This piece was something of an experiment and so I wanna give a director’s commentary/annotations with the grammatical decisions I made! Read as I overexplain my work!
So! Before anything else, before your eyes glaze over, I want to point out the thing with the paragraph alignments — they represent each facet of Blackwall and his identity:
- right-aligned = Warden (get it, because he’s righteous)
- left-aligned = Captain (either in the second-person POV or surrounded by parentheses)
- centred = Thom Rainier, or a combination of the Warden+Captain
I hint at this from the summary itself, where we have:
Warden Blackwall does not like it.
He thinks it corrupt.
Shoutout to the wip wednesday thursday gang for inspiring me to try my hand with this type of formatting! Seth Dickinson also plays around with right-aligned paragraphs in their books (yes, we got Baru Cormorant propaganda in here!)
Anyways, onto the annotations and commentary!
The themes here are names, titles, identities — how both Blackwall and Adaar have their own titles, chosen or no, and how those names/titles inform their identities, sense of self, and others’ perception of them. (And of course, all of this while they’re having sex.)
The first few paragraphs discuss the Inquisitor’s titles:
They call them Adaar the Mage-Traitor.
“Mage-Traitor” is elaborated on later, but I wanted that gut punch so I started with that. Then, the next sentences are how most of Orlais (and most of Thedas, really) sees them: an outsider, an oxman. Even after the Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts quest, their opinion of the Inquisitor would still be coloured by the fact that they are qunari (if not ignoring them altogether and just thinking of them as an entity of the Inquisition)… but I digress!
In remote places where the Empress’s grasp does not reach
“remote places” is intentional here — again, they’re a qunari, so probably the only places where they’re favoured would be small communities where they’ve made an impact like those in Crestwood and the Dalish clan in the Exalted Plains.
The Captain decides he likes that better: it rolls off smoother on the tongue—a full pardon bestowed upon him by Inquisitor Adaar the Righteous.
Captain Rainier! (Note that I use just Captain and not his name here.) He likes the positive titles better for the Inquisitor because if he thinks of them as Just and Fair, then he could justify his full pardon as something that is also Just and Fair.
But Warden Blackwall doesn’t think so! Especially not with the Inquisitor’s track record with their judgements. He knows he deserves punishment still, and with how the Inquisitor freed him through Josephine’s connections, the whole thing reeks of corruption.
alone together, they are Kara. Kara the mercenary, Kara the mage, Kara the eldest, beautiful Kara, handsome Kara
Then: Kara Adaar. Bit of exposition here on who they are, slowly transitioning to how Blackwall sees them: “beautiful Kara, handsome Kara,” and then he thinks about the ropes on their antaam-saar with a brief tangent on a shibari fantasy because I can.
he asks—despite himself, despite his hands already pulling loose the knots of their garment
He has no self-control. (And we know this from in-game lines too, that man cannot stay away!)
“Where is the justice in this?”
Right-aligned, so we know this is Blackwall. He’s questioning the Inquisitor’s judgement, all while he’s undressing them. He’s not one for dirty talk.
Where is the justice for
the child-killer,
the deceiver,
the deserter?
Captain the child-killer, Warden the deceiver, and Thom the deserter. “the deserter” also aptly describes both the Captain (who ran from his crimes) and the Warden (who ran and didn’t go through with the Joining). The last one was originally “the coward” but I find “deserter” flows better with the previous two titles.
“It was never about justice,” says the Fair Inquisitor, and yet the False Warden seeks it anyway
Check the contradicting juxtaposition of “It was never about justice” with “Fair Inquisitor”. This one is directly inspired by The Traitor Baru Cormorant, though of course Dickinson did it better:
“Slash their tendons,” the Fairer Hand ordered.
And of course, I added “False Warden” in there to have symmetry with “Fair Inquisitor”.
their verdict is severe and cruel: perpetual Tranquillity gifted to the treacherous, subterranean exile commanded to the blasphemous.
Behold, Mage-Traitor Kara Adaar. Tranquillized their fellow mages despite allying with the rebel mages, and sentenced a Grey Warden to the Deep Roads instead of the clean death she asked for. (And hey, it turned out well for Ser Ruth, she joined the Legion of the Dead!)
How dare they think themselves above justice?
I took advantage of Kara’s they/them pronouns to give this sentence a double meaning. How dare those criminals think themselves above justice, and how dare Kara think themself above justice with their cruel judgements?
(You do not deserve that.)
Full pardons for the Captain only! No executions, please!
A swift death would be an ungranted mercy, and even now, he wishes it, even as his hands bury themselves into their hips
Oh, the dissonance! He knows what he deserves, but he also knows what he wants, babeyyyy!
He whittles away, slow and exacting, his fingers carving into the thick shape of their flank and loins, as brown and beautiful as stained oak—his favourite.
Probably one of my favourite sentences in this piece. I like incorporating a character’s hobby/quirks in how they describe and perceive things. Here I used whittling as a euphemism for groping and hand jobs, while also describing Adaar’s skin as brown as “stained oak—his favourite”.
This serves as his confession and penance
Going back again to his guilt — he confesses his desires while also using it to atone for what he’s done, emphasised again in “their exultation and his contrition”.
(You do not deserve this.)
How many times does Blackwall tell this to himself and the Inquisitor during their romance? (Answer: a lot of times, probably.)
They offer up his little death in turn, the only mercy they will allow, and he accepts his sentence with restrained silence.
I simply cannot resist using “a little death” in a fic about verdicts and sentences! Also note how it’s framed as a mercy — it’ll come up again later.
like a good little soldier he obeys the Inquisitor’s command
Epithet spotted 🫵🏼 Blackwall still thinks of them as their title, even during this, maybe especially during this. Also, yes, Kara! Make that old man moan!
“Better than hay,” you say, and they laugh, a witch bolt lancing your heart
Two things: fucking in the hayloft is wild and I cannot imagine how itchy that would have been, and second, I know witch bolt is a DND spell but I don’t really care. Again, this is right-aligned because the last time they had sex, he was still the Warden.
Penance becomes veneration: the Herald of Andraste and their lone devotee on his pilgrimage.
Another epithet spotted 🫵🏼 Earlier they’re the Inquisitor, now they’re the Herald of Andraste. He knows they don’t like being called that, but he doesn’t hate it. In the game, he’d mentioned something about how this title is necessary even if the Inquisitor doesn’t believe in it, because that title has become a symbol now, one that gives others hope.
fettering him in place
I’m having fun with my choice of words here, heehee. Because “restraining him with their thighs like shackles” is a mouthful.
then comes their judgement: yielding, relenting, forgiving.
Hehe, get it? Comes? And then: “forgiving” — orgasm/judgement described as merciful, just like earlier.
And now this thing is officially longer than the fic itself, lol. Onwards!
glowing lightning-purple and rift-green
A reference to Kara and their mage specialisations! And how fun would it be to have your eyes glow when you come? The glowing here isn’t like heterochromia where the left is purple and right is green; I think of it more as a blend or a gradient sort of thing. Also, “stormy eyes” because the vanilla game wouldn’t let me give them brown eyes.
He closes the rift between them
“rift” here means two things: the social and physical type of distance. In a way, this was all to make up for what he did — the social rift — but it’s also physical: he closes the distance by laying next to them. Bonus: by using that word, I’ve reversed their roles a little bit, because it’s Blackwall who’s closing this particular rift and not the Inquisitor.
No silverite mask for the Orlesian captain,
no griffon helm for the Grey Warden.
And by closing this rift, he’s also foregone both of his façades: the Captain and the Warden, referenced with their typical headgear. (Though you could argue as a captain he probably would have used a helmet too, but counterargument: this is Orlais, and we’ve also seen Gaspard wearing a mask, and that dude’s like, a military man.)
“So,” they say after a while, and here, in the expanse of their bed, with no witnesses to corroborate, they insist upon honesty. “Where does this leave us?”
We’ve got a couple of references to court and law: “witnesses to corroborate” and later, “testifies”. And “Where does this leave us?” is another reference to the first flirting dialogue you could have with Blackwall.
“Would you accept this?
And what I used to be?
I lied about who I was, but I never lied about what I felt.”
Sort of verbatim in-game lines. Again, the alignments represent facets of Blackwall. And starting from here, his dialogue is now exclusively centred.
to wield the gavel once again—to rend him into splinters, or to forge him ablaze, anew
Threefold meanings here: the hammer as in a judge’s gavel, the hammer used to support the whittling knife, hence “splinters” (kiiiinda flimsy, ngl), and the hammer as in a blacksmith’s hammer forging armour and weapons.
(though it had only been three weeks since he fled)
In the game you could finish his quest in a matter of minutes (if you have the War Table - No Waiting mod), which frankly I think is ridiculous. I’ve made posts of my criticisms of it on Tumblr, but anyways in my head it takes a week for the Inquisition to find Blackwall in Val Royeaux (and a week for him to travel there alone simultaneously), one week for the advisors to organise and get him back to Skyhold, and one week for the Inquisitor to stop waffling and get on with their judgement. (Also, isn’t this technically a conflict of interest… whatever…)
“You’re brooding again, kadan.”
When I tell you I giggled when I typed this down. The beauty of writing: I can just make my character say whatever they want even if the game doesn’t let me call him kadan. Also, this conversation is a riff off their dialogue post-judgement where he asks the Inquisitor in front of all these people to pass judgement on their relationship, like that’s kinda crazy.
(not of your guilt)
(not of your lies)
(but of breaking their heart and calling it better)
At this moment, he’s not the Captain or the Warden, so he doesn’t apologise for his manslaughter or crimes of impersonation (and the time for that has already passed), but for breaking their heart and calling it better. Also, I just really loved that line from the game.
he doesn’t doubt it, doesn’t doubt their resolve, all the web of strings they would pull, to loosen or to choke.
He knows the lengths the Inquisitor would go through for him, “to loosen” his restraints or “to choke” others to get what they want.
“The man you are now—not the traitor, and not the warden.”
Note that “warden” is not capitalised! Symbolic of how this title is no longer in effect at this moment.
The Inquisitor must not be so lenient with their soldiers; and the Herald cannot afford to think him more special than the rest. But here, enmeshed in each other, they are not the inquisitor nor the herald
I do the same thing here again with capitalisations, this time juxtaposed with each other for full effect. It’s also a reference to Blackwall’s in-game romance dialogue!
he calls them Kara Adaar (My Love, My Lady, My Lord), and they call him Thom Rainier (Darling, Kadan, Hayati)
Then, these terms of endearment are capitalised here, as a reverse of the formal titles which now don’t matter in this scene. Also, notice that I’ve only used their actual names in the beginning and at the end of this fic.
their dutiful appellations
Title drop!
Aaaand that’s it! Hope you enjoyed reading!