#fun fact!!! i based the name off how -afaik- “toutlemonde” is a common placeholder last name in French meaning “everyone”

[invinciblerodent]

Silk and Silverite, the complete series (so far), by Lady Stéphanie Toutlemonde-Baliverne of Val Royeaux

in-fiction Dragon Age fiction, because why not

Silk and Silverite

Featuring no subtitle, the book was meant to be a one-off, but upon the wildly positive reception (five scarves fluttered in shock out of five!), the work was expanded into a series.

This first volume, fittingly to the title, is a fairly basic story about a whirlwind romance between a wealthy surface dwarf merchant-woman with a price on her life, and a beautiful bard (known only as "Lady Cinquefoil") that mostly follows the conventions of Orlesian bardic romances, and shocks mainly with just how explicit it is for its genre.

It's rumored to have been inspired by the author's own scandalous affair, however this is mostly due to the staggering amount of very specific details pictured, as there is next to nothing known about the secretive authoress.

Vol.02.: Lustrous Cotton

Following one of the secondary protagonists of the original Silk and Silverite, Lustrous Cotton is about a meek, scholarly mage in 9:41, now a rebel against his will, trying to make his way across the Fereldan countryside with a hired bodyguard: a tortured and complex woman, a deserter of the Templar order, who is trying to eke out a living by taking people across the wartorn Hinterlands for coin. The two, of course, fall into mad love roughly 80 pages in, and then proceed to make (both figuratively and literally explosive) love in tents and inns all over the country, before fleeing both the war and their Templar pursuers towards the Tevinter Imperium.

While controversial in its choice of protagonists, the book is commended often on its creative yet heavily eroticized use of magic, and its accuracy in depicting the difficulties of stripping off armor while in the ~throes of passion~.

Vol.03.: Vyrantium Samite

As a hard pivot from the previous two books' southern settings, the third installment of the series continues in Tevinter, and takes the reader to a fictional version of the underbelly of the upper echelons of Imperial society, featuring the entanglement of a handsome magister and an equally handsome Orlesian ex-chevalier in the heart of Minrathous. It's easily the most inaccurate to its setting of all the books, and it sparked quite a bit of controversy both with its generous blasphemies, and by coming out in the same year as Lord Gallanter Pismire's "The Magister’s Temptation", and Lord Gustave Thibault Beaumarchais’ "Champions of the Lust - To Break an Imperial Stallion", which both feature some eerily similar characters.

This, of course, fizzled out quickly, as it soon became obvious that these books were not all copies of each other, but were merely inspired by the exact same people (with Pismire and Beumarchais drawing on the Inquisitor's figure far less subtly), and Vyrantium Samite at least never used expressions like "quivering flesh-cavern", or "pulsing man-meat". (Editions after the first one feature a mysterious endorsement on the back cover signed only as "R.": "To draw from life with such boldness is a thing both wonderful, and mildly terrifying.")

Vol.04: Fade-touched Velvet

Any semblance of and overarching plot or an interconnection that the previous installments would have introduced is chucked straight out the window, as this installment is written from the perspective of Juliette, a cheeky apprentice in the newly formed College of Enchanters, and recounts her taboo romance with an enchanting desire demon seeking to possess her. (Which explains why exactly the titular "velvet" is "fade-touched".)

The demon's shapeshifting abilities are, of course, explored in extreme depth, touching on yet more Andrastian themes of blasphemy and desire that leave the average reader feeling both flustered and vaguely guilty, and the book ends with a series-atypical cliffhanger that had readers writing letter after disgruntled letter to the Randy Dowager in such numbers, that Her Ladyship had to put out a notice that she will simply stop reviewing the series if people don't stop bugging her about it. (Five scarves fluttered in shock out of five, of course.)

Vol.05.: Rough Hide

The author seems to dial the oddities back in with this installment, as it features, once more, a fairly common Orlesian plot structure and a conventional depiction of a fictional Grey Warden, a gruff and determined dwarf woman with a heart of gold, and her partner, a plucky, yet sweet recruit- a thief both petty and pretty, who chose to join the Order as an alternative to either a hanging, or a Chantry cloister.

This one, though still explicit, is cited as by far the most loving, most romantic book in the series, as the "burn" seems slowest in this one, and the characters' palpable bond tugs at the heartstrings. The two often meditate on mortality, love, and loss- mostly after bouts in the bedroll that definitely fit the title.

The dedication of this book raises eyebrows, as it is merely "Thinking Always of You".

Vol.06: TBA

The newest installment was set to be released 9:53 Dragon, but, well... it wasn't, for obvious reasons.

Rumor has it, the title was to be Paragon's Luster, and it intended to delve quite deep into Orzammar's caste politics and royalty (again, both figuratively and literally), but it'll understandably take a few years to actually be released, if it ever will be.