I know a lot of people think the Cousland origin is boring, and I agree - with all the lore there, they could have been so much more in-depth storytelling with it, and it was largely passed over.
And people think Alistair x Cousland is boring - fine, fair, AGAIN, a lot to explore there that they just. Didn’t. Because the writers were so chuffed with making the grimdark fantasy horror game that they did, that somehow they seemed to miss all these fantastic opportunities for world building (affectionately).
But have you considered? Calenhad Theirin, in his attempt to unite the teyrnirs, the Clayne tribes, had almost accomplished it when this firebrand of a teyrna, Elethea Cousland, says fuck you and your army, I am not doing shit for you, this is my house - so they duke it out on the battlefield, until she finally is defeated because Calenhad is the Thedosian version of King Arthur and is a Very Special and Mythical Hero who supposedly cannot come to harm so long as he stands on Fereldan soil, and she finally swears fealty to him, ensuring that the Couslands retain the teyrnir despite their initial resistance.
Fast forward 500 years, both of them are now legends and their respective descendants are the two people tasked with not only ending a Blight but also ending a civil war that threatens to undo the unification their fore-bearers were so instrumental to so long ago.
And then their descendants fall in love. The descendant of the woman who would have preferred to stand free than capitulate to a merchant’s son who got lucky falls in love with the descendant of the man who defeated her and forced her to swear fealty to him. There is a real, epic poetry to all of this…and we are forced to just…not acknowledge the sheer destiny of it all. It gets completely glazed over.
We glaze over the daughter of the Sea Wolf, the granddaughter of the Storm Giant, both famous rebels who fought against the Orlesian Navy, falling in love with the bastard son of the first king to return to the throne in Denerim after the occupation. We glaze over the contrast of a woman groomed to proudly inherit arguably the second most powerful seat in the kingdom and a man who with every fiber of his being resists the destiny of his own lineage, the magic of his bloodline that has shaped the Thedosian South for five hundred years, the luck of being another Very Special and Mythical Hero. Somehow, five hundred years after their ancestors clashed over the rule of what would become Ferelden, they found themselves on a converging path that was centuries in the making.
I don’t know. I guess I have just had too long to simmer on this pairing…I will never be normal about them.
And like…
Up to you on how interested or aware your Cousland is of all of this, but Alistair was raised in a monastery with all the history books and Thedosian lore at his fingertips, and before that, he was under the care of the Arl of Redcliffe. There is no way he doesn’t know at least a little bit of this. There is no way he isn’t at least a little bit gobsmacked at the juxtaposition when Cousland is the only other survivor of Ostagar. There is no way he doesn’t at least wonder a little about their shared heritage when she starts flirting back for the first time. There is no way the DAO gang’s resident chronic over-thinker isn’t laying in his bedroll after their first time sleeping together without his mind wandering at least once to Calenhad and his face-off with Elethea Cousland, to how strikingly different their relationship has been to that of their ancestors, and how those legends might react to this attachment. There is no way he doesn’t silently freak out at least a little bit at how all of it seems a little preordained, how despite his efforts to shake off his birthright, it keeps catching up with him wherever he goes - even in his relationship with someone he is desperately in love with. She may not have conceded a battlefield and a legally-binding allegiance to him, but she conceded her heart and her loyalty to him, and there is something still so very stunningly eerie about that.
And if she chooses to elevate him to the throne? Where Elethea had BALKED at Calenhad becoming king, Warden Cousland has to encourage Alistair to do it??? Boy, oh boy, he swears to himself that Calenhad is swirling in his proverbial urn, laughing about the consequences of getting mixed up with Couslands… And if she offers to become his consort, he knows Elethea is just fuming somewhere in the ether as well to the tune of “my idiot descendant joining herself like a loser to the great-great-and-so-on grandspawn of Calenhad, after everything that shithead put me through???” Whether it bothers him or tickles him a little bit…who knows?
I think it isn’t always at the forefront of his mind, but certainly sometimes if Cousland looks at him with a particular air of self-assuredness or she makes a major decision with a strong degree of resolve, he gets a little shiver up his spine as he ponders to himself, “Her ancestor tried to kick the shit out of mine 500 years ago, and she only lost because he had magical silver armor that made him invincible.”
Just things to consider.
