Mine

Here's the thing about Emmrich leading up to the romance: He's fiercely kind not just to Rook but to everyone else. He's gentle and unassuming, even in the face of Rook's being a goblin occasional teasing. It's clear he likes Rook, and it's clear how fondness turns quickly into *adoration*.

It's also a known fact that the man has weapons grade rizz. He has game like nothing you've ever seen before. He is comfortable with his sexuality and confident in his flirting abilities (as he should be, because wow).

But I do love the idea that when Rook first "accuses" him of trying to impress them, he protests specifically because he feels called out. Not just that: Rook's comment is exactly what wakes him up to his own crush. Because despite his usual confidence, he's been kind of in denial - even while setting up tea time for two in the Memorial Gardens.

And here's the delicious bit: I think he would come to terms with his romantic feelings for Rook relatively quickly after that. But his *desire*? No. There's the age difference, there's their overall situation, and then there's Rook, who is constantly overwhelmed and being thrown tasks from all sides. Emmrich's own wants are the very last thing he considers whenever he does get a moment with Rook. He's so focussed on showing them kindness, on making sure they are comfortable, that the first time he helps them to their feet after a fight and gets caught in the way they look up at him, all flushed cheeks and parted lips, their hand lingering in his, he has to excuse himself to stare at a wall.

Because sure, he has a soft spot for Rook. He's well aware of the warmth that spreads through his chest when they smile at him. But now his skin on fire and that *look* in Rook's eyes is burned into the back of his eyelids and it takes five minutes of breathing exercises (And then two more minutes of something he is too ashamed to ever think about again) before he can rejoin the group.

The scene in his library with the skull happens that same evening, after a minor existential crisis some serious deliberation. Because this is not Emmrich's first time *wanting* someone. But it's the first time he's been so repressed about it.

“Glasses” 🥸

This for sure has happened more than once….

i need you all to watch this because i took slightly more wary/incredulous options re: necromancy in my second playthrough and got the single most amazing dialogue in emmrich's romance:

emmrich: there are mysteries past our comprehension. something beyond the weft of magic or deepest fade. emmrich: when i'm fortunate, i spy suggestions of them here. rook: i do find the necropolis exciting—creepy! weird and creepy! emmrich: you astound me, rook. you have a distaste for the dead, the undead and necromancy. and yet... rook: where's this heading? emmrich: there's no shame in a little attraction to the forbidden, my darling. rook: pfft! what? like i want you to throw me over one of those fancy graves with skulls and flowers and floating spirits, and— and... rook: (clears throat) you're lucky i like you. emmrich: undoubtedly.

torn between second-hand embarrassement for rook digging his own grave (no pun intended) vs the hilarity of emmrich's knowing look i'm—

He doesn’t understand what’s happening but they always seem happy afterwards so it must be good. The first time they notice him, Emmrich gives him a talk about privacy but doesn’t explain what they were doing.

When Manfred learns to speak, he asks. Emmrich gives him a technical explanation and now Manfred knows what, but not why.

So naturally he turns to his other parent and asks Rook who promptly hands him a romance novel (four scarves fluttered in shock out of five) and says it should answer his questions.

Manfred reads the book with his two best friends, Assan and Spite. Assan is mostly uninterested but Spite is fascinated. He has a lot of questions that Manfred doesn’t know the answers to, so he offers to ask his Dad.

Which is how Emmrich ends up having to answer Manfred’s questions about “throbbing members” and “quivering flesh” while Hezenkoss loses it (yelling) and Rook loses it (laughing).

As Emmrich is explaining that they’re metaphors, Lucanis bursts in and demands to know why Spite is asking about “heaving bosoms.” Rook suddenly remembers something extremely urgent that they have to take care of in Minrathous and vanishes.

Emmrich, who firmly believes that there is nothing shameful about consenting adults having sex, suggests that Lucanis explain it to Spite himself. Lucanis, who would rather eat a meal prepared by Viago than explain sex to a demon, tells Spite to ask Emmrich next time Lucanis is asleep.

Rook looks at him directly, waiting until his downcast eyes meet hers.

"I'm a Grey Warden," Rook tells him. "I know how to make every year that I am given count."

When Rook is thirty-one, and Emmrich fifty-seven, as Emmrich presses a kiss against the back of Rook's bare shoulder, Rook admits in a small voice: "I have, at most, fifteen years left to live."

In the warm darkness of their bedroom, the quiet stretches like the last moment after a crystal has been struck, just before the world falls again into silence.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Emmrich vows.

When the bells peal, sunlight and thrown petals and grains and joyous laughter raining down on them in equal measure, when Emmrich clasps her hands and says I give you my heart and soul. I will honor and cherish you each and every day of our lives— his voice sounds exactly the same.

When Rook is thirty-seven, and Emmrich sixty-three, she finds him on the floor of his laboratory, overcome by weeping.

"I have it," Emmrich tells her. "I have it. The Blight will progress no further in you."

She rocks him on the floor for a full hour as he sobs with the heart-rending relief, clutching her as if afraid to ever let her go.

When Rook is forty-six, and Emmrich seventy-two, Emmrich claims that most of his smile lines are Rook's doing.

"And many of the worry ones, too," Rook teases gently, brushing her thumb over her favorite, the divot closest to his right eyebrow.

Decades of love settle over a person as tangibly as gravity: they are both radiant with it.

They watch the sun set together, as they have done hundreds of times, hand in hand. Emmrich waits until the last sliver of pink has left the clouds before he turns to Rook to speak.

"I have learned that my solution was flawed," Emmrich admits very quietly. "The Blight in you will be at bay only so long as I live."

The light of the first rising star is reflected in Emmrich's gleaming, tear filled eyes.

Rook raises their joined hands to her mouth, kissing the back of his.

"I am older than I ever thought I would live," Rook says tenderly. "This life is enough, love."

The words soften Emmrich's expression, but fail to touch the grief in his eyes.

"It is more than enough," Rook tells him, at fifty-two.

"You think I want to live in a world without you in it?" she tells him at fifty-six.

"I love you," she tells him, every day.

"Every word in every love poem ever written isn't enough to say just how much I love you."

Emmrich peers at her over his thick glasses, pausing in his reading of the book of sonnets.

"Should I stop, then?" Emmrich teases.

"No," Rook says, settling her head more comfortably in his lap.

He runs one knotted, shaking hand through her grey hair, presses a kiss to her forehead. Rook closes her eyes.

When Rook is fifty-seven, and Emmrich eight-three, he slips away in the night. She wakes, as always, with her hand in his. She lies quietly for a long time, her eyes bleakly dry, knowing that this time is the last.

Most deaths feel sudden, in the end.

And yet every griever knows: it is still possible, somehow, to survive the removal of a heart.

After Rook has stood for two hours at the funeral, crying mechanically and stopping just as suddenly, Manfred guides her away.

"It's time to sit down, Mother," Manfred tells her gently. "Would you like water? Tea?"

Even fifteen years after beginning his travels, Manfred still sounds so much like Emmrich. The place where her heart is meant to be aches. Rook lets him settle her in a chair, and bring her the blend of tea that he designed just for her.

"There are two more bequeathments to distribute from Father's will," Manfred tells her. "He wanted both to be delivered by my hand."

The first is an elegant leather-bound book, intricately tooled, with fine gilded additions. It's carved with both their favorite flowers, intertwined. Rook opens the cover with shaking hands.

The lines are labelled with a date, with a single sentence accompanying it, penned in Emmrich's fine hand. Each is a message to her. It began almost four years ago, but— the book is far too full. Every page is written in. Rook flips forward to find that Emmrich wrote a line for every day for the next three decades.

"He should have spared himself the pain of writing so much," Rook says. "The Blight will have me far sooner than that!"

Manfred silently hands her an envelope. On its front is written:

To my darling Rook.

Rook reads the letter. She stares at Manfred, uncomprehending.

Manfred embraces her, pressing his forehead to hers in his version of a kiss to the cheek.

"The Blight won't take you at all, Mother," Manfred says gently. "He transferred the spell to me eight months ago."

Through a veil of tears, Rook sees that every neat line in Emmrich's book ends the same way.

I cannot decide if this would be REALLY out of character or weirdly IN character for Emmrich. Either way, this immediately appeared in my head when I saw all the coffin sex talk.

My sister is an Egyptologist and I've been living with her for three years. The "coffin vs. sarcophagus" thing gets brought up weirdly often. This was the explanation I got:

Coffin - usually made of wood, goes into the ground, or *inside* a sarcophagus (which is what ancient Egyptians did with their high ranking mummies)

Sarcophagus - made of stone, stays above ground.

Of course, this now begs the question: coffin or sarcophagus, why the heck was there a plush lining inside that body box shown in the cutscene? The only logical answer: it is, in fact, the Sex Sarcophagus (the Sexcophagus, if you will) specifically made for really horny necromancers who just HAVE to do it right then and there in the Necropolis. I mean, it's in a place called The Vault of the BELOVED, for Maker's sake.

The gentleman Necromancer will be a genteel kind man who will be chaste.

Post Veilguard Fandom: The broody assassin has probably never had sex in his life.

You're such a romantic.