#ellenere lavellan

[refrainee]

Exploring the Fade

Solavellan comms for @smitten-miqitten thank you so much! ✨

[smitten-miqitten]

The duo are on vacation in modern Thedas, a few hundred years in the future.

Solas is both fascinated by and disappointed in the grocery store’s offerings and has to look at and criticize everything.

Meanwhile Ellenere just wants to purchase what they came there for and then go do anything else.

Lavellan is in her hundreds now and has an old lady’s level of give-a-shit, so she doesn’t feel the need to wear long sleeves to make her arm more palatable for strangers. When asked what happened, she makes up increasingly outlandish lies to fuck with people for fun and Solas plays along and keeps track of what lie got told to whom.

[smitten-miqitten]

Tidied up an old Solas and Lavellan doodle.

[smitten-miqitten]

After the Crestwood breakup, apart from a couple canon dialogue options (the angry ones, she's got a temper and those also give her more agency in the situation imo), instead of outwardly livid or depressed I see my Lavellan is the picture of professional.

She acknowledges that, at present, she's still Solas's boss and basically any debate she can muster about their relationship status would either be an abuse of power or manipulative. And she refuses to be that.

She offers him a graceful exit from his persistent place in her travelling party. A couple missions to make the timing not so stark, and then he'd be assigned Skyhold-based research work (he declines, because ultimately he still wants to be by her side to keep her safe).

She shuts down any attempt from friends like Dorian to reprimand Solas on her behalf. She doesn't need or want attack dogs and it's again an abuse of her position. (It still happens when she isn't looking, but it's clear it's against her wishes)

She schools her face into her very most diplomatic mask. He doesn't deserve the satisfaction of seeing her bleed, he doesn't get to win, her more bitter feelings demand. (Honestly makes her feel more empty and sad rather than victorious.)

The only times she really breaks are:

When he calls her Inquisitor. "If you cannot think of anything better to call me, I'd prefer you not address me at all." He calls her 'Lethallan' instead.

When, the night before the final battle against Corypheus, he's called to her room to discuss party comp preference for the final push. She's been drowning in troop logistics paperwork and simply hasn't had time to go to him. He arrives as she's writing her will, in the event of her death, and a little of the terror she feels slips through her mask. Unable to console her as he'd prefer, he burns the will, declaring it unnecessary. (They argue. When she's angry she feels less frightened. Sort of a win?)

I prefer this because she IS a very diplomatic person and this is her way of respecting the distance Solas seems to want. AND I think Lavellan being a closed book about how she feels about the situation, when previously she'd been so open, hurts him more. Kinda an uno reverse at him.

[smitten-miqitten]

Thinking more Lavellan thoughts.

Ellenere is clever and imo, though the full picture is far too fantastical for really anyone to have guessed, would have sussed out some of Solas's identity.

Specifically, that he's Elvhen.

After meeting Abelas and co., it would have made a LOT of Solas's behavior and opinions make a ton of sense if he'd been Elvhen, possibly previously in uthenera.

His secretive nature could easily be explained by fear of discovery and having to explain that he's ancient, something that would see people either try to exploit his knowledge or deem him insane.

His fluency in what is more or less an almost entirely dead language.

His initial disdain for the Dalish (that Abelas, the other example Lavellan has, shares), and his unwillingness to consider himself having anything in common with most Elves.

His 'from the Fade' stories that feel a tiny bit like a lie.

His waaay too much/too varied life experience for a guy who's supposed to be like 40 something.

His lack of/slightly limited knowledge about some fairly normal things. Like most modern Dwarf stuff. He's out of touch.

Really all of his interactions with Abelas are sus as fuck.

Initially she'd have understood Solas was witholding things but respected his privacy and trusted him to tell her in his own time. That said, she does wonder, and guesses at what the mystery might be. After meeting Abelas though, Ellenere thinks she's already figured the big secret out, and so stops digging.

When Solas takes Ellenere to Crestwood, she 100% thinks he's going to tell her he's Elvhen. And when he doesn't, she thinks it's because he's decided she can't be trusted with that secret. And that hurts.

And unfortunately because she's so so sure that she's already found the answer, she overlooks all the other obvious clues he's left around (which she kicks herself for later)

[smitten-miqitten]

Inky’s Fade-prison fit

[smitten-miqitten]

Thinking about Dorian and my Lavellan.

At the start of Inquisiton, though you'd never know it by her demeanor, Ellenere is lowkey terrified of all the Humans around her, especially the Templars and fancy Templar(Seeker).

She's the picture of diplomacy, and at the Conclave even went so far as to drop her Free Marches Dalish accent and adopt a more Ferelden accent (so she shifts from Irish to Alix's British), all to make herself appear pleasant and avoid giving the Humans a reason to hurt her. She's on eggshells for most of her early days in Haven, and doesn't have many people to drop her guard around or feel safe with. The only other Elves around are either servants or a standoffish man who doesn't consider himself to be her kind of Elf. The Dwarf is nice to her at least, and has wonderful stories.

Enter Dorian Pavus, a not-a-magister from Tevinter. Somehow THIS Human is more of a pariah than the Dalish Elf Mage. And he wears it with such enthusiasm and defiance! Any bigoted ire from others makes like a heat-seeking missile toward him and avoids her almost entirely.

He's a bit tone deaf when it comes to the life circumstances of Elves, but Lavellan being an Elf is a non-issue for him. She's no more weird to him than any other Southern savage (a designation which notably includes the Humans and Dwarves and Qunari around her). The one Human who logically she should feel the least safe around becomes almost instantly a source of comfort, and models for her how best to own the ill perception others have of her.

Obviously their relationship develops quite a bit further than "Man these Humans hate this one Human so much they forget to be bigoted toward me!" but it is unfortunately how the least likely candidate for the best friend of a Dalish Elf got a foot in the door to eventually became her dearest companion.

[smitten-miqitten]

I have this post-veilguard headcanon where my Lavellan uses a lot of her suddenly ample time to solve one of the biggest nagging problems she's had: what became of the bad Redcliffe timeline.

Ultimately, through a lot of fade sciency shit, she discovers that the timeline is persistent and is a branch of the current one (alongside and muddled by many of Alexius's numerous attempts to save Felix).

She is then presented with a new problem: Did bad-timeline Solas actually properly die, or did he fragment like Mythal?

Being the only living person to have been to that timeline, she's the only one who can access it, and through considerable planning, effort, and the wibbliness of the Fade manages to steal back to that timeline briefly. She discovers that a small fragment of Solas DID survive; a fragment embodying his hope that became trapped in the red lyrium that grew in his corpse.

She manages to bring that fragment back with her, and her good-timeline Solas is able to cleanse the lyrium shard of the blight. The fragmented Solas then goes on to live a life not dissimilar to that of a spirit.

Fragmented Solas takes up residence in the section of the Fade his friend Wisdom once lived, and while not entirely a spirit he is no longer truly embodied and so can choose his form, alternating between spirit worm and wolf. He's not quite Solas, he's only a small piece of the man he was, and so begins to develop a new identity for himself that is branching from his living counterpart. He is also not alone, for he has the younger regrown Wisdom for company, various other spirit friends, and Lavellan and Solas visit on occasion. It's a little awkward of course, but Lavellan and good-timeline Solas are glad he no longer suffers, and bad-timeline Solas is grateful and surprised to have been saved.