Misery's Crown
A Dragon Age: Origins FanFiction by Darkly_Tranquil
Disclaimer - Dragon Age: Origins and all associated IP are copyright of Bioware, Inc. I'm just borrowing it. :)
Title shamlessly pillaged from the song Misery's Crown by Dark Tranquillity
I am lying half awake in bed when the door to my chambers bursts open. I sit up, trying to make sense of what is going on and wondering absently where my sword has gone; I cannot recall having seen it recently. I should really find out what happened to it. Not that I am likely to ever be allowed to use it again anyway, but that is beside the point...
My muddled thoughts are interrupted by my "beloved" wife bustling into the room followed by a gaggle of servants trailing behind her. Without so much as pausing to acknowledge me, she begins setting them to task.
"You, open the curtains, and then bring the King his breakfast. You two, prepare the King's bath. You, go and find the armsmaster and tell him he is to have the King's armour here and ready for fitting no later than ten bells, " she snaps as the maids all jump to their assigned tasks. Her behaviour reminds me of one of my old instructors at the monastery, if the instructor was a woman, had two working legs, and more than four teeth.
"To what do I owe this unexpected visit? Are the Orlesians attacking?"
"Today is the Landsmeet," she replies tersely. "Your secretary informed you of this?" She phrases it like a question, but her clipped tone makes it sound like a statement.
I sigh dejectedly. "Why do I have to be there? It's not like I will be required to do anything." The Landsmeet is one of my least favourite activities. Being forced listen for hours on end while the nobility argue and debate amongst themselves as to who is the most pompous and self-important among them while my arse goes numb is not my idea of a good time.
"Because for reasons known only to themselves, the nobility are very attached to the idea of a Theirin King. Not only do they like the idea of a Theirin King, they also like to see him from time to time. Since you so rarely make any kind of notable foray from your oubliette, they desire your presence at the Landsmeet, if only to prove to them that I have not simply done away with you in secret."
"Maker forbid they should think that," I mutter in reply.
"Indeed. In any case, you cannot hide away here forever."
"I'm not hiding, I'm grieving. Is that so wrong?"
"I know what grieving looks like, and this is not it. This is wallowing in self pity; its a poor look for a man and a worse one for a King. How long do you plan to persist with this morose display? Its been a year. Will it be another year? Two? Five? Every day you sit in here in the coldest and emptiest part of the palace staring at that damned tower instead of attending to your duties. I've half a mind to have it demolished!"
"This part of the palace has it's advantages. It's as far from you as I can get..."
"While I can appreciate the desire to be as far from each other as possible, the fact remains that by hiding here you are neglecting your responsibilities as King."
"What responsibilities might those be? As I understood it, you neither wanted nor desired my involvement in running the country." I reply bitterly. Anora had made clear from the outset that she would brook no interference with her rule, not that I had any real desire to get involved.
Anora, employing her most aloof, queenly mein, replied, "While that is true for the most part, appearances must be maintained. It does not look right for the King and Queen to reside so far apart. It will set the nobles talking if there is seen to be undue dissent between us."
"There is dissent between us."
"And that is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, but be that as it may, there are some duties I cannot undertake alone..."
Irritated by her obfuscation, I snap at her. "Stop beating around the bush and tell me what you want, Anora! What duties are you referring to?"
"Well, let me put it this way, I am unlikely to get pregnant with you on one side of the palace and me on the other," she observes archly.
"You want to have sex with me?" I ask incredulously. What has brought this new and terrifying idea on? Previously, she was perfectly content for us to ignore each other.
"Alistair, I want to have sex with you only slightly more than I want to have sex with a hurlock, but seeing as that is the only way to get an heir to the throne, I must regard it as a necessary evil." she replies, her voice dripping with scorn. "It will silence the fretting of the nobles and allow me to get on with ruling the country."
The thought of laying with anyone other than Elissa, particularly the ice queen herself, still causes my heart to clench painfully. "I'm not ready for...that." I reply lamely. It sounds weak even to my ears, but it remains true.
"We have been married a year, Alistair, and our marriage remains unconsummated," she replies in an exasperated tone. "If I believed you capable of such cunning, I might think you were holding out as an excuse to set me aside."
"It's a good thing I'm not that clever," I retort.
"Ironic, isn't it?" she sneers. "That the one useful duty you could actually do for this nation, and you are unable to do because you cannot perform. In any other circumstance, your fidelity to your dead lover might be laudable, but in this case it is merely selfish and unhelpful. Producing an heir would grant us much needed stability. It might also give you something to do..."
As always, I resort to sarcasm to deflect her barbed words. "Thanks for the pep talk. I appreciate it."
She pauses to look directly at me, impaling me with her steely, scornful gaze. "I would never have thought it possible that you would prove to be an even more pitiful king than your brother, yet here you sit in all your woeful 'glory'. Cailan at least showed some interest in life, even if was just carousing and whoring. Its more than can be said for you. All you do is sit here day after day pining for a dead woman. Quite how the great Maric Theirin managed to sire two such utterly ineffectual sons is quite beyond me..."
"Haven't you ever loved anyone, Anora? Haven't you ever lost someone you loved? Or is power the only thing you love?"
She replies conversationally, "Why, yes, I have as a matter of fact..." Then her tone turns to ice, "I loved my father, whom you beheaded in the very chamber I am forced to hold court in each day because you are hiding up here wallowing in your dispair. But unlike you, I continue to do my duty in spite of my grief."
I'm tired of her endless litany of complaints and insults about my shortcomings. I know all too well what a failure I am. The last thing I need is to have them thrown in my face yet again. "Are you done?" I ask flatly.
Anora gives an irritated sigh, "Yes. Just...be in the Landsmeet chamber at eleven bells. Wear the Royal plate. And do try to look somewhat dignified."
At this point I just want her gone. "Fine," I mutter. "I'll be there."
Without another word, my wife and queen stalks from the room and I am mercifully alone again.
As I do every day, I turn my eyes to Fort Drakon; the place where the only woman I have ever loved died to ensure that I would live. As is nearly always the case, I once again find myself wishing that I had been the one to take the final blow, that I might have been spared this fate worse than death.
Several hours later I arrive at the Landsmeet chamber wearing Cailan's wretched, gaudy, golden armour. The suit is as shiny and as crass as the man himself was, but it reminds people of what the King is supposed to look like, even if I do not do the part justice. In many ways its fitting that I wear Cailan's armour, since I am little more than an understudy, filling his role as a king and as a husband. In both roles, I have been found hopelessly wanting.
As I enter the Landsmeet chamber, the combined nobility of Ferelden all bow before me. It is meant to be a mark of respect, but it feels like mockery to me, serving only to remindly me of the fraudulence of my reign. I make my way over to the throne and seat myself as the nobility rise and assume their appointed places about the room. The Arls and Teryns stand on their raised platforms on either side of the central aisle, while the greater mass of banns and lesser landlords occupy the floor level.
Whenever I come here, I am struck by the irony that almost every man in this chamber would give anything to be in my place, while I would give anything not to be. I always thought that being a Grey Warden would allow me to escape the curse of my bloodline, but no matter how hard I tried to run from it, it ultimately dragged me back and threw into this pointless sham of an existence; all so that the myth of the Theirin bloodline can continue a little longer. Maybe it is just my fate to be denied the only things I ever wanted in my life, and to have all the things I despised. Maybe what Elissa said to me before the Landsmeet just over a year ago is true - we don't get what we want, we get what we get.
The nobles come before me in turn and speak their ritual oaths of alliegence, but their honeyed words cannot hide the various looks of disdain or pity in their eyes. In return for their simpering promises of duty and loyalty, I acknowledge their platitudes as if they are sincere, granting them the false respect none of them truly care for. It is a game we all play, pretending to respect each other if only to disguise the contempt we all feel for one another.
It is an open secret that I am regarded as a laughing stock by the nobility - the unwilling king who allows his wife to rule in all but name. They bow to me, but they all know where the real power lies, and I cannot bring myself to care.
Once the formalities of acknowledging His Majesty (me), and waxing lyrical on my glory (the lying hypocrites), the main business of the Landsmeet commences. Almost immediately, the nobles begin to bicker about post-Blight taxation levies and the requirement for troops to rebuild the army. I try to follow for a while, but in the end it seems pointless. It is well understood by all that I will take no active part in proceedings, even if I did have an opinion to offer.
My input is not required in any case. Anora stands at the fore of the chamber, directing the course of the Landsmeet like a conductor leading an Orlesian orchestra. She expertly plucks the strings of jealousy, suspicion, greed, and ambition in the nobles, all to advance her own ineffable goals.
Observing her in her element, I cannot help but notice that she is a beautiful woman, if one judges her solely on appearances; bright, piercing blue eyes, golden blonde hair, skin like porcelain, and a curvaceous, womanly body. Were she not so utterly without human warmth, she would be all but irresistible. But I have seen too much of what lies beneath the surface of her character. Behind her cultured exterior lies a cold, ruthless pragmatism that is truly chilling to behold. There is very little that Anora MacTir-Theirin is not capable of should she put her mind to it. I have little doubt that should I ever get her with child, she will have me killed in short order once the succession is secured. Anora does not like to share power, and she resents that she is required to tolerate me in order to wield it.
As proof this fact, at some point in the next few days, she will drop a pile of documents on my desk for me to put my royal seal to. I would try to read them, but they are always written in such an inexplicably arcane style that I have no hope of diciphering them. I suspect she does this on purpose just to remind me who makes the decisions. My role is merely to legitimize them. In the end, I will just sign them so as to make her leave me alone, and then we will go on with our separate lives, each of us doing our best to ignore the existence of the other.
And so I sit in the Landsmeet, a witness to the rule of my nation, but not a part of it. I am nothing more than a figurehead. Accorded as much importance as a staute of Andraste, I receive a perfunctory bow of acknowledgement, and then I am consigned to the background until such time as the ceremonies end. Then, like a grey stone statue, I am wheeled into storage until the next time the King is required to grant veritas some folly or another.
It is a strange fate, to be the very thing you most feared you would become.