In Dragon Age, the most enduring battle isn’t always against dragons or demons. It’s between mages and templars. On one side are people born with dangerous gifts they never asked for. On the other, an armored order claiming the right to cage, suppress, and kill them “for the greater good.”
It’s an old story: the powerful justifying control through fear. And if it sounds like fantasy, look around in 2025. We’re living it.
The Prison of “Protection”
Mages in Dragon Age live in Circles, tower-prisons where they’re monitored, drugged, and sometimes lobotomized through the “Tranquil” ritual. Templars argue it’s necessary. After all, mages who lose control can unleash catastrophic magic.
But what’s really happening is systemic fearmongering. Ordinary citizens, told constantly that mages are dangerous, accept the cage as “safety.” That logic is chillingly familiar today. From surveillance states to laws restricting bodily autonomy and identity expression, governments and religious institutions justify intrusion by painting freedom as a threat.
The message is always the same: “We’re taking your rights to protect you.”
The Church and the State
The Chantry, Dragon Age’s dominant religious institution, guides faith and runs politics. The templars answer to the Divine, and to resist the Chantry’s authority is to risk excommunication, imprisonment, or worse.
Sound familiar? In 2025, the marriage of religious dogma and political power remains strong. Abortion rights roll back in the name of morality. LGBTQ+ communities are silenced under the guise of tradition. Leaders invoke faith to justify exclusionary policies, while opponents are painted as dangerous heretics to the national soul.
The Chantry’s voice echoes: “Obedience is order. Dissent is chaos.”
Fear as a Political Weapon
Here’s the dangerous truth Dragon Age makes explicit: fear isn’t just a reaction, it’s a tool. The Chantry amplifies the risk of abominations to keep mages under control. The worse the fear, the stronger the templars’ hand.
In our world, the script hasn’t changed. Fear of terrorism, extremism, misinformation, or “outsiders” drives mass surveillance, censorship, and militarized policing. Politicians frame whole communities—immigrants, trans people, political opponents—as existential threats. Fear justifies crackdowns. Fear makes the cage look like protection.
And fear, left unchecked, always escalates.
When Oppression Breeds Resistance
The mage-templar conflict spirals because neither side is entirely wrong. Magic is dangerous. But oppression doesn’t prevent danger. It multiplies it. When people are denied freedom, they don’t disappear. They resist, and in resisting, they sometimes embrace the very extremes used to justify their oppression in the first place.
In Dragon Age, this means mages turn to blood magic or form rebel armies. In our world, it means alienated communities radicalize, fractured societies polarize, and trust in institutions collapses.
Oppression breeds the instability it claims to prevent.
The Choice Before Us
By the time Dragon Age: Inquisition opens, the system has collapsed. The Circles are gone, the templars splintered, and the Chantry is in chaos. The world has to ask: if the old order was built on fear and cages, what comes next?
That’s the question facing us in 2025. How long can we keep trading freedom for the illusion of safety? How long can religious institutions dictate politics before faith becomes tyranny? How long can we live in fear of each other before the system cracks entirely?
Fantasy worlds like Thedas give us distance, but not escape. The mage-templar war is our reflection, and it forces a choice: build a future on fear, or on trust and freedom.
Because if Dragon Age teaches us anything, it’s this: cages don’t hold forever.