He nods acknowledgment.

"Did the thing for the poison work?"

"Yep!"

"Oh good."

"Yeah. Do I need to explain the political situation? Elissa does a better job, but I'm not bad."

"It sounded complicated and stupid and I did not follow it all."

"It's a bit complicated and many parts of it are stupid. How much did you catch? Do you want me to have a go at explaining the rest?"

"There was a fight with more darkspawn than could be reasonably fought, some of the army ran away, the person who led them away is now being hostile to Grey Wardens."

"That's a fairly reasonable summary."

"I'm unclear on why."

"Why the Regent is hostile to Grey Wardens?"

"Yes, I can think of various reasons to run from darkspawn."

"...A few decades ago there was a war between Ferelden and Orlais. Loghain fought in that war. Now he doesn't trust anything foreign and especially not if it has anything to do with Orlais. Grey Wardens as an organization don't belong to any one country, and the nearest other Grey Wardens outside of Ferelden are in Orlais because it's the closest other country around. So the Grey Wardens say 'we want to bring in reinforcements from Orlais' and he hears 'we're working with those horrible people who did horrible things to you and your country'... it's not reasonable but it's understandable."

"Is that why those people were angry when they thought I was an Orlesian elf? What was the war about?"

"Yes, that's why those people were angry when they thought you were an Orlesian elf. The war was because - if I said Orlais briefly conquered Ferelden, would I have to explain 'conquer', somehow I suspect it's not a concept that comes up a lot in your daily life -"

"There was war up to around when I was born and my husband writes history books so I might have the concept, but I don't have that word yet."

"The rulers of Orlais decided that they wanted to also rule Ferelden and the people of Ferelden decided that they did not want that and they fought and Orlais won. The war Loghain fought was when the king of Ferelden reclaimed his kingdom from the Orlesians."

"- why'd he do that, why have another war over the same thing -"

"...What do you mean?"

"Were the Orlesians very bad at ruling...? I mean, they did decide to kill a lot of people, but that doesn't seem very unusual here, was the king of Ferelden a lot better."

"...there's a piece you're missing here and I'm trying to figure out what it is and how to explain it... it's not that the Orlesians were bad at ruling in general, they seem to do an adequate job with Orlais, but when one country conquers another, the conquerors usually do not prioritize the comfort of the conquered. And losing one war about it did not make the people of Ferelden any less upset about being ruled by Orlesians."

"...why did Orlais want to rule Ferelden?"

"Oh, if you were imagining they had anything resembling a good reason, that might explain it. They didn't. It would be more or less accurate to summarize their reasons as 'they just kind of felt like it'."

"...that's - not even stupid, that's -"

"I'm not sure exactly what word you're looking for there but I think you've got the right idea," says Stalas. "Wars of conquest are bad."