Written for the August Minor Character challenge on the Dragon Age Fanfiction Writer's Facebook group. This month's character: Anora
The Sixth Stage
When Loghain brings the news that Cailan is dead, Anora just laughs. "You can't be serious," she tells her father, shaking her head. He's always been so doom-and-gloom, seeing Orlesians in every corner, believing Ferelden's independence to be tenuous at best, a joke at worst.
"Anora, I am serious. The horde was too much, and he insisted on being on the front lines." She searches her father's face for any hint of regret or sadness, anything other than his stony stoicism that makes him so hard to read. She sees nothing.
"He'll return," she says, looking back to her needlework, her way of telling him the conversation is over. He sighs and she hears his heavy footfalls as he tramps out of the room. "He'll return," she tells herself. She makes herself smile. Cailan has always been about defying the odds. He wouldn't head to Ostagar only to die.
He can't be dead. Even when more messengers arrive with news of the total devastation in the south, and the darkspawn horde's movements, she believes they're wrong. "My lady, I escaped with barely my own life," an injured man says. "I saw the King fall with my own eyes."
Anora takes in his bandaged head. "Thank you for your report and may the Maker watch over you," she says with a smile. He clearly took a knock to the head. He clearly didn't see what he says he did.
Did he?
Cailan hasn't been the best husband, but this? This is the most awful thing he could do to her. Anora could even forgive the cheating, but dying? How dare he! How could he leave her like this?
She can hardly bring herself to sleep in their marriage bed. Anything that reminds her of him sends the rage bubbling up inside of her. She's always been the calm, controlled one, and the anger scares her. But how else is she supposed to feel when Cailan went and got himself killed?
Loghain calls an emergency Landsmeet. Opinions are polarized, which is to be expected. Bann Teagan refuses to swear allegiance to Loghain or to his plans.
"Bann Teagan, please!" Anora begs as the nobles begin to trickle out. She'd been counting on the support from Redcliffe; they still have all of their troops, even if Arl Eamon is too ill to order them out. Teagan can act in his brother's stead. "My father is doing what's best for Ferelden."
Teagan stares up at her. "Did he do what was best for your husband?"
That night Anora drinks more than she usually does. She sneaks to the practice yards and hefts a light sword in hand and strikes a practice dummy over and over until it is little more than a shapeless bundle of straw.
Straw the same color as Cailan's hair.
Anora kneels in the chapel, staring up at the visage of Andraste. "I'll do anything to bring him back," she whispers. "Please. I'd even swear vows and become a Sister, if it only meant that Cailan were back on the throne."
Days pass like this; if the Sisters and Mothers of Denerim's Chantry notice Anora's pattern, or overhear her supplication, they don't say anything. Maybe they pity her. Maybe they are afraid of her wrath.
Sometimes they offer to pray with her, but not often. Anora politely declines. This is her battle to fight, her bargain to make, her price to pay. She would pay anything to have a second chance with her husband.
She won't get out of bed. The servants deliver meals, but Anora sends them back barely touched. She's not hungry; no, that gnawing feeling in her stomach is an emptiness food cannot fill. She stares at the empty side of the bed. Cailan should be there, but he's not, and he won't ever be there again. She's stopped praying, begging a Maker who doesn't listen. She was silly to believe that would work.
When Anora does get out of bed she tries to do needlework, but the threads blur before her eyes and she can't concentrate. Whenever she hears footfalls she looks up, her heart racing, some sadistic part of her hoping that it's Cailan. It never is.
She wants to cry sometimes, but she can't. There's nothing in there. She wants to break something, but everything is already broken. The country is tearing itself apart. The Blight is spreading across Ferelden, steadily moving north. It will be Denerim's gates. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Howe tells Loghain that the nobles aren't cooperating. "They just need to be brought into line," Loghain says. He sits on the throne. He looks wrong there.
"Cailan approached the Orlesians for support, did he not?" Anora ventures. Her father's been acting as her regent, but she is still the queen.
"Cailan was a fool," Loghain says simply. "I will not see an Orlesian force set foot in this country under my watch."
Pieces click into place. Her father's fortuitous escape. His refusal to allow Cailan to seek outside help. His denial of a true Blight, and his criminalization of the remaining Grey Wardens.
"Did you kill Cailan?" she asks.
"His death was of his own doing," Loghain says.
It's all she needs to hear.
Cailan is dead. He will not return. He is gone.
Anora tells herself these things every morning as Erlina combs and plaits her hair and helps her dress.
Denerim needs her. Refugees from the south pour in regularly. She helps at the Chantry. She sends out letters looking for donations of food and clothing and blankets. She used to wish that she too had gone to Ostagar, but she's realizing that her place is here with her people.
Cailan's place was here, too. His people needed him and instead of remaining with them, he jaunted off to the front lines. He paid the price for that.
She doesn't feel the same emptiness that she used to. No pangs of guilt or pinpricks of hot tears behind her eyes. Cailan is gone forever, but the people of Ferelden are here, now, and they need their queen. She will be the queen they deserve.
She doesn't expect the morning she wakes up and feels… relief.
She thinks about all the times Cailan was off gallivanting, or sleeping with other women, and she had to make the tough calls that he avoided. She remembers how good she got at forging his signature; how many proclamations she drafted up and either forged a signature, or asked him to sign after he'd had a bit too much wine. And how much better off Ferelden is because of it.
Not because of him. Because of her.
She should feel guilty that Cailan is gone, but she can't. She just feels relief that now she can be the monarch she was made to be.
The only thing standing in her way now is her father and a bastard Grey Warden and his influential Cousland lover.
Anora spent the last five years dealing with Cailan.
She can deal with anything.