I love the feel of a sword in my hand. Even now, when my body almost creaks more than my armor, it makes me feel like I can control something. This is what I know, to my bones.
My entire life taught me that you have to be prepared to do anything to protect what you love. And above all else, I love Ferelden. Above myself, above my daughter, above everything.
I was a child, really, though I would have tried to hurt anyone who called me thus. My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer's wife. Our life was not glamorous, or rich, but it was our own, and we relied on very few others. I was taught to ride on the broad-backed mare that pulled the wagon, laden with extra produce, to the closest village. I was taught to hunt, and if the occasional arrow found an Orleisian interloper, well that was just bad luck on his part, wasn't it.
One of my arrows, with its gray and yellow fletching and banding, had rested in the hand of the lieutenant who came to our farm with his six men behind him. They had shouted in Orleisian, then barely intelligible threats in the trade tongue.
She refused to give me up to them. My father nearly pulled his arms from their sockets to get to her. I had black bruises on my arms where they held me back. They held her down and raped her in front of us, and then slit her throat. Then they laughed that it was more punishment to let us live, threw us off the farm and gave it to some lordling to run into the ground.
During the rebellion, I thought of that moment frequently when I put another yellow and gray arrow through the throat of another Orleisian pig.
I've never been rational about Orlais, even if I have good reasons to despise everything about them. Like many things people know about themselves, it helps much less often than one would think.
How much of my devotion is love for Ferelden, and how much is hate for Orlais? How much is love for Maric? My love of my country, Maric and Rowan have always been a tangled ball of confusion.
I loved Rowan, but she was promised to my friend, Maric (only incidentally my prince). She learned of That Elf Woman and came to me, hurt and betrayed. I would have left them all, woman, prince, rebellious army, to keep from betraying him. Did I stay because of her, or because of him, or because his army was my best chance to hurt the Orleisians? Or some combination? I swore fealty to the prince that day, to strengthen my resolve to not betray the man. He cast her aside, and she ran into my arms. I pushed them back together, ensured the death of the spying elf, because I knew he would not be half the king without her.
Which was stronger, then: my love of Maric, Rowan or Ferelden?
Of course, that presupposes that love is something that can be weighed and measured, like gold, or grain, or horse manure.
think the slide began when I decided I needed Howe. I have a tactical mind, but only for battle, not these political twistings. Howe has always been a devious weasel that I wouldn't trust with a bucket of piss. But his loyalty could be bought, so I did.
Did he want Bryce dead to retrieve his family's former holdings? Out of envy over Bryce's greater acclaim? So he would have more land to divide between his children? Or just because he was a bitter, paranoid little man who couldn't do anything without turning it to evil?
His father was one of the first nobles to pledge themselves to Maric. He died for his troubles and eventually Rendon returned from where he'd been hidden, barely more than a child. For all his youth, no one played the balancing game between we rebels and maggot Meghren better, Maker damn both of them. When he finally had no choice but to join us, he was one of the few to make it out of White River. I wonder sometimes who he betrayed to manage that, but I've seen him fight when backed into a corner. So have you, if you've ever seen a rat cornered by a terrier.
His ideas, most of it, but I agreed to all of it, to save Ferelden. Eventually I learned to close my ears and mumble my assent, scribble my name on the paper. I would do what had to be done.
It started small enough, when Cailen refused to listen to me. His messenger, Duncan's messenger, to the Orleisian wardens, never made it out of Denerim. I never believed Duncan wasn't involved in those happenings with the Tower, twenty years ago, to tell you the truth.
And then my payment to Howe was made. He had butchered his good friend Bryce Cousland's family. I needed to sweep it under the rug – and help ensure in time that Highever was his. I agreed to his demands and returned to Ostagar.
Still Cailen's head was stuffed full of nonsense about glory and legend, propped up by the grey wardens. Self-important frauds, that's what I thought at the time.
Maric's bastard whelp, that Alistair, he looks like a king. All shiny armor and lineless face. Kings don't have black hair and bags under their eyes. Howe once tried to persuade me to give up my armor, that it was too dark. The armor I took from the body of a dead chevalier at the battle of River Dane, the battle that made me the Hero of Ferelden!
River Dane was thirty years ago. And when the war was past, I left court for so long… So many who didn't know who I was, when I returned, what I had done for this country. The ones who were there when I returned whispered that I all but ruled for Maric, after Rowan's death. Some days they were right.
Cailan looked like a king. Maric looked like a king from start to finish. I look like a disgruntled aging farmer. My daughter looks like a Queen, for all her common blood, and I made her one. There was no political advantage to Maric in that, but between our friendship and throwing the children together, I made it happen.
They survived, these novice grey wardens. I sent out men to find them, posted bounties. "They had betrayed the king." Sometimes, I could almost convince myself of it. My secret couldn't get out, no one would understand that we needed a strong ruler, at whatever cost. Howe hired an assassin. It was no big step – we were already trying to kill Eamon, with that brainless malificar.
My spies still aren't clear on what happened there, in Redcliffe. Undead walked, they say. There was a demon. These days, I question little. How in the Maker's name could I predict that they would find Andraste's damned ashes to cure Eamon? I began to second guess myself – perhaps Eamon wouldn't have questioned his nephew's death if he had been well? Had he been corrupted by that Orleisian trollop he calls a wife?
I have never trusted the tower, not since Remille, and so Irving does not trust me. But the man I dealt with, Uldred, made a deal with a demon, turned everyone into abominations. Is everyone so corrupt? When did the world become so damn difficult to predict?
And then the reports of Darkspawn began to come in. We were already losing men left and right to these little rebellions, and now an army of darkspawn was coming. We were wrong – I was wrong. This was a Blight, not just a larger incursion.
We didn't have the men, not with the losses we had taken. Howe promised he could get more men, mercenaries, but he needed money. The treasury had already been bled for the army we had. I signed the order, the agreement with the Tevinter. Sell all of the damn elves in Ferelden, just get me the money to buy the men to defeat this damn Blight! Otherwise – it would have all been for nothing. I couldn't fail now, couldn't make those loses be for nothing.
The butcher's bill has risen too high, and soon it will come due. I will not say I have done wrong, just not well enough.
I fall to my knees, empty and spent, like a penitent kneeling in the chantry. I look up, see his scowling face. He's too young to rule – they are all too young. Maric, Rowan and I were never that young, never. And yet… her eyes, the other grey warden, her eyes have an age, and I know she will do what I could not. She will defeat this Blight, she will take my place, behind the throne, or next to it. I can finally rest.
As my head drops again, I hear the creak of armor, the breeze. Forgive me, Anora – I hope they will not punish you for my sake. Maric-