Taking my Lavellan through Varric’s companion quest again and I think I’ve finally put my finger on what it is that I don’t like about Bianca.
Thing is, conceptually, I should like Bianca. She’s funny, witty, canonically brilliant. She’s a surface dwarf that nearly wins over the Shaperate. And she’s exactly the sort of person that you would expect when it comes to dealing with the Dwarven Merchants’ Guild. (In DAII, Varric tells Hawke that whoever has to deal with the guild sleeps with a knife under their pillow.) Plus she’s voiced by Laura Bailey.
One of the first issues is that Bianca evades any sort of consequence for her actions. She’s the one who introduces red lyrium to Corypheus (at the time posing as either Larius or Janeka) and gives them a copy of her key to Valammar. And by this point in the game, the Inquisitor has Seen Some Shit. They’ve seen people imprisoned while red lyrium grows out of their bodies, they know that the red templars are harvesting corpses for more, they’ve seen red templars become unrecognizable mutations.
And Varric’s been kicking himself for every second of this game right up to his companion quest, saying that it’s his fault, it’s his and Bartrand’s fault, and he has to personally come fix this. Come to find out that Bianca’s at fault: Varric reached out to her about the red lyrium way back when, and she repaid his trust by introducing Corypheus to red lyrium. Worse, she doesn’t even come clean at Skyhold. She waits until the moment that she has her copy of her key back in her hand before she tells the truth–and even then, Varric has to push. She doesn’t volunteer any information about her role in this. Not until he asks.
Bianca isn’t apologetic. She’s aware that she fucked up, but she blows it off by saying “funny story” and then claims that because she sealed the entrance and took back her key, then she’s fixed it about as much as possible! Problem solved! Thus conveniently absolving her role in the red lyrium crisis. Varric even calls her out for it, saying she can’t just fix this like she fixes her machines. She viciously questions the point of her feeling guilty over something she can’t fix, asking if she should just sit and make up stories instead.
That argument is the closest she comes to experiencing any consequences for her actions. It’s also a temporary argument. At the end of the quest, the Inquisitor can ask Varric if he plans on seeing Bianca again, to which he responds, “I always do.”
Bianca’s attitude towards Varric ends up being as much of a problem for me as her escaping any consequences for her actions. She’s buddy-buddy with Varric, waxing poetic about them interrupting Bartrand’s dinners. And the whole time she’s dragging him down memory lane, she knows that she’s also led him down into Valammar to fix her mistake. It’s like she’s warming him up before revealing the awful truth: “Hey, remember the great times we used to have? Those were awesome. By the way, the crisis you’ve been torturing yourself over is mostly my fault, as it turns out that none of your reasonable precautions have backfired, and I’m the one who gave the red lyrium to the enemy.”
It feels very manipulative.
The argument between Varric and Bianca gets dirty pretty fast. Bianca calls him out for feeling sorry for himself, for making up stories–something Varric brings up back at Skyhold at the end of his quest, going so far as to say that if it weren’t for Cassandra, he’d be sitting in Kirkwall and pretending none of this was happening. It’s a cruel thing for her to say, and it’s clear that it bothers him greatly.
Varric has been beating himself up since Haven about red lyrium popping up all over the place and becoming the source and excuse for a great number of crimes. But Bianca had a more active role in that crisis, yet she cuts Varric to the wick during their argument, bringing him down low enough that he actually believes her. Even though Cassandra was the one who brought Varric to meet the Divine, Varric’s been actively contributing to the Inquisition and stuck around even when he was no longer needed. It actually comes up earlier in the game, during an argument between Varric and Cassandra, where the Inquisitor has the opportunity to defend Varric as a worthy addition to the Inquisition.
This also sticks out to me because I’m a married woman. There’s just shit you don’t throw in your partner’s face during an argument. Varric’s deep guilt over accidentally introducing red lyrium to the surface, especially knowing how much pain it has caused on a both micro and macro scale, is completely reasonable. Varric’s storytelling hasn’t done anyone harm, and the lie he spun to Cassandra about Hawke is probably the only reason why Hawke didn’t die at the Conclave. Bianca taking his guilt and his penchant for storytelling and twisting them into things he should feel bad about is just a low blow.
But this hearkens back to “Bianca doesn’t face consequences for her actions”: despite a pretty rough argument, when asked, Varric confirms that he intends to see Bianca again. Bianca lies to Varric and insults him during their argument–but their relationship is apparently fine. She gets to stay married and have her extramarital affair, and Varric continues to be the other man and will see her again once he has the chance. Their relationship is unchanged.
One of the saddest moments comes at the end of the quest, when Varric and the Inquisitor are talking back at Skyhold:
“The second she showed up here, I knew. I just…”
Varric admits that he suspected Bianca was at fault simply because she came to Skyhold at great personal risk to deliver her so-called “lead.” They’ve been in a relationship for fifteen years, albeit a long distance one, but one which is clearly the primary romantic relationship in Varric’s life, and not only does he not trust her to tell the truth, he’s not surprised that she didn’t tell the truth.
You shouldn’t feel that way about your partner.
And the most frustrating moment is the last line that Bianca delivers to the Inquisitor:
“Get him killed, and I’ll feed you your own eyeballs, Inquisitor.”
Bianca threatens the Inquisitor. It’s supposed to be one of those anger-born-of-worry threats, but Bianca has no credibility here. She intentionally misleads Varric, manipulates his emotions by bringing up their history together, withholds her role in the crisis until he calls her out on it, throws his guilt about said crisis in his face as if it were an unreasonable thing to feel, doesn’t apologize or display any remorse for anything, and treats taking back her copy of the key and sealing the entrance as “enough” compensation for her role in the red lyrium crisis. And then she makes this threat to the Inquisitor, and it’s supposed to be all “aw look she does care” kind of moments, but it’s really not. In the greater context of her behavior during this quest, it’s just another moment of her being an asshole.
It’s like finding out that your best friend’s long-time girlfriend is actually an abusive asshole, and also you can’t talk him out of it. Bianca’s entire role just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
