[Another surprise, the admission that the Circles carried too high of a cost. It runs counter to the earlier statement of the Circles keeping them and everyone else safe, but the context of the conversation helps him see, he thinks, more of where Myrobalan is coming from.]

I started with advantages. I will never know what it is to be an elf, to know that hatred. I'd numbers and letters so that I could inherit and run the family cow farm when I was of age and my father was retired. It was not a luxurious life, but it was a life I was happy with.

Then I was taken somewhere I did not speak the language, punished for insolence when I did not understand, and it set the tone for the next decade and a half of my life. It took and took, and I learned what it was to be seen as a thing rather than a person. I don't believe a place truly run by mages could do that to mages. I think we would see each other.

Would you see the same value and chance in a place that's divorced from the Chantry and run by mages? If we built something without Templars?