#character explorations.

[archonoclasm]

What really gets me is how Dorian really does try giving you an out when you romance him:

Inquisitor: I thought we could discuss what happens…after. Dorian: Ah, yes. After. Dreadful thing, after. Let’s see. Assuming one or both of us aren’t slaughtered along the way, what do you wish to happen? We could go our separate ways if you prefer. I’ve been a port in a storm before. I would understand.

Another example comes after you have sex:

Dorian: I’m curious where this goes, you and I. We’ve had fun. Perfectly reasonable to leave it here, get on with the business of killing Archdemons and such… Inquisitor: Tell me what you want. Dorian: All on me then? Inquisitor: Should it be all on me?

And this revealing bit of dialogue after you have sex and say you just want it to be sex, nothing more, much to Dorian's totally expected disappontment:

Inquisitor: I don’t know if I want more. Wasn’t this a good time? Dorian: I’ve no burning need to stroke your ego. More of the same would not be unwelcome. Perhaps this is something we can speak on later…once we see whether you or I survive this whole business. Until then… I need to go. [Dorian stands and starts to collect his clothes.]

I know I mention this a bit, but Dorian really just primes himself for being let down. It's genuinely all he knows. Well and truly. And it's so heartbreaking that he throws you these lines to use to escape so he can try and minimize the hurt before falling for you deeper to that point in which he can neither easily nor safely scrabble out of.

This line he says reveals so much about him. He's so, so confident in terms of sex, but romance, emotions, the vulnerability... He's lost, inexperienced, and not a little bit worried:

Dorian: You say that like [starting a relationship]'s a simple thing, easily imagined. I have no examples with which to compare.

[archonoclasm]

Sidenote, but you know what I find absolutely delightful? That despite all the walls Dorian has, all the outs he gives you to leave him behind as just another notch in your belt, he is....disgustingly full of yearning. And a gentleness. And a really deep and warm and affectionate love.

No, he isn't going to come out through the mist like some syrupy Mr. Darcy to spill his heart out onto your feet, but he still sheds his layers despite his uncertainty, peeling them all back 'despite his better judgment.' He always waits for his rejection and still allows for this easy, sharp flirtations to bounce between you two. Sure, maybe it was fun at first. Maybe he started it as only just fun, but eventually, it became dangerous and deadly as it brought in him a hope -- and yet, before his fears, he still propositions you. It's he who comes to your room. It's him who brings up sex with a blatant eagerness. He goes in baring himself for injury despite knowing full well this may just be a fling, and still, he takes the leap and jumps in anyway. In the bedsheets after, he darkens with his worries.

Really, there is a level of risk taking Dorian finds himself absolutely unable to resist. He pursues romances that might burn him out. He leaves home with not a copper or a friend to his name. He'd fought constantly as a boy and had wrangled at those bars stubbornly kept about him, but rebelling and daring is what he's made for. Ergo, tempting a reckoning is sort of a hobby.

So, when Dorian approaches you for sex, Dorian is very much aware of what he's risking. And for months before this climax, this physical entanglement and the dreaded 'what now?', it shouldn't exactly escape you that he's been calling you amatus. It might be an odd image, maybe, imagining Dorian to be a man made for syrupy gestures, but Dorian Pavus is quite seriously that man! There's petnames! Letters! And calls every night! He doesn't say amatus for the hell of it or to simply relish in the knowledge that he can make you squirm. There have been countless occasions where he would offer that word with such a bludgeoning sincerity, and stripped right down to its barest of bones, for months, this man, walled high, has been calling you his love.

There it is. Dorian may actually loathe it were you to tell him, sure, but he's unfortunately a man made to yearn.

[archonoclasm]

Dorian as Archon is no pushover. He comes across as flippant and nonchalant, humorous and easy spirited, but as a reformer at heart, as a man who seeks to uproot old Tevinter traditions, Dorian is a bit — well, total in his actions and borderline scary.

Dorian, dedicated to changing Tevinter, is not above spreading a long undertone of fear. To those that would cling to the Venatori or fight tooth and nail to protect their status, they should expect a lot less lenience and a lot more bloodshed; in other words, Archon Pavus is not above murder. To him, those who would reach for the Venatori are as much morally reprehensible as they are a foul amassing rot long overdue for a thorough ousting. He's not fool enough to wait, and in his experience, finds offering them time entirely too generous. Tevinter politics is nonsense and is half a bloody jungle and half a fucking war, and he knows showing a sprig of patience can be taken as weakness before seeing it bent a million ways to wear at his goals. No, he won't accept dawdling or stalmates in the Senate to make him sweat. Magisters are proud, vain creatures, such qualities he's seen more times than he likes, and if he allows them patience, affords them their time to change their minds, he knows the Venatori will only plunge in their claws. He won't, not for anything, let that happen.

When his father died, Dorian had said he'd every intention to find his murderers and murder them back. That alone says a lot about Dorian's penchant for exacting actions. If you want a sick taken care of, sometimes, you've no choice but to take that rabid dog and bury it out back.

Old Tevinter should fear him. Should the country shake, it'd be for the tremors of those rich and complacent with so much to lose.

[archonoclasm]

As none of these headcanons deserve any actual in depth exploring, here are a list random factoids regarding Dorian and his physicals + grooming habits:

1. Dorian runs warm. And he prefers it warm. It isn't that Tevinter is some tropical country (it most certainly isn't), but beside Ferelden, its colder seasons are of a gentler clime and more agreeable to Dorian. His complaining up in those wretched snowy plots the Inquisitor is ever so fond dragging him through is absolutely deserved; even running as a blasted oven, the damned country proves heartless.

2. His fragrances tend to run on a more mellowed side with profiles in the gently sweet and spiced. His go-to scent would have him carrying through Skyhold the subtle suggestion of fig and cardamom. Everyone knows Dorian smells absolutely lovely.

3. Dorian is fastidious about grooming. He always shaves, seldom allowing his facial hair to grow even a mite unruly, and will always shave his chest to better go with his outfits. He prefers to be a bit more polished, but it doesn't exactly mean he finds the opposite unattractive on others.

4. Baths are Dorian's absolute favorite. A scalding soak — and he does very much mean scalding, that point where one has to will themselves to endure the first shock of heat before settling — is his preferred way to unwind beyond reading. He likes to pair this with a glass of wine if feeling abundantly indulgent (dry reds are his favorites, give or take a sherry undercurrent). If he can help it, he will bathe every day, and though being out in the elements doesn't exactly make this luxury feasible, he still insists on a blasted wet cloth and a basin every night before bed at least. Please.

5. Dorian is hard-up on making sure he remains very much in shape. He enjoys the burn in his muscles after a good work out — don't let his love for sitting and reading about fool you — and tests his body's limits often and within reason. He won't push himself in the way warriors may (say, Cassandra, Iron Bull, and Cullen), but he keeps himself very in shape despite his greater lean toward milling about to research/study. That said, he is also a very vain creature, and he intends to remain delightfully strapping.

6. Preferring to seem untouchable, Dorian has no scars to speak of during or before the events of Inquisition. That isn't to say he'd never been hurt in such a way as to warrant one, but that he simply had such injuries sufficiently healed — often through a healer back at home, or potion draughts in a pinch— just in time to make sure his skin doesn't mend over raised and rough. However, after Inquisition, he manages to let some injuries scar over, most of them won after dealing with would-be assassins. You can find the stray groove here and there down his skin, things he now wears as badges of...Maker, forgive him for a spell of nonsense poetry, pride. His countrymen trying to kill him? He must be on the right path.

6. He enjoys feeling adorned and decorated in the most handsome gold jewelry. Good clothes are a must, of course, but admittedly, he quite enjoys feeling ornamented and will go for it more often than not. Granted, he doesn't overindulge in this department, but rings, several piercings at his ears (simple small hoops) and, for a stint in his more reckless youth, his nipples (bars) is the preferred. That he hasn't these fineries in Inquisition is because he'd sold most his jewelry after abandoning home before joining the Inquisition, low on money as he had been. He returns to having these piercings and gold fixings after leaving the Inquisition.

[archonoclasm]

Amatus,

I’m writing. Again. Yes, the sending crystals still work and yes, you’ll be in Minrathous in a few short weeks. But a letter, written in blind longing, is real. It can be touched, and it can be held, when ink and paper must substitute for your skin on mine and my breath in your ear.

I used to scoff at frequent declarations of affection. Trite, I thought. Save them for rare and precious moments. But time and love are no longer things I care to squander, especially not as we race again toward calamity. And so, in each of these fleeting, ephemeral seconds, I will tell you that I love you. Whether penned or spoken, or conveyed by glance or action, I love you. In this moment, and in all the moments to come, for as long as they do, I love you.

I will find you soon.

Yours, Dorian.

The letter a romanced Dorian writes in Veilguard is genuinely overwhelmingly wonderful for him.

In Inquisition, we knew him to be a man to both deflect and dismiss, hesitant to drop his walls in fear of looming disappointment. He can love, of course, and he can fall very, very hard in spite of his worries (and he'd resented this, of course), but I think fully letting go to feel kept and safe? That takes time. And so, it did. What helped were those moment with his lover, the affection proud, unabashed, and dizzyingly mutual. He had thought public displays 'trite', sure, and had, to some extent, feared hearing 'I love you' thinking it'd be the last, but year after year of being treated like the one? It softened him. Really softened him, actually. And after some time, he managed to grow, be confident, and say it in turn.

It shows a great arc for Dorian who has managed, with persistence and a tremendous deal of faith, to work through both his insecurities and baggage.

Him preferring written letters and openly admitting to adoring his love on paper... He has come a tremendous long way from Inquisition. [emotional]

[archonoclasm]

While a necromancer, Dorian is also an exceptional storm mage. Of course, he is able to cast from all schools of magic (though is admittedly woefully unfamiliar with the more clerical arts), but to him, it's actually the crackle of tempests that most excites him. With this preference, observers will discover that being around Dorian is like welcoming the flavor of very, very thick ozone. On his own tongue, too, in fact, he would sense the sharpness of a fury, something both silver and staticy like springtime lightning. He can drag his tongue across his gums and feel the tantalizing sizzle of radiating shock, and poured in rivers down the veins of his arms, a balmy, warm heat colors his skin. When he casts, Dorian becomes a conduit. Though he pulls from the Fade, what he manages to mold it to feels entirely his own. He's used to storms, one might've guessed, and all manner of soul-jarring turmoil, and truthfully, he finds this intimacy is what makes him proficient. As a rather embroiled man himself (unfortunately), he tames cataclysms with ease.

Everyone will sense it, of course, mage or not, that feeling of his tingling electricity that surges hotly off him. However, it's only when he's casting, the air devisihly charged wicked as though to border on a density that flirts with tangible. It echoes the feeling of walking in a storm except the whole entire time, you're in the very eye of it. Though magic feels differently to every spellcaster, to and near Dorian, it's like the booming void.

[archonoclasm]

Dorian's expression of magic is artful, but it isn't at all empty vanity. Coming from one of the most influential houses in Tevinter, however, he'd of course enjoyed all the benefits that came with his schooling. Naturally, as an altus and an heir, one can imagine that his success in magic was an outright necessity. Still, he was a child of rebellion and was given perhaps several times over to bouts of misconduct. That said, all throughout his childhood, he'd shuffled nigh-constantly from Circle to Circle, and though they were certainly the best that Tevinter had to offer, the extent of his learning had suffered just a bit.

In time, Dorian's parents had decided that their home wasn't cutting it. He was then boated off to institutions beyond their borders, even enjoying a very brief stint with the Watchers in Nevarra. Of course, being such influential people, Dorian, again saw the very best minds and the most skillful of mages. Sure, he was an unruly student and had given every teacher a couple what-fors, but there was no mistaking it: Dorian Pavus was undeniably gifted. It's just... Well, his application left more than a bit to be desired.

That said, Dorian knows the theories. Dorian can bend some rules and can work them like it's art. He's gone through the motions and has learned all the cues from the most venerated casters, and you can see his schooling blatantly in his body -- it's smooth, graceful, and flashy, too. Still, because of his wild youth, he wasn't exactly what you could call the most conventional or practical. Gauging it, Dorian would be less precise than Emmrich but twice as flashy, and not as improvised as Neve but at least a half more structured.