An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):
… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.
Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.
What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.
However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.
Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.
It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …
