#but anyway yeah i love every excuse to talk about da ❤️

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Hey so you've posted a bit about replaying DA and I wanted to know if you have a canon run through

I do! I'm currently replaying through my canon run right now [with a few deviations here and there] because every time I finish a run, some time passes before I'm like, ".........I miss them." It makes doing an alternate run harder, too.

For DAO, I play as a rogue lady Tabris named Rosalie, or Rose. Dual-wielding ranger and dualist. Her most used party dynamic is Alistair/Morrigan/Zevran. She named the mabari Griffon after the tales of Grey Wardens and their griffons. Rose romanced Alistair, kept him a warden and made Anora queen. She considers Morrigan one of her closest friends until Morrigan reveals her true intentions for coming with them. I've written about that whole thing before. Honestly, as far as companions go, Rose becomes close friends with most of them... except Wynne, they tend to butt heads in a lot of ways.

Rose didn't want to become a warden and thinks most of their rules and secrets are bullshit. Duncan's excuse for not coming to help her and the other elven women Vaughan took is a driving force for her to defy that "we can't get involved" rule as much as she can during and post-blight. She sided with the mages in Kinloch and with their help saved Connor, made Bhelen king of Orzammar, and settled things between the Dalish and the werewolves peacefully by convincing Zathrian to end the curse. She executed Loghain at the Landsmeet since, y'know... he sold city elves, nearly including her father, to Tevinter slavers to fund his war so... in her eyes, he doesn't get to live after that.

This playthrough I did make a save to reject Morrigan's dark ritual to see what happens when the warden makes the ultimate sacrifice and it's the most unsatisfying ending. It's such a, "No no noooo we didn't deserve this! After everything we went through! Just for it to end like that??" hopeless feeling... which was then fixed when I went back and made my canon choice of begrudgingly accepting the deal [even though it mostly goes against Rose's character but I'm weak and selfish and want her and Alistair to live].

In DA2, I play as a male mage Hawke named Edgar, or Ed. Force mage and blood mage. His most used party dynamic is Carver/Merrill/Anders until Carver goes to the Grey Wardens, then it's Isabela/Merrill/Anders. He's mostly purple in personality, but occasionally dips into blue, and I can count the number of times he's gone red on one hand. He named his mabari Fleabag after Malcolm bought the pup from a traveling merchant who failed to mention he was flea ridden. Several baths later, the mabari was finally flea free but Ed decided he should never live it down and named him Fleabag.

Ed maxes out the friendships with everyone [yes, including Carver, Ed tries so damn hard with him] except Aveline, he maxes out her rivalry. They all side with him and the mages in the end. He romanced Anders. I once did a run where I romanced Fenris with Ed and even though I liked it, the whole playthrough felt wrong because romancing Anders is, like... a fundamental part of Ed's story now... Even though they break up in the end.

I've done all three options across different playthroughs when it comes to Anders; I've spared him, I've killed him, and I've told him to leave. My canon choice is to tell him to leave, and then let him join my party later after we've sided with the mages. It's hard to explain without writing a full essay, but Ed and Anders are pretty much life partners at this point. Even if it's no longer romantic because a huge amount of trust was broken, even if they never get back together in that regard, even if Anders will now be on the run for the rest of his life, whether or not Ed agrees with him [he does and he doesn't, it's complicated] like... Ed loves him and he'll always love him, y'know? He won't abandon him even when everyone tells him he should.....but then DAI happened uhhh

Finally for DAI, I play a lady mage Lavellan named Ashalle, or Ashlaen, or just Ash. She's a knight-enchanter who mostly does storm magic. I'd say DAI is the game where I have a pretty even party use that I rotate between; Cassandra/Varric/Vivienne, Solas/Sera/Blackwall, The Iron Bull/Dorian/Cole. She sides with the mages in Redcliffe and left Hawke in the fade [sorry Ed, and sorry Anders... and sorry Carver... and Varric]. When it came to picking a ruler for Orlais, she figured all options sucked but went with Celene and Briala. Ash drank from the well, and then disbanded the inquisition in Trespasser.

I dislike how DAI just kinda plops your inquisitor into existence with only a small paragraph explaining why they were at the conclave; I wish it had a DAO approach so that's what I did for my inquisitor. Before I start the DAI playthrough, I boot up DAO. Before she was Ashalle Lavellan, she was a circle mage named Ashlaen Surana who escaped with Jowan after he lied to her about being a blood mage. In the ten years pre-DAI, she lost Jowan. In her grief, joined the Dalish, changed her name, and eventually ended up at the conclave. It just adds a lot more meat and spice to the choices and interactions with companions and advisors since she keeps that part of her backstory a secret. After all, she helped a blood mage and then was accused of being one herself before fleeing; she doesn't want the inquisition to know that. All of her crafted staves are named after Jowan while her crafted robes are usually named after her conflicting identities and pieces of her past, too..... Oh, speaking of past, she romanced Cullen. Because of course.

With the context of all this, it becomes them reuniting after they may or may not have had a thing going on in the circle, but then she escaped and he believed she was actually a blood mage for ten years. Cullen sees her like "Ah. Yes. You. Whom I haven't met. Hope they're right about you. We've lost a lot of people to get you here. Glad you survived." when internally he's screaming "I know who you are, those tattoos fool me not! Why are you here?? To torment ME specifically??" Then there's Ash who takes a little longer to recognize him, and when she does, it solidifies that she needs to run after this because he knows who she is and why she fled, that's not good, she's not going back to the circle after all this is done.

But y'know... they work it out. Eventually.

That's my canon run through of all three games. I keep trying to talk myself into doing a full alternate canon run, but the only game I've successfully done a different route in is DAI with my male rogue Tristan Trevelyan whose backstory was that he's a pro-mage ex-templar. That was fun to see how different things play out, but I haven't managed it for the other two.

I'd like to play DAO as a more cutthroat warden who, unlike Rose, won't go out of their way to do kind things; they'll do what they deem necessary. I'd like to do a lady warrior Hawke run with Bethany as the surviving sibling, and I've tried before but every time I hit a point where I'm like ".....I miss Carver so much" and abandon the run. Like there's always something that makes me abandon the run. I almost abandoned Tristan's run, too, but somehow I pushed through and got invested. I dunno. One day I'll put on my big girl pants and just do it.