MERAAD AND DAVRIN, 11, 13, 14, 31, 33, 34,
11: What do you love about them?
I love how lightly they tease each other, and how seriously they take each other. I love how easily and simply camaraderie becomes friendship becomes love. I love them with their shared cat-bird kid. I love Davrin, who is tall and stocky for an elf, getting physically swept off his feet by this mountain of a Qunari.
And, yes, I admit I love the heart-crushing voice acting when she mourns for him.
13: How would the pair do in an escape room? What kind of room would they choose and would they get out?
I don’t think that would go terribly well. Meraad’s preferred tools for problem-solving are patience, stubbornness, and a big maul: she tends to decide on a direction and charge in it. Then keep headbutting. She can change direction if there’s reason, but she’s not good at it. Davrin has the kind of mind that is good with the puzzles that are physical props, but he’s less patient than Meraad. More to the point, both of them are very practical people who serve a Cause: why are they wasting time in this little game room? Basically, they are only escaping the room if Neve tells them what to press when.
14: How do they work together?
Well! They are both frontline warriors, although it probably takes them a little while to mesh his precise, defensive sword-and-board with her wading-into-the-fray-with-big-wild-swings. I think it settles into her breaking the line and him watching her back. He’s better at taking orders than she is at giving them, initially: as a Shadow Dragon, Meraad takes a while to adjust from ‘individual guerilla fighter’ to ‘leader of a team’. Fortunately, she has enough natural charisma that leading by conviction and example mostly works out until she finds her feet, although probably everyone else on the team thought her hatred of Solas was overdoing it a bit.
31: What’s their cursed couple Halloween costume?
I SEE YOU AND YOUR REVENGE
I don’t know whose idea it is.
Davrin goes as Balmor or Ludrik, one of those prissy mage monster hunter/bestiary writers he despises. Meraad goes as a dragon and makes a public show of catching him and eating him as he squeaks about how this wasn’t how it goes in his book! Taash is convinced it’s some weird sex thing and is perhaps not entirely incorrect.
33: Imagine this OTP on a couple date with another OTP of yours. How does it go?
I think them out on the town with Khamsin Cadash and the Iron Bull would be hilarious. By nature Davrin and Meraad are a little more serious than Cadash and Bull, but a few drinks in and they’d all get along just fine, telling tall war stories, plotting to go out and find some Venatori to murder, and Cadash starting a betting ring on the arm-wrestling (Bull has the edge here, but doesn’t rub it in; Meraad will be almost as good once she’s older, taller and a little uglier). I think, later in the night, the Qunari slip into Qunlat, and Davrin draws Cadash aside to let them be. I never decided whether or not I accepted the ‘battlefield foundling’ history the game gave Meraad, or whether she was Vashoth of Tal-Vashoth parents, but either way, one of Meraad’s well-hidden soft spots is how isolated she feels from her people, and how much it comforts her to hear her native tongue and be around people of her own shape and size. (Taash could have filled this role, maybe, if they weren’t fighting so hard to be themselves; Meraad would have liked to spend more time with Shathann, but she did not approve of Meraad as clearly both a warrior and a woman).
34: If they get married, what would their wedding be like? (Location, food, guests, wedding outfits, etc)
WHYYYYYY
I think it is a small and – I was about to type ‘quiet’, but honestly all the griffons are there and do not shut up – event. Just the gang, Tarquin and a few other Dragons, definitely Antoine and Evka, and uncle Eldrin; one of the calmer parts of Arlathan rather than Minrathous or the Lighthouse. It’s probably a Dalish ceremony rather than an Andrastian one, or whatever the Vashoth communities do. Sunlight filtering through the trees and gleaming on Meraad’s hair, which is probably the first time anyone other than Davrin’s seen it worn loose. No armour, although the weapons are just a step away in case something goes wrong. Simple vows, if those aren’t dictated by Dalish custom, and no long speeches.
Assan brings them the rings, after a brief scuffle defending them from the other griffons. Lucanis, Harding and Emmrich cry at weddings. Taash hollers and pelts flower petals at Meraad and Davrin when they kiss.
It’s a short interlude before they get back to work – oh. OH.
You know what it is? Forget some of the above. It’s another of Davrin’s ‘you look tired, let’s go touch grass’ quests. They go out, they round a corner by a waterfall, and everyone’s there waiting, and he says to Meraad, “you know how you said you’d love to marry me one day? How’s today?”
And it turns out today is perfect.
