#TLDR: halward tried to drug dorian. halward planned to sacrifice a slave. dorian found out. dorian bolted.

[archonoclasm]

𝗛𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗣𝗮𝘃𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗮 𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲. No, not just simply blood magic, a mere prick to one's finger, but specifically the siphoning of blood from someone entirely unwilling. Halward had wanted to change Dorian. Halward desired a more pliable son, an obedient son, and a child who would ask, if ever he were told to jump, 'how high, father?' before jumping off the cliff. Of course, wanting an heir, Halward had to alter Dorian permanently and at a very fundamental level, a goal that would require a very strong spell.

Dorian: I wouldn’t put on a show, marry the girl, keep everything unsavory private and locked away. Selfish, I suppose, not to wanting to spend my entire life screaming on the inside. He was going to do a blood ritual. Alter my mind. Make me acceptable. I found out. I left.

A strong spell in the case of blood magic, unfortunately, also means a greater cost. Where other forms of magic have mages tapping into their connection with the Fade, blood magic requires one to make sacrifices -- be it on their own accord and body or someone else's. This is where the line between a simple spell of blood magic crosses into blood ritual territory, as the demands of both seem to vary considerably.

As we learn in Inquisition, Magister Livius Erimond joins the Grey Wardens and has their outfit undergo a widespread blood magic ritual wherein Grey Wardens were sacrificed to be bound to demons. Furthermore, we know that the Magisters Sidereal had conducted a blood ritual in which they were able to physically enter the Fade, though not without murdering a devastating amount of slaves. These examples are given not to say that a ritual always needs many bodies, unwilling or not, but to highlighte rather that the threat of death is always a very real and very near possibility.

However, as Halward Pavus, is neither willing to let neither himself nor his sole heir die, that would mean that he would require the sacrifice of someone else. In this case, as man of stature, wealth, and as a influential and extremely powerful magister in the Imperium, one could reasonably believe that that means a slave -- one of the House Pavus' undoubtedly. Halward had prepared to kill off a slave, perhaps several, in his monstrous and harebrained attempt to have his son sire him an heir. It hardly even mattered that he might have lost Dorian in all ways but physical considering how dangerous, difficult, and risky this ritual was. Again, this is a ritual for a complete and permanent change in someone else. What mattered most to Halward, however, was their family name.

Inquisitor: Can blood magic actually do that? Dorian: Maybe. It could also have left me a drooling vegetable. It crushed me to think he found that absurd risk preferable to scandal. Part of me has always hoped he didn't really want to go through with it. If he had… I can't even imagine the person I would be now. I wouldn't like that Dorian.

All that to say, Halward, considering the scope and intensity of this ritual, would have been planning for a great deal of time. In my interpretation of Dorian, I would have imagined, as one could reasonably suspect, that Halward had to trick Dorian or subdue him as there's certainly no possible way that Dorian would allow this. As such, considering how heavy on the drink Dorian had been back then, the idea of lacing something in his bottle or glass would have, to Halward, made sense.

It's over dinner. Aquinea is sat with them, all three sat substantially far apart, more cold, more distant, and nothing too familial. Halward tries for conversation, his own strange flavor of temperate stoking both a wicked hope in Dorian's heart and a considerable wariness. In the end, it's silly, as most things tend to be with them, how Dorian finds out about his father's intentions. Dorian sought to slip away early, needing space, still, after their recent fight over his opposing his arrangement with Livia Heradanus. ("You are no son of mine.") However, Halward urges him to sit and to finish his dinner, and because Dorian is Dorian who seldom ever listens, now a step away from the table, Halward commands he drinks. It alerts Dorian at once who, glancing at his mother, notices the sharp line of her mouth had grown all the thinner. It can't be, he thinks, as he takes up the glass and levels his father with a glare all a flurry of emotion.

"Magnanimity to pair with the pudding? It must be a holiday," he says glibly, charm and honey and razored hurt. "But I'm afraid I already had so much the other night as I'm sure we've all doubtlessly learned. Perhaps you should like to finish this with me? We can think of it as a toast to my turning a new leaf!"

And Halward doesn't. Halward sits still as Aquinea carves her steak. Dorian watches them both, a deep pit of hurt gutting in his belly. "It was supposed to be simple, son," his father says as Dorian asks hotly what he'd put in the wine. "Something I'd only thought would make things easier for you. You'd forced my hand." Right. Of course. Bolting from the room, a servant-- the house Pavus' favorite -- finds him as he hurries down the hall. "Am I free to go then, Lord Pavus?" he asks him, as Dorian stands there speechless. His father comes from farther behind, his footsteps bounding down the hall, and it is all metronome and thunk-thunk-thunk.

"Remind me," he breathes. "Free you from what exactly?"

He fidgets. "I--I'm not sure. Your father hadn't said."

"Typical. Had he told you to strip down like that, too?'

"He had. I was instructed to wait here until you were done with dinner."

Oh. "Well, it seems we're all retiring early for the evening."

"Lord Pavus." A breath. "I was told to clear my cot before I came down here. I'm not -- I'm not being punished for some offense, am I?"

"Are you being what?"

"Not for your offense, no. But that of my son's."

They both turn about. Dorian spies Halward go cold and steely. "There are things to consider that go beyond you, Dorian." Oh. The drink. Their argument. Their slave's quaking fear-- "I can't sit idly by to watch our house fall with you."

A ritual.

"At least this way, you can do something other than disappoint."

Right. Dorian rears away. His heart bellows like a maelstrom in the seat of his chest. Betrayal snicks through his middle, rendering him cloven to bleed messily and thick. His father goes to see him when the morning sun rises, but by then, after a quick letter to Maevaris, Dorian's left. In the back of his head, he still hears the clatter of Aquinea's cutlery.