Davrin and Assan: Their Relationship as a Parallel to Davrin's Arc
davrin is a shepherd. and davrin is a hunter. he is a protector, and a monster-slayer. he is a dork who carves wooden models of monsters and wants to create a real bestiary. he is way too young for all this shit but also fully on board. he sang to the halla. he keeps trying to throw himself into a glorious death. he is a central character in veilguard, absolutely core to the main plot of the game. he is dalish. he is a grey warden.
and he is father to assan.
assan is important in davrin's arc, because assan, too, is a hunter and a shepherd. is a fighter and a protector. griffons are viewed as creatures born to hunt and kill darkspawn, as if that is their sole purpose, as if their very existence, their every waking moment, is not spent living their lives in the many and varied ways they do, but in this singular pursuit. the reality is far more complex than the assumption, and although assan is a dedicated, incredibly skilled hunter of darkspawn, he's also so many other things.
he's exceedingly gentle. he's noisy. he's friendly. he's silly. he cares about his family so much. he cares about davrin so much.
through assan, davrin is shown that a being can be both hunter and protector. can be both hunter and shepherd. and, through assan, davrin is thus shown that he can be both the man who was once the boy who sang to halla... and the man who took an oath to fight for the wardens.
davrin's acceptance of assan is an externalization of his acceptance of himself. it is also about assan, for him, undeniably so: he cares so much about assan, he cares so much about the griffons. but as a narrative element, assan is a character, yes, but also a representation of that arc.
but i think another lens through which to view this is: assan is both monster and charge. to davrin's shepherd, assan is the wolf and the sheep.
i'm struggling a little to differentiate these two things, so bear with me, because they are different. in the first lens, davrin sees in assan behavior that is of both a protector and a hunter. assan's actions - and davrin's growing acceptance of this duality in assan - are ways that davrin can begin to accept his own duality. this view is based around assan's behavior.
in the second lens, however, assan is both hunter and charge. he embodies these things, not through his actions, but through what he is to davrin. it is that davrin is caring for a monster, in a manner of speaking. this view is based around assan's fundamental and inviolable nature and how davrin reacts to it. namely, that davrin, monster hunter, protects the "monster" and grows to understand it.
the relationship between davrin and assan is very, very important. and it is important for more reasons than i've listed here: for example, the griffons are a deeply contentious part of grey warden history so davrin, like bellara, is having to grapple with the way the history of his people - both the elves and the wardens - is complex and muddy and not always good or just. but i think the way assan is a path to davrin's own self-acceptance is one of the most crucial aspects of their relationship, and the one i wanted to really emphasize here
