#riordan

in order:

Commander Avalon (she/her)

Lieutenant Alasdair (he/him)

Riordan (EVIL/EVIL)

“You were the one who hemmed and hawed about your Makers-damned responsibility to the fucking Bannorn, you were the one who didn’t trust her, even though she’d been nothing but cooperative—”

“—she was his daughter—”

“And your sister-in-law! She loved Cailan! She was faithful to him, far more than he ever was to her! You know what your problem is, Alistair? You seem to think that because I value the wellbeing of the whole world above everything else, that I’m apparently some cold, heartless witch! I’m sorry that I apparently don’t coddle your fucking feelings enough, Alistair! I don’t like Anora either, after what we fucking saw in the alienage, but we swore a Makers-damned oath to save the world! Sacrifice, duty, vigilance! Do those mean nothing to you?”

“You don’t get to say that shit to me, Vellia—”

“Duncan would have recruited him without a second fucking thought, Alistair—”

“Oh, fuck you! You didn’t know him—”

Jowan lingers awkwardly outside, completely unwilling to enter the room and invite either Alistair or Vellia’s wrath onto him. It’s quite frankly, the last thing he wants to deal with on the eve of his sad, ignoble death.

He doesn’t quite know if he’s relieved or embarrassed when Warden Riordan walks up the corridor, escorted by one of the Arl’s servants to him, and grimaces at the sheer volume of them screaming at each other.

“Are they—?” Riordan asks, lowering his voice and pointing at the room.

“They’re arguing about Loghain.” Jowan says, dully, because really, even without them saying his name, the context is obvious, “Whether he ought to have become a Warden or not. Whether it was okay to kill him.”

Riordan winces, regretfully. “I see. I…regret speaking out-of-turn this afternoon. I ought to have observed the political nuances of the situation more closely, but I saw what I believed was an opportunity.”

Jowan shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.” He understands the logic of Riordan’s offer, and why Vellia would have accepted, had it been solely up to her. Loghain was a military tactician and a war hero, despite also being a slaver, regicide and coward. If they’d turned him into a Warden, it might have helped the acrimonious civil war resolve more smoothly. Loghain’s forces could be easily integrated into the united army that would fight the darkspawn, and Loghain could have led them into battle himself. Now, as the discussions of the afternoon had portended, the royal guard are going to have to vigilantly guard Anora from malcontents, and imprison some of Loghain’s higher-up co-conspirators since they can’t be trusted and utilized anymore, and his death might come off as matyr-esque, especially for those who hadn’t been in the Landsmeet. The whole political situation was messier for Vellia and Ferelden, now that Loghain was dead.

“—now the Bannorn will constantly hound you to deal with her anytime she does something they dislike! You’ve precisely made yourself into the sort of political rival to Anora that we were trying to prevent, when you renounced your claim to the fucking throne—”

“—And what if she needs dealing with anyway?”

“Dealing wi—I can’t believe you! Can you just be honest about the fact that you do actually want power, you just don’t want to be held accountable for any of the fucking consequences!?!”

“What do you think, lad?” Riordan asks, drawing Jowan away from his gloomy dwellings on their voices, “Would you have made Loghain into a Warden?”

“Me?” he asks, startled. Few people care about Jowan’s opinion on politics.

“You’ve been operating as if you were a Warden for some time now. I heard from Warden Vellia that you all spent almost a month and a half in the Deep Roads,” Riordan explains, running a gloved hand over his face in exhaustion, “And if all goes well, you’ll be a Warden tonight. Would you have Joined him?”

“I—”

Jowan wants to automatically agree with Vellia, say yes out of loyalty to her. But something stops him. He hasn’t thought about this in ages, but his afternoon of nostalgia and wallowing had apparently drawn it out of him. He recalls the cold, distant look on Loghain’s face as Lieutenant Hedwynn had dragged him out in front of his horse on the edge of the Imperial Highway to Denerim, the blood of Templar Mary still cooling across the front of his sodden apprentice robes, A flash, an unimpressed eyebrow, short, cold laugh when they said Templar Mary had caught him because he was a maleficar. He thinks about how Loghain had looked down at him, cool and unconcerned, and said they would find a use for him. How he had regally waved his hand, bundled him off to Arl Rendon Howe. How unconcerned he’d been when Howe had slapped him around the back of the head, right in front of his whole entourage, how Jowan had fallen to his knees, cringing from the pain and the shock. 

Loghain hadn’t been personally involved with the details of the plan to poison Eamon. But when he’d greeted them at the front of Eamon’s estate two weeks ago, foiling their attempt to sneak into Denerim unnoticed, he’d clearly known about the poisoning scheme. He’d been fine with blackmailing a maleficar into poisoning an honorable, family man. He’d sneered about the lingering weakness left in Eamon because of his own assassination attempt. He’d been fine with gutting out the elven alienage and selling the poor elves into slavery, and trapping them inside the walls to all die of the plague, despite so many of the elves there having served him as Night Elves during the Rebellion. He’d let Howe trap his own daughter within that awful, evil mansion so she couldn't object to his decision-making. All these evils done under his undiscerning stamp of approval.

“I don’t know that I would have killed him right there and then like Alistair did,” he admits, slowly, “But I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it. Having him as a brother or an ally. He did too much.”

Maybe it’s hypocritical for him to say that. The men of Redcliffe Village must surely feel the same about him, and yet Vellia had forced them to accept him as their brother-in-arms, in this fight for their survival. But Jowan’s never claimed to be anything but a rotten, low worm. He’s not pragmatic and forward-thinking enough to swallow his resentment like Vellia can, for the sake of the greater good.