#maryden

[flower-khajiit]

Wake up, Inquisitors, this is how we dance in Ferelden💃

[fatale-distraction]

God I hope DA4 having new bard songs means Elizaveta is doing them again

Not just because it’d be kickass to see Maryden back, but because I REALLY love Elizaveta’s voice 🥲

[dragonageconfessions]

CONFESSION:

I like Maryden’s ballads, but if there’s any in-universe bard music in DAD I hope we get a little more variety. Where’s the marching songs! Where’s the inappropriate drinking tunes! The epics of past battles! Old love songs! That one annoying jig about some loser from a hundred years ago that the goofy dude in your party keeps getting stuck in your head! I want more to bounce to than only Sera Was Never

[salroka]

When making Cole human makes more sense for my character but I want Krem to get the girl.

[howlingwolf23]

Since Maryden claims she is a minstrel and not a bard as she isn't Orlesian trained made me think of her singing a Dragon Age version of "We Didn't Start The Fire" that basically recaps Dragon Origins to Dragon Age Inquisition and she sings it with Cole at the beginning of Dragon Age Dreadwolf

[neb-art-zeke]

Nightingale's Eyes is still my favorite

[bitchesofostwick]

maryden girl u good?

[dirtybiowareconfessions]

Confession: I have it real bad for Cole. Maryden you lucky bitch, stealing my man who doesn’t yet know he’s mah man.

[bethesdaglitch]

I know it’s ten years too late—literally—to be making this post but I always felt so bad for Maryden in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Imagine you’re a bard for the Inquisition. You have a crush on the new elf that just joined up. You’re kind of clumsy in the courting department so you decide you’ll write her a song. And you play it as often as you can because said elf lives in the tavern. And she fucking hates it. And she’s very vocal about how much she hates it. And then she gets with either Dagna or the fucking Inquisitor herself. There is literally no universe in which she responds to your feelings with anything other than disgust. Poor Maryden.

[castleseer]

Happy Dragon Age Day!

[the-northern-continent]

Rhythm and Breath in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Inquisition plays around with a couple recurring rhythms:

iambic pentameter (dagger skill tree, Maryden)

trochaic tetrameter (Saga of Tyrdda Bright-Axe)

the cadence from the song Hallelujah (Solas)

Many folks have already written technical comparisons of these different rhythms, but I specifically wanted to talk about how they handle breath.

Without even paying attention to the word content of these rhythms, the breath patterns help set the mood. Are my breaths regularly spaced? Am I gulping for air? Am I breathing slowly and calmly?

As we go through the different rhythms, try reading them aloud to see where your breath lands.

Iambic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a five (penta-) foot meter, where each foot is an iamb. An iamb is a two-syllable “da-DUM” sound, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. So each line has 10 syllables total.

Here’s an example from the dagger skill tree, with the feet color-coded:

You leap through shadows to attack your foe

With deadly strikes that hit them from behind.

Before your target turns to face your blow,

You move to stealth, impossible to find.

If we read this aloud, we find that 10 syllables is a lot! There are very few mid-line commas, so we naturally want to breathe between lines. But each of those breaths needs to last for ten syllables. If we don’t want to pass out, we’re reading the lines a bit faster than we normally would.

The iambs add even more forward momentum. Since we need to save more breath for the second syllable in each pair, we hurry slightly faster over the unstressed syllables.

Because we keep repeating that same syllable count and stress pattern, the overall effect is one of speed and precision. This is a rogue rapidly making blow after blow after blow with their daggers, hitting every single time. This is Maryden rattling off each sentence with perfect poise and musical training. There’s no time here for thinking; no room for mistakes. The next line is going to be ten syllables too. And the next. And the next.

Trochaic Tetrameter

By contrast, the Saga of Tyrdda Bright-Axe only has 4 (tetra-) trochees (DUM-da) per line. On every other line, the final unstressed syllable is dropped (catalexis).

That’s a lot of jargon, let’s color code the feet:

Tell the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe

mountain maker, spirit’s bride:

Free, her people, forged in fastness

made in mountains, hardy hide.

This is a classic meter, often found in nursery rhymes and folk songs. Because there’s only 8 syllables per line (plus lots of mid-line commas), we can read each line at a casual pace, without speeding up. The catalexis adds extra emphasis to the rhyming lines, since we get to the last (7th) syllable with more breath to spend. And even within each foot, we don’t have to manage our breath as much, because the stressed syllable comes first.

This creates a comfortable rhythm that lends itself to memorization and recitation. We can easily imagine this saga being passed down beside a campfire.

Hallelujah

Since the Hallelujah cadence comes from music rather than poetry, it has an additional kind of stress, the mid-measure secondary stress.*

We don’t exactly have feet, but we can color code each measure:

I lay in dark and dreaming sleep

while countless wars and ages passed.

I woke still weak a year before I joined you.

For the first two lines, each measure is 4 syllables long, so we get 8 syllables in each line, similar to the Tyrdda poem. If we read it aloud, it’s easy to do it slowly and thoughtfully. The secondary, quieter stresses also create an echoing effect, which emphasizes that Solas is thinking about the past.

Then the last line goes absolutely bananas. It abandons the unstressed-stressed repetition and gets much longer, flying up to 11 syllables — even longer than the 10-syllable lines in iambic pentameter.

Additionally, Solas tends to glue the first two lines together, which is SIXTEEN syllables, so they sound closer to an octameter** than the tetrameter(ish) sound of the original song.

The overall effect is of someone trying to be measured and thoughtful, but partway through he gets hit with nostalgia and the lines spill out in a long breathless rush. Bro has to speak quietly so he doesn’t totally run out of air.

*Music theory sidebar: Leonard Cohen’s original version is in 12/8 time, so the secondary stress isn’t as prominent. It shows up in one or two verses, but not all. A lot of the subsequent covers, including k.d. lang’s, sound more like 6/8. That means every measure has a 2-beat count: 1-2-3 4-5-6. I think the 6/8 version fits Solas’ speech pattern a bit more. But he’s not singing, and secondary stresses are harder to place. Syllables don’t have to align 1:1 with melody notes (in fact, in Hallelujah there are several places where the syllable alignment changes from verse to verse). So someone else could easily hear a slightly different stress pattern.

**This implies a cursed version of Solas where the last line is omitted and he’s actually syncing his speech to Modern Major-General.

[vigilskeep]

can we talk about how samson knight in red is a weird thing to sing in skyhold

[full---ofstarlight]

ok now im curious

for that last one, pls have it be two companion characters who canonically get together! EDIT: for the love of god do not trash talk these ships just bc u like them less lmao...

[sweetjulieapples]

Shame we never heard a disstrack in the tavern.

[tavtiers]

have you done a maid of heart analysis yet? would love to see your take on it :D

The Maid of Heart [symbols: flower, heart]

The Maid class has its basis in the handmaiden or lady-in-waiting. An example would be Joan of Arc.

The Heart aspect’s main theme is instinct. You can find its official description here.

A Maid of Heart is among those who alter the individual's impact. This is the “classpect group” they belong to. Members include: the Sylph, Maid, Bard, and Prince of Heart/Mind. These classes are all opposites or inverses of each other that alter the Heart/Mind dichotomy (the individual's impact). A description of classpect groupings can be found here.

The Maid of Heart actively assists the Heart aspect. Active classes tell themselves what to do and do so for their own benefit. They are more likely to stand up for themselves, but more likely to be cruel. Sylphs and Maids aid their aspect and everything it symbolizes or use it as a form of aid. Simplified, the Maid of Heart is motivated by themselves to assist instinct.

In personality, the Maid of Heart feels like something is holding them back and is invested in self discovery. Personality descriptions can be found here.

Their archetype is the Escapee Free Spirit, defined by freedom and instinct. Archetypes are explained here.

Their opposite is the Sylph of Mind, who passively assists intuition.

Their inverse is the Bard of Mind, who passively destroys intuition.

A classpect or “god tier” is an individual’s best self. All classpects go through a journey from unrealized, to struggle, to realized. When a character is unrealized, they neutrally exist as their inverse. On their struggle, they will wildly flip back and forth between their inverse and true classpect. In their worst moments they will act as their inverse, in their best their true classpect. When realized, they will stabilize as their true classpect. They will still have room to grow, but will become happier, more successful people.

This means that the Maid of Heart begins life motivated by others to destroy intuition. When their struggle arrives and they are at their worst, they will continue this behavior in negative extremes. However, when at their best, they will find purpose in instead assisting instinct for themselves. When realized, they will stabilize and continue to assist the Heart aspect actively, in a positive way.

They share their archetype with the Rogue of Breath, the Free Spirit Escapee.

The Maid of Heart would quest on a planet similar to the Land of Underground [Maid] and Heart [Aspect]. An example would be the Land of Rabbit Holes and Roses. An explanation of planet naming conventions can be found here.

Two possible gods, or denizens, to reign over their planet would be Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) or Yaldabaoth (Trapper of Souls). Other Heart aspect denizens can be found here.

When the Maid of Heart completes their planet quests and dies on their quest bed, they would rise to ascension on the wings of ladybugs (symbols of love). A list of soul animals can be found here.

The characters that I have currently classpected as Maids of Heart are: Snow White from Once Upon a Time, Laurie Jupiter from Watchmen, Maryden Halewell from Dragon Age, Aubrey Little from The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, Lucy Brennan from Twin Peaks, Stephanie Splitz from LazyTown, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and Pearl Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants.

If any of the links not connected to my blog break, the content can be found on my Google Drive.

Official Aspect Descriptions Personality Descriptions Aspect Denizens