“A Crown of Laurels” Chapter Seven - Sovereigns - is up on AO3!
Summary
The Queen's Champion has won six tournaments but never courted a lady—until a sharp-tongued girl crashes into him and calls him a fool. Now the court whispers: has the wolf finally been caught by a vixen?
A Medieval Story about Tournaments, Turnabout, and a rather fortunate Tryst in an alcove.
*please note the updated tags and rating for this fic!
Excerpt:
Wolves everywhere.
With slippered feet, Ellana stepped through the castle doors onto the landing, and all at once she was surrounded by the snap of pennant and flashing color. Banners in every direction, fluttering in the wind. Familiar trippant silver-white halla across the green of her house flew beside the griffon segreant of Weisshaupt, but wolves dominated: midnight wolves rampant on silver fields, wolves on the waiting chariot, wolves on the heraldry of even the stomping horses, wolves that worked across flags that threw back the morning sun in brilliant fragments.
At the foot of the stairs, a wolf waiting for her.
Solas’s coronation mantle swept from both shoulders to the flagstones, indigo samite so densely embroidered with gold thread that each movement sent light rippling across the fabric. Fastenings were chased in silver filigree. Pearls and other precious dark stones—she could not count them all nor all the different kinds—traced the forms of two wolves rampant in mirror image, each striking at a sunburst dragon. The garment’s weight pulled at him; she saw how his shoulders bore the burden, yet he stood straight.
Only a sovereign or prince of the blood might lawfully wear such fur trim, and she saw it now: black vair at his throat, the mark of royalty in Arlathan’s sumptuary law.
Ellana descended the stairs, each step bringing her closer to the man whose face she knew better by moonlight than by day. He looked different in daylight; handsome still, hers still, but also uncertain. The corner of his mouth twitched. Was he nervous?
She looked on him and thought mankind must have been made for mornings such as this.
He looked at her in unabashed stares. Was it her face? Surely she was pale and nervous, but surely as well she was smiling. Her hair? Plaited with ribbons of white and gold and left to cascade down her back?
Her dress?
This was, after all, the first he had seen the dress complete rather than in hanging bolts in a dressing room.
How the seamstresses finished such a feat in only weeks was nothing less than witchcraft: though none could see it, Ellana could feel the silk undergown against her skin, so fine it caught every breath of wind and clung to her frame before falling in a straight column to the marble below. Over that lay what was visible: a sumptuous surcoat of cloth-of-gold with a wide neckline across her collarbones, edged with bands of goldwork. The fabric itself was worked with embroidered patterns of wolves and halla intertwined as his house and hers were made one, and heavy draping sleeves were slashed to show indigo silk in the gaps, the indigo blue of his tournament favor, his colors, that she’d worn when he crowned her once before. No stiff boning compressed her ribs; instead, the gown’s bodice had been stitched with cunning seams that followed her natural shape, gathering beneath her breasts before releasing into flowing skirts that pooled at her feet and trailed behind in a train longer than she was tall. Ermine bordered the surcoat’s edges, white fur dotted with black, the mark of royalty worked into every fold.
When Ellana reached the final step, he inclined his head.
“Lady Lavellan.”
“Wife, soon,” she said and it earned her a smile.
“As if you had not already set me the task of counting each moment until ’soon’ at last yields to ’now.’ You appear resolved to test my patience to its very limits, to tease until the very last moment, and I cannot but admire your commitment,” he said, extending his hand.
“Until?” She took it, his palm warm even through her glove, and stepped towards the waiting and opulent chariot. “Hardly. We are to marry, and both soon and now will yield to the greater forever. This is the natural way of the world, and so I intend to maintain your torment for a great many years. Perhaps eternally.”
There was a sparkle to his eyes, a levity in his laugh.
“Then may eternity come ever more swiftly.”
The chariot’s frame was carved from pale ash and gilded at every joint, with a long pole harnessed to a matched team of white horses, each wearing royal badges and plumes. Grooms in livery and white-laced collars held the reins while attendants steadied the step as she rose, coming to rest atop cushions of yet more cloth-of-gold. Overhead, a canopy stretched aloft, embroidered with leaping salient silver wolves and constellations. The four corner posts were topped with an overflow of white-rose garlands with trailing ivy, and about them the sides remained open to allow the crowd their view of bride and groom, and tasseled curtains of sheer fabric could be drawn if needed but hung loose now, fluttering in the breeze.
A caparisoned palfrey was brought forward for Solas, a dapple-gray with a coat like burnished steel and a gait bred for ceremony rather than war. This was not the mount of a tourney champion, but a creature chosen for pageant, and midnight silk draped her sides, worked with silver wolves that matched Solas’s mantle. Solas stepped into the stirrup and rose into the saddle, his coronation mantle spreading across the horse’s haunches in a river of indigo. He brought the palfrey alongside the chariot, close enough that his stirrup nearly brushed the gilded frame.
“Are you prepared?” Solas asked, pitched for her ears alone.
“To marry you? Entirely.” Ellana paused, lips pursing. “To… be crowned? No. Not in the least.”
His mouth curved. “Then we are perfectly matched. If it be now or later, the readiness is all. I trust you as I trust that we are ready enough.”
The Solitary Figure of Inquisitor Lavellan - the one Who Dared to Love Solas
When I talk about Lavellan’s solitude, I don’t mean she has no friendships or community. I mean solitude of the heart.
All Inquisitors have solitary aspects to them if you really break it down, however a Solas romanced Lavellan is different. She’s the only version of a romanced Inquisitor who doesn’t get closure of their romance in DAI. The image of her standing alone on her balcony at the end of the game and again at the end of Trespasser, while all other Inquisitors have the company of their chosen loves, is the first indication.
Firstly, to be the Inquisitor at all is to walk a path of isolation. The mark on their hand erases their former identity and remakes them into a figure of myth, whether they accept it or not. I have always viewed the Inquisitor as written very Frodo-esque and Galadriel tells Frodo that to be a ring bearer, is to be alone. To bear the mark for the Inquisitor, is to be alone. They become “Herald of Andraste,” “Inquisitor,” a vessel of destiny. Varric, who gives every companion a nickname, never does this for the Inquisitor. His Andrastian heart can't help but see the Inquisitor as touched by a higher power.
For Lavellan, this mythic isolation compounds her solitude of the heart. She isn’t only set apart by the mark, or by the destiny imposed upon her, but by her love. Where others see only betrayal and danger in Solas, she continues to see compassion and grief - and that makes her incomprehensible and alone.
In Trespasser, any Inquisitor can vow to save Solas from himself, and when they do, every companion disapproves - except Cole. That unanimity of rejection is such a reveal. I think it can reflect the companions’ personal anger at Solas’ betrayal, but I also think it represents their inability to understand how the Inquisitor could still have compassion for him after such deception. And this is where Cole’s approval becomes so helpful to our understanding.
Cole isn’t just another companion with an opinion. His entire being is tuned to emotional truths: he feels pain and grief and responds by trying to ease it. He doesn’t get caught up in politics or morality the way others do; he responds directly to suffering. And in Solas, Cole feels a wound few others could endure.
That’s why his reaction matters so much to me. Cole’s approval to me, feels like an affirmation that the Inquisitor is able to see Solas as Cole sees him - through the hurt itself, and through compassion. That is a lonely Inquisitor in that moment, with only Cole in their corner.
The isolation theme continues with the Trespasser dream slides. A Lavellan who remains in love with Solas and vows to save him receives the dream-visit slides - a Lavellan who romanced him but later broke up and vowed to stop him does not. I find this difference so significant because this is probably the greatest example of how love and compassion bind her differently. Only this Lavellan remains connected to him emotionally through the Fade.
The dreams also externalize solitude as they are private by nature, unseen by others. This Lavellan experiences something no one else can witness or validate except her. They become a narrative device to show how her heart is set apart, even beyond the physical world.
When we move into VG, we see this solitude stretch on. For the Inquisitor, it isn’t a matter of months - it’s years. Years of endurance, being hunted, forced into anonymity, needing Morrigan to secure perimeters for safety. Years of chasing shadows, tracking Solas’ movements, receiving every grim report of what he’s done.
Now imagine the added ache for a Lavellan whose heart is still connected to him through all of it? To get those dark reports, to continue to be a witness to his descent and still in her heart, hope there's a way to get through to him? So when Lavellan meets Rook for the second time, she's heavy with those years. She stares out at the window, weary. It's the fatigue of someone who has lived with a wound so long it has fused into her being. In that moment she is uncertain, hopeful, and exhausted all at once. That, too, is her solitude: not just the myth imposed on her, not just the love, but painful vulnerability shown in that moment and that makes some people very uncomfortable.
In the war council before the final battle in VG, every Inquisitor can speak in Solas’ defense, advocating for another way, and each does so alone. Not even Dorian speaks up in support (not even if the Inquisitor is his lover). Instead, Morrigan speaks up and pokes, and for a romanced Lavellan, that poke is sharp: “speaking from the heart, Inquisitor?” is a reminder that she alone in that room is Solas’ heart.
And when Dorian later asks if she’ll be leaving Minrathous when it’s all over, Lavellan answers, “something like that.” She doesn’t tell him the truth. This is sad, that narratively she can't even confide in a close friend - because would they even understand? Dorian disapproved back in those Crossroads after all.
Lavellan’s love isolates her because it can’t be explained or defended. To forgive Solas, to believe in him, to still hold love in her heart for him, to be willing to reunite with him is to stake her heart where everyone else sees only danger, betrayal, monstrosity or disgust. Loving Cullen, Blackwall, or even Anders comes with opposition or risk, but those romances are still human loves rooted in the familiar world. Loving Solas is something else entirely. It’s loving an immortal being bound to ancient catastrophe, a being others see as unknowable, manipulative, dangerous, irredeemable, different. To extend love here is to step into the incomprehensible as mentioned earlier.
And how fascinating that parts of the fandom echoed this same incomprehension. When the game first released, so many ridiculed Lavellan’s choice - I lost count of the posts mocking her reunion with Solas, or condemning her for even considering leaving Thedas. Yet those same people would go on boasting about their Inquisitors retiring peacefully with Cullen in the countryside away from it all. Why, it’s almost as if the fandom itself reenacted the very isolation Lavellan’s story represents. The expectations put on that Lavellan vs the Inquisitor in general were such fascinating perspectives.
Lastly, the solitude of Inquisitor Lavellan is captured in the din’anshiral. I know I’ve brought up the din’anshiral many times, but it’s significant in her story and in Solas’. I believe Solas walks it regardless of romance, severing himself from love - convinced he’s unworthy, irredeemable, and choosing to become the monster. VG follows through with this severing, there’s no focus on romance because he has chosen disconnection from his heart as the condition of becoming the Dread Wolf. But in the Atonement ending, Lavellan mirrors him. Her path isolates her just as his isolates him. Their parallels in this ending are heartbreaking and beautiful.
As I’ve said, Lavellan isn’t alone because she lacks allies or friends, but because she loves where others hate or judge. Even Rook struggles to believe. How could there be love for the Dread Wolf? How could the Dread Wolf love?
To forgive when friends disapprove, to walk forward in compassion when mocked or ridiculed, takes courage - and history has shown us that that type of courage is profoundly lonely. She is poked at in the story, just as she was in parts of the fandom. But to me, the mirroring, while painful is fitting and beautiful. Her solitude is the solitude of the heart, because no one else - except Cole - truly understands it.
He had fled. With no other idea except to be free of his own shame and Felassan’s ease in the center of his worst memory. Directly into the Titan’s dream. At least, this time, he had remembered to grasp the Inquisitor’s living hand instead of the prosthetic. At least, as the breaker of emotion washed over them, some dim part of him could still feel her pulse between his fingers. Or he could until he let go.
It was not loneliness that engulfed them this time, but absolute terror. The wave of light shrieked as it passed them, crackled like every flame he’d ever seen and pierced each joint as if he’d been struck by lightning. Battles flashed before him, battles he’d fought himself against the behemoth titans. The earth rattled around him, mountains split asunder from the force of Mythal’s spells and melted under Elgar’nan’s heat. And then it was gone and he was howling.
“Atish, emma lath, ea eth.” The Inquisitor’s voice seemed impossibly small. Distant. He could feel the imprint of her hand shaking on his arm and looked down. “Telir somniar,” she said, craning to see his face. In his panic, he had transformed. He let his wolf body diminish, dwindle away.
“It’s over, it’s over,” she said.
“How did you remain calm?” he asked, pulling her into him.
“I didn’t,” she said, returning his hard hug. “This one will be more difficult.”
“Yes,” he said, staring over her shoulder at the approaching wave. “It is panicked. The pulses will be closer together.”
“A good dream. A safe dream,” she muttered. “It is the size of mountain ranges. What can it fear? How do we make something like that feel safe?”
He closed his eyes, mostly to shut out the scarlet sparks of the approaching wave. There was nothing else to see. Not yet. “It is about the sensation, my love. Not the setting.”
“I feel… stripped of any such memories, Vhenan. I cannot think of much aside from this overwhelming dread,” she admitted.
“It’s the only fair way,” Varric’s warm voice broke the blank.
Solas felt her flinch slightly against him, but did not halt the dream. He only had a few moments before the terror returned and the memory would scatter if it was not solid enough. A bard sang somewhere nearby.
“Then perhaps I should not play. For everyone’s comfort,” Solas remembered saying.
“Bull’s got the same, droopy. Come on, ‘s just three drinks. Seen you do that at the ball in ten minutes flat and never blink.”
“They really do want you here,” Cole’s voice floated through the air. “It isn’t for the cards, it is just better with you here. And it’s not just her. They all want you here, even Blackwall. Even if you said no to the rules. Please, Solas, you want to stay, too.” Floorboards creaked and then became visible, solid under his feet. The Inquisitor’s grasp on him loosened slightly and she looked around, her own mind already filling in gaps before his own could. The Rest’s large fireplace bloomed into being, flickering against several tables shoved unceremoniously together. Solas could feel those tabletops even now. Perpetually sticky no matter how many times Cabot swiped at them with a damp rag and reeking of stale wine. Scratched with dozens of Inquisition names and symbols. Uneven chairs that squeaked and tilted dangerously.
Cole perched upon the bar beside him, his hat pushed far back, legs kicking the wood. Cabot did not scold. Solas had guessed the others did not see him. “You do not have to be a god. Or a commander. Or someone else’s wolf. They love you as you are. You can stay.”
“Come on, Chuckles, I’ll make Cabot break out the good stuff.” Varric appeared with Sera leaning on his shoulder. Both younger than when he had last seen them. His chest ached, but he did not push the memory away.
The Inquisitor’s terrified expression dissolved into something more comfortable. She reached for Varric and melted when he embraced her. Solas knew it was not really Varric. He thought she probably knew too. Not like Blackwall or Felassan had been. A dream, only, but solid enough for her to smile.
“Oh no, darling, don’t let him order the drinks,” Vivienne laughed over Solas’s shoulder. “Three of Varric’s choice will put you under the table and taste like Cabot’s dishwater all the way down. Trust me to handle it.”
“Pah,” said Sera, “You don’t fool me, you can outlast Bull if it came to it, Vivvy.”
“True. But I choose not to suffer while I do so. Inquisitor, is that West Hill Brandy still in the cellar?”
The Inquisitor turned toward her. “I’ll go and—” she gasped as if struck and the dream shattered.
Solas reached for the Inquisitor’s hand but she screamed when he touched her. He had only an instant to feel sorrow for it before fear swallowed him whole.
It was not Titans this time. And it was not Solas who was in danger. Mythal’s hand was outstretched, offering Elgar’nan their dagger, offering proof of what they had done. Elgar’nan’s smile was cruel, surely Mythal must see his cruelty. Surely she would step back, shield herself. But of course, this was not real memory but only how Solas imagined a scene he had never been present for. Elgar’nan’s voice was treacherous, arguing coolly that they had been mistaken. That Solas’s ire had surely led Mythal astray. That she should not let such things alarm her. Mythal shook her head, pleaded with them. Her attention called by Sylaise, she turned. Elgar’nan’s arm raised, Mythal stepped back too late, too late to put the distance she needed between them and— the dream dissolved.
The Herald’s Rest slowly reappeared around him, piece by piece as if it were a child’s toy being constructed. The bard’s song was different. A weaving song, a hymn to Sylaise sung in an unfamiliar man’s voice. He found himself sitting beside Cassandra. The Inquisitor frantically reconstructing the memory around them.
“Well?” asked the Seeker, nudging his arm gently. He glanced at her cards, even as Blackwall appeared on his other side and pressed a glass of brandy into his hand.
“These,” he said, pointing to her knights with shaking fingers.
“But I thought snakes were better.”
Varric sighed. “Serpents. And it depends, remember?”
“Dunno why I insisted on the brandy,” muttered Blackwall, “No way you can win with the Seeker, she just tells everyone her cards.”
“Hmm,” said Solas, not really listening. He was looking for the Inquisitor.
She sat at the far corner, next to Iron Bull who was playing much the same role for her as Solas had been for Cassandra. She watched him intently.
“Are you well?” she called down the table.
“He’s already got at least a pair on the first play, I’d say he’s doing well,” said Iron Bull.
But Solas knew that was not what she had meant. “Yes, Vhenan,” he said.
Sera whistled.
“Well,” said Dorian, “are you going to play Seeker, or should we have another open hand to go over the rules again?”
“Are you certain?” Cassandra asked him. Solas wanted to get up, draw closer to the Inquisitor so that he would not be parted from her when the next wave of fear came, but the dream was fragile. Push it too far from what they both remembered of this night and it would collapse.
“Yes. If it were my hand, I would bet a crown that Varric has the Angel of Death. He always goes quiet when he does or leaves the table to order another round. It is the best you will be able to draw.”
Blackwall groaned and slid his cards onto the table. Iron Bull raised an eyebrow. Pointed to a card in the Inquisitor’s hand before Sera tapped at his glass to remind him to drink. Solas closed his eyes as the play moved on. Tried to remember the warmth of the fire, the texture of the tabletop, the glass in his hand, what the weather had been. Tried to layer in complexity as a buffer against the Titan’s panic. So something of the memory would remain when the next wave passed. Like digging pits in the sand as the tide comes in.
He had felt easy in this instant. A little tipsy and it didn’t make him nervous to realize he had let himself become so. He had just been a man among friends who did not look to him for anything more complex than which card was better to play or to call a bluff.
He had been certain, just for the instant, that if he had told them all, if he had sat at those creaky tables awash in old ale and grimy coins and related the tale, they would have listened. All of them.
He even knew how it would have gone. Immediate empathy from the Inquisitor and Cole. Startled denial from Cassandra at first and then a barrage of questions. Varric would have laughed and then his cards would have dropped to the table and he’d have hunted for a quill. Vivienne, alone, perhaps, would have shown no shock. And when he was done, they would have helped him. He knew it, in that instant. He was certain. But it had passed, as instants do, and he doubted again. He clung desperately to that surety as the Titan’s emotions swept over them again.
It was not enough. He had no flesh, only essence, only purpose. There was no Inquisitor. No Felassan. Elgar’nan had vanished, his bright presence winking out of sight. Then Mythal, Dirthamen, Falon’din, they slid away, one by one and the Fade emptied. It echoed with the vacancy. It ran down, eroded. Solas was often alone. When Mythal returned in a strange shape, strange voice, strange thoughts, Solas had feared she would disappear again. He had followed her from the Fade in terror and—
He was back in the dark. He could hear the Inquisitor weeping but could not tell the direction.
“Mamae, halani,” she whispered into the void. Her outline sparked and sizzled with light. “Halani,” she said again and he tried to close the distance, but found he drew no closer to her no matter how he reached. Panic threatened to engulf him again, this time native to him. It would not relent if he gave in to it. The sparks around her intensified.
“Vhenan,” he called to her.
“It is too small. We are too small,” she said with a sob. “Ir abelas, ar nuven’in Mamae.” The sparks swirled around her, lighting her face and then gathering beside her. The spirit did not resolve into a definite form, but its work began immediately anyway.
Solas smelled the sweetness of crushed berries and trampled grass before he could see anything. Then that weaving song slid through the dark again, the same man’s voice, though it dipped and surged as if he were moving his whole body as he sang. Grass and slick, soft wetness squished between his toes. Then the sun, blazing and immediately overhead. He looked down and saw loose blackberries scattered across the grass. A basket, overturned, lay between the Inquisitor and himself. She was weeping heavily. A woman knelt beside her. Familiar but young. As young as the Inquisitor had been when he met her. She swept her fingers over the Inquisitor’s cheeks.
“All is well, little Bramble,” she said gently. “We will gather them again together.”
“No, Mamae, there is something evil beyond the grass,” said the Inquisitor, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “It is coming and I cannot stop it. Don’t go.”
“What has frightened you, da’len?”
That it had started as a memory, Solas had no doubt. This— the smell of blackberry and the weaving song were too specific, too intense to be a dream, even one plucked from her by the spirit building the scene. This was no imagining. So it startled him when the Inquisitor reached for his hand and told her mother: “Something enormous. It is consuming all the world with its terror and we cannot hold it back and it is so swift— we cannot flee.”
The woman glanced up at him and then back at her daughter. “Then do not, da’len. Let it come, this terrible thing.”
“We can’t, it will take everything.”
The woman laughed gently and began gathering up the blackberries near the Inquisitor’s knee. “No, dearest, it cannot take everything. Many, many men and gods and beasts have tried to take everything, but we remain. You remain. You cannot outrun this dread. You cannot halt it. Then you must turn and face it.”
“I can’t Mamae.”
Solas slid down into the grass beside her, crushed by the hopelessness in her voice. Her mother only calmly gathered up the fallen berries. “You thought the same in Haven, little Bramble. Shivering in the snow while Corypheus closed in. You could not run. And you were not strong enough to defeat him. So you turned and faced him.”
“This is bigger than he was,” she protested.
“Vin. And you are bigger than you were then, too. When the Blight chased you up the mountainside and all aid was out of reach, you turned around and faced it, too. You held the fortress until the horde retreated. Called home by their makers. And you marched after. To shield others. And you remain. Even here. You did not flee from the Void itself, fanor. You turned and faced it for the love of him. Why should you flee from the nightmare of another now?”
“We must soothe it. The Titan thrashes in its sleep. It sends the Blight over all the world. We have to stop the nightmare until we can wake it.”
She patted the Inquisitor’s prosthetic. “It cannot be calmed by a memory of your Mamae. Nor of your comrades. Those are past. What it fears lies in the future. To soothe it, you must face what it fears and turn it aside.”
“I do not know what it fears. It is larger than the Vimmarks, what future threat could be dire enough to give it a nightmare?”
The woman smoothed the Inquisitor’s hair. “You do not know what it fears, da’len, but he does. He fears the same and he must stop running.”
The Inquisitor looked over at him.
“Yes,” said Solas, “I know what it fears. And what I must do.”
The Inquisitor’s mother clucked and beckoned him. “Come here, pup,” she said.
He stepped toward her and bent down as she waved him closer. She gripped his shoulders gently. “You have many tasks behind you, Solas. Set both by others and yourself. So many that you have forgotten your purpose. Mythal did not create you. She only gave you form. You were not created for tasks or heroic deeds or to be the Dread Wolf who stalks our stories. You exist to be loved, da’len, just as every other creature. That is your purpose. No matter the outcome of this next task you have set yourself. Don’t forget.” She pressed her lips to his forehead before releasing him.
Some part of him knew that the love that flooded him was predictable. It was, after all, a spirit the Inquisitor had called. It made sense that the result would be favorable to him. Biased.
But most of that realization was subsumed, swept away by the comfort of the spirit’s words, by the warmth of the dream. You exist to be loved. That is your purpose.
“Now, little Bramble, it is time.”
The Inquisitor reached for him just as the memory collapsed. Her fingers found his sleeve, pulled tight as the Titan’s panic came shrieking past. Five warm spots just beneath his elbow, seeping through the cloth. He wrapped around her and her prosthetic crumbled beneath his hand and then her arm, her shoulder, her breast— “We have to turn into it, Vhenan,” he whispered into an ear that was already shattering stone. “We have to follow the wave.”
He wasn’t certain how much she could hear over whatever nightmare she was lost in, but he did not let go and she stopped crumbling away. He let them float in the crest of the wave, a million prickles and sparks of horror crept over his skin. He let himself change into what he knew the Titan feared.
Vast and thrumming with power, ice feathered along his unfurling limbs as if he could not quite maintain control over them. Below him, the Titan’s heart tried to call it’s familiar tune. But it sped and skipped and the song was out of sync. The heart seemed small enough that if Solas had still had hands, he might have cupped it in one. Unguarded. Alone.
“Vhenan, you are…” her shocked voice was distant, a thin echo he strained to hear. She was far beneath him and he bent to lift her but found his axons each tipped with a lyrium dagger.
“It is a mask only, my love. What the Titan fears. I am still myself,” he whispered, fearing his voice could shatter the stone around them.
“What will you do?” she asked him, craning to follow each of the light fronds that he was composed of.
“It fears I mean to destroy it completely. I must show it that I mean it no harm. I do not know if that is possible, given how badly I harmed it in keeping it here.”
“It is difficult to concentrate here,” she admitted, “but if I can help, I will try.”
“We caught the fringe of the wave. If we can remain here, it will get no worse. I am having trouble as well.” He waved the dagger tips of his form well away from both her and the heart to demonstrate.
“Perhaps altering that would be a good start. You are… intimidating.”
He focused on shedding the daggers first. They went slowly, the Titan’s fear made it a slow process, stubbornly resisting the transformation. The Inquisitor, in the meantime, had not been idle. A gap-toothed wall of stone encircled the heart, jutting from the ground as if grown there. She was far slower than he, having to contend both with the dread that permeated everything and with her inexperience shaping dreams, but she had managed to grow several of these rock panels in the time it took him to shift into something less threatening.
“I saw the Sha-brytol do this to defend their Titan,” she offered. “I do not craft them half so well but I thought it might… understand these, at least. Though… I do not know what we are meant to be defending it from. Perhaps the feeling of being less vulnerable will be enough to ease its fear.”
She was so far from him. He tried to coil around them both, the heart and the Inquisitor, wishing she could touch him, soothe the constant rub of the Titan’s dread against him as if it would chafe him raw. What is to be done? I cannot convince the Titan I do not mean it harm simply by waiting, can I? It has feared me for millennia.
“This is how you appeared to them?” she asked, peering up through the strands of magic that were him.
“I had flesh when I first encountered them. But perhaps the Titan could see what I had been. What I still was beneath.”
She reached out hesitantly, let her fingertips graze him, disturb the glow of him. “Perhaps. But Mam— the spirit— said that it did not fear what was past, emma lath. What it feared was yet to come. And you said…”
“That I knew what it feared. Yes.” He let the Titan’s heart sing its erratic anthem in the silence. “I do not wish you to see,” he admitted.
The Titan’s heart thrummed behind her. Her touch did not retreat, a slender, fragile tug of her own magic hidden deep beneath her skin. “I wish to stay beside you. To aid you, Solas. But if you wish it, I will let the wave pass me by, step out of the dream, wait— wait for you to return.”
Hope that you return, she means.
“Don’t go,” he said quickly. “Ar nuven’in ma.”
“Let it come then, emma lath.”
He unfurled himself, a cage of light around the heart and her and braced himself. “I do not know what she will do, Vhenan, in this dream. Ea eth, emma lath.”
“I am ready,” she said, and he felt her barrier well and stretch, straining to protect them all. He did not tell her it would be as cobwebs to Mythal.
The story of Lavellan and Solas tickles my Tolkien-influenced love for fantasy. It falls into the category of Beren and Lúthien - a love story that, by all real-world logic, is absolutely batshit insane. And yet, placed within the mythic frame of fantasy, it fits perfectly. It belongs there. These are the kinds of stories that only make sense in a world comfortable with myths, legends, ancient beings, monsters, supernatural war and absurdity - where love doesn’t follow rules, it transcends them.
That’s what I love: the illogical. Because love isn’t logical. For every argument I’ve seen that says it “makes no sense” for Lavellan and Solas to fall in love over the course of Inquisition, or that waiting that many years to be together is unrealistic. I sit back and laugh. Really? Love needs a timeline? In a fantasy?
Beren took one look at Lúthien dancing and fell irrevocably in love - and Lúthien was all in too. They didn’t take three years to build a foundation of trust and talk about boundaries or what they saw in each other. Their version of courtship was joining forces to battle literal evil so they could earn the right to be together. It was reckless, wild, insane, illogical and absolutely delicious.
Lavellan and Solas hit that same mythic nerve for me. Their story - two people drawn together across time, fate, and existential stakes - feels like something out of The Silmarillion.
I don’t need these stories of love and pain and tragedy and trauma and desire to be logical in the real-world sense. It was never meant to be. Like all mythological love stories, it speaks to something eternal, irrational, and luminous.
There are themes and tropes woven through Lavellan and Solas’ story that utterly captivate me. And it’s partly to do with the fact that their love story isn't a comfortable one. It asks something of you. It asks you to reconcile contradiction: love and betrayal, hope and despair, violence and tenderness, destiny and choice, love as performance vs love as presence.
I’ve uncovered themes and archetypes that fit perfectly in this world of fantasy and discovered new ones in conversations with fellow Solas and Lavellan lovers as well. Here’s my attempt to weave some of those tropes and themes together.
Their story carries what I like to call the Tolkien Effect: elven culture where immortals and mortals fall in love and brave inconceivable odds just to be together. It’s the story of a man tormented by the choice between duty and love - Solas’ self-imposed responsibility to mend the world demands that he sacrifice his heart, while Lavellan’s bond with him is forged within that very conflict. He stands as the tragic anti-hero: prideful, guilt-ridden, withdrawing into self-destructive isolation because he’s convinced only he can set things right. She, meanwhile, plays Beauty to his Beast - seeing the fractured soul beneath the would-be destroyer and, by loving him, becoming the mirror that reflects his lost humanity. In classic fashion, they are star-crossed lovers - she's a mortal leader of the present, he's an immortal haunted by his past. Their timelines are misaligned, their love a sacrifice in the face of fate.
Their relationship goes from prejudice to passion. At first, Solas sees Lavellan as a biased curiosity - a product of a world he resents. But curiosity gives way to respect, respect deepens into desire, and desire transforms into a love so overwhelming it must be cloaked in restraint. He tries to resist her, but she becomes a gravitational force pulling him into an orbit he can't break.
Here, love becomes existential salvation or existential disruption. Lavellan offers Solas something terrifying: a path out of the endless cycle of destruction. It's a chance to choose life and yet instead he chooses to run from it, fleeing the love that might transform his path.
He tries to let her go, believing he must shield her from the darkness he carries. But he's the immortal who can't let go. He dreams of her. Writes to her. Remembers her. Because this is love across time - a mythic bond that survives years, silence, betrayal, and distance. A love that endures even after everything else has fallen.
He's the lonely immortal whose memories stretch back to betrayals no one else can comprehend. Lavellan is shaped in the mold of Tolkien’s quiet heroes - Frodo’s endurance, Aragorn’s purpose, Éowyn’s resolve - meeting unearthly stakes with a resilience that refuses to break, even when love itself feels like punishment.
In the end, wisdom and mercy override vengeance. Lavellan’s forgiveness doesn’t excuse but provides a path to healing. She has taken on the role of mortal muse of the divine. A single, fleeting human heart - fragile, finite - a key that might yet save an ancient, wounded soul. And so great is this ancient being’s pain, so immense the guilt and fear he carries, that it takes a fellowship to save Thedas, to save him - the mortal and immortal working together. And at the end, the star-crossed lovers are reunited, a bittersweet ending as they experienced so much pain to get there. They ascend together into another world, stepping outside the boundaries of Thedas, likely to inspire new legends in the years to come.
Should I go on? There are more themes and tropes I’ve pulled from this story - more patterns of myth and meaning that keep drawing me back. And now, with the story of Lavellan and Solas together in the Fade, it begs for new narratives, new archetypes, new emotional terrain.
The other thing I love about the romance route for Solas is that it's the one which shows you most clearly that he's really not in control and is just desperately playing it by ear.
On either the friendship or low approval route, he ultimately stays in his comfort zone: he gets in, uses the Inquisition in accordance with his plan, and gets out. A lot of his relationship-building can be thought of as him just testing people or concealing who he is. He does still undergo significant changes in his worldview in response to his connection with the Inquisitor, but this version is largely consistent with the picture of him as an elite, prideful trickster figure.
But on the romance route it's very different. Falling in love with the Inquisitor is a monumental fuck up and it is also a very deeply human one. You get a much clearer sense of him just trying to figure everything out and stumbling and losing control of his plans. At Crestwood you can see him realise in real time that there's no graceful way out of the situation he's created and he handles it very poorly and it's all just extremely realistic and sympathetic to me.
It also makes for a delicious contrast in Trespasser because there he's trying to present himself once again as detached and completely in control, but if you romanced him you know perfectly well that this is an act and sure enough he quickly crumbles and goes back to 'vhenan' and 'my love' and the fragility of his whole facade is so achingly clear.
Every relationship adds something to Solas, but the romance really does shine a light on it all. It really opens that door into him, especially after VG and things you find out about him.
Every time I see a take on the solavellan relationship in Veilguard that boils down to “he’s just an ex she dated for a year about a decade why does she even still care” I die a little inside.
This so fundamentally misses the point of their relationship in Inquisition. It’s not an everyday type of experience. This isn’t your ex from uni you’re still hung up on well after graduation.
The Inquisitor was thrust into becoming an icon for a religion she doesn’t even follow. She became the leader of a religious military organization. With every day that passes, she is increasingly removed from being a regular person. Even if she doesn’t like nor want that, it’s now her reality.
But throughout this experience, she has someone who’s by her side. Who can advise her. Whom she can confide in. He shares dreams with her.
They fall in love. He breaks her heart. He abandons her. He was a god and responsible for everything that happened to her in the first place.
This is an epic and mythical romance. It’s not supposed to be grounded nor healthy and placing constraints on it as if it were doesn’t make sense.
I mean, Solas’s voice in Trespasser. It was something else! So different! I was so curious I reached out to Gareth David Lloyd himself to ask about it.
PS - he was wearing a Dread Wolf t-shirt, because of course!!
I highly recommend reaching out to him on Cameo, he’s always super kind ✨
this was mostly an excuse to play with some watercolor brushes i got ages ago and then never did anything with. but it was also a warmup that went too far.
The Inquisition has defeated Corypheus, and Solas’ orb is destroyed. He knows he is about to leave Inquisitor Lavellan behind.
But before he disappears, he needs Lavellan to know: what they had was real.
For me, this is his way of positioning both of them in a shared truth. He loved her. Their connection was real. It's a pre-emptive reassurance, knowing what he’s about to do.
He knows Lavallan will learn horrifying things about him, that she will feel betrayed and for all his layers, all the lies he tells himself, Solas needs her to believe that their love wasn’t manipulation.
He tells her it was real because he needs to protect one sacred thing from everything he’s about to become. For a man already breaking under the burden of regret, who is fractured, who has redefined himself time and again, it's like this is a piece of himself he wants to preserve - the man who was loved, and loved in return.
He tells her it was real not just for her sake, but for his own.
And perhaps, unconsciously, it’s the first clue he leaves behind. The beginning of a pattern. Because while he walks away, part of him still hopes to be stopped. He cannot ask for it outright - his pride, guilt and sense of purpose won’t allow it. But his love for her remains, and in that love, he begins to scatter pieces of himself.
The idea of Solas living all alone in the Lighthouse for ten years is really viscerally upsetting for me.
Ten years is a long time. (We know, because that's how long we had to wait for this story to be resolved!). He ate alone at that long table every night for ten years. He went to bed alone in a little corner of his office every night for ten years. He spent ten years worth of unhappy evenings in his music room, playing virtuosic sonatas and drinking alone.
In that time, apart from the events of Trespasser, he never had a conversation with a single (embodied) person who liked him or cared about him.
He repainted his Inquisition murals because he missed his friends. He went personally to that meeting in the Tevinter Nights short story because he just wanted to see someone who knew him; someone who would call him Solas. And when it really became too unbearable, he visited Lavellan's dreams. He knew he shouldn't, he knew it was wrong, but the loneliness was dragging him under and he was afraid to lose himself in that vast darkness.
His greatest fear is dying alone, and yet that's exactly what he was doing. Inch by painful inch, he was killing what remained of Solas, replacing him with the Dread Wolf.
No wonder he sobs when Lavellan kneels to tell him she loves him. It's a decade since anyone has been kind to him; he's not just touch-starved, he's starved of connection of any kind. He clutches at his heart because she is his heart, and after ten years of existing without really living he finally has a chance to be whole again.
I think that’s the thing with him. It’s not like he’s cackling madly like Elgar’nan, loving every second of power he’s amassing.
Solas is GRIEVING AND SUFFERING in every single second we see him after he leaves the Inquisition. He is in so much pain. And he’s just going further and further.
That look that he gives Lavellan when he gives one more feeble little push for her not to follow is STARVATION. And I think Lavellan is wholly aware of that. Why else can he not FULLY abandon her? Why else does he linger in her dreams? Why else did he send the letter and the statue? She is that last connection and Solas simply CAN’T release it. She goes with him knowing that what she is about to do is not only saving him, it’s saving the world.
Because even if Solas is redeemed and goes into the Fade alone, HE IS STILL ALONE. And he needs SOMEONE.
Varric: Me, take down the Dread Wolf? I'm flattered.
Varric: No, I just came to ask you a question. So, you rebelled against the other gods, and it was a disaster.
Varric: Then you imprisoned them and created the Veil, and that was a disaster.
Varric: So how is this time gonna work out any better? Can you tell me that?
Solas: I understand your hesitance, but what I do now must be done, despite it being past your comprehension.
Varric: I'm not saying you're evil. But if you really believed in what you were doing, you'd be able to give me a straight answer.
Solas: You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve.
Varric: No mistake is worth killing innocent people over.
Solas: The question is what lives, and how. My ritual will heal the world, and restore what was driven out of balance.
Varric: C'mon, Chuckles. Who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself?
Solas: Varric…
Varric: You're not the first good man I've seen talk himself into a bad decision. The question is whether you can admit it.
IDK what solavellan fic writers are smoking, because I legit cannot stop reading all new fanfics.
I assume in big part it's fueled by how much of a flop Veilguard turned out to be and their desire to process this disappointment.
Some fics are better than a canon and genuinely written so well that I can hardly believe I can access freely. Novels I bought in store this summer pale in comparison
I love being in this fandom. Baldy really attracted thousands of talented people, huh
if anything, thanks for making so many talented people mad, bioware. I'm in fucking heavens. I'm being fed so good. A great solavellan renaissance if happening in aoe right now.
I had Gareth read my favorite poem (To One in Paradise by Edgar Allan Poe) on cameo and as usual they were delightful. <3
Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
I love when people have adult money and use it for wonderfully whimsical things that bring joy like this! And i love it when actors have such a lovely sense of humor,love for the character, and their fan base to indulge them! Thank you, @garethdavid-lloyd , for these lovely, silly, wonderful clips that make us all smile a little bit more!
