therookery | let's talk anything but politics

let's talk anything but politics

FORM: sending crystal
SENDER: Darras Rivain
RECIPIENT: everyone
WHAT: Girl of Your Dreams, the most important game ever played
WHEN: now
WHERE: the Gallows

So for those of us that don't feel particularly moved to be adding our voices to any debates over the Divine. [Well, wait.] No, that's unfair of me. Anyone is welcome to be playing this game. It's just that you might be too busy.

Though it's quite easy. Doesn't take much attention. It's Girl of Your Dreams, and it's meant to be played when you're exceedingly bored. Every bit of this dream girl is perfect, except there's one detail, one tiny detail, that's terribly wrong. Like... "Girl of your dreams, girl of your dreams, except she's got goat's eyes." The ones with those terrible square centers, and they're half wall-eyed? And then everyone has got to say if they'd still have her or not. Which--in honesty--for that one, I would.

We could play it about the Divine, if that would strike you as more topical. "Future Divine of your dreams, Future Divine of your dreams, except she'll only eat food that you've chewed for her." Still vote for her, or not?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Huh. ]

D'you think it would be better for the people not to have a Chantry?

No, I'm sure all the praying makes up for unleashing the civil wars that Corypheus has been taking advantage of on Thedas.

[ Don't be glib, Gwen. ]

It could be a force for good. Something that goes beyond the stupidity of all this - national pride and hatred.

And Celene could use her power to enact real change for elves in Orlais, and enforce the laws that she put into place, but they're being used as weapons like I fucking told everyone they would be and I'm still the cunt for calling that bargain what it was when it was made.

You know how I feel about that word.

[ Anyway - ]

What bargain?

Not letting the bitch die.

( look, she didn't say cunt. )

I don't like that word either.

When were you in a position to not let her die?

( WHATEVER, VOCABULARY POLICE, )

Me? Never. The Inquisition was instrumental to the end of the Orlesian civil war. She would not have held her throne by herself.

( and gwenaëlle, clearly, harbors some strong feelings on the matter. )

Oh. And you said that we should get her chucked off.

I'd like her stripped naked, flogged through the streets and left for dead somewhere, but 'not being Empress' would do, yes.

Why do you hate her so much, anyway?

The Baudin sisters died in Halamshiral. A chevalier shot Alix in the back while she was trying to get to Magalie in their burning home—she'd have been trapped. She was sickly. I expect it's possible she'd already choked to death before Alix made it to their door.

( it's all very even. )

But I'm sure all those paper promises Celene made when her throne depended on them make up for everyone she slaughtered to defend herself against the accusation of being soft on elves. I'm sure it was all fucking worth it in the end.

The Baudin - You mean - your sisters, or...?

Yes.

( clipped. she thinks she's said it in so many words only the once, only to thranduil; only when he told her how. when she told him the truth. )

Mistress Baudin's daughters. They were twins. They were older than me. Her true daughters, elves, they're dead. There wasn't other family. There'll be no more elves that looked like my mother. There's just me.

( she doesn't hate celene as much as she hates herself, for that, and she hates celene a great deal. )

Yeah, but -

[ Kitty isn't very good with expressions of emotion; they often come out awkward. She's even less good with trying to comfort people - but that last bit sounded so significant, it doesn't seem right to let it go unaddressed. ]

You're - you're really good, though, you know.

One spoiled human for three elves is not a trade anyone in this outpost would make.

( she's pretty sure it's definitely not a trade kitty would make. )

It really doesn't factor. Let's not rehash arguments I have with my husband, he'll be put out if he has nothing to do. The point is, I don't think the end result of the civil war was worth the cost and I said so.

[ A little fiercely: ]

Acting as though lives can traded and bartered and set up as equivalent like that means accepting that people are just things. Which is the sort of political arithmetic that people like her do, and what they use to justify choices like the one she made.

I don't think it's right that the only thing left of my mother is something that was done to her.

( she bites off every word. )

I will never think that that is right.

( that, maybe, explains some things about her father's death. )

That's - [ Uncertainly: ] What do you mean, something that was done to her?

Well, certainly, why not let's do the math on this? Comte, lady's maid. Human, elf. Vauquelin, Baudin.

How much do you think it mattered what she wanted? Did he have to ask first, when he took a child from her and gave it to his wife? What does that decision-making process look like? I don't know. Not very romantic, I can't help but think.

( there is a painting of her mother that makes it more complicated; gwenaëlle does not look for nuance, here.

i didn't know what her voice sounded like until i was old enough to still remember how surprised i was.

anger is easier. )

Oh.

[ Kitty's voice is a bit small. Her first reaction is a wave of humiliation, that she'd never even thought of that. But - right, of course. It's the exploitation of the economically disadvantaged by the economically advantaged. The employer-employee relationship is inherently coercive. Of course, she's always tended to think of the servants of the powerful as complicit, really - they sign up to bow and scrape, don't they, get a wage to flatter and to coddle those who don't deserve it...But that doesn't make Gwen's queasy point any less than true. ]

Did you ever...have a chance to talk to her about it?

She was my handmaid for a few months before she died. We didn't talk, much, and then some fucking Dalish shot her in the throat so she didn't even—

( it still bothers her that guenievre had no last word. she was always so quiet, that gwenaëlle remembers, and then silenced entirely. )

It wasn't what we talked about.

( gwenaëlle had been, if she's honest—she's not going to be honest about this—afraid to ask. afraid of the answer, afraid of what it would feel like to finally have certainty. to hear it in truth, or to hear her mother try to spare her, to lie. )

She told me it wasn't appropriate to see Thranduil in private and she braided my hair at night. I can do it myself, but she would just sit there with the brush and look at me until I—

( there's a short delay. a silence. this isn't where she meant for this conversation to go. )

She asked Thranduil to find out what happened to her daughters. She didn't tell me what he'd said but she told me that he'd investigated. It was just before she died. That's how I know. I asked, eventually. We all knew they were dead, we knew it was in the slaughter, we just didn't know what had happened.

I'm sorry.

[ What is there to say but that? - It's stupid; Kitty can't help but think of her own mum with all that talk. Would her mum have braided Kitty's hair, if Kitty hadn't kept it chopped rebelliously short? Mum had sometimes commented wistfully on that, speculating that Kitty would look lovely if she let it grow out, but Kitty never had. And Kitty had certainly heard plenty about the people she oughtn't be spending time with. But if Kitty had sisters who died...Mum would never ask to find out what happened to them. She'd just hide her head in the sand and pretend they'd never existed. Like she, no doubt, pretends now that Kitty never existed -

Stop it. Kitty takes a breath. ]

Why was there that - violence at all? I've never heard of this before.

Civil unrest, you know. Rebellions. Not even especially dangerous ones, or—I don't know, it isn't as if anyone would have told me if they were. Enough that my lord took us out of Halamshiral, at any rate.

( gwenaëlle lived most of her life in the high quarter, before that, before the breach; it's startling how terribly long ago it all feels. )

There were rumors she was soft on it. That her pet elf made her soft. The Marquise, now. No one said she was too lenient with elves after she marched her chevaliers into Halamshiral and burned half the fucking city.

( a breath. )

It was old news before you arrived.

Oh.

[ Old news, but not old enough to make it into the books Kitty reads. Sometimes she feels like she has the most dire blind spots. ]

What was it that caused their rebellion? What had she done?

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