#( anyway this is my headcanon that erlina was actually sent by brialla but actually ended up stopping sending information back because she

[mercysought]

@skyheld​​​​ : ❝ You have proven me so very wrong. And I could not be prouder of you for it. ❞ /shianni to anora and im sorry i will stop spamming you now :') from black sails season 2 ( accepting )

Perhaps she should not feel quite so validated and yet she did. The relief that she allows herself for the moment is enough to allow her to sigh and lower her head with a shadow of a smile. The amount of shame had almost rendered her frozen when it came to dealing with had been done; heavier perhaps was the shame that lingered upon realising that many of those issues were things that had always been there. The reason why they had been allowed to fester for so long was due to her negligence. She could say that there had been other things of import, that her attention as the Queen was pulled by thirty different places, but those would be nothing but excuses and the bitterness remained. 

That Shianni should be proud of her for keeping her word for making her a Bann, for actively working towards the improvement of life in the alienage of Denerim (first Denerim, slowly the rest; change didn’t come easily nor without sacrifice). It felt good, but she couldn’t help but feel that it was a shallow and easy victory when the bar was set quite so low. Anora looks onto her own hands, looking over towards the other woman still with the same smile. 

   “I appreciate it.” she starts, shoulders squaring as she rises from her chair behind her desk. There were still things that they didn’t see eye to eye with, there would always be things like that. The point of her presence was that she would always fight for the rights of those within alienages and that was no small feat, but she knew that Anora’s duties went beyond only them. But for now... For now, Anora found comfort that Shianni would be able to cover whatever blindspots and find holes where she herself might have missed them. There was a lot still to do, a lot still to learn from both sides “Your words, support and advice mean a lot, Bann Tabris.”

The queen walks around her desk towards the two chairs left often empty while she worked. Now Anora sat in the empty chair next to the other woman. 

   “Erlina has told me that she enjoys your talks.” Erlina. Shianni didn’t ask, not yet, and Anora was wondering when the question would come. An orleasian, elven woman as the Queen’s only handmaiden was certainly a decision. The same way that she had kept her word to the Warden about making Shianni her bann. Erlina was an incredibly talented woman, one that could very easily slip in and out of places and hear and catch things that Anora herself could never. They were right, without Erlina Anora would not have been there safely out of Howe’s grasp and that was something that even now gave her pause “It brings me comfort to know that she feels she can trust someone else besides me in this castle.”