16: Nation's Son (Part II)
"Go out in the woods, go out. If you don't go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin."
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Anora was grateful for the end of the long evening, filled with forced smiles and trite conversations. Remaining in the good graces of the Farrises was a strategic move. Whitehorn was, after all, a rich arling and it held a significant sway over the Bannorn— something she needed anytime she had to deal with the unruly group of rulers. The couple had been mollified during the dinner, it appeared, and had regretfully announced their imminent departure the following morning, much to her relief. Alistair's too, she suspected, although he had remained uncharacteristically silent during dinner. He bid them an early good night, apologizing and alluding to the common discomforts Grey Wardens tended to experience. His face had seemed wan and his eyes much darker.
During all those years she hadn't really seen him in the throes of his…condition. He was usually far away at those times. But now he was there and the strange ailment appeared to manifest itself more often. Her physicians were of insignificant aid— they prescribed little more than elfroot phials and rest, although they tried to reassure the monarchs that many of the Wardens returning to Amaranthine were experiencing similar symptoms.
"It is not the Calling," Leliana's letter repeated what they had already been told by other surviving Wardens when they had sought out more details from the Inquisition about the situation. "But Corypheus appears to be unleashing all kinds of sorcerous effects on Thedas. The symptoms of your discomfort may not subside until Corypheus is defeated, I'm afraid. In the meantime, please be careful and remain in Denerim, my dear friend," she had written back to Alistair.
As Anora was escorted by her retinue to her apartments that evening, she glanced down the hall to the doorway to Alistair's rooms, debating whether or not she should pay him a short visit to verify his well being.
He appeared so pale, she recalled.
They rarely were in each others quarters, although for the first year of their marriage, she had dutifully invited him to hers. She needed the kingdom to know that she was trying to fulfill her obligations. And while she hadn't raised her hopes too highly, a small part of her had wished to prove Cailan wrong about her fertility and to place the blame for their childlessness squarely on him. She and Cailan had tried for a child frantically, to the verge of her denigration, she remembered angrily. Desperation had trumped affection, respect, and become a singular, obsessive goal. She believed Cailan had shared her heartbreak and burden, but instead he extricated himself from any blame by accusing her, and her alone, of being defective.
And suddenly all those years, all her dedication and loyalty to him, to their position and rank, had been effaced.
I do not know why I bothered being his companion, wife, partner―none of those things mattered as much as being his breeder, she thought to herself contemptuously, as she had so often over the years.
How she looked, how she carried herself, all that she knew… Alone those things were irrelevant.
No better than a prized mare or heifer.
And because she was unable to do the only thing that was expected of her, Cailan would have discarded her without regard or consideration.
In the struggle for power…her mind echoed bitterly.
To say she had welcomed Alistair into her bed would've been a gross exaggeration. He'd been reticent to do as he was bid, telling her he didn't expect her to perform such duties, but she'd explained to him, in very unsentimental terms, the nature of their obligation.
Although she did very little in the way of encouraging Alistair once they were performing the deed, he'd always been gentle and oddly considerate, given the awkward circumstances. She contrasted his behavior with Cailan's, especially towards the end, when he would simply roll off her and walk away from her bed once he was done, indifferent, otherwise absorbed, his displeasure and frustration more and more evident as each month confirmed what all had suspected for a long time. At the time, she attributed his detachment to worry. She believed things would go back to normal after Ostagar. After he died, she had still clung to the conviction that things would have gone back to normal, and mourned for the unrealized, imaginary future they had been meant to share. It was only after the cache of letters was discovered that she understood the true meaning of his behavior.
In his eyes she was no longer his queen—and it was only as queen that she had been relevant at all to him. "Anora" did not matter.
As far as anyone knew, Cailan may have been the one to blame. For all the rumored affairs, he failed to produce any bastards, she pursed her lips scornfully. She knew. She had her eyes and ears throughout the kingdom inquire.
When no child materialized after the first year of lying with Alistair, the invitations to her bedchamber diminished until they all but ended. Once in a while they would arrange to spend an evening together, but nothing more beyond conversation and sleep occurred. It was for the benefit of the people. She knew it was important for morale if the people believed them to be a real, stable couple, she had informed him. That every time his personal guard escorted him to her door at night, it was gossip that propagated easily and appeased their subjects. It is for Ferelden was her motto. He had listened to her justifications for their occasional meetings in silence and she wondered if anything she said had stung him. She remembered when they had ascended to the throne together, after professing their wedding vows and being presented jointly to their court: he had timidly attempted to take her hand, but she had instinctively shaken him off.
As their conjugal visits waned, she fully expected him to seek fulfillment of his urges elsewhere.
But he never did.
This too, she knew for a fact. Again, she had deployed her eyes and ears throughout the kingdom. At first she had smirked at the report's findings…Or rather, lack of findings.
Wait, she had told herself. He will prove himself soon enough.
She told herself the same thing after the second year…third…and all subsequent years.
Yet, he did no such thing.
She brushed out her long, thick blond hair from its usual braided bun as she pondered whether or not she would go to him that night. Perhaps it would be a good thing if the guards saw her visiting him when he was unwell. Besides, she had learned to resent him less over time, had developed a grudging respect and honest admiration for him, for his character. They did not clash with each other often. Over the last months, she even had begun to appreciate his company somewhat. As with Cailan, there was something very juvenile about Alistair… But unlike Cailan, there was no malice in him.
She had asked him once, pointblank, if he had turned away from a more desirable path in life to answer his call to serve the people of Ferelden. She asked him detailed questions about his past, beyond the circumstances of his birth, upbringing, and role in ending the Blight, but he had rebuffed her carefully.
"I would rather not lie. I am not good at lying," he told her. "So don't ask me questions that would make me want to lie."
She had displayed displeasure at his reply, but in truth she respected it.
Anora contemplated her face in the mirror and felt immensely fatigued. She was a couple years older than Alistair. Ten years ago, despite his hesitation in obeying her orders to bed her, he never refused her. For all her teasing about his growing older, she realized that in the years since she had met him, he had striven to maintain himself battle ready, engaging regularly in military exercises with the Fereldan army, and until recently, with his fellow Grey Wardens. She would catch herself staring at him surreptitiously and noted that except for the hint of grey blending into his dark blond hair at his temples and a few lines on his face, especially around his eyes whenever he smiled, Alistair had aged little since they'd been wed. He was still a striking, strong man. Perhaps it had something to do with the Taint, she gathered.
I wonder what he thinks of his queen, she thought, staring at herself. His older, bitter, barren queen.
She stepped out into the hallway, immediately spurring her personal guards into a frenzy as they scrambled to stand and salute her. She wore her flowing, wavy hair down, and was enveloped in her finest dressing gown and satin bed slippers.
"I am going to the king's chambers," she announced.
The guards bowed deferentially and led the way down the ridiculously short walk down the other end of the hall. Alistair's personal guards rose respectfully as she approached and paused before the door. She could almost hear the morning gossip already: "The queen was the one who went to the king last night!"
She was quite certain speculations as to why she had called on him would be lewd, but it was all, nevertheless, good for their image. She rapped at the door until she heard Alistair open it. He stood before her in his night shirt looking befuddled.
"Anora! What?―" he asked incredulously. "Is something on fire?" he wondered, upon seeing her at his door, flanked by the guards.
He blurted out the question without thought, but she pressed her lips at the interesting choice of words that would undoubtedly be reworked through the grapevine as a delightfully dirty double-entendre. Recomposing himself, he immediately stepped out of her way so she could enter the apartments.
He had been reading, she noticed, glancing into the bedroom as she breezed into his office. He'd left a book opened face down on the covers. She waited for him to follow her so she could launch into her well-rehearsed explanation on how she was there solely to engage in their ruse, for Ferelden's sake… until she saw how waxen his expression appeared.
"You do not look well at all."
"I haven't been sleeping much," he told her.
She examined him uneasily. Right before the siege in Adamant, things had become almost unbearable. She had placed her most trusted guards by his side at all hours of the day and night. He had been assailed by visions that rendered his eyes almost black and clouded his sight with invisible perils. He shifted between eerie stillness, a glazed expression over his face that unnerved her with its listlessness, and an agitated state where he appeared to be engaged in arguments with angry and accusatory voices.
The guards told her again and again how they'd had to wrestle him to the ground―three men one time―to keep him from succumbing to the deadly summons.
"It must be terrible," one of the guards had reported to her, as Alistair lay in his bed nearby.
"No," he weakly protested, overhearing them. "No… It is beautiful," he'd said, his face wild and exhausted.
But Adamant had been months ago.
"How bad is it?" she asked, staring at how his veins appeared so thick and prominent on his arms, his legs, even over his hands.
"It's not too bad during the day―I have plenty to keep me distracted then," he stated. "But at night, my head just spins." He raised his hands to his temples.
"Then you need a distraction," she concluded. "Something to occupy your mind."
He nodded, rubbing his shoulder as she watched him attentively.
"Reading helps," he said.
She wandered over to his bookcases: history books. Histories of Ferelden, the Grey Wardens, Templars, the Chantry.
They were all heavy, dry, indigestible tomes by all but the staunchest academics. She narrowed her eyes. "You have read all these?"
"Well, some I read…back at the Chantry. They were required reading when I was training―"
"I meant recently."
"I may have browsed through a few…flipped a few pages…" he continued nervously.
He was right. He was a terrible liar.
She glanced over at the book lying on his bed. It appeared to be a serial of sorts. The kind of trashy book that was popular among the soldiers.
"What is that?" she pointed.
"It's a book," he said sheepishly.
She squinted.
"Unless Hard in Hightown is a geological treatise, I am doubting it fits in with all the scholarly titles on your shelf," she challenged him. "Why do you have all these other books if you are reading something of that ilk?" she wondered.
"I couldn't very well have only ordered these serials." He indicated the bottom row of his shelf filled with books with evocative titles: The Masked Rider of Rivain, Behemoth from the Fade, Dagger for Hire, The Mark of the Golden Varghest. "So I ordered these more… respectable titles," he waved at the top shelf, "so I could slip in these other ones. Then people could say, 'Yes, King Alistair has broad, eclectic reading tastes…" his voice faded as he noticed her standing still, her arms crossed. "You really don't need to stay," he told her apologetically.
She observed him with a trained eye.
"Do you wish me to leave?"
"No," he stated. "I merely thought…Do as you please," he amended courteously.
She had half a mind to return to her quarters, his rooms feeling strange and unfamiliar to her, but then he added,
"I do appreciate your company. This is harder to do when I am alone," he confessed.
"I'm hardly company," she retorted, pulling out the chair across from his desk.
He said nothing in reply. He did not dare. He was careful like that. Thoughtful. Never wanting to overstep his bounds. Or her bounds. Unlike Cailan, she frowned, remembering resentfully. He walked to the bed, taking the book in his hands and gingerly brushing his hand over its cover.
Without a further word, she sat on the chair and pretended to take in the room's decor with mild interest as he kept staring down at the serial's gaudy and flashy cover.
"So―what is your book about?" she finally asked, a hint of curiosity surfacing in her voice.
"Alistair," she began the following morning, in a hushed tone. They were walking down the stairwell to the main meeting hall. "Expect me in your quarters tonight."
He almost tripped.
She faced forward, a solemn expression over her fine features.
"It is best you not remain alone while you grapple with this ailment," she declared. "I will visit you…for as long as you are in its grasp," she explained.
"It's not as bad as other times. You needn't concern yourself with me," he reassured her, standing beside her before the large doors leading the the hall inside. A lady-in-waiting adjusted the long train of her dress.
"Suit yourself." She stared at the door, suppressing her disappointment. "I merely wanted to offer you some support. For Ferelden's sake," she said dryly.
His brow furrowed. The herald slipped between the door, ready to announce their arrival.
"I did not say I wouldn't take you up on it! Because…I will," he muttered to her crossly, over the herald's booming voice on the other side of the door.
"Good," she replied, surprised by the relief that overcame her. The great door opened before the majestic hall.
"Besides, I find your true motives suspect," he quipped, formally offering her his arm.
She shot him an alarmed glance as her hand alighted over his lower arm.
"I think you are just doing this because you can't wait to find out what happens to Donnen in Hard in Hightown, am I right?…" he smirked knowingly.
The faintest smile flashed across her lips as they processed down the central nave to their thrones.
Maker, bear with me, you good people. There's a part III.
Thank you for the insightful comments both here and on AO3- I've enjoyed reading your thoughts on Anora, Alistair, what you perceived during your own playthroughs...Like I said before, I ended up surprising myself when I wrote this story arc. What really revved up my imagination was how they appeared together in Inquisition (if that was the world state you chose, obvs). I remember thinking: They haven't killed each other in these 10 years...and what's up with Anora actually leaving Denerim to accompany Alistair? And working with him? What could be going on there, hmmm?... Plot bunnies' ears shot right up and they began to circle me predatorily...