Solas and taking responsibility
One thing that always strikes me about Solas in DAI is that he didn't have to join the Inquisition. We know he had a number of agents at that time; he could have sent someone as a spy and instructed them from afar. But it was his mistake, and his responsibility to fix it. And he really commits: he spends weeks walking around the Hinterlands. He helps chase that druffalo back to the farm. He gets soaked and muddy in the Fallow Mire. He sleeps in an uncomfortable tent, and is good-humoured about Sera putting lizards in his bedroll.
We see this in his memories of the rebellion too: he's not commanding from a distance, he's right there on the ground with his people. He doesn't ask anyone to do anything he isn't willing to do himself. I always think of this when he's described as prideful, because yes, he is, but in many ways he's also surprisingly humble. Compare him to the other beings we've encountered of similar age and power – it's impossible to imagine Elgar'nan or Corypheus lowering themselves to sleep on the ground and hunt food for refugees. Even Mythal just watches history from a distance and intervenes briefly: Flemeth sends Morrigan with the HOF rather than joining up and walking across Ferelden herself.
For me, this is one of Solas' best qualities: he takes responsibility for his mistakes and does what has to be done to make things right, even if it's unglorious hard work. But part of his tragedy is that it's this very quality that goes wrong in the end: he takes more and more responsibility on himself and becomes so self-reliant that he loses the ability to trust and pushes everyone away. I know some people see this as pride as well, but for me it really seems to come from a combination of trauma from past betrayals and self-loathing. His task is 'a price that I alone will pay,' he says to the Inquisitor, and he means it. He exhausts himself doing everything himself because he thinks he deserves it, because asking someone else for help would make him too vulnerable.
But in the end it all comes full circle, because joining the Inquisition is the thing that saves him. He didn't have to do it; he joined to take responsibility for his mistake, to punish himself. And yet somehow, it was a time of unexpected, unbelievable happiness. He found the love of his life. He found a way out of the prison of his past, even if it took a few years to get there. He was trying to hurt himself and instead he stumbled upon the road home.
