Firstborn,
Or,
Seed Sowed Carelessly
A girl's natural curiosity. Dragon 9:2-9:25
"Where's my father?"
The little girl scowled, stamping her foot. Her mother was unimpressed.
"Do not show that face to me, my girl. Such a face makes wrinkles, and will make you old before your time."
"Old like you?"
She really was an impudent little creature, but her mother could not complain about her looks, wits, or talent. She would do. She would do very well when the time came. And if the Blight came later than expected, the girl would do for other things.
Impudence she could tolerate; rebellion she would not. If the girl crossed that line, she would find out just how much she had still to learn.
"Ah, but I am hardly old 'before my time,'" she purred, stroking the child's hair, her claws just enough in evidence to give fair warning. "I have lived long, and know far more than you ever will."
The child eyed her warily, but was no coward.
"I must have a father. Every creature has a sire, and so I must have one too. I hope he is not one of those horrid Chasind. They stink."
"They have their uses, as you will find someday. Your father was the best that I could provide, under the circumstances. His bloodlines were impeccable."
The little girl did not know the word, but was too proud to say so. A name was clearly not forthcoming. She set her small shoulders and stalked away, chin lifted defiantly.
It was the first, but not the last such conversation. When the girl turned fourteen, and was nearly ripe for breaking her to her future duties, the matter arose again.
"Was he Chasind? A Templar? A knight? An elf?"
"What is it you want, child?" the mother asked, sweetly reasonable. "Do you imagine he will come to take you away—" she gestured around her at the hovel in the marshes "—from all this? I assure you he neither knows your name nor even of your existence. Nor would he care if he knew. His kind spread their seed carelessly, with little regard for consequences." With mocking gravity, she added, "Will you seek him out? Will you prove your birth to him? And how? With a matching birthmark, a magic sword, an ancient jewel? You have none of those things. Even if you found him, you would be driven away with blows and scornful laughter."
"I'll find a way to make him believe. Tell me his name, and I will find him."
"And what if he is dead?"
The girl paused. "If he were dead, you would have said so. Therefore, he is not. Tell me his name."
"It does not suit my purpose to tell you," said the mother, with manifestly false sympathy. "So sorry."
It was not hard to keep the secret, for only she knew it. The brief, long-ago visitor who sired the girl no doubt had thought little of a one-time encounter over the years. Nonetheless, she kept her daughter on a leash: permitted to wander enough to allow her to imagine she knew the world, but not enough that she would ever encounter anyone who could put her on the right track.
Years passed. The girl was trained in all the useful arts. The magic took the longest time, for her skills must be perfected; but she was also trained to accept any man, without sentiment and without consulting her personal taste. She was trained, in fact, as far as possible to have no personal taste in such a matter at all. First, she was hardened by seeing her mother with a succession of partners, engaging in every act that might—or might not— give pleasure, and then seeing just how casually her mother disposed of them. Then it was the girl's turn to learn to do the same, with no maidenly flinching and no tender words. For the girl to turn silly over some clodhopper and run away with him to breed was hardly a desirable outcome: not after all the time and work invested in crafting such a tool of her will. The girl was restless and resentful. That did not matter, as long as she obeyed in all the essentials.
Her beauty could be a danger, for the girl was very, very beautiful indeed. Beauty such as hers was a temptation, and could be a formidable weapon. A mirror that could have given her foolish ideas was ruthlessly smashed, and the girl warned against the desire for such trivial possessions. It would not do for the girl to have any ideas other than the ones her mother had spent years putting in her head...
After further consideration, it seemed prudent to create a false Grimoire: one which she allowed to fall into Templar hands. It would tantalize the girl, and put her on entirely a false scent. True, some of her Daughters had been adopted as the Black Grimoire indicated—but not the best ones. Not the special ones.
At last, in Dragon—how that nomenclature made her smile—in Dragon 9:25, all the nonsense about fathers became a non-issue. When her daughter brought it up again, the reply was, if not honest, at least not completely a lie.
"Oh, him. He is gone. Quite gone. A pity you never met him."
A pause. The girl—not such a girl now, after all—pretended nonchalance, but the repressed disappointment was quite delicious.
"He is dead?"
"Gone forever. Put him from your mind. He was never anything to you, anyway. Nor were you anything to him."
Of course he was not dead, but a captive across the Waking Sea, and thus forever beyond the girl's reach. It was amusing to picture the look on Maric's face had he ever been confronted by his wild and beautiful daughter, but Flemeth's schemes were too important to risk for mere entertainment. And Morrigan was quite vain enough without knowing that she was the daughter of a king.
Note: Sorry if the implications (Alistair and the Dark Ritual) are squicky. I cannot imagine that Flemeth would care. In fact, more dragon blood from the line of Calenhad would be quite welcome. The upbringing Flemeth gives Morrigan is pretty much the kind of treatment a trafficker uses to desensitize a girl being forced into prostitution, and is already about as squicky as you can get.
Maric and Loghain wandered the Kocari Wilds in Blessed 8:96, following the murder of the Rebel Queen Moira. Cailan was born in 9:05, and Alistair in 9:10. Could Morrigan be 33 years old? Definitely. We know that magic can negate aging to some degree, and a 33-year-old who's taken good care of herself can easily look 10 years younger. (Morrigan's pale, exquisite skin is a big clue, I think. Flemeth did something to prevent sun damage.) Morrigan doesn't behave like a kid, though that does not mean she is as sophisticated and traveled as she likes to believe she is.
Maric and Loghain spent the night in Flemeth's hut, and I have no problem believing that Loghain would sleep through anything Flemeth wanted him to sleep through, and that she could make herself look however she liked, depending on her mood at the moment. And as for Morrigan not resembling Maric...neither Alistair nor Cailan resembled their mothers.