the thing i need you guys to understand is that the dwarves and the tevinter imperium have been SO tightly intertwined from the very first moment
when darinius took his first step towards founding the tevinter imperium by uniting tevinter and neromenian, his very next thought was the dwarves. it's not really clear why they were his priority, but he probably knew that access to lyrium would make or break his new nation. he knew that he couldn't take it by force, as the dwarves were at the height of their strength, an underground empire spanning all of thedas. instead he personally travelled to the deep roads, offering himself up to be taken to their king so he could negotiate a treaty.
supposedly he travelled for weeks in darkness, led by his dwarven escorts, until they arrived in the capital of kal-sharok. even then, he was not permitted to see the king until the provings had shown that the ancestors favoured this meeting. he fought alone in round after round of battle against the champions of the warrior and noble castes. eventually, he's said to have faced a lone warrior in magnificent armour, supposedly wielding a war hammer forged from pure lyrium that "shattered spells like spun glass". the two fought for hours until darinius' opponent finally called for a halt. he revealed himself to be the dwarven king, endrin stonehammer, and declared to the astonished spectators that darinius had "valos atredum", the voice and favour of the ancestors.
they forged a trade agreement together. darinius returned to the surface with gifts: dwarven steel for his warriors, fonts of lyrium for his mage-priests. from the spoils of this alliance, he became such a force to be reckoned with that the third northern kingdom, qarinus, saw no hope of defeating him, and qarinus' high queen, rathana, proposed marriage instead. with that union, the tevinter imperium had truly begun.
the imperium’s relationship with the dwarves is its foundation. the dwarven embassy in minrathous was built by the same man who first established the magisterium. we're told that the minrathous proving arena, inspired by those of the dwarves, was built a mere seven years after neromenian and tevinter were united, and it must have been built specifically to accommodate dwarven guests in the very heart of tevinter, as we know stonehammer attended the first tournament held. and the dwarven embassies would go on to be built in every major city, completely subterranean so that they can live entirely underground and be part of tevinter, and right up to the “modern day” dwarves have their own body of representatives in tevinter’s government
to be clear about the importance of this alliance on the dwarven side as well, endrin stonehammer was not just any king. he's the first ever paragon. you know, being a living ancestor who the dwarves revere above all others as everything a dwarf should strive to be? he invented it! that’s the kind of reverence they have for the guy who, among other things, established this bond
i justtttt, like, i don’t want to get too far ahead of myself in the timeline but i think there’s so much to be said about this. the dwarves were and are complicit in every action of the imperium. they gave it so much of its strength and never abandoned those ties. as the centuries passed, they only ever bound themselves more tightly to it no matter its atrocities, prioritising (over the elves they had co-existed with for millennia, over even the lives of their own people) an alliance that crucially did not save them, an alliance with a people whose leaders would eventually unleash an apocalypse on them and refuse to so much as admit responsibility. to Me it is one of the crunchiest and most under-utilised narratives in dragon age and i insist on being insufferable about it until everyone notices. heart emoji
