D is for Dog
It is the custom in Ferelden, as in the rest of civilized Thedas, for a newly crowned monarch to send gifts to his freeholders and other heads of state.
Cailan, Maker bless him, sent a single Mabari puppy to every king, queen, empress, prince, viscount and teyrn on the continent. Each and every one was female, which Anora thought was a fine idea; it would leave their allies dependent on Ferelden for breeding stock, encouraging at least a modicum of diplomacy.
They were fine animals, gifts worth of royalty.
(She vetoed his first idea emphatically.
"Cheese? Honestly, Cailan, how provincial."
"But it's fantastic!"
He sulked at her for days.)
Two months after their coronation, the Orlesian ambassador returns from his delivery to Val Royeaux bearing a letter from the Empress and two black-and-gold masks- when in Orlais, Anora whispers to Cailan through clenched teeth.
The ambassador bows and simpers, his mask a garish shade of green. The Empress had taken a great liking to the pup, it seemed, and was training it as a watchhound.
"Has she chosen a name?" Cailan sits forward on the throne, eager.
"Why, yes, Your Majesty." (She suspects he's smiling, behind the mask.) "I do believe she named the animal Moira."
It takes all her strength to keep Cailan seated, even with her fiercest warning look.
(He worshipped his grandmother, though he'd never met her; she was long dead, her head on a pike outside the gates of Denerim, when Cailan was born. Maric- and Queen Rowan, too, she'd bet- spoke endlessly of the Rebel Queen, and he had learned all the stories of her at his mother's breast.)
She rests her hand on his wrist and shakes her head, the gestures they'd long ago agreed meant please shut up and let me handle this, Cailan.
"Her Majesty, my husband's beloved grandmother, would have been honored to be chosen as the namesake of such a fine beast." She keeps her hands clasped at her waist to steady their trembling as she stands, letting her voice fill the room, quelling the outraged court. "Do you know much of the mabari, ambassador?"
She steps down from the dais in three quick strides and plucks the Orlesian's mask from his face; he shakes his head, and would have backed away but for the guards now behind him.
"The mabari bitch, in particular," she says with a smile, "is a force to be reckoned with. She is bred and raised for a single, focused purpose, which is to defend her master, kin, and country with whatever means are at her disposal."
He swallows.
"And when you threaten a mabari," she nods, and the guards seize his arms and start to drag him away, "you had best be prepared, lest you feel her teeth at your throat."
She looks to Cailan as the murmurs of the crowd start to quiet. "I do believe, my husband, that we are in need of another Orlesian ambassador."