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Venatori guard: Is this elf here your slave?

Neve, disguised as venatori: Don’t you..

Rook: Yes I’m her slave! Really the most subordinate slave you can find, I will do anything she tells me

Venatori guard: ….right. I guess I’ll just let you through then

*as soon as out of earshot*

Neve: You said that way too fast

Rook: Ok wow, sorry for trying to stay in character

#datv #veilguard #dragon age the veilguard #meme #shitpost #oc #datv rook #elf!rook #neve gallus #rook x neve #neve x rook #veilguard spoilers #datv spoilers

OLIVIA DE RIVA | ROOK QUESTIONS

HOW DOES YOUR ROOK DEAL AFTER BLOOD OF ARLATHAN? HOW DID THEY FEEL WHEN ELGAR'NAN SPOKE TO THEM DIRECTLY? AFTER THEY WERE CHARMED BY HIM?

olivia has this persistent sense of isolation in familiarity, bordering on imposter syndrome and at its worst it’s self-sabotaging. she wants an excuse to turn-off, for once in her life. she never had a sense of belonging, both as an elf as well as in her upbringing (similar to sera, but she’s on defence, not offense) and elgar’nan preyed on that. calling her “da’len” and playing on her vulnerability in a familiar connection. at that moment of time, olivia doesn’t know who she is, where she came from, so to some extent she found comfort in that destructive connection.

she’s insecure in her place as a member of the veilguard. the team look to her to solve their personal problems, many regarding their own upbringings and family connections despite having little experience of her own in either route, especially when it comes to harding, davrin, bellara and lucanis. she doesn’t doubt her role in the team but there’s very much a disconnect in the unit’s synergy and that once this is all over, so is their reliance on her.

she can’t let people into her life because she doesn’t think there’s anything to her, she doesn’t have family around, a place to call home that isn’t somewhere she just lives. most of her interpersonal relationships have some level of transaction so olivia struggles to put in the effort because they’re usually a means to an end.

elgar’nan spoke to that, however it wasn’t enough, because whilst she feels little connection to dalish, she’s giving back and protecting the one truth in her life, being elven.

olivia, canonically as it’s in game, becomes a little more snippy with the team during the mission and lucanis probably got the brunt of it because to her, he just doesn’t get it because the crows never did.

WHAT WOULD FEARLINGS LOOK LIKE TO THEM?

olivia pathologies most things about herself, for better or worse. she’s had a lot of time to just sit with her unhealthy behaviour due to the nature of her work but the one thing she holds onto is her optimism. things can and will get better, even by her own hand but not necessarily pertaining to her own being.

i don’t think her fearling would be the typical manifestation, it’d be her. not only her, but the glowing, giggling six-year-old olivia tabris from the alienage slowly decaying into a sprite of monster and most horrifyingly by present olivia’s own doing. killing her inner sense of wonder, hope and youth. she blames herself when the fact of the matter is, it was inevitable in the environment she was put in at the hands of someone else and she was forced to adapt to the situation. the choice is hers. let the child gradually fall to this monstrous form, or kill it swiftly to taking away the pain of the forgotten girl.

WHAT EVENT BROUGHT THEM TO THEIR LOWEST, MENTALLY? HOW DID THEY ACT DURING THIS TIME?

olivia becomes borderline catatonic when discovering the truth and just how she ended up with the crows. morrigan comes to visit the day of her engagement party in treviso and breadcrumbs the information out, about her parents, her home, and how she ended up in antiva before leaving her with the ring her mother was supposed to be wed with. she’s sat alone on that veranda, crashing out as the memories flooded back, no longer protecting the solace she once had in blissful ignorance.

she’s angry, passively vengeful and feels swindled. marrying into a family that once took her from her own in an act of revenge, targeted her people at their most vulnerable and intended to parade her about like an image of not only pseudo-solidarity but compliance. she doesn’t hate lucanis but she can’t be around him without a sense of betrayal and disillusion. so, she walks away.

she changes back into her gear, leaving a simple note and slips into the night, heading for southern thedas, denerim. unfortunately, olivia is left feeling some sense of vindication and safety for her long-standing emotional isolation. outside of caterina and to some extent teia, nobody knew olivia tabris, so they wouldn’t know the first place to look.

i’ve mentioned this before but i’m messing with the timeline a little and pushing back origins about ten years give-or-take because liv is twenty-eight but canonically she’d be about twenty.

HAVE THEY EVER FELT INSIGNIFICANT? TO THE WORLD? TO THEIR FACTION? TO THEIR LOVED ONES?

olivia and her relationship with the crows as a faction and the individuals within it is loaded to say the least. elves, but particularly elven women from a young age are very aware of their place in the eco-system. as good of a fighter as you may be, it’ll never be their primary function. there’s such a pervasive, yet contradictory message sent to kids like olivia, telling the elven girls one thing that it’s almost setting them up for failure and an absolute assassination of character.

despite being a competent mage, olivia was under no impression that it was ever her selling point. they’d tell her to weaponise her beauty and body, but throw it back in her face when it was no longer beneficial and despite teia trying to protect olivia from as much of it as she could, they were both still at the mercy of the status-quo. similarly with viago, who was rock stuck in a hard place but it was much easier for him to compartmentalise it, especially when he was able to push her out and away from the environment. although olivia didn’t take it that way, she took it to heart that the only constants in her life were locking the door and throwing away the key as if she never belonged there.

i think a lot of those feelings reared their ugly heads when lucanis showed up. she instinctively scoffed at his hypocrisy when it came to zara’s behaviour of her subjects and, not necessarily downplayed his grandmother’s treatment of him and illario but for her it wasn’t petty family rivalry, it was life and death. the cousins drew daggers at each-other from across the dinner table, when she was forced to aim for her friends without hesitation.

similarly with the elf thing. she feels passively insignificant, it’s not intention it just is what it is. she didn’t grow up with a lot of elves and most of the one’s she did were gone, either by their own hand or hers. i guess in some way this all came to its breaking point during the ritual, both with the dalish and lucanis.

HOW QUICK IS YOUR ROOK TO FORGIVE? DO THEY FIND IT EASY TO MOVE ON AFTER THE FACT? WILL THEY HOLD THIS AGAINST THE PERSON?

depends on the situation and the person. olivia’s resentment towards caterina isn’t going anywhere anytime soon but when it comes to lucanis, teia and after a little while, viago it’s a lot quicker than anyone would’ve thought but i don’t think she would’ve been able to do so without initially leaving to find her parents. she needed the space, and the slower-ish, pace of life - to finally be in a situation that wasn’t all encompassingly suffocating.

lucanis i think deals with her disappearance the best, simply because it’s on her own terms. don’t get me wrong, he’s sick to his stomach but with the help of the team, particularly davrin, neve and harding and to some extent emmrich, he’s able to rationalise it. spite… not so much.

viago’s pissed, which then turns to apathy more than anything, it’s an embarrassment on house de riva and it’s a public reflection on him that he still can’t keep one of his crows in-line during one of the most notable events in his house’s history - a direct link to the first house - that has now been swiped from beneath him that he had no control over.

with neve, she was simply going to have to live and let live and no matter how much she tried. deep down she would never really let go of what happened during the dragon attack. olivia saved her home, her people and neve was just going to have to live with that, just as olivia was going to have to live with the fact that neve wouldn’t take any justification.

similarly with teia, olivia was essentially ordered to be teia’s pet-project under orders from caterina and what’s done is done. olivia can’t change what happened and knows teia was just surviving under the crows too.

WHICH ONE OF THEIR SENSES WOULD THEY FEAR LOSING THE MOST?

sight. olivia’s really good a reading people and too lose her sight would be a lost of one of her key skills and more importantly it would be a loss on her being able to read how people perceived her and that’s pretty difficult to managed when her image, especially during her time with the crows was everything she relied on outside of combat - stealth was never her thing.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HEADCANON FOR YOUR ROOK?

olivia’s actually a pretty good singer, if i had to pick a vocalist she sounds like, it’d probably say rachel zelger, especially on the songbirds and snakes soundtrack. on that, i could absolutely see olivia in lucy gray’s rainbow dress and it’s what i’d picture her wearing when she returns to the south, completely changing up her colour palette from black and red and she stops dying her hair from blonde.

also, this is a more general thing but i fully believe lucanis and rook had a few very handsy drunken moments before bed after drinking with davrin

IF YOU HAVE MULTIPLE ROOKS, DO YOU THINK THEY'D GET ALONG WITH EACH OTHER?

honestly yes, the three of them balance each-other out but also mirror each-other in a lot of ways. aurore is generally more upbeat out of the three of them, ward being the most pessimistic and olivia is the equaliser.

and to get this one out of the road, whilst i don’t see anything necessarily long-term, ward and olivia wouldn’t oppose casual sex (if lucanis or neve weren’t in the picture). ward and olivia wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on everything. the minrathous and treviso choice being a no-go talking point, though i do think ward would rationalise it better than neve, he’d still be a bit prickly about letting the venetori take over. the other thing being solas, neither particularly like him but olivia does feel a slight bit of sympathy, but that’s more so on behalf of lavellan and in regards to his rebellion against specifically the evanuris.

olivia i do think would initially be wary, he’s human, he’s from minrathous and she’s not exactly buddy-buddy with the shadows but i think ward would be the same, to a lesser extent he’s just skeptical on motive and doesn’t love the way the crows take advantage on the existing slavery system, though they both agree on that.

aurore is very much at face-value. doesn’t take herself too seriously, is generally friendly with everyone until crunch time and then the warden in her comes out. she’s someone who enjoys life to the fullest because she’s painfully aware of the inevitable.

probably helps a lot that they all romanced different people and can just be happy for each-other. olivia is especially pleased to hear about davrin and aurore.

questions cr: @anderfels (hope you don’t mind, i was picking and choosing from the compilations without wanting to clog up your notifications with the individuals).