a crow never abandons a contract

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

as i said earlier, he's raised by calpurnia, a priestess of dumat, as her own son, and naturally he shows a bunch of magical talent early and he can do it better than experienced dreamers at the age of ten blah blah blah. interestingly he's said to have been able to charm animals and to use birds or cat as "agents and spies", so effectively that many believed he could tell the future. (darinius is quoted without any real context as having said, "the wise are wary of prophecy: to seek knowledge of the future is to grip a sword by the blade." it's worth noting that his supposed biological mother, livia, was a high priestess of razikale, a role which can also be referred to as the "augur of mystery". i don't have a point here, i just wonder if you could make the argument that there was maybe more to the fortune-telling rumours if you felt like it.)

when darinius was 19, the high priest of dumat lay dying. he summoned all the senior acolytes and of course also darinius even though he was only a novice. his successor, he said, would be the one who could bring him "that which has no legs yet must dance, has no lungs but must breathe, and has no life yet lives and dies". while the other acolytes grumbled that the man had lost his wits, darinius lit a brazier and brought it to the high priest, understanding that what he meant was fire. this apparently qualified him to be the next high priest.

later, the high king of neromenian died without an heir. a successor had to be chosen from among the dreamers, so the palace summoned the high priests of the "three patron gods" of neromenian: dumat, toth, and lusacan. (silence, fire, and night, respectively. i think different kingdoms having different patron gods is super interesting!! i guess we can assume razikale was one of tevinter's.) the three were told they had until sunrise to "tie an egg in a knot" and place it on a pedestal. the correct solution would reveal the high king's crown. while the other two went straight into trances to search the fade for an answer, danarius smashed the egg, soaked a cloth in it, and tied the cloth in the knot, which apparently qualified him to be high king of neromenian.

(this kind of deeply silly story reminds me of two anecdotes: alexander the great and the gordian knot, and the egg of columbus (or of brunelleschi, which was the version of the story i heard first). the wikipedia page for the latter also specifically mentions that someone is asked to tie an egg in a knot in the kalevala, which i'm not personally familiar with. my point is that pulling off a famously "impossible" task by taking a shockingly straightforward approach that others wouldn't have considered is general shorthand for portraying someone as a brilliant visionary who changed the world because he personally was that smart and Not Like The Others.)

on the evening of darinius' coronation, calpurnia reveals the truth to him that he was found on the seashore, and shows him the broken ring. (i'm not really sure why calpurnia is supposed to have kept this secret, but it's maybe sort of implied that it relates to her practices as a priestess of the dragon of silence? the wiki uses the phrase "history would remember her for her silence" but i can't figure out where on earth it got that because i'm looking at the page it claims to reference. it's kind of wild that it was fine for her as a priestess to raise the kid in the first place let alone claim him as her own for so long, but i guess that as the priestly class here seems to be synonymous with the dreamer/mage lineages, there’s no sense that they shouldn’t have families and they were probably actually encouraged to have kids?)

anyway, darinius' new war chief helpfully recognises tevinter's signet ring and they apparently piece together that he is therefore the lost son of tevinter's usurped queen. darinius is now in a tricky situation, because of course he is obliged to avenge his birth mother's death and the gods would put a curse on his lineage if he didn't, so he just has to conquer tevinter, isn't life so hard. however, it might be a bit difficult, as minrathous is well-fortified and hasn't had diplomatic contact with neromenian or qarinus either in decades because they refuse to recognise tarsian as a king. not because he murdered his sister, but because he’s not a mage.

that night, darinius dreams that he is crossing a river in a small ferry, piloted by a man whose face is in shadow. when he reaches the other side, he looks back and sees his own face; he was the ferryman. he takes this as a sign from dumat (sure, i guess), and sends a bunch of messages & gifts to his uncle tarsian, who has no idea who he is except that he’s the high king of neromenian, saying that neromenian would love to be friends again. tarsian is flattered and lets darinius and his honour guard of seven into his palace in minrathous. darinius then immediately uses a spell to keep tarsian's guards from entering and challenges tarsian to a duel. (world of thedas says that he challenges him and then when the spell dropped and the guards presumably poured in, tarsian simply “was dead”. i wonder if we’re conveniently skipping over something like how much of an honourable duel it could actually be when darinius brought 7 friends.) anyway darinius kills his uncle and takes the other half of tevinter's seal from his body, apparently managing to reforge it then and there. neromenian and tevinter are then united under his rule.

so this is where we really come to the crux of the matter where darinius has to be the long-lost prince of tevinter not only because it makes him of proper dreamer lineage but also because if he isn't, then he simply lied and tricked and murdered his way onto tevinter's throne. which he totally did. but it's fine because his uncle betrayed him first. apparently.

according to legend, his mother, livia, was both high queen of tevinter and high priestess of razikale, the dragon of mystery. it's notable for it to be a woman holding such titles. tevinter is usually portrayed as quite patriarchal and with the conditional exception of maevaris in veilguard, all of the imperium's known archons have been men. there are couple of explanations for why livia might have been a different case. firstly, another queen in her own right is also mentioned in darinius' lifetime, so it's possible the region actually changed and became more patriarchal over time. secondly, later in darinius' story, a king is selected from among high priests. it's possible that as razikale is the only old god mentioned to be female, her high priests were allowed to be or had to be women, and were then considered as eligible for thrones as any other high priests. thirdly, livia had a brother, tarsian, who was specifically not eligible for the throne because he was not a mage. it may be that they were the only two heirs of a royal family and the rules of inheritance preferred a woman to a non-mage, which is an interesting little insight into the sort of ranking of cultural prejudices here.

naturally, livia's brother tarsian was jealous of his mage sister and also thought he had no chance against her in a fair fight. (you can really tell this is a tevinter story.) thus, he struck to usurp her throne while she was in labour with her first child. he slaughtered his way through the palace in minrathous, but when he came to the queen's bedchamber, he found it empty, save for one broken half of tevinter's royal signet ring. he tracked his sister from there to the temple of razikale, "where she waited, exhausted but fully armed and armoured." (i think this is a super fascinating description because livia is a mage. traditions where mages wear armour are afaik always characterised as originally elven, suggesting exchange of knowledge between tevinter and arlathan well before arlathan was destroyed.) tarsian defeated and killed his sister, though he lost an eye and an arm in the battle. however, no trace of his newborn nephew could be found.

meanwhile, in the city of vyrantium in the kingdom of neromenian, a woman named calpurnia was serving as a priestess of dumat. shortly after the violence in minrathous, she discovered a baby boy in a basket on the seashore, who had nothing with him but a blanket and half of a broken ring. calpurnia took the child in and raised him as if he were her own son, naming him darinius and not telling him of his origins.

this early part of darinius' story is absolutely full of real world mythological references and i'm sure there are many more comparable stories beyond the ones that jump out to me. darinius being cast out to sea makes me think of moses (especially with the basket) or perseus, and the fantastical background of a lost prince particularly brings to mind the legendary founders of rome, romulus and remus, who were suckled by a wolf after being abandoned to die by their great-uncle who had wrongfully seized the throne. it's a pretty standard tactic to mythologise the origins of a nation and afford it some legitimacy to say "actually our founders were the long-lost rulers of Somewhere Else, they weren't just unprovoked conquerors or ordinary people who scraped their way to power, they were righteous avengers reclaiming what was theirs". if darinius were just any abandoned child or priestess’ son, not a descendant of a proper dreamer lineage, he would be a much more difficult ancestor for tevinter's noble houses to accept because he wouldn't further their narrative that their magic is stronger and better and gives them a rightful claim to power.

but which aspects lift you Up 🤔🤔

schools of magic!! different approaches and specialisations. magic is varied and mysterious. it’s studied by academics but there is so much left unknown to keep it feeling mystical. specific spells are passed down and practiced but can vary from mage to mage, game to game, tradition to tradition, culture to culture, age to age.

magic as imagination and dream enacted into reality by willpower. also, templars and their ability to “enforce reality”, not to mention mages’ own spells to challenge other mages. fascinating!! so many implications as to how it works and so much left for us to imagine.

staffs. grimoires. enchantment. even styles of clothing specific to mages. all of these items and physical gear involved with magic. how much a mage’s personalised versions of these things could tell you about them.

blood magic and its complexity. the real dangers vs the real usefulness and merits vs the deep cultural stigma of it and how impossible it is for anyone’s understanding to be free of that, making these characters feel truly like a part of their world.

and overall i adore how embedded magic is into culture and religion and the world...

to be fair this is specifically very niche very irrelevant stuff so nobody should feel like they know no lore because they don’t know who thalsian is or whatever. i would be surprised if any of the people who wrote the games could off the top of their head tell you who thalsian is.