Orzammar's Most Ill-Suited Deshyr
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age.
Lord Denek Helmi was, by and large, more miserable than a man in his position ought to be…or so he was often informed. On the Surface, it would appear that they were right. He was one of only eighty deshyrs who made up the Assembly who ruled Orzammar and could only be checked by the King. He was from one the most prominent families in Orzammar and so while he was the youngest deshyr there he was also afforded more power than most. He had cordial relations with his sisters and regular advice from his mother and predecessor. As a noble he was also given free rein to do pretty much as he pleased and there were no limits on his material possessions.
So why, many wondered, did he seem to hate it all so? It wasn't just that Denek seemed to resent all that he'd been given – hate seemed a bit strong although on some days it seemed an appropriate description – but he really did. He was a deshyr, true, and House Helmi was a powerhouse but his mother still tried to issue her orders through him and usually he let her. She was so much better at this kind of thing than he was and she certainly cared more. If Denek had his way than he would have just passed along the deshyr seat to one of his sisters but Adal was even less interested in politics than he was and focused on fighting and his other sister wouldn't be any better.
Not to mention, of course, how frightfully unpopular Denek was with the other deshyrs. Make no mistake, he would have resented his position either way but had the people he had to deal with on a daily basis been friendlier it might not have been quite so bad. But no, he was quite thoroughly resented by his peers and the sentiment was more than returned. They were all the same: well-dressed, blood-sucking cave ticks without any concern for anything past winning their petty games even though it was destroying Orzammar. Sometimes Denek wondered if it was that they really couldn't see Orzammar crumbling around them, choked by their precious tradition or if they just didn't care. Sometimes he didn't want to know as he honestly wasn't sure which was worse, the blindness or the apathy.
And he was oh so very aware of what trouble the city was in. To begin with, it was a city masquerading as an empire. The nobles – his fellow nobles, he reminded himself – spent their time plotting each other's downfall, focused on pleasure, or keeping the lower castes 'in their place.' The first only served to prevent anything from really getting done or anybody from trusting anybody (he only dared trust his own sisters due to their disinterest in politics), the second just proved how wasteful they could be when there were dwarves – casteless, yes, but still dwarves – starving in the street, and the third was highly unnecessary.
The others insisted that only one nobly born could possibly be a deshyr and while Denek had to agree that someone not born and raised to expect poison in their tea might not be able to keep up with the other deshyrs but that didn't mean that they wouldn't be able to rule Orzammar. In fact, get rid of all the corrupt deshyrs and offer less hedonistic people from all wakes of life the chance to rule and see how that went. If nothing else, it couldn't be worse than it was right now. Maybe they could actually get people who cared about Orzammar's future or knew what they were doing and not people like him who had the misfortune to be the eldest child of a deshyr himself.
He knew that that idea would never be popular with his fellow deshyrs. They had power, as little that they did to actually deserve it, and so they were loathe to give it up to those that they considered beneath them. They didn't even feel that those who were not of the noble or warrior caste should have a right to bear arms which, as hard as Denek tried to grasp this, he simply couldn't understand. They weren't 'good enough' to die to try to save Orzammar? They certainly were if they joined the Legion. Provings were a viable way to solve disputes because the winner was determined by who the Ancestors favored? Then why not let anybody in? Why not let the casteless compete? If they were truly so worthless and bereft of Ancestors then shouldn't they, logically, lose every time? Of course, if that little casteless girl – Brosca, he thought it was – hadn't not just won but completely dominated the Proving she'd snuck into then maybe that belief would be a bit more sound. The last time he had suggested further opening the Provings the man he was talking to had actually tackled him. So much for prim and proper deshyrs.
The fact that Denek didn't really get the point of the casteless hardly set him apart from his peers. The fact that, while they insisted that those unfortunate enough to be born with a casteless parent of the same sex never should have been born, he felt that they should have a place in society did. Regardless of whether or not they should exist – he had had that argument far too many times as it was – they did exist and so it was just throwing away a valuable resource to let Dust Town remain overpopulated and then fretting about how there weren't enough men to face the darkspawn.
While he had never been there, of course, and his knowledge of it was extremely limited, he'd heard from a few of the Surface casteless merchants (who were easily identifiable by the temporary brand they'd applied) that on the Surface there were no castes. Things were hardly equal, he had been assured, especially if you happened to be an elf but the current Queen of Ferelden was a woman whose father had been born a farmer. Farmers had no place in the caste system of Orzammar but it seemed to Denek that it would be roughly the equivalent of a miner. While such a thing was uncommon it was still doable.
On the Surface, the nobles rarely fought on the front lines but relied on the common folk to fight for them. While that hardly presented a picture of a more altruistic and dedicated nobility, there were opportunities for the lesser born up there that could barely even be conceived of down here in Orzammar. It sounded…nice. It sounded like something that could help Orzammar survive if they adopted it.
It sounded like if he suggested it then he'd get tackled again.
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