As I’ve been playing a Cousland for the first time in a decade, I noticed something I thought was interesting.
Remember Lady Landra? If you don’t, she’s a friend of Teyrna Eleanor, Warden Cousland’s mother, who is visiting Castle Cousland during the origin story. She has arrived to keep Eleanor company when Bryce and Fergus march south to war, and Eleanor plans to go spend some time at her estate as well. Eleanor introduces her as “Lady Landra, Bann Loren’s wife.” She has come with her son Dairren and her elven lady-in-waiting Iona, either of whom can be flirted with and invited to the protagonist’s bedroom for the evening. In conversation, Lady Landry coyly remarks to a female protagonist that Dairren is “not married yet either,” suggesting that she might be pleased if the younger Cousland took an interest in her son.
Later, during the attack on Castle Cousland by Arl Howe’s men, the soon-to-be Warden Cousland and Eleanor find Lady Landra dead in her guest bedroom. Eleanor grieves for her friend, lamenting, “If she hadn’t come to me… If she hadn’t been here…”
Why is this interesting? Well, we hear of Bann Loren later, as it happens.
The beginning of the Return to Ostagar DLC takes place on Bann Loren’s lands, where the game describes Bann Loren as “a well-known minor lord and little-loved for the fluidity of his allegiances.” There the Warden can witness Elric Maraigne, a confidant of King Cailan, being attacked by a group of the Bann’s soldiers. Before succumbing to his wounds, he will explain that he was captured and tortured by Bann Loren, and implore the Warden to return to Ostagar to recover some sensitive documents belonging to King Cailan, as well as his his sword.
While it is not stated outright, this scene implies that Bann Loren was working for Loghain at the time. I can think of no other reason he would capture and torture a confidant of King Cailan. But if that was the case—if he was an ally of Loghain and Howe—then why were his wife and son not spared in the attack on Castle Cousland?
We hear of Bann Loren again in Inquisition. His castle, Caer Oswin, has been overtaken by an extremist group called the Order of Fiery Promise. In the castle, a letter from Bann Alfstanna Eremon can be found:
I worry about Loren daily. Ever since the death of his wife and son in Highever at the onset of the Blight, he retreats further and further into reclusion.
Almost no one is permitted to come to Caer Oswin. The last time I managed to see him, it was only because I bullied my way into the castle and insisted his strange new guards take me to him. And I say "strange new guards" for a reason: almost all the Oswin retainers have been sent away. These men didn't wear Bann Loren's colors, and they struck me more as prison wardens than as protectors. Loren himself was pale and almost delirious. I begged him to see a physic, and he promised he would, but I doubt he ever did.
The guards ushered me out in a hurry, and the last time I returned, I was not even allowed past the gate. It's been months since anyone saw Loren at all. I fear the worst has happened, yet I can prove nothing. All I can do is pray the rest of the Bannorn take notice and act before a good man is lost.
Evidently, someone thinks Loren was a good man after all. It has been ten years; perhaps time and loss has changed him.
The question remains whether he was already in league with Loghain before Ostagar, and whether he knew that Castle Cousland was going to be attacked while his wife and son were there. I suspect that he did not. While it is possible that Dairren was not his sole heir, even if Loren had some reason he wished to dispose of his wife, it would make little sense politically to send his son to the same fate.
I suspect that this was simply a tragic mistake. If Loren was already in league with Loghain, I don’t think he knew that Howe would be attacking the Couslands. It’s also possible that Loren’s allegiance to Loghain came later—with his wife and son already dead, a Blight rising from the south, and Loghain declaring himself regent, a man of “fluid allegiances” may have seen no sensible option but to fall in line behind Ferelden’s new ruler and to do his bidding.
Whatever the case, Alfstanna’s letter suggests that the loss of his family sent Loren into a long period of decline—likely ending with his own castle being overtaken, and Loren possessing little will to stop it.
I wonder if perhaps he only found out after throwing in his lot with Loghain that the regent he served had sanctioned Howe’s attack on the Couslands—and been therefore complicit in the murder of his wife and son. I wonder if he was plagued by guilt.
