dragon heart

agameofme:

Sometimes, the characters and the world of a game nudge my imagination, encouraging me to give the characters interests or hopes or dreams beyond what’s presented in the text. In Grand Theft Auto V, for instance, it’s fun for me to pretend that Franklin has an unspoken passion for foreign cinema, that Michael is dallying in amateur street photography, and that Trevor, in addition to being a complete sociopath, is also a fitness nut who has his eye on winning every triathlon in the city. These ideas of mine about the inner lives of the characters get woven into my experience of the game.

Usually, however, such imaginings play a decidedly minor role. They add a bit of texture to the characters, and that’s about it. With Dragon Age: Inquisition, I had a very different experience. As I played, I became increasingly invested in the character I’d created and the relationships she formed (or failed to form) with other characters, and I found that in time, my personal narrative about my inquisitor’s inner life was really what was pushing me forward. That’s not to take anything away from the game. On the contrary, I mean it as a tremendous compliment. Inquisition gave me an incredible world and wonderful characters to interact with, and let me shape the central character to such a degree that I felt personally invested in what I saw as her own hopes and desires. And I am hardly the only one to feel a special level of investment in this character and this story. I have my issues with Inquisition, but in terms of creating a world and story that let players develop a powerful sense of who their inquisitor is and what she or he really wants, I think Bioware has created an exemplary game.

For me, Dragon Age: Inquisition was ultimately less a tale about a world in peril and more a tale about unrequited affection and desperate, irresponsible romantic conduct. As I followed through on a romantic path, the game seemed to think it was telling a joyous story of a love fulfilled, but my sense of my inquisitor’s true feelings made me see that story arc very differently.

This is my inquisitor’s story. It’s not my story, but it says something about me that this is how I experienced the game.

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It’s been decades now since the Inquisition. What a whirlwind of a time that was. So much happening so fast. I remember it now as I understood it then, in broad strokes. I trusted my circle of advisors to understand the details for me, to help guide me and support me. I fumbled my way into the whole hero thing and then I did my best to fumble my way through it, trying to help people when I could. I guess I did all right, in the end.

When I look back on those days now, there’s really only one thing I remember clearly.

Cassandra.

I admit, at first I just found her intimidating. In those early days, I was confused and intimidated by everything. But I was also so thankful she was there. I got most of the attention and credit, but if anyone asks me, she was the driving force behind it all. She saw what needed to be done and she made it happen.

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As a seeker, Cassandra had long been accustomed to putting her own weaknesses aside and powering through. And in those earliest days, that was all I could see when I looked at her; that stalwart facade, allowing no glimpse of the person underneath.

Growing up in my clan had taught me a thing or two about maintaining facades, as well. I knew how much it cost to do that.

Maybe that’s what fascinated me about her at first, I don’t know.

I do know that I only became more fascinated by her as she started giving me glimpses of Cassandra, the person.

It took some prying, and at first she pushed back pretty hard, but as time went by, I think she became relieved to know that I was genuinely interested in who she was, and to know that she didn’t have to pretend with me to always be strong or to always feel like she knew what was the right thing to do.

 

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On those early inquisition expeditions, she was always by my side. Truth be told, she was so essential to what the Inquisition was in my mind at that time that I would have felt lost without her. But she was more than a symbol of the Inquisition to me, more than a source of comfort and strength. She was my friend. I loved having her by my side.

And at some point, I realized that I loved her.

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Who can say what it is about a person that makes us love them? It was the things we had in common, the way we both understood what it is to feel like we need to pretend to be stronger than we are, to hide things about ourselves. It was the things we didn’t have in common, how I was shy and she was direct. The fact that, on the battlefield, I always wanted to keep my distance with my bow and arrows and she always got in there and scrapped it up said a lot about us as people. I felt like we could learn a lot from each other, like we could be good for each other. But in the end, these are all just words. Whether or not they have anything to do with why I felt such a powerful desire to know Cassandra, to reveal myself to her and have her reveal herself to me, to be close to her, I honestly don’t know. I just know she rattled something deep in my core, and that sometimes all I could do as we walked around together talking about this or that was stare at her and think about how beautiful she was.

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She was the only person at Haven, and later at Skyhold, who I felt I could really talk to. The only person with whom I felt like I didn’t need to be the Inquisitor. She still called me Inquisitor sometimes, though. I always hated that. I always wanted to beg her to call me by my name when we were alone together.

She knew, of course, how I felt about her. I couldn’t hide it. For a while I even dared to hope she might come to reciprocate my feelings. She never mentioned to me a man in her life, or a woman, so I thought that maybe we could love each other.

I think it was when I found her reading one of Varric’s cheap romances that things started to fall apart. It brought me so much joy—maybe too much joy—seeing such a different side of Cassandra after everything we’d been through together. She was desperate for the next volume and I convinced Varric to write it. I don’t think any other accomplishment of mine as the Inquisitor brought me as much happiness as having Varric write the book and seeing the look on Cassandra’s face when he handed it to her.

She was obviously touched that I did that for her, but she also understood the feelings that had motivated me to do it for her. I guess she felt it was time to be clear with me.

She pulled me aside and told me, apologetically, that she could not return my feelings. What sticks in my head most from that conversation all those years ago is that even then, as my heart was breaking, she called me not Keleyna, but Inquisitor.

 

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Most of my conversations with Cassandra I can recall like memories I can step back into and live in. Not that one. I don’t remember how it ended. I think maybe she said something about wanting us to still be friends, and I think maybe I muttered something about how of course we’d still be friends.

But I couldn’t. Being around her hurt too much. My feelings for her didn’t change or go away. So I stopped taking her with me on expeditions. In fact I stopped talking to her altogether. It was a rough adjustment, but by then I felt like I had a decent handle on what it meant to be the inquisitor. And Iron Bull was a fine fighter and good company.

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Some players are upset with the limited romance options in Inquisition.

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But to me it seems only right that my options should be few, and that the only character that I find really interesting might not be interested in my character. Even though I’m the central character, even though I’m the one who saves the fucking world, I don’t get the love I hoped for.

Of course I’m glad for games like Gone Home and The Last of Us: Left Behind, in which women find love (or at least the possibility of love, however short-lived) with other women, but that’s not always the way it goes. No matter your gender or orientation, sometimes the person you want to be with doesn’t want to be with you. As a player, I wanted things to happen with Cassandra. I wanted the storyline to play out differently. I wanted my inquisitor to have that happiness. But I also sometimes love it when a game, like life, doesn’t give you what you want. In fact, sometimes I wonder if a steady diet of video games with stories that make players feel like heroes almost always both save the world and “get the girl” hasn’t contributed to the collective mindset of entitlement on such horrifying display in GamerGate. People rally against “SJWs” because they worry that devs won’t pursue the supposed artistic integrity of creating gung-ho power fantasies. But when a big developer actually does something with a little integrity, someone complains because, as a product, it doesn’t cater to them enough.

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One of the first places I went without Cassandra was the Hinterlands, which had also been the first place I’d visited with Cassandra. It was strange, being back there without her. I remember thinking, oh, we climbed that ridge together. Oh, we stood right there and talked, and she looked so beautiful in the sunlight.

I remember thinking, these are moments that happened.

It wasn’t long before I found myself being dragged off to a masquerade at the Winter Palace, where my companions and I intended to foil an attempt on the life of the Orlesian empress. It was awful. Sure, I often got tired of having to murder yet another band of marauding templars or bandits out in the wild, but I much prefer it to the so-called “game” that is life at Orlesian court. After a long and tedious night of small talk and playing politics, I was exhausted.

Josephine Montilyet, the inquisition’s ambassador, joined me out on the balcony. Still half-heartbroken over Cassandra and longing for some human contact, I asked her to dance. We danced alone together on that balcony, away from all the masks and chatter of the ballroom. She looked beautiful. It was a lovely ending to an otherwise tiresome evening, and I found some comfort in her arms, that night and in the weeks that followed.

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Looking back all these years later, I try to forgive myself for what I wound up doing to Josephine. We thought the world might be ending. I was almost certain I was going to die. That doesn’t make it right, but I hope at least it helps you understand why I sought solace with her, and took what love I could find. I still feel terrible about it. That doesn’t make it right either.

After that dance out on the balcony, I pursued Josephine.

 

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It wasn’t just a matter of a few sweet words here and there. I went to great lengths to track down her family crest and present it to her as a gift. I went to greater lengths to help her with some…complicated family issues.

And then there was the time I dueled an Orlesian noble to prevent him from being able to force Josephine into an arranged marriage.

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I told myself that I was doing all of these things because of how I felt about Josephine, but the truth is that I wasn’t. I was pouring all this energy into my pursuit of Josephine to distract myself from Cassandra. And that wasn’t fair to Josephine at all. She is an extraordinary woman. She just didn’t rattle me the way Cassandra did. Nobody else did, back then.

I heard myself saying things to Josephine, things about love, and I knew that they were true, but that they were not true of how I felt about Josephine. They were words for someone else, that I could never say to her, and so I said them to Josephine instead. And even as I heard myself saying them, I was wracked with guilt over what I was doing.

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As an aside, I am very grateful that there is a trans character in Inquisition, a man named Krem.

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Krem is a minor character, but for now, he is enough.

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I am glad that he talks frankly about the challenges of being trans in the world of Dragon Age, and I am glad that he has been able to make a kind of peace with his life, such as it is. “Not a life I’d wish on everyone,” he says, “but it’ll do.” I think I understand what he means. But I wished I could have asked him about the challenges of finding love as a transgender person in Thedas.

You can’t play as a trans character. I couldn’t help but wonder as a player: would Josephine still have loved my inquisitor, if she were trans? Of course it’s unknowable, both because the option doesn’t exist in the game and because if she were trans, she’d be a different person in every way because the experiences that had shaped her would be so different. That didn’t stop me from wondering, just as I sometimes wonder in the real world if this person or that person might have loved me if I weren’t trans, even though the impact of being trans on the course of my life has been so tremendous that I can’t untangle being trans from who I am today. These are questions without answers.

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The history books tell the tale of Corypheus’ defeat. You don’t need me to tell it again here.

Afterwards, there was a feast at Skyhold. Cassandra and I hadn’t spoken in weeks. She must have known that I had been avoiding her. I guess she decided to keep her distance, to give me the space I needed in order to do what I needed to do. I’ve always wondered what she thought about the way I went running into Josephine’s arms after she told me she couldn’t love me.

It was a bit awkward, but I approached her at the party. I felt that I should talk to her one last time, in remembrance of the things we’d been through, in acknowledgment of how important she’d been to the inquisition. Even if all of those moments we’d shared meant something very different to me than they’d meant to her.

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We stood there in the dark. My heart was aching. She told me that soon, she was going to head off to rebuild the seekers. I knew that was the right thing for her to do. It made some part of me glad to know that she was going to be doing such important work, the work that she was meant to do.

She said to me that I am the inquisitor, a symbol of hope and change to so many. I thought but didn’t say, “That’s not what I wanted to be to you. To you, I just wanted to be a person.” She said that I had proved to be exactly what we needed. I thought but didn’t say, “Oh, how I wish I could have been what you needed.”

True to her word, she soon rode out the gates of Skyhold. Off to rebuild the seekers.

Things with Josephine didn’t last.

After Cassandra left,  I think she could tell something was wrong. Maybe, in a way, she always knew.

Following Corypheus’ defeat, I wasn’t the only one who was in demand. Marrying Josephine would have been politically beneficial to any Orlesian noble. But unlike her previously arranged engagement which I so dramatically called off, this time she arranged her own engagement to a man she loved. She used her considerable political influence to make Orlais more politically stable, and to give elves a better place in Orlesian society. I used to visit her and her husband when I was in Orlais. They had such beautiful children.

I wandered the halls of Skyhold recently. It was…hard, being back there. Too many ghosts.

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I never saw Cassandra again.