Cole (Dragon Age)

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Character
Name: Cole
Occupation:
Relationships: Bunny (sister, deceased)
Maryden Halewell (girlfriend, player-determinant)
Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Other: Cole at Dragon Age Wiki

Cole by Liedeke
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Cole is a character in the Dragon Age franchise. He was first introduced in a story in the novel Dragon Age: Asunder and later appeared as a recruitable companion character in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Canon

In Dragon Age: Asunder, Cole is a young mage who was arrested by Templars after killing his abusive father, and was taken to The Spire, where he was tortured before being forgotten and starving to death in a remote cell. The spirit of compassion the mage had befriended assumed his personality, memories, and appearance, becoming corporeal in the process. This spirit had the unique ability to sense the pain of mortals and to make himself unseen. He became the mysterious "Ghost of the Spire," killing mages and spreading terror through the Spire. To him, these killings were not murders, but acts of mercy intended to spare mages the torments of the Circle. He eventually stopped and left the Spire.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Cole can be recruited to join the Inquisition, professing a desire to help people even it means killing. He is unfamiliar with the workings of the mortal world due to his origins as a Fade spirit. Varric, Solas, and the Inquisitor become his mentors. Varric encourages him to connect more with his humanity, while Solas guides him to embrace his spirit side. Cole's decision can be determined by the player.

Fannish Perspectives

Shipping & Asexuality

Due to his naive nature, some fans view Cole as child-like or even "child-coded," and thus find shipping him with other characters to be problematic or tantamount to child abuse.[1][2] Others fans see Cole as too alien to be interested in romantic/sexual relationships or headcanon him as asexual. It is possible for Cole to end up in a relationship with female NPC Maryden Halewell in the Trespasser DLC if he embraces his humanity in Inquisition.[3]

People get weird about Cole on both sides, seems like. I wouldn't say he's a child exactly. Physically he's in his twenties, mentally and emotionally he seems innocent and asexual (or rather, he seems curious about sexual things, but only when it's other people doing them; he doesn't seem to be that interested in having sex or a relationship himself), but he's a spirit, so I'm not sure you can meaningfully measure any kind of age when it comes to him. I think in his current state a romance would be kind of weird - maybe if he matures a little and starts showing any actual interest in romantic stuff, then a romance might work. I think it's going too far to call someone a pedophile or creepy for shipping or not shipping him though.

changhyun (2014)[1]

The idea of a Cole romance creeps me out a whole lot. Even if someone imagines it happening after Inquisition events, Cole still has a long way to go, so much more to learn about the world and how to live in it. And who is to say he will even be interested in that sort of thing anyway. An asexual Cole would make sense to me. For me personally I'm one of those that calls Cole my baby...but I do that for plenty of characters. He's adorable and curious and I feel protective. As for my inquisitor, he was like an older brother type. Cole could be weird or aggravating at times, especially bringing up private things when he shouldn't, but he still looked out for him and didn't want him to be mistreated. He might be a weird spirit thing in an ugly hat but he's my weird spirit thing in an ugly hat.

ma-ma-ma-macaroni (2014)[1]

In a 2021 academic paper, Melissa Shani Brown and Nichola Lucy Partridge presented an asexual reading of Cole, finding that DA:I's writing others and infantilizes him in its equation of sexual desire with humanity:[4]

Problematically, Cole's asexuality is depicted as something which needs to be overcome in order for him to become 'human'—the alternative being to remain a spirit within a human shell, a masquerade of a human being without full understanding of 'human experience'. If not a conscious depiction of asexuality, Cole nevertheless illustrates a wider social tension around the place of active sexuality as regards both masculinity and 'personhood'. Beyond the scope of this game, this reflects wider social presumptions about human sexuality, reinforcing the notion of asexuality as deficient, or at best a type of immaturity, perhaps particularly for men.

Brown & Partridge (2021)

Brown and Partridge held that Cole's story arc reinforces not only compulsory sexuality but heteronormativity by positioning a het relationship as an exclusive outcome of the human path:[4]

Cole confounds the clear separation between human and spirit in managing to be both simultaneously; what is of import to his narrative is that his interstitiality is read by the other characters, and ludologically built into the game, as something to overcome—that is, fix, much like his absent interest in sex. If pursued, his personal quest involves seeking out the Templar who was responsible for the death of the "real Cole" who starved to death in prison, the former inhabitant of his body. When the Templar is found, the PC is given governance over Cole's future in the form of two choices: "Cole must forgive this. (Cole becomes more like a spirit)." or "Cole needs to grow. (Cole becomes more human)." They both involve letting the murderer go free, but choosing to become 'more human' has particular repercussions for Cole's asexuality. Becoming 'more human' is described as a type of 'growth', which could be read as another example of infantilization, but it also emphasizes the non‐humanness of his current state. This 'becoming human' is presented as an imagined path not only towards 'real personhood', but also towards 'heteronormative manhood':

Blackwall: So now that you've dealt with the Templar, you're a real boy?
Cole: Realer.
Blackwall: Good enough. I suppose you'll stop looking into people's heads soon? ... Soon you'll be eating properly. Then drinking. Then drinking for real. Then girls.

The future-oriented masculinity reinforces reading his current masculinity as ambiguous, or lacking certain masculine capital (alcohol and sexual conquests). Blackwall's prediction of Cole's future not only includes him becoming less spirit‐like (not reading memories), but also 'drinking for real' and 'girls'—his path from 'real boy' to 'real man' is laid out as part of what it fundamentally means to become human. This path is later fulfilled in DA:I Trespasser DLC (BioWare 2015):

Dorian: You have a lady friend?
Cole: Well, I am human now.

Cole's becoming‐sexual (if that is what this relationship is) is here explicitly represented as a signifier of his becoming‐human, inversely situating asexuality as signifying the non‐human. What Cole's relationship entails is not further explored (is it even, in fact, 'sexual'?)—his 'having’ of a 'lady‐friend' is treated as a fact for his humanity which does not need further exploration. That these are Cole's own words also means that it is harder to read such 'hetero‐sexual‐humanity' as only projected onto him by other characters—he implicitly legitimates this as a sign of his own becoming‐human.

Brown & Partridge (2021)

Lead BioWare writer David Gaider argued in a 2015 Tumblr post that explorations of asexuality in future Dragon Age games would require "in-game discussion" that he felt would be difficult in the series' "quasi-medieval setting":[5]

As Patrick and I discussed at GamerX last year, the thing we see more likely is allowing the player more opportunity to have romances where sex wasn't a necessary part of it — I didn't dictate that this needed to be the case in DAI, but I asserted to the writers that they needn't feel required to include sex in their romances, and that’s why some of them don't need to go there (like Dorian) or leave it out entirely (like Josephine). Whether we would make that a requirement in the future, I'm not really sure. We slightly change our approach to follower writing and romances in particular with each outing, so it really depends.

Insofar as including asexuality specifically, my difficulty with it remains the same as with other—shall we say more complicated?—forms of sexuality…in that the only way to really include them is to allow for an in-game discussion of that sexuality. You can't just show it, you have to talk about it, and that gets a bit more difficult in a quasi-medieval setting where the notions and terms aren’t the same as in our own modern society.

Not impossible, mind you (as Krem certainly shows—though if you didn't stop and talk to Krem about his transgender nature, would it still count? Would people even have been aware? The discussion had to be deliberate, and there’s not always an opportunity for that), but it’s certainly a hurdle. I’d say the entire team is aware there are fans who would like to see more stuff like that, so I’ll just say it’s possible and we’ll leave it at that for now.

David Gaider on Tumblr (2015)

Neurodivergent Interpretations

Patrick Weekes stated in a 2016 interview with BioFan that they drew on elements of autism spectrum disorder when writing Cole in Dragon Age: Inquisition. However, when directly asked whether Cole might be considered autistic on Twitter in 2014, Weekes replied that they saw likening an otherworldly spirit to an autistic person as "insulting to neuroatypical folks."[6]

Cole was in many ways high-school Patrick. It's high-school Patrick merged with Cole from Dragon Age: Asunder, the novel that David Gaider wrote where Cole first appeared. So I took that and I said, Okay, this is a character...he's young, he's figuring himself out, he is so sensitive. He is so unversed in how people work [...] He's looking for people who can teach him what it means to be people. And while I don't identify as being part of the autism spectrum or the neuroatypical spectrum, there's elements of that that run in my family. I know what the experience of being overstimulated, emotionally overwhelmed, having to withdraw and get off into a place where I can just sort of tap the wall to reconnect with reality again. That's a part of me. And that was something that I took to Cole and said, this is Cole. Cole is in a world, he is a raw nerve, he has no filters that can help -- that can protect him from all the senses he's being bombarded with and is totally unprepared for. And this is how he reacts and deals with it. That's why he's part sponge, just soaking up everyone's pain and hurt and then voicing it at inappropriate times, and part of why he has to withdraw sometimes.

Patrick Weekes (2016)[7]

Some autistic fans have nonetheless embraced the interpretation of Cole as autistic or having autistic traits, particularly as an accurate, relatable reflection of sensory overload and emotional hypersensitivity in an autistic adult.

So, when I played Inquisition for the first time I noticed the specific moments of Cole expressing autistic traits occurred during his personal quest where he becomes incredibly emotional and distraught, having what is described by the autistic community as a "meltdown". He gets angry, to the point where verbal reasoning fails and storms off. Other times include some of his mannerisms and actions I subtly noticed, such as how he often gestures with his hands when speaking and the tilts of his head. Another noticeable aspect was the lack of eye contact - a very common trait of autistic individuals.

Perhaps my favorite trait that corresponds to autism with Cole is his empathy. He is incredibly empathetic and understanding; both because he is written as a spirit who literally embodies compassion and because autistic people tend to be more empathetic and able to feel emotions more deeply than neurotypical individuals, even if they cannot understand the more subtle nuances and social cues behind them.

Speaking of social cues... during some party banters, Cole often uses his powers to read minds, often without permission and not realizing what he is doing is wrong or off-putting. I noticed when party members told him to stop, Cole often ignored them or simply went quiet. This lack of social cue understanding is another big part of autism.

Sythra (2016)[8]

I know a lot of people think the autistic child with magic powers is over done. Cole is an ADULT an Adult with Asd a trope that is often overlooked in a society where it's hard for adults with disabilities to get service or jobs or even be recognized.

Higheverweave (2018)[9]

In light of these interpretations, some see the shipping controversy, specifically the interpretation of Cole as a child or child-like entity, as perpetuating ableist stereotypes.

Cole isn't a baby, and he doesn’t need to be emotionally protected from the dirty sex stuff.

Canonically based off an autistic child, he's an adult with autistic characteristics. Who has narrated with fine clarity what was going through the Inquisitor's head while they're being screwed senseless. He only asks what an Orlesian tickler is because it’s a sex toy. Idfk what it is either, I'd ask too.

Cole understands so much more than people give him credit for.

MasterOfOne (2020)[10]

Patrick Weeks confirmed Cole is an autistic adult - so comparing him to a child is incredibly infantilizing and ableist.

Elvenasscheek (c. 2020)[11]

Fanworks

Fanart

Cosplay

Art Gallery

  • Cole by Delomia

    Cole by Delomia

  • The forgotten boy by Ephdrawz

    The forgotten boy by Ephdrawz

  • Chibi art of Cole by Eve F.

    Chibi art of Cole by Eve F.

  • Cole by Erika H.

    Cole by Erika H.

  • Cole by Liedeke

    Cole by Liedeke

  • Cole wearing a flower crown by Liedeke.

    Cole wearing a flower crown by Liedeke.

  • Spirit by Liedeke

    Spirit by Liedeke

  • Art by Ben Masi

    Art by Ben Masi

  • Cole - The Spirit by trisketched

    Cole - The Spirit by trisketched

  • Cole by veroniikus

    Cole by veroniikus

Resources

References

  1. ^ a b c "What's the general opinion on Cole in regards to the relationship between him and the Inquisitor? [Slight spoilers]" post on r/dragonage on Reddit
  2. ^ Meta by dragonageconfessions
  3. ^ "Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC - Cole and his girlfriend" on YouTube
  4. ^ a b Melissa Shani Brown & Nichola Lucy Partridge, "'Strangely Like a Person': Cole and the Queering of Asexuality in Dragon Age: Inquisition", Sexuality & Culture, Volume 25, Issue 3, June 2021
  5. ^ Reblog from The DGaider Tumblr Archives (2015)
  6. ^ Tweet by @patrickweekes
  7. ^ "BioFan Interview | Patrick Weekes [BioWare Lead Writer for Dragon Age]" on YouTube
  8. ^ "[DAI Spoilers] Cole and Autism" post on r/dragonage on Reddit
  9. ^ Meta by Higheverweave on Tumblr
  10. ^ "[Spoilers All] What are some common misinterpretations/misconceptions in the fandom that irrate you?" post on r/dragonage on Reddit
  11. ^ Note by Elvenasscheek on a post dated August 4, 2020 by dragonageconfessions on Tumblr
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