I'm reading a book (Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet) with a section on witchcraft and its prosecution by the Church, and it strikes me that the version of this that we get in the Dragon Age series might deserve more credit than it generally receives. Like most things about the story of Dragon Age, the story of the Chantry is usually dismissed as stock fantasy fare, and it is, to an extent: mages and knights and templars and God and so forth. But it's also an approach to witchcraft that said, not just let's prosecute it, but let's also take over the policing of those inflicted with it, and let's use them as weapons as well. It's an idea with some legs to it, I think--taking the real-life idea and forcing it one step further. The great advantage of fantasy, in my opinion, is less the use of magic and more the chance to look through human culture and nature through slightly different lenses.
Later Days.
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