I haven't forgotten 'From the Ashes' but this is something that's been in my head for quite some time (I'd meant to put it up at the same time as the Landsmeet chapter in F.T.A., but time and other things got in the way) so I thought I'd get it done before going back to my main story. This is set just before Chapter 54 of F.T.A., basically as Loghain broods the night before the Landsmeet on everything that's gone wrong. Not looking for reviews (though they're always welcome!) , just writing this one for fun and to try something different (I despise Loghain, but I'll not deny he's a very interesting character!)
Some spoilers for D.A.: The Stolen Throne and D.A.: The Calling are in this, just so you know.
Enjoy!
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'I am what I am. Someone has to be'- Raynald de Châtillon, Kingdom of Heaven
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He could hear the voices of the people, the mob gathered outside the palace gates, even from his study in the highest tower of the royal palace, and though the voices were all different-men and women, human and elves- they all said the same thing.
They were all screaming their hate for him, their wish to see him dead.
Loghain downed another goblet of wine in an effort to steady his nerves. 'How did it come to this?'. Less than a year ago, those people howling like wolves at the gate for his blood had worshipped him as a hero, the freedom fighter, and now they all wanted to see him suffer, to see him fall from glory, and finally to see him die.
He'd only ever felt such trepidation as this once before in his life, the night before the Battle of River Dane, but that day all those years ago, he could count on the men and women at his back, true sons and daughters of Ferelden who, like him, understood what was at stake; it had united them, given them the strength to do the impossible. Now they were gone, and their children were united only by their hatred for him. To hear the curses, insults and jeers coming from the mob gathered in the square, from the talk and whispers his spies told him was being muttered in the taverns and wine sinks of the city, one might think he was Meghren come again.
The bottle of Gwaren red was empty. With a growl of frustration, Loghain seized the empty bottle and flung it at the wall, watching it shatter, the meagre dregs of wine left dripping down the wall like blood, wishing it to be the head of one of those who'd brought him to this pass, one of the many people whose skulls he wished to smash.
'How did it come to this? This is not my doing; since this whole thing began, I have been betrayed and undermined by lesser men. Had I done things as I saw fit, this would never have happened, but instead I took the 'wise counsel' of my advisors and now it has brought me to the brink of ruin!'
'Howe...I should never have trusted him. He was no true son of Ferelden, just a treacherous, back-stabbing snake in the grass who put his own fortunes above everything else. Bryce Cousland learned that too late and so did I'. It was his fault that everything had gone wrong. At the time, Loghain had swallowed his pride and made his deal with the devil, covering up that bloody mess of Howe's doing at Highever, when Howe had given in to his long-nursed bitterness and jealousy towards Bryce Cousland instead of doing as he was bid-Loghain had wanted Bryce's endorsement of his regency in exchange for 'forgiveness' for his planned treason with Orlais- and giving the ambitious wretch what he wanted: Maker knew he had few allies as it was and for his legion of faults, Howe had a shrewd political mind and a grasp of the games of politics and currying favour that Loghain had always disdained, but now Loghain knew the man shouldn't have been trusted with organising an orgy in a whorehouse, let along ruling the most prominent arlings in the kingdom. He'd been the one to suggest wasting the treasury's already dwindling funds on hiring assassins to slay Arthur Cousland and his wretched companions, though in hindsight, Loghain suspected it had more to do with the fact Howe wanted no last trace of the Couslands to plague him rather than because of the danger that boy Warden posed to the nation. 'If Howe had done his job and taken the Couslands alive, the whole mess could have been avoided. With his wife, remaining son and his heir's wife and child in my grasp, Bryce would have agreed to anything I demanded of him and that old scaremonger Duncan could hardly make the boy a Warden from a cell beneath Fort Drakon. I should have never agreed to the Crows, helping Howe clean up his own mess with my coin!'.
And when those so-called 'masters of the art of killing' failed so spectacularly, it had been Howe's notion that they endorse slavery, an act that was anathema to any right thinking Fereldan, which should have included Loghain himself. 'Oh, I admit it sounded good at the time. After that little shit Vaughan's indiscretion, the Alienage was tinder waiting for a spark-with the army in the field trying to bring the rebels to heel and curtail the darkspawn's rampage, we had no men to spare to contain riots in the city- the treasury was all but empty and the army needed to be paid, fed and equipped. But the anger of the elves shouldn't be so strong-I insisted they only take the troublemakers! I can only assume Howe let the Tevinters do as they please to line his own pockets'. Not for the first time, Loghain felt a sense of disappointment that, despite how fitting, Arthur Cousland had cheated him of the pleasure of killing Howe. Many times since he'd been forced to accept that he needed the services of that back-stabbing asp, Loghain had dreamed of the incredulous look on Howe's face when all was said and done and the little bastard thought himself safe and secure in victory, when he was no longer needed and the teyrn could send him to the headsman's block. 'I would have wielded the axe myself! Death would have been the only thing, I think, to put an end to Howe's greedy grasping for rewards he wasn't entitled to. And it would have kept a promise, since I swore he'd suffer if anything happened to Anora!'
'Anora...' No one had seen hide nor hair of his daughter since the Arl of Denerim's manor had been burned to the ground; his only consolation was that of all the charred corpses they'd pulled from the ruins of Howe's estate- among them Cauthrien, much to Loghain's sorrow; the knight had, for all their disagreements in recent months, been almost another daughter to him once, what seemed like a lifetime ago- Anora's had not been one of them, which could only mean his daughter was alive, though it also meant someone had taken her and was holding her...or had killed her and dumped the body off the premises.
'Wherever she is, I will find her. Whoever has her, I will find them. And if even one hair on my daughter's head has been harmed, then there will not be a rock in Thedas big enough for them to hide under!'.
Loghain wanted nothing more to order every man he had to tear the city apart until his daughter, his queen was found and he had a pretty good idea where to start looking-'Eamon's hiding enough from me in his estate, why not Anora, alive or dead?'- but instead he had to waste his time trying to shore up his power and allies enough to try and claw at a victory in the Landsmeet come the morning, a victory by no means certain thanks to all the disasters that had beset his regency.
Who else to blame? Uldred? That posturing, pompous buffoon had assured him the Circle of Magi's loyalty, yet instead the egotist botched the job and got himself and most of the tower's residents killed in the process, in addition to turning the Circle and the Chantry against him. 'I've little love for magic but I recognise its uses, and the Chantry was an outdated system that had been another way the boot of Orlesian imperialism had been firmly pressed on Ferelden's neck'. It had been the Fereldan Grand Cleric who'd put the crown on Meghren's head, named him King and justified his tyranny as 'the Maker's will', the clergy only doing their duty to Ferelden when the rebel victory had become inevitable. And considering the amounts of money spent on ridiculous tithes to feed the Chantry's endlessly hungry braziers when it could be used for far better things, such as feeding the poor, housing the destitute, providing a source of income to those who needed it...no, Loghain had no qualms about restricting the Chantry's power. Given the shackles imposed on them, Loghain had believed that the Circle would be more than eager to place their sorceries at his disposal in exchange for more freedom from the oversight of the priests and their templar enforcers, but instead Uldred screwed up, managing only to make the Circle and Chantry put aside their differences to make him their common enemy.
Cailan? It had all begun with him, with his obsession with carving his name in history and damn the consequences, his willingness to undo everything his parents had fought for, that so many good Fereldans had fought and died for, so long as he made a name for himself. And his plans to throw his lawful wedded wife aside and hand Ferelden back to that painted Orlesian bitch just so he could strut about calling himself 'Emperor'...that was something Loghain could not forgive. Father and son alike...Cailan and Maric had both betrayed women far better than they deserved and for what? Orlesian harlots who would have led them down the path to ruin, which they would have seen had lust and greed not blinded them.
Duncan...now that was obvious. That bastard Warden was constantly at Cailan's side for so long, whispering Maker-knew-what poison in his ear, goading him on, urging him to follow their plan, for who knew what agenda. Loghain had never trusted a single one of that Order-history was full of examples of how the Grey Wardens thought themselves above the lawful authority of nations across Thedas- Sophia Dryden being a prime example- and that mess at Kinloch Hold with Maric near twenty years had only convinced him the Grey Wardens were not to be trusted; they served their own agenda and nothing else. Cailan would have seen those war-mongering old relics of another time were leading him to ruin with their claims of importance-any fool could kill darkspawn, the battles before Ostagar had proven that, so why Duncan and the Wardens had insisted only they could end the Blight was beyond Loghain- had he not been so blind, seeing only a chance to further his own wretched dreams of glory by caving to the Wardens' every whim.
Who else? Eamon and Teagan, for constantly undermining and hindering him, giving those who were dissatisfied leadership and direction, trying to hide their ambitions behind a mask of patriotism. Unlike their sister, the Guerrin brothers had put their ambition and their contempt for him as an up jumped commoner. He'd known the danger they'd posed, had tried to negate it by removing Eamon from the picture, helped along by that brainless Orlesian tart Eamon had taken as a wife-Teagan was popular with the common folk, but not the consummate politician and negotiator his elder sibling was, not as skilled at swaying the people, noble and commoner alike– but then something went wrong with the plan; his spies stopped reporting, replaced by mad tales of magic and demons and something Eamon's mongrel weakling of a son had done, and before Loghain could make sense of the chaos, that lousy boy and his traitor companions brought Eamon back from death's door more obstinate and troublesome than ever. From the moment he'd opened his eyes, Eamon Guerrin devoted his efforts to rebuilding the power and influence that had rotted during his 'illness', looking to put that bastard of Maric's on the throne, his willing puppet, and Maker knew who else's, uncaring or blinded by hate and ambition to see that the weak, untrained boy he'd seat on Maric's throne would only lead the nation to ruin, like his half-brother.
"And of course, on top of all of them, Arthur Cousland, for refusing to be a good little boy and die...!" he muttered aloud.
'Enough! Don't try to hide your own greed and ambition behind the actions of others. You have no one to blame but yourself'. Even now, his conscience still sounded like Maric, but with coldness and a mocking edge his friend had never had in life.
"I did what was right, what was needed; I made the hard decisions no one else had the stomach to!" Loghain raged. To whom- his conscience, Maric, the Maker himself- was open to debate. "And still they hate me for it!"
'Lie to yourself if you want, Loghain Mac Tir, but do not lie to the world. Everything you've done was for yourself, because you couldn't bear to relinquish the power you've held for more than three decades'.
Even now, he could hear the voice of that malignant witch from all those years ago, her dolorous warnings to Maric as clear as when they'd been spoken, words that he'd once dismissed as rambling nonsense now cutting to his very core.
'Keep him close and he will betray you, each time worse than the last'
"Who did I betray?" he demanded.
Everyone and everything you held dear; your people, your friends, your family, your beliefs. You knew everything you did was wrong, but you did so anyway because you knew to do otherwise would cost you everything'
'You've rage enough inside you, tempered into a blade of fine steel. Into whose heart will you plunge that one day, I wonder?'
'The heart? That witch was being generous, I think' his conscience sneered in Maric's voice. 'How many people have you stabbed in the back because you thought it best? Myself, Rowan, Cailan, Bryce Cousland and all his family, the Night Elves you once led? You've hidden your own ambitions, your greed, your insatiable lust for power behind a mask of righteousness and duty, justified your treasons as in Ferelden's best interests for long enough but no longer. Tomorrow, the scales will fall from the eyes of the many and the truth shall be known, even by those who loved you, believed in you the longest''
'Who shall be the judge? A teyrn's boy
One king shall he crown, the other he'll destroy'
The mocking voice of that witch rang in his ears again as he realised that he was doomed. Come the morrow, he was walking into a different sort of battlefield. One where swords would avail him nothing, and where defeat was a certainty.
'It all ends tomorrow. And in all likelihood, with the people who once loved me, once worshipped me as a hero cheering as my head is mounted on a spike. But I'll be damned if I'm going out without a fight. If these people would cast me in the villain's part, then I shall. I've come too far to stop now, given Ferelden too much to stop now. If this is to be my end, then I will face it unafraid and repentant. I did what I had to do, what seemed right at the time. If the world must hate me, at least let them remember whatever wrongs I've done, they were meant with good intentions.'