A Future King's Second
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age.
Note: I do realize that Dulin is referred to as Harrowmont's 'loyal retainer' while Vartag is outright identified as Bhelen's Second but if nothing else, Dulin is acting as Harrowmont's Second for the duration of 'A Paragon of Her Kind.'
Dulin Forender had never trusted an Aeducan. They may have had a reputation for heroism and pity for the small man but they were also the unquestionable leaders of Orzammar and had been so practically since their house's inception. There had been, to date, nine successive Aeducan Kings. Many people had just assumed that the Aeducan reign would go on forever and Dulin had been one of them until Prince Trian's death.
Yes, House Aeducan had a wonderful reputation and the public loved them but it just wasn't at all realistic for an entire House that so unquestionable dominated Orzammar to be so morally sound. There may not have been any proof of wrongdoing but that just meant that they weren't caught doing it not that it wasn't going on. As King, Endrin Aeducan was above suspicion but everyone else…the biggest surprise when Princess Aunn had been exiled for killing Trian was that it left the untalented and uninteresting one, Prince Bhelen, as heir to the throne. Only now it seemed he wasn't nearly as untalented or uninteresting as he had passed himself off as for all those years and was quite arrogant as well.
Lord Harrowmont was among the first to believe that Bhelen had a hand in his brother's death. After thinking carefully on the matter for all of five minutes, Dulin had to conclude that Lord Harrowmont was probably right. He also insisted that Aunn had had nothing to do with it as she had sworn so very earnestly that she hadn't mere moments before being sealed into the Deep Roads. That, Dulin was a bit more skeptical of. He didn't doubt that that was what Lord Harrowmont believed but everyone had their faults and one of Lord Harrowmont's was having too much affection for the late King Endrin's only daughter.
Aunn was…she was okay, Dulin supposed, and she had certainly seemed capable if a bit lacking in dedication. That said, she was as much an Aeducan as her brother and what else had Lord Harrowmont expected her to say? That she had killed Trian and enjoyed it and that he himself could drop dead for all she cared? That could very well be true but while playing the victim may not have ended up helping her, admitting to any sort of depravity certainly would not have. It helped, of course, that Lord Harrowmont had wanted to believe her, had wanted to be able to assure their King that Aunn hadn't done it. Personally, Dulin felt that the King might have been happier believing that he hadn't sent his daughter off to her death for something that she hadn't done but that was just him.
And now Aunn was back and trying to meet with Lord Harrowmont. Dulin knew that if he took her request to his lordship then he would be instructed to bring her there straightaway and so perhaps it was best that he didn't do that and refrained from mentioning that she wanted to see him until she'd proven her loyalty to his satisfaction. Bhelen may have tried to have her killed and had her removed from House Aeducan but he was still her brother and who knew what kind of deal she had worked out with Bhelen's people or what she hoped she could achieve by gifting him the throne? No, he had to be certain.
Dulin had worked closely with several prominent politicians of Orzammar in the past, including the late King, but he had to admit that Lord Harrowmont was his favorite. He wasn't painfully corrupt like certain Aeducan princes he could mention and he wasn't an outright defeatist like the head of House Helmi either. Lord Harrowmont wasn't perfect – as evidenced by his affection for the exiled princess – and not literally everything he said was the truth (but Dulin would defy anyone to find him someone from whatever wake of life or whichever species who did that) but he was, by and far, the most honest man in Orzammar and certainly leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else of the noble caste.
Not everyone cared much for honesty (read: Bhelen and the snakes he allied himself with) and that was hardly surprising as if honestly were really something that any real value was placed on then it wouldn't be so very rare, now would it? Dulin himself was hardly obsessive on the matter but there came a time when the amount of dishonestly and corruption became outright ridiculous. Bhelen's second, Vartag Gavorn, was even now trying to find a halfway credible source to convince Lord Helmi and Lady Dace that the perfect legitimate deal Lord Harrowmont had made to secure their votes was fraudulent as he had promised the same land to both parties. As if the Shaper would let anyone get away with that! And no, the fact that the Shaper himself was a distant relative of Lord Harrowmont's didn't mean anything as Czibor was a very dedicated and honorable man who wouldn't dream of lowering himself to shaming the very memories he was charged with protecting by lying about something like that. Dulin had always liked the elderly Shaper; he reminded him a good deal of what Lord Harrowmont would be without the politics.
That was another thing that made Lord Harrowmont so special in his eyes: the fact that for all that his hands were cleaner than most of Orzammar's, Lord Harrowmont was firmly located near the top of the political hierarchy. House Harrowmont, while one of the most ancient of houses, had never been particularly important until Pyral had befriended King Endrin. The alliance hadn't initially appeared to do the King much good but over time as Lord Harrowmont's prominence rose the association began to benefit the King as well. Clearly King Endrin had seen the value in having someone honorable and whose word could be trusted close at hand as an advisor and Lord Harrowmont had never steered him wrong. While Dulin dearly wished that he wouldn't be so outspoken about his belief that Aunn had been framed, he had ended up convincing the King in the end. It wasn't like Dulin really expected someone like Lord Harrowmont to just be able to sit back and watch Bhelen profit from his fratricide and attempted sororicide anyway.
Everyone knew that King Endrin had rejected Bhelen and if he had any honor or dignity at all then he would step aside gracefully. Unsurprisingly, he didn't and it was clear that he wouldn't. Lord Harrowmont was Endrin's chosen successor and while Dulin was a little concerned about the age, he knew that Lord Harrowmont would be ten times the King Bhelen could ever be. Lord Harrowmont didn't even want the throne but he was willing to take up the burden to save Orzammar from Bhelen's corruption.
Frankly, at this point Lord Harrowmont was the only one who could keep the throne away from Bhelen. He'd spent years serving King Endrin, acting as an able administrator and the author of many compromises in the Assembly (and that was no mean feat given how contentious pretty much any decision the Assembly had to decide turned out to be), and he had never shown himself to be power hungry. Lord Harrowmont would make a good King while Bhelen would destroy their culture in his single-minded quest for power.
Dulin Forender knew what kind of Orzammar he would prefer to live in and it was up to him to make sure that the future King Harrowmont got the opportunity to preserve it.
Vartag Gavorn knew the way the world worked. In specific, he knew the way that Orzammar worked and he knew his place in it. He was the second to the most important and powerful man in Orzammar – who would soon be King – and that wasn't something that just anybody could handle being. He was not a nice man and he knew it but then any idiot could be pleasant and polite when called upon to do so. A feigned good nature – or worse, a genuine one – wouldn't do him or his prince any favors.
Bhelen Aeducan was the kind of man who liked results and didn't much care for questions of morality. He wanted to be his father's heir? Vartag opened up communications with the carta to go after Orzammar's other prince and the princess. Houses Helmi and Dace were bribed to turn their back on their traditional alliances and supporting the usurper Harrowmont's bid for the throne? Alter the Shaper's promissory notes and find someone less publicly aligned with Bhelen to deliver it. Whatever Bhelen needed done, Vartag would do it. While some – most notably the usurper Harrowmont – spoke of the injustice of what had happened with Trian and Aunn, it didn't bother Vartag a bit. If they possessed the survival skills or ability to get things done needed to rule, they wouldn't have fallen victim to Bhelen's plot. It was a very good plan, granted, and it had taken years to piece together but if either of them had truly been the better candidate than they would have found an out. The last man standing was usually the best, after all.
Being Bhelen's second also meant, of course, that if anything he did or had done for the prince got out – and there was every chance that the forged promissory notes would be taken to the Shaper and he wouldn't be able to bluff his way out of that one – then it was understood that Vartag would take full responsibility while Bhelen denied all knowledge of wrongdoing. Vartag was the fall guy. Some might not consider this particularly fair but he had known what he was getting himself into when he had agreed to become Bhelen's second and if he didn't want to face the consequences of the dirty deeds he did for Bhelen then all he had to do was not get caught. If he was then it was his mistake anyway and he didn't even want to know what Bhelen would do to him if he broke his silence and started pointing fingers. As for as incentives to be careful and not leave any evidence behind went, Vartag's was pretty good.
His status as potential scapegoat was the reason that not only did it not matter if he came across as rude or obsequious but it was actually encouraged. Had he passed himself off as another oh-so-honorable lord then it would be less plausible that he was the corrupt one while Bhelen was so very shocked by this all in the event that he was caught. By looking bad, he was actually helping his lord to look good. It was hardly a sacrifice, either, as he had never really been fond of all the complexities and subtleties of the manners that the nobility of Orzammar thrived upon. He could and would do it if required but why would he turn down the opportunity to be much more blunt and to the point when he could afford to be?
And even setting aside his personal preference, there were the benefits of being the second to a future King to consider. House Gavorn was a minor house. There was really no point in trying to deny this fact. Worse than that, it had been founded when a lady from House Forender – the house that Harrowmont's blind supporter Dulin who actually thought being truly honorable mattered in Orzammar hailed from – married a man from the warrior caste. Her brother died so her father was heirless and the Assembly agreed to grant him a new family name and adopt his grandchildren as his heirs. The fact that his house came from Dulin's caused him no end of annoyance but at least he was the one more in touch with reality.
House Gavorn had been an unimportant house since the beginning but now with Prince Bhelen taking an active interest in them – and in a few other minor houses but mostly in House Gavorn – that could all change. Vartag's own son was fostered with House Aeducan for a year and when Bhelen's own son, little Endrin, was twelve then he'd stay with the Gavorns for a year. Imaging the influence that they would be able to have on that little boy in the year he was with them and the trust that that showed Bhelen placed in him was enough to assure Vartag that he wasn't that expendable. And the perks of riding the coattails of the future King were enough that he probably wouldn't mind if he was.
For all that the nobles liked to pretend that they were all honorable or, when complaining, that they were the only good man in a den of thieves, Vartag knew the truth. There were no members of the nobility with any sort of power who actually practiced what they preached because if they did then they took great pains to remove themselves from politics or they died. The only thing the usurper Harrowmont had ever done to impress him was to be so talented at appearing honorable. It was a lie, of course, but actual evidence of any sort of wrong-doing proved few and far between and so it was much more efficient to just start inventing things. It might be hard to find things but that hardly meant that Harrowmont was any better than the rest of them. If he were, after all, how could he have gotten so far?
Still, regardless of just how skilled their would-be King was when it came to cover-ups, he would be an absolutely horrible King and Vartag wasn't just saying that because his future depended on Bhelen's. The usurper Harrowmont was a weak man and so it would only follow that he would be a weak King. He had practically admitted it when he announced that he would rather be a just and kind King than a strong one and that he believed that the Assembly should make most of the decisions for Orzammar. Technically, that was the way it was supposed to work but in practice? Hardly. One would think that the usurper hadn't spent most of his life watching Bhelen's father. It was really wasn't surprising that Harrowmont had gained so much support when you thought about it: the deshyrs all sensed an opportunity to expand their power and to take the throne in the five years or so the usurper would be able to hold it (if he weren't assassinated first) before simply dying of old age and, like any self-respecting noble, they weren't going to waste an opportunity.
They could scheme all they liked. One way or another, Bhelen would take the throne and it was Vartag's job to make it easier for him.
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