#Mairead Cousland

[onelessvenatori]

Queen Anora I Mac Tir of Ferelden, and her Princess Consort, Mairead Mac Tir (née Cousland)

Just characters under cut

[adjectivebear]

Mairead Cousland

Sleepwear - Highever - Post-Joining

Summer - Winter - Landsmeet

Warden Commander - Queen of Ferelden - On the Search for the Cure

Thanks for the tag, @kellinahasaship! Whew! This took longer than I thought it would!

Rules: Always remember to post the rules.

1. Pick an OC and pick nine outfits from the list below, or add your own:

General: Lingerie, Underclothes, Nightclothes, Field, Riding, Travel, Combat, [Class] Outfit, Daily, Wedding

DA Various Location-Specific: Ostagar, Lothering, Redcliffe, Brecilian Forest, Orzammar, [Season] Kirkwall, Sundermount, Deep Roads, Hanged Man, [Season] Haven, Hinterlands, Val Royeaux, Skyhold Formal, Skyhold Casual, Skyhold Judgement, Winter Palace, Adamant, Well of Sorrows

DA Moments in Story: Pre-Joining, Post-Joining, The Landsmeet, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Post-Kirkwall Chantry, Pre-Conclave, Post-Well of Sorrows, Trespasser, Post-Trespasser

2. Build outfits in Azalea’s Dress Up Dolls (Viking Woman) and when you finish each look, save it and add to a 9-grid image post. (make sure you include which outfit is which in the text below)

3. Tag nine people to do the same! Oh man. I am not that motivated. Errrrggg @hollyand-writes, @geeky-jez, @right-in-the-vhenan, @rederiswrites, and anyone else who feels like it.

[couslandpup]

I really do like the romance! He’s just an ass.  Zevran (with my Cousland, Mairead) Anders (with my completely undeveloped diplomatic Hawke) And Solas (with my talk-shit-get-hit Lavellan, Mara)

2/3 for Betrayer Boyfriends isn’t too bad, right?

[slugette]

Mairead Cousland

A full character painting for my giveaway winner adjectivebear

Hope you like the outfit design I did for her.  She is such an interesting character and I really loved drawing her.  Thank you so much for being so patient.  It took me wwayy too long.

[atomicpen]

aedancousland replied to your post : wip meme the cool kids are doing

Huh, I want to hear about Elizabethan AU, WWII & Warden Story. :T

Uhhhhh... this is super long, so putting in a cut to save all your dashes.

The Elizabethan AU is basically a pirate!AU for Gawyn and Mairead back when whyswhoswhats​ and I were writing a million and ten things for them. I can’t recall exactly how it started, but once we started throwing ideas back and forth about Gawyn being a courmudgeonly privateer and Mairead as Commander of the Royal Navy, it kind of spiraled out from there.

I’m pretty sure we kept them knowing each other from childhood (but I can’t recall 100%), but they had this cat-and-mouse thing going on, with them at times successfully catching one another and either escaping or being let go on some minor formality or another--and he gets jealous and throws people overboard who try to profess their love for her or some such thing--until he became legitimized as a privateer--I believe after single-handedly taking out the Arishok’s dreadnaught by ramming it with his ship (and nearly dying in the process, much to Mairead’s, and his crew’s, horror). And then he gets invited to some nobility function and weats his dusty old boots and with a knife in them and his pair of pistols (which probably get taken from him; he’s not the craftiest pira--er, privateer).

With a lot of fun headcanon, I actually tarted a little drabble thing, but literally stopped mid-sentence in my document (warning: very shippy ahead |D):

The soft repeated ting of metal against metal woke him slowly as any other morning. But something was off. He kept his eyes closed against the dim light of the room, and listened a moment longer. Familiar sounds surrounded him—the creaking of the wood that made up his cabin, the soft ticking of his prized clock mounted against the wall behind his desk, the gentle mechanical whir of his bearing instruments as they shifted with the rocking, the muted slap of the waves against the hull of his ship. It was almost indiscernible, the difference, but once he heard it, he wondered how he could have missed it.

Gawyn stretched out his arm slowly, carefully, and felt the heat of another body in his concave bed, which at his light touch rolled into him.

Her scent filled his nose again as she pressed her cheek into his bare chest and slipped an arm across his waist. The famous Mairead Cousland, First Captain of Her Majesty's Royal Navy and Warden of the Seas, and she hummed softly against his skin in her sleep. He was relatively sure there was some sin, some private hell he would eventually go to, for a privateer such as himself delighting in the smoothness of the skin on her shoulder, or from twining a length of her auburn hair around his fingers and pressing it to his lips. It was worth it.

She stirred a little, but did not wake as he skimmed feather-light fingertips down her spine, over the thin shirt she wore. Though they had indulged perhaps a bit overmuch the previous night on his better rum, they were both mostly clothed still, and he did not feel the soft ache that would have told him if they had done something regretful. He remembered her telling him of her father's estate in flames, her family murdered, her taking to the seas in hopes of revenge but finding no solace in the act once she exacted it.

His thumb pressed into her spine at the inward curve of her back and brought both a soft sound from her throat and her hips pressing more firmly against his leg. He remembered them kissing, feverish and demanding, but not much else beyond that.

The clock ticked softly in the quiet of the cabin, marking the beats of his heart. She made his pulse quicken by simply lying there, her shirt sliding off her shoulder, auburn hair pooling across his arm and bed. He wanted desperately to find the hidden paths between her freckles and trace them with his tongue, but he held himself still. The breath in his lungs was a bird trapped in a cage, and his skin ached to feel more of hers against it.

He remembered her tasting like rum and salt when he kissed her, and he knew it would have soured in her mouth—and in his—overnight, but that didn't stop him from wanting to taste her again, warm and still drifting through sleep. He thought of a thousand ways he wanted to make love to her before she stirred on her own.

The

As you can tell.

The WWII AU started out preeeetty much the same, again with Gawyn and Mairead (they have some of my favorite AUs I swear), as a sort of... rolling RP/headcanon that I randomly started with whyswhoswhats​ because I am endlessly fascinated by that era. I was just struck one night with the idea and rolled with it--I still have the messages saved on my phone I enjoyed them so much:

It’s right after WWII and he’s trying to piece his family back together in England, and she’s just coming back from the mainland after being a high-profile decoder for the last few years, and she sees him with this torn piece of paper with a list of addresses and names, but the wind catches it and he loses grip, but it blows right toward her and she catches it and returns it to him and he wants to take her out for a drink but needs to find his family.

And then: a couple years after she saves his paper, she’s walking home and a car starts honking at her, coming up from behind. She moves closer to the edge of the road, but it keeps honking and slows down, and she’s half-pissed, half-reaching in her bag for her brother’s old dagger just in case it’s some creep--and Gawyn calls out to her, saying he recognized her walk, and did she want a ride it looks like it’s about to rain?

And then she refuses to talk to him, and he tries to strike up chats a couple more times around town over the next however long, until he plunks down as she’s at some roadside cafe thing and tells her she hasn’t let him thank her, and she brushes him off and he invites her to an opera.

I believe she ended up having to move in with him because people were out looking for her (due to her acting as a very effective decoder during the war and then all her family being assassinated at some point).

I also started a drabble with this, too (sensing a theme yet?). Here is some of it:

It was even more expansive on the inside than out, she noted the first time she was led inside by Gawyn's manservant, Bodahn. A small fist of nervousness clenched her heart and made it stutter a bit, while her stomach tried to tie itself into knots. She felt like an intruder here, and it didn't sit well with her, despite whatever circumstances had forced her hand.

It hadn't been her first idea to come here, she reflected as she set the suitcases she held onto the dark marble floor. But it was her only option left. Bodahn and his son were out at the car, gathering the rest of her things—it wasn't everything, she hadn't the time for all that. A slender woman came up to her, head dipped and hands folded carefully in front of her.

“May I take your bags, miss?” the woman asked, her voice small and quiet.

“Oh, thank you. I'll help you carry them.” Mairead picked up a suitcase and handed it to the woman—it looked like it could have weighed nearly as much as she—and then took the other in her own hand. “It'll be good to know where I'll be staying, anyhow.”

“Of course, miss. I'd be happy to take you there.” She lead Mairead up a broad, winding staircase.

Mairead let her eyes wander as she trailed after the woman, taking everything in. Though the furnishings were much more sparse than other estates this size, the furniture that was there looked finely made and old. Portraits hung purposefully on the walls, strategically placed to highlight their already dramatic presence. There was a particularly large one over the mantle of an older man who had the same eyes as Gawyn Hawke did, and several smaller ones around of elegant women in stunning dresses of eras since past. It was obvious the estate had been well established for generations, the family well-respected. Further along the staircase, very nearly at the top, she halted in front of a smaller, newer frame, and felt her gut lurch into a nervous roll.

It was a family photograph, both the fact that it wasn't a painting and it was of an entire family setting it apart from the rest of the pictures in the vast main room. What made her breath catch on a lump and her chest constrict was that it was taken very obviously before the War, of Hawke's family together.

A looming man stood in the back of the group with fierce, dark eyes and a nose thin and straight as a rod—his father, she recognized what Gawyn's nose would have looked like were it not crooked from being broken. The man had one hand on an older woman's shoulder, her hair pulled back and an elegant off-shoulder dress making her look stately. Her eyes were pale, though not as much as Gawyn's. A younger man and woman about the same age stood on either side and in front of Gawyn, who stood just in front of his father, nearly next to him. Both elder Hawke men had the same set of their jaw and deep brow, looking as if they would have rathered spent their time doing something more constructive.

Without thinking, she lifted a hand and brushed fingertips over Gawyn in the picture. He was in a snugly tailored waistcoat, black with gold buttons.

“Miss?”

Ah, the Warden story. My DABB That Never Was. I’ve already talked about this a bit before when you ask about Aelethenn and her father, BUT I can be persuaded to talk about it again /grins

Originally I was super stoked to be part of the DABB, and came up with a really good story (I thought, anyway, especially since it also... ties in with my other big DA story, Bonds of Blood, thus I was doubly-stoked), and even plotted out ALL the major events that I wanted to happen in a crazy-long summary (which is how I start my plotting).......................... and then every narrative I started fell flat on its face until about the half-dozenth try, and by then I ran out of time for the DABB and had decided to turn it into a Miomir story instead. So it will probaly never get written into the Thedas universe as fic.

Basic plot was: Aele is fidgety in Amaranthine and goes visiting back to the Circle only to find some old books of her father’s and wants to go hunt down a 20-year cold trail to find him. Questions and weird strangers and dangerous adventure ensue!

BUT since I am planning on moving it to Miomir, I don’t want to reveal too much of the actual plot... but here are a few Thedas-only bullet points I had plotted out so far:

Whatever the case for her father, Amell has no ties at the moment—her Warden status notwithstanding with the Blight over and Ferelden on the mend, and Amaranthine well-looked after—and decides to trek up to Kirkwall.

She discovers herself among a sea of Ferelden refugees, all fleeing the Blight, and though she tries to tell some of them, at first, that the Blight was over and they could return home, they ignore her. She cannot find passage on a ship across the Waking Sea, and so has to backtrack down through the northern coast of Ferelden along the edge, circling around through Orlais and back up to Kirkwall. As an apostate, once part of the Circle but now no longer, she does try to keep a low profile, but as a Warden, she finds many day-to-day people take her on her word and don't question her much. She doesn't use magic unless she has to, and travels at her own pace, seeing no hurry to get to Kirkwall. As such, it takes her the better part of a year to traverse the long way on foot around the Waking Sea before she reaches the City of Chains. (Hawke has come back from the Deep Roads at this point, and it's just about the start of Act II)

To her surprise, she has a bit of trouble getting into Kirkwall, and is turned away at the gates, with the guards saying they had more than enough Fereldens to last them a couple lifetimes. Undaunted, she decides to try and find another way into the city—it wasn't only a port, after all, and there was more than one city gate. She had hoped that not coming across the Waking Sea to the gallows like all the other Fereldens fleeing their country would have given her an edge, but it seemed she was wrong.

So she circles around to the Vimmark side of Kirkwall and is successful on getting into the city from that way. Despite her Ferelden accent, the fact that she doesn't look like a refugee and isn't coming in on the boats with the rest of them, but from the complete opposite direction no less, she can get in. It seems the guard on the northern side of the city were a bit more lax on allowing entry to the city than on the southern. She also made sure to tell them she didn't intend on staying, but was only travelling through, looking for someone, and that seemed to ease them up quite a bit more.

Of course, even though now she's in Kirkwall where she knows Xenon is, she has no clue how to find him, or even where to start looking. She asks around a bit, but everyone she talks to either dismisses her because of her accent, or has no clue what she's talking about.

She stays at the Alabaster Circlet in Hightown—she has the money, why not put it to good use?—and is surprised to find that many of the Templar officers sometimes hang about when they were of-duty. Unlike many mages, she never had a bad experience with Templars, and was used to their presence nearly her entire life, and so she is not put off or worried about them. Even if she were, as a Warden, she has many leniencies and freedoms that apostates and Circle mages do not. What does catch her completely off-guard, however, was when Cullen walks through the door, his face drawn and hollows under his eyes. She entertains the notion of going over to him, but remembers his traumatising experience at the Circle before he was transferred, and thinks better of intercepting him.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) he spots her anyway, and comes over, startled by her presence. He asks her what in the Maker's name she's doing in Kirkwall, wasn't she supposed to be in Amaranthine, last he heard? Or the Circle? Or something? Somewhere where he wouldn't run into her? She tells him quietly it's good to see him, too, and how has he been doing since he left Ferelden? He tells her Kirkwall is no place for her to be, and she should leave as soon as she can, and she just tells him once her business here was concluded, she would be leaving. Or if she couldn't find what she was looking for, but she doesn't tell him that bit.

Thanks for asking!! I’d apologize for this being so long, except I’m pretty sure this is the entire point of the meme. :D

[needlesslycryptic]

Holiday gifts from lovely asolitaryrose ~

1. Mairead Cousland for howeliday 2. Catalina Shepard for zevranes

3. Lenya Mahariel for merilsell

4. Nemain  for sehnsuchttraum

been waiting for so long and now i can finally show them!

[adjectivebear]

This might seem lazy, how about 9 (OC questions) for ALL the OCs you mentioned!! (I like seeing how people's OCs differ heh) Also 30 for your Hawkes :)

Oh dear, this is a tough one, largely because I haven’t really thought about it!9. What is their favorite mealGrace Ryder - cheeseburgers, but the snooty gastro pub kind with aioli and truffle cheese, and perfectly crispy tater tots on the side.

Mairead Cousland - has not met a whole lot of food she doesn’t like, but has a particular fondness for any and all cake, which she will absolutely eat for breakfast.

Solona Amell - likely tapas-type stuff, with lots of red wine.

Nathalie Hawke - simple things, like roasted chicken with plenty of vegetables.

Selena Hawke - steak, medium-rare.

Alya Lavellan - a tie between spicy Dalish curries and any and all fancy Orlesian cuisine.

Imogen Trevelyan -  fresh, hot bread liberally slathered with butter and honey.

30. What makes them cry

Nathalie - sadness, happiness, frustration, particularly moving songs or books… you name it. She’s a cryer.

Selena - more apt to hide her feelings with humor, or–in the case of Bethany and Leandra’s deaths–be in too much of a state of shock to cry. She wept when Fenris left her after their night together, but only after he’d gone.

[couslandpup]

I love you, my darling girl. You know that, don't you?

I'm hardly a girl, Mother.

Mairead wanted to say that she felt uneasy long before the betrayal occurred, but the truth was far from it. She spent that last evening doing all that was in her power to make a pest of herself- flirting shamelessly with Ser Gilmore and Dairren, sweet Dairren, bothering her father and mother about going off to battle or running off with the Wardens.

What struck her the hardest was that she thanked Howe for his troops, for standing by her father's side. She felt relief knowing that he would have his old friend down south fighting monsters. Howe complimented her dress at dinner, she remembered, and inquired after her feelings regarding his drunken idiot of a son, Thomas. The whole thing made her stomach roll.

She worried later, curled up under a burrowed blanket, pretending to sleep while Duncan took the first watch. Perhaps, she thought, if she had been more pliant, more agreeable, had played more attention, she might have played the situation differently.

Fergus and the King, she chanted to herself, eyes fixed shut. Get to Fergus and the King. A Cousland always does their duty.

[adjectivebear]

TMI TUESDAY

I haven't done it in a while, so have at the invasive OC questions.

[adjectivebear]

Thedas plus-size OC week?

What a great idea! Allow me to roll out my OCs with extra body fat. Ahem!

Mairead Cousland Five feet, eleven inches, and 220lbs of dual-wielding warrior. Lover of sweets, animals, and booze. Warm, cuddly marshmallow and slutmonster extraordinaire. Queen of Ferelden and of epic knockers.

Solona Amell 5′2, 175lb pear-shaped ball of pasty, freckled chub. What she lacks in self-esteem and people skills she makes up for in cleverness, snark and the ability to kill you with her brain. Has a fondness for smutty romance novels and Antivan rogues.

[adjectivebear]

How have your Warden ladies changed during the 10 years betwenn DAO and DAI, physically and personality-wise? Any particular Events that shaped them?

Mairead has put on 15-20 pounds, due in equal parts to a lack of constant battle and never quite dropping all of the weight she gained with her daughter, and has become near-sighted enough to require glasses to see anything further than five feet from her face. The birth of said daughter shaped her quite a bit: not only has it brought great joy to her and Alistair’s lives, but it has made her absolutely determined to find some way of cheating the early death guaranteed to Grey Wardens so that she and Alistair will not be prematurely taken from their child’s life the way Bryce and Eleanor were taken from hers.

Solona has gotten even frecklier, and has learned to somewhat tame her mane of frizzy curls. She has grown more confident in herself, largely thanks to Zevran. Previously content to be a Circle mage, having come to Kinloch Hold as a toddler, years of living outside of a tower have shown her how oppressive and restrictive that life actually was. Whereas a younger Solona would have viewed the mage rebellion as ill-advised, this older version understands and supports it entirely.

[adjectivebear]

For all your Dragon Age ladies: Is there anything they feel self-conscious about? And what are they proudest of about themselves?

Sorry it’s taken me so long to sit down and write a response to this!

Mairead is a fairly confident person in general. She will occasionally doubt herself, but has no real self-consciousness to speak of. She’s proudest of managing to keep everyone together and sane during the Blight and, later, of helping to mold Alistair into a confident and capable King.

Solona has always been extremely self-conscious about her appearance, and may always be, despite Zevran’s positive influence. She’s proudest of her intellect.

Nathalie is self-conscious about whether she can live up to everyone’s expectations of her. (Why does everyone always want her to do everything, anyway?) She’s proudest of having taken care of her family and keeping Anders safe (for however long either of these lasted).

Selena is another who doesn’t have many insecurities in general, but she was doubting herself hard after Fenris left. On that note, she’s proudest of what they’ve accomplished together, and giving him a safe, loving home with her.

Imogen’s insecurities stem from being the youngest of six children, and therefore quite expendable (though no one in her family has ever treated her as such). She’s proudest of what the Inquisition accomplished, in no small part because it affirms her usefulness as a person to her.

Alya is well aware that she is gorgeous, intelligent, and a very talented mage, and thus enjoyed a life of very little self-consciousness until Solas left her. After that, she was wondering what she had done wrong/what she hadn’t done well enough. And now that she knows what he’s planning, she’s afraid she won’t be able to convince him not to go through with it.

[adjectivebear]

Presumably Mairead is super embracing that Alamarri ancestry with this hairdo.

[adjectivebear]

As Queen, how would Mairead address the different political issues in Ferelden? Orlais, mages, alienage troubles, etc?

Oh man. Hmm…

Orlais she’s not super concerned about. Celene isn’t an expansionist, so she sees no reason not to play nice with the Orlesians. She and Alistair make regular appearances at the Orlesian court–or they did, until a high-ranking noblewoman implied that new mother Mairead was looking a bit stout, prompting the understandable but impolitic response of “Fuck you, I just had a baby.” Lord Chancellor Anora swiftly barred her from all future Orlesian soirees (with much eye-rolling and lamentations about grey hairs and being driven to an early grave).

The alienage is… complicated. The Highever alienage was quite well-kept, so she was appalled at the state of the one in Denerim. She’s made a point of working with the alienage residents to rebuild it to a higher standard. Ideally, she would like there to be no alienage at all, but unfortunately the safety of the elves is not guaranteed, despite her (loud and constant) reminders to the human citizens that Dalish and alienage elves were instrumental in preventing Denerim from falling to the Blight. It’s an ongoing process.

Mairead had long been of the opinion that the Circles were necessary so that young mages could learn to use their gifts safely, but that mages should be free to leave once they’d finished their schooling. Inspired by Wynne and Anders, she and Alistair submitted numerous proposals to ensure mages better treatment: family visitations, sending magical children from the same family to the same Circle, allowing Circle mages who had given birth to keep their children, discontinuing solitary confinement as a disciplinary action, etc. (The Chantry figuratively laughed in their faces.) This opinion did not start to shift until she began learning of all the abuses occurring in Kirkwall. It became clear to the King and Queen of Ferelden that mages could never be truly safe–even from themselves–as long as they lived in fear of the Templars. The Circles needed to be abolished. Consequently, the mage rebellion received numerous supply caravans from the royal palace.

[adjectivebear]

For Mairead: How do you feel about horses?

“Oh, I love horses! They’re adorable. Never really got particularly good at riding them, though. I spent more time riding the stable boys…”

[adjectivebear]

Two Words Meme

@andauril and @kellinahasaship tagged me to describe my OCs in two words. Ahem!

Mairead Cousland: Compassionate, loyal

Solona Amell: Intelligent, sarcastic

Nathalie Hawke: Naive, kind

Selena Hawke: Flirty, snarky

Imogen Trevelyan: Nerdy, protective

Alya Lavellan: Curious, vain

Tagging @cobaltash, @rederiswrites, @thetaiwanesedartjob, @eggsquisite-dreadwolf, @freyahinthebreeze, @kirasdream13, and @sgurrdearg