My headcanon about Johanna Hezenkoss & Emmrich Volkarin's relationship. Which nobody asked for BUT that's what tumblr is for.
Now, hear me out, I am thoroughly enraptured by the collective fandom brain that says Emmrich was Down Bad, and Johanna was too busy being a Bad Bitch to care about his feelings. In at least one universe each, you're all 100% right, and I respect you for it. However, I posit an alternative and beseech you to go on this journey with me. I want to explore a woman who does not have a singular mind for a man, who carves her own way through life with a diamond-headed sickle, but who still thinks about him enough to hate him. A woman who sees obsession as a way of life and treats him as just another in a long line.
Our gentleman necromancer is the kind of man who falls in love at the drop of the hat. A man of a million heartbreaks. Emmrich has fallen in love with every person he's ever been on a date with. He has fallen in love with a woman selling flowers from a cart because she told him the species, though he already knew, and he fell in love with the man he met in the lift because their hands brushed when they reached for the lever and he had a beautiful laugh. That's simply how he is.
To someone like Johanna, that is a paltry weakness. Worthy of scorn if not outright mockery (and, let's face it, usually outright mockery). Johanna is a woman of barbed emotions, they stick in her mind as they catch upon thought and idea and they do not become action. She doesn't have time for them when she could be bringing her brilliance to life.
As students, Emmrich is in awe of her. Passionate, intelligent people are his favourite to be around and Johanna has them both in spades. She is fearless and unfettered by the law of man or magic. Daring and dauntless are also qualities Emmrich finds commendable, and on paper he should have been in love in an instant. He could have been in love. But Johanna is something else, too.
Johanna is also cruel. There are so many things that Emmrich, in the sweeping nature of his own passion, can look past. Selfishness can be self-determination. Recklessness can be bravery. Even the willingness to defy the laws and responsibilities he personally holds so dearly can be novel, an experimentation, the base of all new discovery. But cruelty is, perhaps, one of his only staunch nos.
To think of it in simple terms - Emmrich is the one to see a starving kitten and whisk them into his arms to find them food and shelter. He loves to see someone else do the same. He can understand the person who walks past. He can forgive even the person who left them there to begin with. He cannot abide the person who laughs.
For Emmrich, this is easy enough. He does not fall in love and he needn't do so. Johanna is still a valued colleague and, somehow, he enjoys her company. Even if they don't see eye to eye, she is still all of those other qualities he gazes fondly upon and they don't have to agree to have spirited conversations and to learn from each other.
For Johanna, this is a slight. This is inexplicable. This is enough to burrow an emotion past the rest and what she feels is confusion - and that is so much worse than anything else it could be. Johanna knows that she is perfection personified and even if she doesn't want Volkarin, why doesn't he want her?
Johanna is clever, and desirable, and if she's in the mood for a lover it's easy enough to find one. She knows how to crook her finger. Sure, she's intimidating and she can just as easily send them running as keep them coming, but it works for her.
Except not with Volkarin.
Every fortnight or so she sees him doe eyed and dreamy over some fellow student - once, even a visiting Chantry Sister! - and yet he has never looked at her that way. When they stay up all hours of the night, researching their shared love of magic, studying for an exam, performing an experiment, he treats her with kindness and respect. Gross. He exclaims appropriately about her brilliance. Deserved. And he never strays from the bounds of their strange friendship. Unnerving.
Worse, still, he doesn't even seem to realize that they're rivals! Both of them sit at the top of any class they're in, trading number one back and forth in a constant dead heat. When she is number one, Volkarin congratulates her! He gasps in awe at her impressive work. He even stills his tongue in front of others when he believes she may have cheated. Later, alone, when he calls her on it he is gentle. He offers to help, tells her that he will always be willing to help. She can only laugh at him. Because that is pathetic, and condescending, and she is cruel.
It turns out that when he's hurt, his wet doe eyes aren't all that different from when he's a besotted fool.
Their relationship is always like this. They drift apart, eventually as students, but are thrust back together as members of the Mourn Watch. Johanna is never less intelligent, never less driven, and Emmrich is never less kind. He supports her when he can and challenges her when he must. He wants what's best for her, and for the Mourn Watch.
She wants the same things.
When her twisted experiments and refusal to follow the rules finally ends in her dismissal from the Mourn Watch, she is furious. Emmrich is sad. For a while, he sends her letters, and they say the same things he always has. He wants to help. He will help. He cares about her. Johanna responds to exactly one.
You have always been a mewling, pitiful little creature with no backbone. Impressive, considering how easy it would have been to graft one to yourself. If you conquer one fear in your miserable life, let it be the one that forces you to keep talking when you should be quiet.
It's the one Emmrich doesn't respond to. It is short. It is cruel and their bond finally severs, a task Johanna thought impossible. He wants to help. He will help. Until he doesn't. Emmrich Volkarin never follows through on anything. Emmrich is fearful and petulant and compassionate to a fault. And he has finally had enough of her.
That's fine. They were never friends, always rivals, and he never loved her because he was too cowardly to truly see her. She knows this now and that is why she relegates Emmrich Volkarin to a footnote. Part of the past and not her glorious future. It is by nature of the beast that there is no one around to point out, no one that cares enough to notice, that she doesn't need the same footnote on every page.
**Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I am a lunatic. I'll be on tumblr all night - actually, for the rest of ever 😘
