Elf Collector

The Dragon Age franchise has a women-loving-women problem. That problem being, history of their depiction of sapphic relationships as toxic, abusive and deadly. And I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with it, if it was a once or twice kind of thing… but this is a pattern.

Branka and Hespith

In the Dragon Age: Origins quest “A Paragon of her Kind”, we meet Hespith, who shares that she and Branka were in a relationship. World of Thedas vol. 2 reveals that their affair began not long after Branka’s arranged marriage to Oghren, and probably played a role in her leaving him behind on her expedition to find the Anvil of the Void, while taking the rest of the House—including Hespith—with her. But by the time we meet Hespith in game, things have gone horribly wrong between her and Branka.

Branka became so obsessed with finding the Anvil of the Void, that she purposely let female members of their crew be captured by darkspawn to become broodmothers and breed more darkspawn, as fodder for the traps along the way to the Anvil of the Void. She even let Hespith herself become corrupted and start to turn, something that Hespith kills herself over before letting happen; this is inferred in game and confirmed in the game file notes.

Branka herself also is either killed by the player in an ensuing fight, or potentially commits suicide as well, unable to live with what she’s done if the player pressures her about it.

Marjolaine and Leliana

Also in Dragon Age: Origins, once you gain enough approval with her, Leliana speaks of her past as a Bard, including her teacher and lover, Marjolaine, and how Marjolaine ultimately betrayed her. The DLC Leliana’s Song goes into greater detail of Leliana’s past: Marjolaine tricked Leliana into thinking they would return stolen treasonous documents, but instead stabbed Leliana and left her at the mercy of the guards, pinning the whole thing on her. Leliana spent time imprisoned, where she was tortured and would have been killed, but saved by Mother Dorothea, (later known as Divine Justinia,) who helped her escape.

But even before this horrible betrayal, Leliana and Marjolaine’s relationship is depicted as toxic, by virtue of their power imbalance. Marjolaine calls Leliana “pretty thing”, orders her never to question anything, and treats her like she is an object. Marjolaine tells Leliana what to do and when to do it, and the very first time Leliana objects to this, Marjolaine betrays her.

Marjolaine is potentially killed by the player, if she is encountered.

Celene and Briala

Briala grew up serving as Celene’s personal handmaid since she was a young child. Briala’s mother instructed her to obey Celene in everything, even despite Celene saying things like comparing Briala’s dark brown curls to “horse-dung”. As such, their power imbalance runs very deep, to the point where at the beginning of the novel Dragon Age: The Masked Empire, Briala has very little self-worth, and thinks only of how she can be of use to Celene. And Celene hardly sees Briala any differently. For example, when she upsets Briala and Briala has the gall to walk away without pouring Celene tea, all Celene thinks about is how she’ll have to do it herself, without showing a care for insulting the person she supposedly loves.

When Briala begs Celene to let her quietly assassinate a human who is responsible for hanging cut-up pieces of a murdered elf in Halamshiral, to try and appease the elves who are rightly uprising against this horrible act, Celene initially agrees. But then she changes her mind, and arranges Briala to get caught and captured, while Celene herself travels there to oversee the burning down of Halamshiral’s elven quarter and massacre of “a few thousand elves”. This is horrible enough on its own, but then Celene goes on to make Briala feel like it was her fault for not being there to convince Celene not to do it!

Celene actually manages to get Briala back on her side over the course of the novel, convincing Briala that she will free the elves if they work together to get control of the eluvians. And Briala almost believes this, up until she pieces together the final nail in the coffin of their relationship: Celene arranged the murder of all her servants, including Briala’s parents. Why? So that there would be no potential witnesses left to speak of her arrangements in The Game to become Empress.

Briala realizes there is nothing more important to Celene than her public image and her power, so she takes the eluvians for herself, declaring she will use them to empower the elves of Orlais. But not before Celene tries to kill her, further proving Briala’s revelation.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Celene is potentially assassinated and Briala is potentially executed, depending on the player’s choices.

Ritts and Eldredda

In the Dragon Age: Inquisition quest “Strange Bedfellows”, the player is tasked with finding a missing scout named Ritts. When the player finds her, it’s discovered that Ritts was spending intimate time with another woman, an apostate named Eldredda. This discovery though, is posthumously, as the player finds them in the middle of a battle with Templars, after Eldredda has already been killed.

There is nothing here suggesting Ritts and Eldredda were toxic in any way, but I wanted to include them on this list because of another killing of a sapphic woman; something all too common in media.

Hira and Miriam

In the Netflix show Dragon Age: Absolution, Miriam is an escaped slave from Tevinter, and Hira is a runaway noble of the same nation. In the first episode, it is established that the two have a romantic history, but Hira left Miriam to join the Inquisition. She comes back to recruit Miriam on a job to steal a powerful Tevinter artifact. The last episode reveals that Hira’s actual plan was to sell Miriam back into slavery, in exchange for the artifact that she planned to give to the Crimson Knight, who she secretly works for. Hira chose to use Miriam like an object to barter with. Despite this, Miriam actually offers Hira one last chance to try and repair their relationship… and Hira refuses, stealing the artifact and fleeing.

It All Adds Up

One or two examples of this wouldn’t be much to talk about, because I am not claiming that WLW are above toxicity; unfortunately abusive relationships do not distinguish gender. What makes it worth talking about is how repetitive it is. The pattern actually outweighs the number of healthy and living sapphic relationships in the Dragon Age franchise, excluding those that are player-controlled. And that creates a negative message on what BioWare is presenting as a norm.

What we need are more examples of positive sapphic relationships. Tessa and Charter from the Dragon Age: Magekiller comics are a nice example, as are Vadis and Irian from the Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights story “Half Up Front”. I would love to read more stories with them, or more stories with other WLW in it. Thedas as a fictional world is an open space to explore fantasy sapphism in a variety of ways! I hope BioWare learns to take better advantage of that.

-----