't a bad thing.
Rather, it's interesting that the path in which he doesn't process or confront his trauma in the traditional sense, but rather severs the other half of the pain so it can't hurt him, is the one where he is actually happy.
This scene takes place before any forgetting happens too, this lightness is just the joy of acceptance without question.
Part 5 - The Ramparts Scene, Trauma and Forgetting
A fair way into the game, just before the fight with Corypheus, there is a cutscene with Cole on the ramparts. He is contemplating how Corypheus came back from the dead, and chewing on what happened with the original Cole. He wonders if he could have saved him.
The Inquisitor can reassure him about it, insists he did all he could. He recounts what happened, how the original Cole died in pain, how this Cole held his hand while he died. How the boy thanked him.
Human!Cole says thank you. The scene ends.
Spirit!Cole's scene goes a bit differently. After recounting the tale, Cole says that this memory is too painful to handle. He wonders if he should just make himself forget it.
Nothing you can say stops him from doing exactly that.
He then speaks in a monotone voice "You can continue to use that name [Cole], I am here to help."
Its honestly freaky to witness, and there is nothing you can do about it. This is the part the turns most people away from the Spirit!Cole path, and I believe that is intentional on the writers’ part.
This is also the accidental way that the trauma from the original Cole gets dealt with. Wiping these memories is a contentious choice, and whether or not its the right way to deal with it is a complex question. For one thing, he remembers it from both sides, both holding the boy's hand as he died, and being the boy who died. At least half of that isn't even Cole's burden to carry.
But the rest of the trauma is Cole’s, and whether he wiped those too is impossible to say, as it isn't addressed at all.
Cole does not speak in a monotone from now on, this is a once-off moment, and is perhaps something akin to hitting the restart button on a computer. Because he does remember the name Cole, and as such would have those ties straight back to why he is called Cole. This memory wipe must, by logic, be spotty.
Spirit!Cole also, in another easily missed piece of dialogue, says that he's wiping his memory after every battle.
While spirits in general have somewhat dodgy and fluid memories, intentionally forgetting things isn't something that we see spirits or demons do.
This is probably meant as a statement that compassion is something that can't properly thrive in the human world, which is a horribly depressing take.
But from a Watsonian perspective it seems like this is Spirit!Cole using the tools available to him to deal with trauma in an unhealthy fashion, and is something that Cole likely would have ended up doing if you didn't pick either path.
Part 6 - Varric
Solas and Varric are treated in fandom as Cole's "dads", and for a good reason. They're the two that support him and guide him, or at least it seems that way.
Solas supports Cole as a spirit, engaging in conversations that don't make a lot of sense (fun fact, they're TV show references), understanding his more cryptic references, and explaining Cole's nature in general.
Varric supports Cole as a person, calling him kid, teaching him things, offering him advice and company. He's good to him in general and has 'taken him under his wing'.
But, Varric only supports Cole as long as Cole acts normal. Acts human. He never understands and tries to discourage Cole's more spirit-like behaviour, even before the choice to make him more human or more spirit is made.
Cole understands that Varric needs someone to care for, that Cole reminds him of his now dead younger brother, and of Anders, and Varric needs this. Cole likes it too, letting Varric dote on him to a degree. But Cole also never stands up for himself.
Did I mention that Cole's self-esteem is so low you could trip on it?
Varric dislikes spirits. He didn't like it when Anders was possessed by Justice, he shows distrust in Merrill's research into demons and spirits, he hates every time he encounters demons or the Fade. In general, he tries to ignore that Cole is a spirit.
From Cole's personal quest:
"Something like Cole not being a demon?"
"Yes, a spirit who is strangely like a person!"
"All right. I get it. You like spirits. But he came into this world to be a person. Let him be one."
"But he isn't a spirit, is he? He made himself human, and humans change. They get hurt, and they heal. He needs to work it out like a person."
"No, he isn't. The amulet didn't work because he's too human, right? Maybe now the kid's also too human for that binding magic to work on him."
And in Cole's Spirit path specifically, everyone has a go at disparaging Cole:
Varric: "Have you talked to him since? Have you heard what he sounds like?"
Cole teleports onto Solas' desk. "Nonsense words, like Bartrand at the end. 'Just need to hear the song again. Just for a minute.' I'm all right, Varric."
Inquisitor: "That. What am I supposed to do with that?"
Solas: "He can still focus when necessary. He is merely liberated from his self-enforced mortality."
Varric: "You're not still angry with the man who hurt you?"
Cole, softly: "No. I helped him forget. His pain no longer pulls at me. A woman with two names slips a knife in the darkness to a left hand. Honey stirred into Leliana's wine. Faith, not revenge."
Varric: "He could have been a person."
Solas: "Possibly. Would that have made him happier, child of the Stone?"
Everything about this scene is, not just anger inducing, but bizarre. For one thing, Cole isn't being that much more cryptic than he usually is. Everything is relevant, everything is pulled from others thoughts and condensed into poetic memories.
"Nonsense words, like Bartrand at the end. 'Just need to hear the song again. Just for a minute.' I'm all right, Varric."
Bartrand was Varric's brother, who went mad from Red Lyrium. Varric is worried that Cole is going insane, and Cole picks up on this and is reassuring him otherwise.
Inquisitor: "That. What am I supposed to do with that?"
This is the secondary option of the Inquisitor's three choices, but none of them are particularly nice. The nicest just says "As long as he's happy 😌". But what's relevant to this one is how Solas responds to it:
Solas: "He can still focus when necessary. He is merely liberated from his self-enforced mortality."
This is just such an odd sentence. Because Cole is focused here, he's replying to Varric directly. Solas can usually understand exactly what Cole means, so this line is confusing.
Cole, softly: "No. I helped him forget. His pain no longer pulls at me. A woman with two names slips a knife in the darkness to a left hand. Honey stirred into Leliana's wine. Faith, not revenge."
Varric: "He could have been a person."
The line that leaves me fuming. When Cole says something very similar in the Human quest path:
"The left hand misses a friend with two different names. She's hurting, sad, alone, but... Everyone can see me now. They remember.[...]"
Varric glosses past it without a second glance, offering to to teach Cole how to sneak in the usual manner.
Solas: "Possibly. Would that have made him happier, child of the Stone?"
Solas, usually so good with defending spirits as people, doesn't argue that point although he should and has at other points when it isn't actually someone right in front of him that needs defending. Instead he argues that being a "person" is overrated.
This is hard to justify from an in-universe perspective. But from an out of universe perspective, it's pretty clear overall that the way the scenes are framed favours the human path, that the human path will lead to Cole "being a person".
Part 7 - Rhys and Evangeline
The most important people in Cole's life are the two friends he made at the White Spire, Rhys, and Evangeline. They remember him, even while he can't control his power. Evangeline even writes herself notes about him so that she will be forced to remember, even when it starts to fade.
The only reference to them in Inquisition is a short War Table mission where you send them a letter. They don't even know if Cole is alive, and Cole thinks they've forgotten him.
This is never addressed again. But it should be.
Part 8 - The Fandom
The most common choice is to pick Human. A vast majority of fanfiction that features Cole has him as a human.
They subject him to the ordeal of eating food[5], of having crushes[6], of experiencing the cold[7], and of sleeping[8]. He does not do any of these things in canon, even after becoming more human.
These are not terrible things to explore, having someone who has never dealt with these things suddenly have to is an interesting story. But the amount of Cole-centric works that feature the spirit path are in the single digits, and a tiny fraction of the amount of Cole-centric works in total.
Also note that as of the time of writing, no Human!Cole works that I have found actually dive in to Cole's trauma. Which is the entire point of the human path.
There is one that I found that deals with the original human Cole's trauma, and how that relates to this Cole and his memories, but it doesn't go into the trauma that Cole had all by himself and it is since abandoned.
Most of the arguments around making him human talk about how Cole becoming human enables him to learn and to grow, to learn about himself and help others.
Spirits can and do learn and grow. They do so differently, and they usually don't bother to learn things outside of their domains, but as we've seen with Justice curious about love and with Sloth liking riddles, this is a misrepresentation of how spirits work.
Cole doesn't want to learn and has to be forced into it. Cole doesn't want to remember and has to have his tools taken away from him so that he can't forget. Cole is traumatised, and it is never actually dealt with.
[5] The original Cole starved to death, even if it isn't 'his memory', he still remembers it, and being freed from having to eat to survive seems like a source of comfort considering that his reaction to the idea of having to eat is 'blegh'.
[6] Cole is canonically asexual. Romantic stories around Cole are not particularly common, but when they do happen it is almost always with Human!Cole, thus drawing the conclusion that his asexuality is a part of his being a spirit, rather than a part of who he is.
[7] Look I get the bundle him up concept, give the boy a blanket, but why do you keep making him suffer for this he's been through enough.
[8] The Fade is a huge trauma for this guy. Humans and Elves go to the Fade in their dreams. Mages, and probably spirits, are lucid the whole time.
Part 9 - Having Cole "become human" is really stupid
Cole's body is already fully human, he states that point blank.
"I was always human. The way I move comes from my mind, not my body. As long as I remember some of the Fade, it remains."
In gameplay terms Spirit vs Human isn't a choice that affects very much at all. Throughout the entire game, his characterisation is much the same either way. With Spirit!Cole he's little weirder, a little more flighty, and a little happier overall.
Narratively it affects nothing.
Human and spirit aren't actually opposites. In fact, according to what we read in the codex from the DLC Trespasser, the distinction between mortal and spirit was extremely blurred before the Veil went up, with spirits often choosing to take mortal forms and become elves, or elves taking to the skies and become spirits.
The fact that this is a question at all is only because there is now a clear delineation between 'material' and 'the Fade'. Cole is an oddity, a spirit who has done a very normal spirit thing according to how life pre-Veil worked, but because of circumstances he has to be bound either one way or the other, solidly, and isn't allowed to exist on his own terms.
This aligns very well with how AI are treated in other media. Data longs to be human, a transition from one solid state to another. There is no comfort in the way they are, because the way that they are exists outside the boundaries of "normalcy".
But, what if this wasn't AI or Spirits, but rather aliens? Wouldn't it seem really fucking strange if we made an alien in a story that longed to be human? Or an alien that was forced to become human in order to live on earth, rather than helping it adjust to life on earth, or giving it the tools and equipment to live where it wants to without it having to change its species?
That never happens with AI. And it doesn't happen with Spirits.
I object strongly to the concept that one must fit into the concepts of normal in order to be considered a person.
Tune in next time to see how mad I am about Justice in DA2.
Part 10 - We Get It, You Hate Cole's Quest, Got Any Better Ideas?
Why yes thank you for asking.
Imagine if Cole actually got to tackle his trauma. What if he oversaw the destruction of the White Spire. Or if he met up with his old friends and saw that hey, people who matter won't forget about you even if it's been a really long time. Or perhaps the Inquisitor could build a tribute to the original Cole, allowing this Cole to finally move on, knowing that the boy who died in the dark has a legacy that will live forever, and he doesn't have to carry that burden any longer.
What if we got a story where a person who isn't human was treated like a person regardless of if they conformed to human standards.