Aria is a Templar, she was born a Templar to a Templar family.
She was trained to be a Templar – but when the time came, she didn’t not take
the Oath. Despite her mother’s nagging. Despite living in poverty and no work
skills, she refuses to take that Oath and accept the comfortable life that
comes with it
But as a Templar she is still consulted by the local
vampires who want expertise in deciphering a magical symbol – an exposing a
deadly and complicated feud in the process.
One of the storyline elements I most loved was the
central question “what have the Templars become?”
The concept has a lot of really nice nuance on it – and a
really interesting moral quandary and debate with no simple answers and lots of
different facets.
On the one hand, we have the utter passivity of the
Templars, their lack of interference, how they’ve become rather irrelevant in
the modern world (even if they are still a deeply feared power) and how they
general live lives of extreme wealth and comfort while giving nothing back.
This is wonderfully part of Aria‘s own refusal to take the Oath, while still
claiming identity with the Templars themselves. She believes in them, but isn’t
comfortable with what they’ve become.
The flip side is, we have the Templar’s own genocidal
history. We have a history that shows the Templars judging, picking sides,
declaring various beings evil and generally not being proud of that. The debate
is whether they don’t act because few things are that simplistic (especially in
a multi-faith world, exactly who are the “pilgrims” on WHAT “path” that need
protecting) or whether that’s an excuse for the passivity?
