ON OFFICIALLY BECOMING AND STAYING KING ALISTAIR’S MISTRESS
so someone submitted a thing to @romancingalistair about alistair marriages only being allowed for Cousland Wardens (short of using the mod that removes the race- and classgate), and the discussions that followed after made me realize that there’s a number of people who didn’t know that “King Alistair’s Mistress” is an actual thing that can happen in the game and not just a headcanon thing. i’ve reblarbed some of those posts to answer some of those questions, but i thought i’d make a separate post for everybody else who might not be following me and therefore would not see those reblarbs.
(right off the bat, i’m apologizing for the long post)
HOW TO BECOME KING ALISTAIR’S MISTRESS: first of all, he HAS to be hardened in his personal quest. if he’s unhardened, he WILL break up with you (but stay in love [usually] so don’t worry about that part). so yes, HARDEN HIM (which, if you want him to be okay with being king, you’d have to do anyway). THEN, when you get to the dialogue scene that takes place AFTER the landsmeet, the conversation where he comes to break up with you, you can CONVINCE HIM TO NOT DO THE THING. there’s a dialogue option - i don’t remember what it is - which will lead hardened!king!alistair to say sth to the effect of “so you think i should just go ahead and get married AND still carry on with whoever just because it’s a marriage of convenience? because i can?? well okay, you know what, i’m King, i can bloody well do whatever/whoever the hell i want, so yes okay let’s do the thing.” and then later, once you’ve beaten the game and no one is dead, you still get your “now that i’m king of ferelden i can give you any reward you want” scene, after which you get your one-on-one final dialogue with him IN WHICH if you were successful at convincing him to have you as his misstress, you will STILL get him saying “at any rate, i can’t wait to be alone with you; these formal affairs drive me insane.” so yes, the thing is possible. for video evidence (that isn’t modded!!!!), watch this and/or this, among other videos. (the warden in the video is an elf mage, so automatically cannot be queen.)
ADDENDUM TO THE THING: as someone pointed out to me (i can’t remember who rn i’m so sorry!!!! but your ask is in my inbox :D) you’d have to be at a damn good amount of cunning and or persuasion to get those dialogue options to actually work in your favor, which, if you’re playing on PC like i am, you can “fix” via the Console thingy (you can bet your butts i push my persuasion and cunning to max levels at the very start of the game >:D)
*and of course you HAVE to do the Dark Ritual so that you both stay alive coz a King with a corpse mistress is Creepy.
ANORA ADDRESSING THE ISSUE: because yes, yes she does. this can happen BEFORE the landsmeet. it all happens after you’ve rescued her, of course, and plans are being made for the landsmeet. remember how she asks you for a moment of your time and you have a little heart-to-heart with her regarding her father and his plans for the landsmeet? that’s where you and her first talk about the possibility of alistair marrying her and becoming co-ruler with her. of course, you then go to alistair and offer up the suggestion, and he’s not completely okay with it, but he sees the logic in the suggestion. (this, of course, doesn’t automatically lock-in that that’s what’s going to happen, you can still change your mind at the landsmeet.) after speaking with alistair, you have to go back to anora to inform him, right? if alistair agrees (i think he does anyway?) she’ll be very surprised, but is like “well…okay.” AND THEN she’ll ask about you - what’s gonna happen to YOU after she marries YOUR lover? there is a dialogue option here which leads to her acknowledging that cailan too had had mistresses - yes, PLURAL - but had the decency to be discreet about it, even if she always knew (and i’m sure cailan knew that she knew), which leads her to ask if she’s “to have yet another husband whose eyes lie somewhere else?” so it isn’t permission or consent, but it’s acknowledgement of your status as his mistress. or future status, as it were. video evidence is over here.
POST-ORIGINS EVIDENCE THAT YOU ARE KING ALISTAIR’S MISTRESS: well other than the codices that show up when you finish the game (if you were successful, a codex will show up about your warden staying on at court as a chancellor and that although you’re not always present, when you are, king alistair is noticeably that much happier), the scene in DA2 where hawke and co. meet king alistair ends, as usual, with bann teagan telling king alistair that he has matters to attend to. the queen version of that is very specific, but the mistress version is that “vague in an obvious way” kind of deal:
King Alistair: Well, I suppose we should be getting back.
Teagan: Indeed. You-Know-Who should already have returned from her mission.
King Alistair: Is she? Well, let’s not tell the Queen then.
Teagan: [chuckles] Wouldn’t dream of it, Your Majesty.
look, we made Alistair a Very Happy Boy Indeed. video evidence for this is here, courtesy of @danaduchy.
BONUS - A LETTER FROM THE HERO OF FERELDEN: i call this “bonus” because i don’t know if this is a thing that happens for the mistress warden, so if someone could confirm, that would be GREAT. so in DAI, you get the mission “Contact the Hero of Ferelden” if your Warden is alive, right? you don’t have to have alistair be the warden to get the romance version of this letter. Queen Cousland says at the end of her letter:
i don’t know if the Mistress Warden sends this version of the letter as well, since there’s no indication on the Dragon Age Wikia (which is where i got this) of the King Alistair/Mistress Warden version, but maybe? hashtag: citation needed.
but yes, there you go - in-game evidence that King Alistair/Mistress Warden is an actual in-game ending and not just headcanon :D
romaincrisis
izzy806
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
kaledo-art
