#(warden contact astoria is a favorite bc she's so vastly changed)

[carelessgraces]

🖋 heartbreak

HEADCANON PROMPTS ( ACCEPTING )

- heartbreak doesn’t often happen to astoria? she’s very good at detaching herself from messy emotional situations, and so when things start to look like they’re going south, she typically separates herself from any real emotional connection.

- part of this is that she’s experienced a lot in terms of trauma? and one of the things that happens when you’ve been traumatized like that, particularly when you’re young, is that you develop as a defense mechanism an ability to shut down the part of you that gets really attached to things. it’s bitter and disappointing, but it doesn’t break you the way it might otherwise.

- part of this, too, is just astoria’s personality: she’s clever, and cunning, and she’s very good at keeping a measure of control over herself. everything is a performance for astoria, and so there’s always a level of detachment.

- the verse where she’s really defined by her heartbreak, and where she really can’t remove it, is the verse where she lies to @ofexaltations‘ shaw and hides until after the battle at denerim that she asked riordan to join her. because of that lie – her continuation of the lie especially – there really isn’t much he can do with her; he can’t rely on her, he can’t trust her, and he’s understandably angry. so when it comes time for the wardens to leave, he sends her to orlais – she was joined by an orlesian warden. she’s an orlesian warden.

- astoria serves her time in the wardens, then, under clarel, and for the first six or seven years she’s in the emprise du lion. she’s separated from her home – she can’t go back to antiva, and because she did this with no warning, the succession in seleny is thrown into question. her grandfather is furious with her, and so is her mother; her grandfather doesn’t speak to her for years, ignores her letters, only writes back when he starts getting sick. she’s separated from her family in ferelden, too, and while she can see them occasionally, it doesn’t happen much. more than that, she’s separated from everyone in the origins crew, and the person she wants to see most wants nothing to do with her.

- the heartbreak here happens early and it lasts for a decade, at least. she knows it’s her own fault; she knows that if she’d just been honest, if she’d gotten over herself and told him the truth, none of this would have happened. so this heartbreak tends to manifest as anger: anger at shaw, first, for sending her away, then anger at riordan for not surviving; then anger at her family for not keeping i touch. finally, she settles on anger with herself, and that anger-heartbreak combination makes her really self-destructive.

- she doesn’t stay in regular touch with anyone from the origins crew besides alistair and oghren. she refuses to ask about shaw. she and leliana will occasionally encounter each other or exchange letters, and zevran comes to see her for a while after things in antiva have settled and to bring her some things from seleny, but she’s a wreck, and so friendship with her is difficult.

- she becomes close to clarel, and ends up transferred to adamant, where she and clarel become closer, and where she is, unofficially, expected to take up some of the absent constable blackwall’s duties.

- the one time she writes to shaw, it’s when she starts to hear the calling. she doesn’t expect an answer. 

- so her heartbreak manifests through this: recklessness and relative isolation. she’s close to clarel because she knows that clarel finds her more useful when she’s being reckless, because this means astoria is willing to do things that other wardens won’t. oghren doesn’t often express concern. alistair expresses concern, but he understands the dangers of being a warden, and so he won’t judge. 

- it also manifests in her spending less and less time in prayer; she doesn’t care too much for the maker these days. 

- by the time here lies the abyss rolls around, she’s connected with elissa hawke – and the both of them are pretty broken, so they make for good company. when evie trevelyan chooses elissa to remain in the fade, astoria is furious – in part for losing her friend, in part because she became a warden to die and nobody will let her die when she’s ready. the wardens are her family; she should be the one to die for them.

- going from adamant to weisshaupt is difficult mostly because she’s going with shaw, and because this requires her to start to face the fact that she’s going to live for a while yet, and it doesn’t have to be reckless, and she doesn’t have to be hurt while she’s living. this is especially true if they go looking for the cure.