http://nkjemisin.com/2015/02/a-world-in-which-race-matters/

Case in point, since we’re talking about Dragon Age Inquisition: Vivienne. She’s an awesome character in so many ways: powerful, occasionally vulnerable, subtly manipulating events to her advantage at every turn, and not at all shy about telling the player she’s doing so. But she’s also a painfully incomplete character. We meet her love interest at one point, Duke Bastien — but unlike other playable characters in the game who have lovers*, we know nothing about him beyond what Vivienne tells us (and Vivienne’s an unreliable narrator). She seems to have no friends, only allies and enemies. And what is she? Nearly everyone else in the game has an origin or a “people” — among the humans, there’s the various nationalities, and then subsets of the nationalities (e.g. the Chantry-worshippers vs the Disciples of Andraste/Havenites vs the Chasind, among the Ferelden). Vivienne has nothing. She’s a Circle Mage — but by her own admission she’s spent little time in her Circle (and her attachment is apparently to the Circle system as a whole, not any Circle in particular). She says that each Circle has its own unique customs, but which one(s) does she follow? We don’t know. She wears the trappings of Orlesian nobility but only so that she can effectively play the Game; she’s not really one of them and shows that she understands this in a variety of ways. She was born in the Free Marches but retains nothing of that identity but the accent. She’s not Rivaini — doesn’t share the physical characteristics of Isabela and Duncan, like light brown skin and straight hair, and clearly isn’t acculturated as such — but then what is her race? Does it even have a name? This is the problem: Vivienne is affiliated with many groups but few of them seem to have contributed anything to who she’s become. She’s the only playable black woman seen in the entire trilogy of games so far, and she is cultureless, rootless, and quintessentially raceless.

How much better a character could Vivienne have been if, when Bull complained about the lack of horn balm, Vivienne complained back about the difficulty of finding a hairdresser in Val Royeaux who had the skill to handle her kinky hair when it’s grown out (which might explain why she wears it now in such a short, if high-maintenance, style; good grief, the poor woman must have to shave and edge every day)? What if, when Sera complains about raisin cookies, Vivienne sends her a box of some confection that only Vivienne, out of all Skyhold, knows how to make? What if Vivienne spoke of her family, as several of the other playable characters do — if not the people who birthed her, then the family she forged within one of the Circles she lived in? Apparently at some point in the game, some of the Orlesian nobles make disparaging comments about her skin color and how she must “disappear in the dark”; what if we knew that she laughed at this because where she came from, her particular shade of blackness was prized? How much more resonant a character might she have been if she had a complete history, a unique accent and cultural trappings, and some reason for trying to gain power other than “because she wants to”? How much more interesting are those DA characters for whom we do have this level of completeness?

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."