the point of me doing all of that timeline nonsense is to talk about the letter from alexius to halward shortly after taking him in. there are two primary takeaways i have from this and they both make me crazy. first:
He's rather despondent over the life's path you've charted for him—if I may speak frankly—and thus, I think a part of him sabotages all efforts to keep him on the straight and narrow, either to spite you or to punish himself.
this sentence is. it’s a lot. in knowing dorian for such a short time, alexius understands him far better than his parents ever have. (“I know my son.” What my father knows of me would barely fill a thimble.”) dorian acts out because he’s miserable, he’s angry that he’ll never be what his parents want, angry at both them (for setting such unachievable expectations) and himself (for never being enough, for his inherent inability to be enough). alexius can see this so clearly. alexius genuinely cares for him. whether his parents at all care for the man he’s become or just for the man they wanted him to be is debatable.
and secondly, we have this sentence:
The boy had enough cheek, even in his inebriated state, to invite me to join him.
alexius tells halward that dorian propositioned him for sex. dorian is at this point, what, 17 or 18? this is likely the first evidence halward has that dorian likes men. alexius basically outs him. subtly, but it’s there. halward knew for a long time, or at least had a suspicion. but it was in private. only admitted in alexius’s correspondence.
in 9:37, when dorian is 26, he’s caught in bed with a lord’s son and essentially taken captive by his parents. he runs away a few months later, never to return.
below are two quotes from dorian during last resort of good men:
But what was the first thing you did when your precious heir refused to play pretend for the rest of his life? You tried to change me!
He was going to do a blood ritual. Alter my mind. Make me... acceptable. I found out. I left.
“the first thing you did.” this implies that halward only truly confronts dorian about his homosexuality and moves to act after the incident with lord abrexis’s son.
as dorian says in his sex scene:
Where I come from, anything between two men… it’s about pleasure. It’s accepted, but taken no further. You learn not to hope for more. You’d be foolish to.
maybe it would have been fine behind closed doors, but it’s been made extremely public. just look at this letter: word has spread quickly among halward’s enemies.
Halward: I only wanted what was best for you!
Dorian: You wanted the best for you! For your fucking legacy! Anything for that!
when dorian says this, he’s exactly right. halward might not understand dorian, but dorian understands him. halward knew dorian slept with men for 8, 9 years before this, thanks to alexius’s letter detailing how they met. it hasn’t been an issue before. but it’s only now that it could pose a threat to halward’s reputation that halward decides it has to change. he goes back on his word, his teachings against blood magic, to protect himself, his legacy, his image. it’s disgusting. appalling.
finally, i want to address this banter between cole and dorian:
Dorian: You think that if they love you, they should understand. They shouldn't want to hurt you.
Dorian: So you feel betrayed. You say things you can't ever take back.
Cole: “Get out. You are no son of mine.”
Cole: He wishes he hadn't meant it.
world of thedas says dorian “escaped,” “fled.” even dorian says he “found out [and] left.” but this banter, given the above context, is elucidating. dorian didn’t sneak out in the middle of the night. he confronted halward. he stood his ground. he refused to let halward change him. he had hope, even if just a sliver of it, that halward would understand, would still love him, even if he wasn’t everything his father wanted.
and for staying true to who he was, he was given rejection. wholehearted rejection. halward said that dorian was not his son, and he meant it. if dorian couldn’t behave in a way that would uphold house pavus’s perfect legacy, if he couldn’t “put on a show, marry the girl, keep everything unsavory private and locked away,” then he couldn’t be a pavus.
dorian left having tried everything. having desperately pleaded with his father to still love him for who he was. but halward never truly loved dorian. he only loved the man he hoped dorian would become, the man he tried to force him to become by throwing money and disciplinary action and strict schools at the problem because he never truly cared about what dorian wanted, the man he was entirely willing to abandon his abandon his principles to use blood magic to change dorian into.
dorian was not halward’s son, because he fought against the life he was forced into since birth. dorian was not halward’s son, because he dared to put dorian before pavus.
