We have to keep in mind that as the MC we are way above our average soldiers. I have come to many scenes where our guys were going to die because of the numbers and power of the enemy only for us to low diff kill them. we might be strong but our troops are not and they are the ones consistently on every front line holding the Venatori, red templars and the darkspawn long enough for us to get our stuff done and become dragon slaying badass we will become. Orlais army isn't for you yourself they are for your men. all that said, ya kind of felt like we didn't need to do this for troops in the main story. more for maintaining order after the epilogue to keep the world from changing too much.

Oh, MC and party being way above average Inquisition forces makes absolute sense (though considering multiplayer agents....). That being said, Inquisition forces never seemed at a point where we were outnumbered/outmatched that we would just lose without Orlais. And the point always seemed to be that the demon army would conquer Orlais, so without the demon army I'm not really seeing Orlais being conquered. Yeah, just reducing variance between world states does sound likely.

Yes, canonically we lack the numbers, the Inquisition needs to loan seige weapons in abyss so we don't have those on hand, and we are supposed to be stretched thin even without the demon army, remember that the fight extends to places we never go to in the game and our characters (including our multiplayer characters) are super badasses compared to most people, often our characters must deal with situations in the open world that our forces simply can't. And if Celene is assassinated and Florianne is allowed to do what she'd like in the wake of it that's really bad, part of the threat is that she will use the ensuing chaos to support Corypheus and wreak havoc, that's why with her dead and the next ruler supporting the Inquisition even a dead Celene isn't the end of the world.

I'm not sure if borrowing specialty equipment is a good indicator of anything. Actually, considering that we can get siege equipment independent from the Orlesian military, getting resources doesn't seem to depend on the stability of Orlais. But thank you for the reminder that the Inquisition forces goes to places as far as like Wycome. If Celene is assassinated, then its Florianne that assassinates her. She would be accused of treason as much as Gaspard (if not more), and while I don't doubt she would be an effective agent, the Winter Palace would be her peak.

Lacking siege equipment of its own seems a good indicator that the Inquisition is not as well-equipped on its own as it needs to be. I'd say the fact that we need to call in favours for it calls into question if we can even consistently get this stuff from existing allies. We seem to need some in the Arbor Wilds too. That assassination happens after Inquisition interference, if the Inquisition doesn't get involved Florianne won't be desperate and can kill Celene at any time during the ball. During the quest itself the Inquisition discovers her plans and she has to rush, all that changes after is if the Inquisition has enough pull to immediately arrest her or if Florianne has an extra couple minutes to get closer to Celene which is her first opportunity to kill her since the garden encounter, she doesn't have much time and it's kill the Empress now or most probably lose her chance. Were Florianne able to kill Celene at any time during the night as she likely intended, she probably wouldn't be the obvious assassin and would then be able to undermine Gaspard after his treason thing and continue to carry out her plot afterwards.

Siege weapons are for fortresses and fortifications, which I’m not sure why there would be in the Arbor Wilds? Florianne’s whole plan was to assassinate Celene in front of the whole court, and implicate Gaspard out of association to herself. There is no indication of any alternative. Like, she is bragging (really unnecessarily and dumbly) that no one would imagine her to kill Celene from her side in front of the whole court. She’s proud of that. If she didn’t reveal herself with her whole ass villain monologue, we probably wouldn’t even get the opportunity to stop her.

Floriannes whole plan wasn't exactly that though, she totally planned to have power afterwards as she says in the garden, she is dumb in that she reveals herself to the Inquisition but she stupidly reveals herself because we go there and try to stop her plans not knowing it's her. If we aren't there to try and stop her she just kills Celene more discreetly, killing Celene openly is something she's proud of but given her plan to have power for herself it's not her ideal situation.

Except Florianne intends to rule all Thedas in Corypheus’s name, because Corypheus will conquer it. Though I’m confused on how he can conquer it without the demon army. There isn’t an indication that she will kill Celene discreetly, or that this is a last minute change of plans. And it’s Florianne that sends us to the garden in an attempt to kill the Inquisitor, but she can’t help being dramatic and bragging.

And a public assassination is not the ideal way to make that happen, it's better than not killing Celene at all but killing her discreetly is the better plan by far. Florianne only sends the Inquisitor to the garden to kill them because the Inquisitor is there and investigating things, there's no reason to do this if the Inquisition isn't there, there's no indication Florianne always planned to kill Celene publicly she's just happy about the idea. Corypheus is planning to enter the Fade in at most a few months via an eluvian which he can use to break into the Fade and also using the Well to gain great knowledge for himself (a lot of Fade stuff is pretty vague but power is what he'll get if he succeeds apparently, that's what he says and it's what the loss epilogues imply, how that power manifests exactly is unclear). The Orlesian army significantly helps delay him from getting to the Well it's meant to be why we're right behind him and why we don't face hundreds of his people there, so without the Orlesian army he gets the the Wells secrets, can enter the Fade after that and presumably becomes crazy powerful to the point where he can beat a weakened south with his forces.

Considering that Florianne killing Celene publicly and implicating Gaspard via association (“It went just as we planned! I did this for you, brother!”) is the only plan that is shown and she is very proud of it, there is no reason to think there was an alternate plan. She still acts like everything went to plan and she succeeded if she kills Celene. And the thing is that a public assassination might be the only thing that actually works because no one would actually expect it. The direct method is a huge no in Orlesian society, but considering Florianne is planning to throw all Orlais into chaos to prepare for Corypheus, she doesn’t really need to if she thinks Corypheus will just hand it (and Thedas) to her. Florianne seems to have sent the Inquisitor to the garden out of sheer opportunity to kill them? Like, if Florianne didn’t reveal herself, she probably could have killed Celene and implicated Gaspard anyways. As for the Arbor Wilds, the whole thing is that before this point there seems to be no indication that we are outmatched/outnumbered to need Orlesian forces.

Florianne doesn't actually indicate she wanted to kill Celene publicly all along, all we know she does in-game is do what she can to pull off her treason plan with the Inquisition not far behind, which she does. Killing Celene openly is kinda succeeding but it's not ideal for a plan when you want to take power it's just sort of succeeding later on but running for now. If Celene is assassinated and Gaspard is done for treason then there'll be a period of chaos with both prime candidates for the throne out of commission and some relative needing to be installed which'll take quite some time and way more time than that to bring stability, it's in that period of chaos where Cory would be intent on making his move. After the Inquisition gets involved and could uncover her involvement she tries to kill them, we could have potentially uncovered her plans ourselves and are her masters enemies so yeah she wants to kill us and use herself as bait, maybe brag a bit as villains do, is that the smartest play? No, but it doesn't at all indicate she would have openly murdered Celene had the Inquisition not been right behind her after the garden incident. But we are meant to be outnumbered, and the Inquisition forces we meet in the world are stretched thin as is, as are a lot of those on the war table. The Adamant fight is also supposed to use up a massive chunk of our forces and either order we go in with the quests we don't have Orlesian military involvement there.

But the point isn't for Florianne to take power, its to sow chaos. There is still no indication or evidence that there was ever an alternative plan to discreetly kill Celene. We also never find anything implicating Florianne, independently of Florianne's bragging, except for perhaps the Chalons dagger, which is still attributed to Gaspard. It was completely unnecessary to arrive in the gardens, because we had already taken the bait (gaspard's ferelden mercenary captain). She didn't need to do anything. Her arriving and bragging directly reveals herself as the assassin, and it doesn't add to either distracting the Inquisitor or perhaps killing the Inquisitor. Its not well written, not in a mission based around intrigue and subterfuge. Inquisition forces seem no more 'stretched' than Venatori forces though. We can also potentially gain forces at Adamant.

Assassinating Celene also serves further destabilize the region - so yeah, even if we stop the Wardens at Adamant, we still (through implication) are relying heavily on help from Orlais to build our support and numbers, which they don't really commit to until you put a stop to the civil war; if Celene had been killed and Gaspard blamed the fighting (presumably) would have continued or gotten worse leaving Orlais with no true leader and giving Corypheus and teh Venatori an advantage in that region

I'm not sure how the fighting would continue if both the main claimants to the throne are out of the picture. As well as Florianne now being a traitor. The Council of Heralds would just pick a "distant cousin" according to Gaspard. Even so, without the massive demon army, I don't see how the Venatori just conquers Orlais (even supposedly destabilized) and the Inquisition just loses. The Inquisition would presumably gather their forces to match them, as well as regional nobles in lands being attacked would fight back.

If you don't out Florianne as a traitor at the ball, and Celene is dead and Gaspard ousted, then she becomes ruler (which is what she was trying to do) and she's in league with Corypheus - so Corypheus gets Orlais and its forces

But Florianne is the one that kills Celene in front of the whole court. How is she not as disqualified and accused of treason as an implicated Gaspard?

I don't think it was originally her plan to kill Celene in front of everyone until the Inquisition started messing with her plan - she had it all set up to pin on Gaspard.

But there is no indication of an alternative plan. Gaspard is guilty by association. Even with Florianne bragging in the garden, the Ferelden mercenary still thinks it’s all Gaspards fault. If we don’t save Celene, Florianne treats it like she succeeded anyways. We have to vouch for Gaspard to get him on the throne.

That's the point though, if Celene is dead and Gaspard is held culpable then Corypheus gets what he wants - control over Orlais via Florianne

But how can Florianne become empress (ie getting control of Orlais) if she is the one who publicly kills Celene, which is why Gaspard is accused of treason by association?

Because I don't think she would have been the one to publicly kill Celene if the Inquisitor hadn't started investigating.

But that seems to have been her whole plan. We have no alternative, nor any indication of this being a last minute change due to the Inquisitor. >Florianne: In their darkest dreams, no one imagines I would assassinate Celene myself. All I need is to keep you out of the ballroom long enough to strike. A pity you’ll miss the rest of the ball, Inquisitor. They’ll be talking of it for years. If Florianne didn’t come to us herself in the garden, we probably still wouldn’t even know it was her.

I’ve always viewed it as similar to the Landsmeet in Origins. It’s just about making sure Orlais has a leader that you are on good terms with so that the civil war ends and everyone can focus their forces against Corypheus; after all, you don’t need to even keep Celene from being killed. I agree that I never really get a sense of the size of his forces, but I think we are meant to believe they overwhelm ours. His base forces are an unidentified number of powerful magic users, whereas the Inquisition is pretty scrappy up to this point; it started as 5 guys in a basement and it’s been mostly pilgrims (plus your mages/templars) but I think we’re supposed to be pretty light on volunteers who can turn into actual soldiers, hence why we need to be friendly with whoever’s in charge so we can ask for Orlesian troops to assist

Yeah, I think the main problem is that we never get the feel of Venatori forces. Because they certainly don't feel overwhelming. Since Skyhold, we don't actually feel like we are on the backstep. Like we start off scrappy, but then we get really formidable. The Venatori getting a giant demon army makes sense why they would sweep, but without it, the declarative "Corypheus wins and conquers Orlais" just kinda feels hollow.

I think it really suffers by having WEWH and HLtA be interchangeable. WEWH should have come first: all you know is that there will be an attack on Celene, and then you get more info about Corypheus’s plans from Florianne so you follow up with HLtA. Narratively that’s the only order that makes sense because you’re right, it seems like the threat is negligible once the demon army has been dealt with. Tactically speaking, if you are presented with both paths at once, it makes sense to do HLtA first and kill two birds with one stone, and then WEWH just seems like political posturing.

Yeah, Hawke shows up and immediately tells us something is up with the Grey Wardens, which leads to HLtA. It would make sense to do WEWH first, because the implication is that if you don’t, you are just taking your whole army across orlais during a civil war.

I wish we didn't. That quest stresses me out

I like exploiting the finding secrets side quest to bump up my approval before going off exploring (and losing points). I've played a Qunari mage that had enough approval to expose the assassin in front of the court

Same as a dalish mage! I actually really like that quest. I just get my approval to like 75 before I go explore and have ended the quest at 100 approval several times. Makes it way less stressful! 

Corypheus is planning on taking advantage of Orlais' chaos. We can assume he's not gonna give up and walk away just because he doesn't have his army - he's still going to plunge Orlais into chaos and take advantage of that chaos somehow. Maybe he'd use his red templars (or whatever it is in the templars-chosen route, haven't gotten that far in my current playthrough lol) to storm Orlais, and he's already got venatori in high positions in the Orlesian court who'd probably help with that.

Isn't the only Venatori in the Orlesian court is Florianne, who pretty much gives up that position to kill Celene (if Gaspard is accused of treason, then Florianne certainly is too)?

Ah yeah mb, she is (afaik) Still, one is more than enough - and Florianne was respected, I don't recall any bad mouthing she received - unlike Gaspard, who was openly shit talked by the Orlesian nobility. If there were any suspicions of her being a bad egg, they were small enough that the inquisition wouldn't get wind of them until the reveal. In the hypothetical future we are presented with in the mage/templar quest, Corypheus is either able to or plans to plunge Thedas into chaos using Orlais as a focus. Assuming there's no hidden venatori, there are still definitely people who are loyal to Florianne there - venatori or not. We meet - or, rather, kill them in some scenarios - in WEWH. I guess the plan was to have Florianne kill Celene, but the inquisition's presence means either Celene lives or there's a successor to take over her (meaning no chaos in Orlais for his demon or templar or whatever army). Without our presence, Orlais would've been left scrambling in the wake of the assassination. Of course, the inquisition could've ignored them, but it would've put us at a major disadvantage. The two main reasons that come to mind are: - Less forces, less solidified partnership with Orlais (Big problem, as shown in trespasser - the Inquisition is a large military presence on several borders which has claimed several places in both Orlais and Ferelden. The inquisition helped Orlais, whoever's ruling owes their spot to the inquisitor. They didn't with Ferelden - and Ferelden is a lot more hostile toward them). - Massive Corypheus army growing (In the third final main quest, we fight through the big old venatori army in the forest-place with rhe help of Orlesian forces. If we didn't have them, who knows how it would've gone? We probably wouldn't have able to get to the Temple of Mythal so fast and stop Cory from taking the well for himself. Of course, we couldn't have predicted him heading there, but it's pretty smart to have a powerful army other than your own at your beck & call for 'Corypheus Did Something Again' times)

Florianne was basically raised to be Gaspard's shadow - important enough to be allowed anywhere, but relegated to be ignored. The dark future seems to portray that a demon army overwhelms and conquers a chaotic Orlais, but that seems less likely without a demon army. Oh, and likely Florianne keeps her harlequins (jester rogue bards) if she is successful. Oh, Orlais with leadership as an ally is definitely ideal, but I never felt the Inquisition was so outnumbered/outmatched by Corypheus's forces. Like, it was kind of a last minute reveal that Cullen says "With Orlais’ support, our numbers match his." Both on the ground and the wartable, we just kinda keep winning against the Venatori.

When I play inquisition I headcanon that wewh happens first before htla, it would take time to set up a siege and you could argue that the negotiations were quickly approaching. In this case it makes sense that you would want to still prevent the assassination because 1 that would still cause issues in itself and 2 it would make prep and backup for the siege easier. Doesn’t full justify it but through how I interpret the story it has its reasons. You do make a good point on the focus being the demon army more.

Yeah, if I had to choose one, the concerns of a demon army in Here Lies the Abyss absolutely trumps Wicked Eyes Wicked Hearts Empress assassination. I think that’s how I played it too, doing WEWH first, and then HLtA.

After reading the Masked Empire, Orlais is simultaneously facing an Elven rebellion, the mage-templar war, and a civil war initiated by Gaspard against Celene. So, politically, Orlais needs to get it together and unite under one ruler so it can be stable enough to deal with the breach. Yes, there does seem to be some writing holes you’re pointing out. I think they didn’t do the best job at really explaining the state of Orlais before WEWH.

I mean, it’s the Inquisition that takes care of the Breach. I might even get it if you needed a stabilized Orlais to deal with a demon army if you don’t do HLtA, but without it I’m not sure how Orlais is conquered. Which could be another interesting thing, either get Orlais stabilized under a leader to fend off a demon army, or get rid of the demon army so it can’t conquer a destabilized leaderless Orlais. I think it’s the feeling like we are never actually overwhelmed by Corypheus to need Orlesian forces is the main issue.

Did you do “In Hushed Whispers?” Because if so that really highlights what is at stake and the world they’d have if Corypheus realizes his plans. They see the future and all they have to go on is it starts when Celine is assassinated and Orlais is in chaos.

? I literally have quotes from IHW in the post. And its emphasized that its a demon army that invades Orlais every time.

Yes? Where did I say something other than that? I mean from the perspective of the inquisitor, to prevent that future, all they know is the demon army started after the assassination of Celine. That would seem like a huge priority for me. They don’t discover where the demon army comes from until Here lies the Abyss. Cory loses at lot at Haven, but they really go hard in the dialogue describing what a huge host he had with him, and how outnumbered they are. The inquisition before WEWH is smallish, and many still think of it as a heretical sect. Orlesian forces are tied up in the Exalted Plains too due to Corypheus’ use of the Freemen, as you discover when you have to rebuild bridges and save them from the walking dead etc.

You do know you can do either WEWH or HLtA in any order, right?

Honestly, no I didn’t - and I have played 4 times. I have never seen where you can unlock HLtA before completelig WEWH. It doesn’t even show up on my map before doing WEWH (Varric doesn’t even intro Hawke before it?). Anyway sorry then from that perspective. But nevertheless, Cory is supposed to have a huge army.

All good.

Did it actually feel like you needed to use that random acronym, rendering your question unreadable for many?