Oh, fire! Though unfed, you reduce my heart to ashes! You burn in secret, and do not consume. You scorch my heart, but give me the outward semblance of being unburnt, even though your fingers have gripped me to the bones and the marrow, and to the splitting of my soul!
-Anna Comnena, The Alexiad
The Bones and the Marrow and the Soul's Splitting
Of all the Landsmeet outcomes she envisions, her father's murder at the hand of a tattooed Dalish savage isn't one. Her throne, as well, is lost. On it, a king's bastard; behind it, the elf, her eyes sharp and merciless as assassin's knives. They say she learned her trade from the Crow sent to kill her.
So be it. Anora doesn't believe in easy solutions. She learned this: self-control, thoroughness, perseverance. Tears are only as effective as the kindness of those bearing witness. You get knocked down, you get up again.
A chill, miserly rain soaks through her blood-splattered dress as they escort her to the tower. She takes careful stock of her new home: gray walls, drafty corridors, mold-savaged tapestries proclaiming the glory of Andraste. Wind howls outside, bringing with it the Darkspawn Horde, a black plague ready to engulf the world. Hands clasped, teeth chattering, Anora forbids herself to hope the bastard dies and the elf survives.
When they meet again, the bastard rules Ferelden. The elf makes one short visit to the tower after the coronation.
"Renounce your claim, Anora," she pleads. "Take your father's ashes and go back to Gwaren. Rebuild the Mac Tir name."
"You don't deserve to speak my father's name, Warden."
A tremor flicks through the elf's fingers. "Be reasonable, Anora."
"Warden, I am afraid we must once again disagree on the meaning of 'reason'."
"All I ask is that you realize your life depends on the choices you make."
Anora has no illusions about who wields the power now, but she knows power games too well not to recognize the bastard's lover wouldn't be here if she didn't find Anora a threat. She studies the elf in silence for an overlong moment and imagines what it might have been like had Cailan won at Ostagar, had her father survived the Landsmeet, had the past been a different monster to contend with. At length she says, "We both know Maric's bastard hasn't the backbone for an execution."
The elf's steel-cold eyes narrow; torchlight accents the stark geometry of her cheekbones, turns the barbaric scrawl of her tattoos into garbled shadows.
"Yet, Anora. Yet."
"It is good to know the gloves are off, Warden."
The elf nods slowly, with an inward look. She seems to be weighing responses, though in the end she says nothing more consequential than, "Very well."
"Good bye, Warden." Anora turns her back. She's her father's daughter, and she will not be intimidated by a love-drunk girl whose only skill is wielding daggers as sharp as her ambition.
The bastard has a long way to go before he can consolidate power, and none of his court can match her deftness with the tangled politics of the Bannorn. She can wait. If they hope to wear her down, they will fail. Her laughter might have died with Cailan, but her resolve was tempered in her father's blood. His legacy survives in her, marking her to the marrow, and when the next fight comes, as she knows it will, she will not be the one who will break.