lavellout | Inquisitor Info

BASICS · ABILITIES · APPEARANCE · BIO
PERSONALITY · DECISIONS · RELATIONSHIPS

BASICS

NAME Rhiall Lavellan
AGE 26 at the start of Inquisition; 30 by the end of Trespasser
HEIGHT 5’ 3" or 167.64 cm
TITLE(S) Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, and (formerly) Keeper’s First
CLASS Mage
SPECIALIZATION Knight Enchanter

ABILITIES

MAGIC Rhiall favors the Storm spell tree, and later the Knight Enchanter tree with a few bits and pieces from Winter. For fast swapping between weapons, she wears a wrist cuff containing the spirit that generates her spirit blade, rather than wielding it via a physical hilt; her spirit blade is large and unwieldy at first, the way most mages use it, but over time she hones it down to something smaller and faster that more resembles a Tevene gladius. Her preference is to hit hard and fast, and she employs techniques that favor quick, efficient casting at the cost of defense—initially she foregoes barriers entirely and stays on the move instead to keep herself out of trouble, though as she expands her abilities she makes herself learn to use barriers, as well. By all appearances, the way she wields her magic is loud, chaotic, destructive, and messy, but a closer look reveals an exercise in control; every move is planned, every act a strategic use of her abilities for maximum combat effectiveness. Her main spell/ability lineup (learned in the order listed) is: Chain Lightning → Fade Step → Winter’s Grasp → Energy Barrage → Static Cage → Mark of the Rift → Spirit Blade → Fade Cloak → Barrier → Disruption Field → Aegis of the Rift

COMBAT She can wield her staff as one would wield a quarterstaff to attack physically, if needed, and she’s decent with the dagger she carries on her belt at all times. Later, when she takes up the Knight Enchanter specialization, she learns to be fairly effective with a shortsword out of necessity.

APPEARANCE

FACE Gaunt face, aquiline nose, angled eyebrows and tawny-brown skin. Her eyes are bright green flecked with gold now—she swears they were hazel, before the conclave, before the orb burned the mark into her hand. Fade-touched? Maybe. Her hair, a dark reddish-brown, is kept short, practical, out of the way; it seems to rarely see a comb, save when she runs hasty fingers through it after she wakes up to tame it into some semblence of neatness. When she smiles, she bares just slightly extra-pointed canines, lending her a certain wolfish look.

BODY Androgynous. Reedy, boyish, flat-chested and lacking in curves, she can easily pass for a young elven lad, and will take advantage of this fact if she needs a disguise. Years of traveling with her clan, wielding a staff and general labor around the camp have made her lean and strong—not with the same raw power in muscle as someone like Cassandra or Blackwall, but still with visibly defined muscle in her arms and legs.

SCARS She has nicks and scratches everywhere—calloused hands, scraped knees, scarred elbows. The mark on her left hand is a thin, ragged, ghostly-pale tear across her palm, like something pried it open and forced the magic inside. Visible scars on her face include a thin scar on her lower lip—the story changes every time she’s asked—and two parallel slashes across her right cheek—bought in blood from the two foremost knuckles of a Templar’s gauntlet, scarcely a month before the Conclave. She acquires another long scar over her right eyebrow while fighting Gurd Harofsen’s Revenant in Jaws of Hakkon; yet another along her jawline on the left side of her face, a botched attempt by a Qunari assassin to slit her throat in the dark in the Deep Roads during the events of Trespasser—the end of which also results in the loss of her left arm entirely, severed just above the elbow.

VALLASLIN Ironically, given the fact she drinks from the Well of Sorrows and becomes bound as a servant of Mythal, she wears Mythal’s Vallaslin in white on her face. The same branching pattern covers her shoulders and upper arms and extends down her spine to the small of her back.

BIO

Rhiall is born in 9:16 Dragon, the middle child of two boys and a girl born to Mihna Seranni and Arlan Ithael. She is born and raised Dalish, with all of their customs and beliefs, but even as a child she is prone to walking her own path.

At twelve, her magic manifests, late enough that she is already apprenticed to her uncle learning the trade of a hunter. The magic ruins everything. She wanted the freedom of the hunt; now she is bound to the study of dusty tomes and dead languages. She’s upset, rebellious, and shirks her new duties as any young child thrust into an unwanted situation would. Worse still, she’s bad at it, and she has no control; Keeper Ellewen tries, for a time, to teach her, but the Keeper has two apprentices already and a third makes it difficult to give them all the attention they need. At thirteen, she is given to Clan Anwill as their Second, in hopes she will have a better chance at learning before she falls prey to some evil spirit in the Fade. At thirteen, she loses everything she ever knew, and it doesn’t help at all.

Keeper Aridthel is prideful, strict, and does not tolerate being challenged. He expects obedience, and he does not get it from a homesick, unruly child. She is told, repeatedly, that she is “willful, undisciplined, overall a poor mage and an even poorer Second.” Maybe because he’s afraid, or maybe because he thinks she can’t, he does not teach her real magic; he makes her study Elvhen words and how to make a poultice, and any spells she learns are neutered, weak, inoffensive. When the Clan’s fourth mage manifests his magic, there is talk. Clan Anwill convenes with another Dalish clan for a week; they eat, drink, and their Keepers share gossip and lore; the other clan moves on, and two days after that Keeper Aridthel gives her a rucksack of provisions and turns her out.

But the other clan is Clan Lavellan, and they come back for her. Whether Aridthel arranged this with Deshanna, or whether Deshanna, old and with no First to follow in her footsteps, predicted what he would do from his talk and saw something in the girl worth returning for, Rhiall doesn’t know. What she does know is that Deshanna came back for her, that Clan Lavellan gave her a chance when no one else would, and she clings to them the way a child with nothing else left clings. At fourteen, no one else matters; in time, they become her family, and they are everything to her.

She’s still emotional, still rebellious and uncontrolled, but Deshanna is older and wiser than Aridhel and has dealt with enough children to develop an ocean’s worth of patience. The learning process is rocky, at first. Magic has never come naturally to her before now. Rhiall deliberately seeks out and picks fights with demons in the Fade to prove that she is in control, that they can’t possess her, no matter what anyone told her before; when this habit nearly ends in disaster several times over, she develops a deep-seated fear of the Fade and all it holds that she struggles with for years after. But Deshanna patiently works with her, and over time, with the right touch, she becomes a quick learner, carefully controlled, a skilled mage far exceeding expectations. She is still willful and cocksure, but she matures, she grows up; at eighteen, she is given Mythal’s Vallaslin; she is dedicated to her clan, and learns how to assist Deshanna in leading and directing them.

She is twenty-five, and suddenly a world and a system she’s never known or cared about collides with her clan in a brutal way as the war between the Circle Mages and the Templars breaks out and the fighting spills into the countryside. The clan has to keep on the move to avoid the conflict, straining their energy and resources. Rebel mages come to them seeking shelter they can’t give, for fear of attracting the attention of templars; the very same templars, days later, capture the clan’s Second, Sorien, and hold him prisoner, certain the clan is sheltering mages and trying to get him to give up their location.

Their huntmaster argues they can’t go after the boy without risking leading the templars back to the camp and getting more people hurt. Rhiall argues vehemently that they can’t simply abandon him. Deshanna urges patience, time with which to think, decide, and come up with a plan, and forbids her First to leave the camp in the meantime. Which, of course, isn’t good enough for her; in the time it takes to decide, the templars might give up and kill the boy.

She sneaks out in the night with two of her closest friends, a pair of hunters—Ashiril and Cylas—to rescue Sorien. They are caught, naturally, but manage to escape with their lives and their Second. Rhiall covers their tracks as best she can with magic, urging the forest to shift and hide where they’ve been.

They return to the camp, still feeling the high of victory. And then the templars find them.

It’s a fight; people get hurt; Deshanna, wily old woman that she is, is forced to play her cards and uses blood magic, Creators know where she learned it, to slaughter the templars and prevent further bloodshed. The huntmaster is gravely injured, and only Deshanna’s intervention with healing magic saves him.

Rhiall knows she made a mistake. So does everyone else.

Much discussion follows. The clan is, understandably, angry. Eventually, Deshanna decides—because she needs her First out of the way for a time to let tempers cool, and because they can no longer ignore or avoid the threat of the Mage/Templar War—to send Rhiall to the Divine Conclave as a spy. Ashiril and Doshiel refuse to let her leave without them, and so she is accompanied to the Conclave by her two closest friends.

She wishes they had stayed. Creators, why couldn’t they have stayed?

She is twenty-six, and suddenly in a single moment, in one explosion, she loses everything she’s ever known for the second time. Her friends are dead. She can’t return to her clan—people still think she’s a heretic, they think she killed the Divine, and if she goes back she’ll bring that wrath down on them. She can only use the power she has with the Inquisition to try and put the world right, to make it safe for them again.

She remembers questions she used to ask her Keeper, years ago. Power is dangerous, or so they say in children’s tales. Power corrupts.

But power does more than that, she thinks. It’s a siren’s song, and it tempts her, because of this: power levels cities, moves mountains, parts seas. With power, you aren’t helpless, running scared and hiding while you try to avoid the battles of a war your people have no part in. With power, you can protect yourself and others. With power, you can change things.

With power, you can help the powerless.

How can power, in and of itself, be dangerous? She recalls asking Deshanna. It’s like magic, isn’t it? You can use it to help people, too. Power isn’t corrupt.

No, says Deshanna, and already the Keeper is finishing her next thought: But people are corrupt. And people with power are far more dangerous than those without.

She writes to Deshanna, after the Conclave. She tells her Keeper of the Inquisition, why she stays, what she will do. I can’t come back, but I can use this. Here, I have the power to do something about this war. No more running, no more hiding in the dark. Here, I can make up for my mistake. I’ll make sure our clan is safe again. Wish me luck.

And Deshanna writes back, simply:

If power is what you seek, take care there is no weakness in the hand that wields it.

PERSONALITY

“Child,” Deshanna used to tell her wearily, eyes squeezed shut and fingers pressed to her temples, the corner of her mouth twitching faintly, “you wear an old woman’s patience thin. Did you know that?”

The child of fourteen jerks away from her Keeper, arms crossed, sulking in silence; years later, in her twenties, she just shrugs and offers up a half-smile and a nod without denying it. She knows she’s trouble. They’ve told her as much since she was a girl.

She is an unruly child, all skinned knees and bruised knuckles, fighting to keep pace with her brothers. They are always bigger and stronger—everyone is, to a reedy little girl with messy hair and bright eyes—and so she learns, if she can’t be stronger, to be more cunning and clever than them. Her mother always says she’s too smart for her own good, always observing, always learning, always questioning; Mihna is proud, but reminds her daughter she must be wise as well as smart, or it’ll get her into trouble one day.

As the clever, unruly child grows up, she grows proud, willful, obstinate and fierce as a she-bear. She acquires a sharp tongue and a sharper wit. When her magic manifests and she is given to other clans not once, but twice, she grits her teeth and swears that she is strong and cunning enough to trust only herself. When the Shems come with men in gleaming armor to chase the clan away from their towns and villages, she fights, she observes, and she learns the meaning of power—and how those with it dominate over those without. When the demons come to tempt her in the Fade, she learns the art of control, and that as long as she holds the leash she is the master of her own fate. She walks with the barest hint of a swagger in her step, a smirk on her lips and a glint in her eye.

Still, whatever she lacks in manners and discipline, she makes up for in heart; she is driven and dedicated to those she cares about, from her clan first to the members of the Inquisition later, and will do anything for them. No one tells her what’s right or wrong but her own conscience. She is an idealist, if an arrogant one—she cares about people, about doing the right thing, and some part of her truly believes she can make things better for her clan. She sees joining the Inquisition as her opportunity to acquire the power she needs to do that.

She doesn’t trust them, not at first, nor does she really care about the Inquisition, except for the ways she can use it to her advantage. She’s an outsider, a Dalish elf among mostly humans. All she really wants is to stop the war, seal the Breach, and build a better life for her clan. It’s not until she’s marching out of the Haven chantry to face the dragon and die for them that she realizes this has turned into something bigger than herself and her clan, that somehow she’s bought into their cause and this has become about the whole world.

As she grows into her role as Inquisitor, she transforms into another person entirely—not always in good ways. She puts what leadership skills she learned as First to good use, honing them to a fine point leading the Inquisition. She learns how to charm the nobility to her own purposes; she learns how to inspire troops and navigate wartime strategy to great effect. She takes up the role of chessmaster, and she plays it well. But Haven rattled her; there are moments she flashes back to dragon’s fire and splintering woods, feels the cold terror in the pit of her stomach that it’ll happen again, and the ways she tries, desperately, to make sure it doesn’t. In some ways, she becomes obsessed with the idea of control, and she learns to wear a mask, to hide any signs of weakness in herself. She worries constantly about how people see her; she literally becomes the symbol, the Herald of Andraste. She becomes whatever they want to see in her.

After Adamant and the loss of her clan, she becomes steeled, cold, completely withdrawn. They must not see her falter. Somewhere along the way, the idealism is lost; now it’s about revenge, about doing whatever it takes and killing whoever she has to to get the desired outcome and put an end to Corypheus for good. She rationalizes it all however she has to as a defense mechanism; she doubts herself, and then in the same breath reminds herself that whatever she does is necessary, that sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

She’d like to say that killing Corypheus didn’t help; that’s what they say in all the children’s stories, that revenge does nothing for you. It didn’t help, but it gave her some smug sense of satisfaction to watch him die. For a moment, at least, it was alright.

She spends the next two and a half years holding on to the power she’s obtained, making enemies, cleaning up minor messes here and there until the Exalted Council is called. She has no intention of letting go of anything—not at first. But as the Qunari invasion and Solas’ plot unravel in front of her, she starts to doubt. Eventually, she concludes maybe it’s time to let go, and disbands the Inquisition.

She’s never been a quitter, and she doesn’t for a second consider stopping and settling down to ‘live well while time remains'—but as the doors close on Skyhold for the final time, she is more at peace than she can remember being since all of this started.

Maybe it’s better, this way.

DECISIONS

IN HUSHED WHISPERS · HERE LIES THE ABYSS
CLAN LAVELLAN · WICKED EYES & WICKED HEARTs
WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT · TRESPASSER

IN HUSHED WHISPERS Apostate mage that she is, and knowing full well the threat of Templars to the Dalish her whole life, Rhiall defaults to sympathizing with the rebel mages and seeks them first to help close the Breach. They seem more open to helping than the Templars, anyway, and the path of least resistance to getting the Breach closed is what she wants. Finding Alexius already in Redcliffe put a damper on that plan, but an occupying force in a key strategic point in Fereldan only increased the urgency of the matter and cements her decision to continue to pursue the rebel mages. In the end she recruited them as allies, rather than conscript them. The Inquisition is better than Alexius, or at least she thinks they ought to be; and anyway they need the mages to believe in their cause, otherwise they’re not getting anything done. Everybody’s still mad and there’s a lot of yelling afterwards, but she’s stubborn and sticks to her guns. She did what she had to, and that’s all that matters.

HERE LIES THE ABYSS This is the decision that breaks her idealism. At this point, Rhiall is faced with a choice that has no good outcome, where not everyone comes out alive and alright no matter what she does. There is no time, and the pragmatic choice is readily apparent, anyway, though she hates herself for it. She leaves Hawke behind. She’s not proud of the way she rationalizes it, or the things she tells herself after to ease the guilt, but nonetheless: the Wardens need Stroud, more than the world needs Marian Hawke. In the end, Hawke’s death means little. In the end, maybe it’s better this way; maybe her death puts the final nail in the coffin to keep whatever remaining Mage-Templar conflicts there may be from resurfacing when they least need them. She spins the tale, once she’s out. Hawke died a hero, so honor her sacrifice. She lets the Wardens stay, not because she trusts them, but because she wants to keep them close where she can keep an eye on them. And she lets them believe, despite what she knows, that the Herald of Andraste is still real and still more than a farce.

CLAN LAVELLAN While it may not be one of the large, important decisions of the game, the length and complexity of the Lavellan war table series and its personal nature to an elven Inquisitor requires its mention; this is especially important in Rhiall’s instance because the entire clan perishes at the hands of the mob from Wycome, when she chooses to send in the Inquisition’s forces to stabilize the city instead of the clan, trying to “protect” them. She doubts herself for it. Did she make the wrong choice? Is their blood on her hands? She acted as the Inquisitor, and not as the Keeper’s First, and because of it they’re dead. Even so, their worries are so much bigger than a single Dalish clan in the Free Marches, and she can’t dwell on it long. She hardens herself. She does everything she can not to think about it, or to grieve anywhere but in private, and even then not for long. No one must know, and this cannot affect the Inquisition’s greater mission. Bottling it up as she does is probably an awful idea, but she does it anyway. She is not the same after the loss of her clan. She takes great pains to behave like nothing has changed; but somewhere in her heart, hidden away, burns the flame of revenge seeking fulfillment. She’ll find a way to kill Corypheus with her own two hands.

WICKED EYES & WICKED HEARTS She isn’t fooling around anymore, not after the death of her clan; every choice she makes is now a calculated move to be certain she crushes Corypheus that much harder when the time comes. To do this, she needs Gaspard’s military expertise and his forces—and she needs Celene, the weaker ruler, out of the way. But she also needs control of Gaspard, and she wants Briala’s cooperation and her network as well, so after allowing Florianne to assassinate the Empress she then turns on Gaspard, blackmails him into submission, and makes him a puppet for Briala without remorse. She couldn’t give a damn about Orlesian politics; she just wants her revenge, and the resources to do it, though she’ll tell herself it’s because she wants to stop Corypheus before he can hurt anymore innocents.

WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT She does not have time to complete the elven rituals, she tells herself, because soldiers are dying and Corypheus is pursuing them and Samson is that much farther ahead; but passing them up leaves a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach—a reminder that the Keeper’s First of Clan Lavellan would have done it in the heartbeat, but she is not the Keeper’s First anymore. She’s hardly sure she’s even herself anymore. With clenched teeth and steely resolve she carves a path through Corypheus’ forces and the Elven Sentinels alike to the Well, where she chooses to drink from the Well because she does not trust Morrigan and is afraid of not having control of its power, should Morrigan turn on them. More than that, she wants it for her own; she wants the power to kill Corypheus with her bare hands, the smug pleasure of taking the power he sought and turning it against him. A mistake.

TRESPASSER Two years after Corypheus’ defeat, and now the Exalted Council is trying to pull the rug out from under the Inquisition. They’re not wrong—the Inquisition has overstepped in many respects, and Teagan is right that Rhiall thinks she’s the solution to every problem (too much so). She holds too tightly to the control and the power; she starts out determined to keep the Inquisition going as is, to fight and claw and exert whatever pressure she needs to to get them off her back, but as the Qunari invade and the negotiations start to fall apart, she realizes maybe she’s been wrong…that the Inquisition really has outlived its usefulness, that it’s growing corrupt, that maybe it’s destroying her and she’s destroying it in turn. More than that, she realizes. it’s too easy a tool for Solas to get to her and to follow her every move through. Angry, betrayed, and hurt, she chooses to disband the Inquisition and go after Solas herself—and she swears she’ll do whatever she must to stop him, even if that means she has to kill him. She will not let him destroy the world she fought to save from Corypheus.

RELATIONSHIPS

CASSANDRA · SOLAS · VARRIC · SERA · VIVIENNE · BLACKWALL
THE IRON BULL · DORIAN · COLE · JOSEPHINE · LELIANA · CULLEN

*NOTE: These are a just a general reference for how Rhiall feels about her Companions and Advisors and her relationships with them, not hard and fast rules. I don’t expect anyone playing these characters to abide by this.

CASSANDRA is as intimidating as she is admirable, but their relationship starts out rocky and strained, at best. Cassandra introduces herself with death threats; Rhiall introduces herself by walking out of the ashes of the temple where hundreds of people, the Divine and Cassandra’s lover included, just died. It’s no wonder they’re leery of one another at first. Her initial meeting with Cassandra and subsequent journey into the valley to seal the Breach is tense, confused, filled with verbal jabs and sharp disagreements; they start off on poor footing. But as Rhiall begins to understand what drives Cassandra a little better, she develops a deep respect for the woman and attempts to start over; slowly, grudgingly at first, they develop a friendship. They don’t always agree, but Cassandra still stands by her even so, and Rhiall appreciates that. By the time Corypheus is defeated, she considers Cassandra Pentaghast one of her closest friends and most steadfast allies, the one person she can always turn to for advice (even if she doesn’t always take it) and aid. She encourages Cassandra to rebuild the Seekers after Promises of Destruction, and in years to come turns to the rebuilt order for help hunting down Solas.

SOLAS is an enigma, a source of both confusion and curiosity for her. She gravitates toward him at first because he’s another elf and the one thing familiar to her in a situation full of unfamiliars, but is immediately rebuffed by his disdain for the Dalish—which throws her off initially, but then it only makes her try even harder to interact with and understand him. She peppers him with questions and listens to his stories, perhaps looking for whatever it is she misses without her Keeper in the Inquisition to guide her, and they eventually develop a friendship and mutual respect; however, as the pressure of leading the Inquisition mounts, the relationship becomes strained and tense. They disagree repeatedly—she won’t let him kill the mages who bound the wisdom spirit, she follows Varric’s advice to make Cole more human, she doesn’t exile the Wardens, she doesn’t do the rituals at the Temple of Mythal, and she drinks from the Well despite his urgings not to. The respect is still there by the time Corypheus is defeated, but their friendship is…not the same. And once she finds out the truth in Trespasser, it’s no friendship at all. She’s angry, and bitter, and she swears she hates him for what he’s done. She will kill him, if that’s what it takes to stop him…it will take a long time yet for her to realize that she doesn’t want it to come to that, not really.

VARRIC is funny, and friendly, and unpretentious; she likes him. He was the only person to ask if she was alright after the initial failed assault on the Breach. He was the only one to treat her like a person at first, when she was scared and alone and thrown head-first into a mess she didn’t understand, and that counts for something. It’s why she can’t even blame him for hiding Hawke’s whereabouts from Cassandra; he’s clearly always cared about people first, before causes and organizations. He’s one of the few people she really feels comfortable and herself around, and they have similar senses of humor—she goes to him when she needs a break or somebody to ‘talk her ear off’ as he says.

SERA, much like Solas, confuses and irritates her initially. She doesn’t understand Sera’s damage with “elfy elves,” and seeing as she is one, she feels a bit put off by it. On the other hand, she’s guilty of pushing Sera’s buttons right back and treating her more like a puzzle than a person. When she agrees to go to Verchiel, she sees it as simply another errand; coming out of their encounter with Lord Harmond (Sera kills him), she suddenly understands a great deal more than she did. She takes great pains after that to be more friendly with Sera; she doesn’t necessarily take to the pranks and the attitude at first, but she does it for Sera and over time even begins to enjoy it. She finds she can let down her guard with Sera more than other people. By the time Trespasser rolls around, Sera is a close friend and confidante, and though Rhiall doesn’t see herself as Jenny material she is touched by the offer nonetheless.

VIVIENNE is infuriating. Rhiall sees her as a useful ally and manages, most of the time, to maintain a professional friendliness, but she doesn’t like her and they don’t get along. Vivienne is staunchly pro-circle; Rhiall is Dalish and would rather die than let a Circle take her. More than that, though, Rhiall sees something of herself in Vivienne—the same cunning, the same thirst for power—and she doesn’t like it, because she prefers to think of herself as seeking power in order to do good with it, while she sees Vivienne as doing so for personal advancement. They are not so dissimilar; Vivienne hits too close to home and forces her to self-reflect when she’d rather not, especially late in the game when she drinks from the Well of Sorrows, and so she is, perhaps, overly judgmental with Madame de Fer. Also, she doesn’t like that she can never get in the last word. She doesn’t trust Vivienne, and so gives her a decoy wyvern heart when she requests; after, when Bastien dies, she wonders if she did the wrong thing. She wonders a great deal about Vivienne, after that.

BLACKWALL is useless to her when they initially meet in the Hinterlands; she rolls her eyes, huffs, and fully intends to leave him there since he seems to be of no help locating the Grey Wardens. And then he startles and impresses her by offering his services to the Inquisition. As she gets to know him she finds he’s down-to-earth, likeable enough, and good in a fight; she comes to rely on his apparent battle experience and seek him out for advice when her lack thereof gives her trouble. And then—the truth comes out. She’s angry, and she feels betrayed; she frees him from prison, pledges him to the Wardens, and after that bears nothing but cold indifference toward him. She doesn’t fully trust him again for years, not until she meets him again in Halamshiral as Thom Rainier, sees how he’s living in his new life, and finally decides perhaps it’s time to let the past be the past.

THE IRON BULL is a spy, but an honest one, which confounds her when she meets him. She doesn’t quite trust him at first (he told her directly he was a spy) but she grows more comfortable with him the longer he’s around. She fairly quickly picks through the brute tough-guy persona and determines that The Iron Bull is a much more subtle, cunning man than the mask he puts on, but she’ll never tell him directly that she realizes this. He probably knows, anyway. She orders him to call a retreat for the Chargers during Demands of the Qun rather than sacrifice them for the sake of the alliance with the Qunari—she can’t bring herself to let them die, not when he clearly cares a great deal for them. He has useful military and intelligence experience, and he’s fun to grab a drink with at the tavern during downtime; once Leliana leaves the Inquisition to take up the role of Divine, she tends to go to him a great deal for help and advice on running the Inquisition’s spy network, enough that he becomes, for a time, the Inquisition’s unofficial spymaster.

DORIAN is another she doesn’t fully trust at first, mainly because of the circumstances of their initial meeting in the Chantry, with Alexius’ mysterious sweeping of the rebel mages out from under her and the strange magic going on in Redcliffe. And yet he repeatedly sticks his neck out for the Inquisition when he could’ve left well enough alone, offers his help when he didn’t have to, until she can only conclude he has honest intentions. Beyond that, he’s charming and likeable, brave and stubborn to a fault, and she gets along quite well with him, growing slowly more attached over time (she doesn’t even quite realize it, herself, until Dorian mentions that he considers her a friend, which startles her). She’s angry, learning about what his father did to him, and they leave Halward in the Gull and Lantern without any further discussion when it becomes clear Dorian’s upset. She doesn’t agree with his decision to return to Tevinter in Trespasser—and she’s upset he didn’t tell her—but she promises he’ll have whatever support she can send him, whatever way she can help.

COLE, she feels, requires a certain delicate touch, like walking on eggshells—she’s not quite sure what to make of him initially, and even she isn’t certain if he’s safe to have around. But mindful of what Solas has taught her of spirits, and knowing he came to warn her in Haven and helped them escape alive, she lets him stay, attempts to understand him, treats him as kindly as she can. Over time she grows more comfortable with his presence and feels warm, even protective toward him. She chooses to nurture his budding humanity, as Varric urges, rather than restore his spirithood. But when her clan perishes, she grows distant with him, afraid his ability to read peoples’ emotions and thoughts will expose how she’s really feeling—something she’s not even prepared to face herself. He may not understand, but she feels (perhaps wrongly) that it’s best for everyone; this is a hurt he can’t help, and she doesn’t want anyone to see her falter.

JOSEPHINE needs a vacation. Rhiall is fully aware that as a Dalish elf, inexperienced in the political machinations of human nobility, she would be well and truly lost without Josephine. On top of this, Josephine is sweet and clever and an absolute master of the game, such that Rhiall is fond of and constantly amazed by her. She doesn’t necessarily enjoy The Game, or politics in general, but she still questions Josephine about it a great deal privately—both to understand and learn the skills she needs, and because she’s fascinated by Josephine’s take on matters and how she manages to successfully maneuver Orlesian social circles with grace. She helps Josephine non-violently resolve the issue with the House of Repose, though she’s dubious and constantly holding off on a nervous trigger finger that wants to send Leliana’s people in and be done with it before anything happens to her Ambassador; in the end, she’s glad she let Josephine do it her way. Of the three Advisors, Josephine is the one she’s most friendly and comfortable with. It’s Josephine, clearly upset during the Exalted Council, who finally causes things to lurch sharply into perspective for her and makes her question whether she’s doing the right thing—Josephine who ultimately influences her decision to disband.

LELIANA is a source of contention for a long time, mainly because…Leliana has no chill, and Rhiall’s not sure how to handle her. Sometimes they get along well enough, even if they aren’t close; other times they’re arguing about whether Leliana’s methods are too brutal, or Leliana will throw her off by subtly accusing her of being responsible for the Divine’s death. By the time they travel to the cloister in Valence, Rhiall has changed her stance, and willingly agrees that Sister Natalie be killed; they come to an understanding (not necessarily a good one) that perhaps sometimes harsher methods are necessary, after which she is more friendly with Leliana, and the Spymaster ascends to the rank of Divine with her support.

CULLEN, she can’t stand initially. There’s a lot of bickering and disagreement between them at first, what with her support for free mages and his pro-templar stance and distrust of mages in general. She directly, and occasionally spitefully, spurns his advice. Do you and I have a problem? and What were you thinking, allying with the mages? Only when Corypheus’ army overruns Haven do they finally come to a silent agreement and understanding; whatever their differences, they both only want to save the people under their protection and keep the world in one piece. They’re more friendly after that; when she tells him Skyhold is as good a place to start over as any, she’s not just talking about the Inquisition. She respects him enough after that to tell him to stop taking the Lyrium, and pour support into his mission to bring down Samson.