what can one grey warden do?

an 18+ dragon age sideblog hobbs, she/her, 20s.

[dearasteria]

Josephine Montilyet based on John White Alexander’s painting Althea

[stonesense]

anyway my new josephine fix is that if she was sent to orlais young for marriage then it would be more fitting to the tone and stakes of the world than “finishing school”. and it would be more logical for bards to approach an isolated and dissatisfied young bride than a well-connected student carrying all her family’s hopes. her refusal to turn to violence would now have meaning as a personal sacrifice, because this version of josie would have actually had a desperate need for control over the direction of her own life, and becoming a bard would have seemed to offer that. her development of her diplomatic skills and the respect she receives from her orlesian peers would feel genuinely hard-won if she started from the underdog position of a friendless foreign wife. she should have a reputation in orlais, but i don’t think she must be or even should be an experienced international ambassador, because she’s so young for that, and it’s logical and fun for the inner circle to be the unlikely few who are willing to take the massive risk of joining the early inquisition precisely because they would never get such an opportunity otherwise. all that has to have happened is for leliana to have taken note of her abilities. and finally her “innocence in love” as leliana puts it would make a lot more sense if in inquisition she’s a recent widow (or still married, look i still think her romance should’ve let you be a real homewrecker, sue me) who simply hasn’t had a chance to be courted and previously could shelter in her unavailability and easily dismiss all comers as not having serious intentions

[stonesense]

my own tags:

tags by @shineoftherainbow

discovering her husband’s alive as a replacement for her getting randomly engaged would be so fun i might add that to my worldview if you don’t mind. like imagine if her actual husband shows up out of nowhere and challenges you to a duel.

[faeturtle]

I… have never allowed anyone too close

[astralzeraphias]

yearning

[brambeag]

my most favourite rogues

[j0-0l]

this one goes out to all 5 blackwall fans, drew this a few weeks ago but forgot to post it idk he is so fine its crazy :')))

[internet-goblin]

There will never be another character like Blackwall Dragon Age. He's a Grey Warden. The first time you meet him, he saves you from being kirked. He's an idealist. He's a romantic. He's a war hero and a protector and a knight in shining armor. He's a liar and a bullshitter and a coward. He's a family man. He's traumatized by his family's tragedy and his own failures. He's a sports fan. He hates nobles. He's trying to impress nobles. His best friend is a lesbian half his age. He made a suicide pact with his coworker. He's a fuckboy. He genuinly likes women. He helps his friends get laid. He makes toys for children in his free time. He's a child murderer. He always lies about who he is. He always tells the truth about who he is. He gets psychoanalyzed by Varric without either of them realizing it. He fucks so loud it scares the horses. He idolizes courtly love. He's not a Grey Warden. He's every Grey Warden that ever walked on Thedas.

[basilistic]

Trick of the light

I'm using an old laptop while mine is at repairs and the colors are atrocious let's just hope these look good

[queam]

Carver Hawke

[sevibun]

like dogs, shianni.

[wckedgrace]

Bethany the better hawke twin 🫶

[ayesopod]

actually drew more scruffy exalted march dlc sebastian based on the concept art some time ago...

i didnt like it enough to post at the time but now its on my mind again.. and theres not much else to post... mwahmwah mwah lets pull you out of the fade kitten

[artofmisi]

#dakiss25 - first knight

[apostacism]

the thing i love about the hawke family is that it's entirely a reflection of hawke. hawke is shaped by the family, in the sense that all people are shaped by where and how they grow up, and the family is shaped by hawke in turn, because you create the family by your choices.

carver is your surviving sibling because you chose to be a mage, but carver is also carver because his siblings were both mages. i'm not here to tell anyone what to think, if you think carver would have been the same person regardless, that's totally fine, but i think the carver who grew up with an "ally", a non-mage sibling who was like him is a fundamentally different person than the carver who grew up having to protect two mages.

similarly, the bethany who grew up with self-loathing isolation... i think that's a different person than a bethany who grew up with a mage sibling, particularly if that sibling felt differently about their magic. that's a bethany who couldn't blame only herself for the family's situation, who wasn't always the odd one out, the one with the biggest and worst secret.

i love that the narrative bends around hawke, creates an arc where the defining feature of the surviving sibling is isolation. loneliness.

malcolm is the ghost in the machine the haunting at the center of the narrative, yes, but he is also shaped in your image. hawke is canonically like malcolm, which means that malcolm is canonically like hawke. leandra, who loved him, who gave up everything for him, then changes too, maybe more subtly. but who hawke is has to reflect on who leandra is, because leandra becomes the type of person who would anchor her life around a person like hawke.

[the-cryptographer]

every week at card games fenris is regaling donnic with stories about how he successfully managed to barter with the cheesemonger and advocate for himself at lirene's shop counter and on thursday he even ate breakfast before 3pm courtesy of the kebab stand and thus he has fed himself more competently than the previous week, and donnic's like 'wow, you've made so much progress! i'm really proud of how far you've come!' and fenris is preening so hard and anders is like 'why are you patting him on the back for this? why is any of this remarkable?' but not casually, like, bitterly and seething with jealousy because he wants donnic to pay attention to him instead.

[wickedsnack-art]

i never understood what made your lips on my neck such an intimate affair, until your teeth grazed my pulse and i realized: you could tear open my throat and make me bleed out in your arms. but instead, you chose to kiss.

feat. dhavihal lavellan (she/her)

[constantinnen]

know my name.