#sorry this is so long ajkgha

[houseaeducan]

@prohalla

Do you think if the origins coup didn’t happen that your aeducan would be better or worse then bhelen, harrowmont, or trian as the queen

love this question ty... it's a bit tricky with daera because she never actually planned on becoming queen of orzammar -- she's pretty uninterested in politics and always felt pretty content with the idea of focusing her energy on her position as commander under whichever of her brothers ended up on the throne. she'd play the game to undermine and fuck with them a bit as sibling antics and because you need to if you're going to last, but bhelen moved against her more because he knew that she would turn against him once she realized he committed fratricide and less because he thought she would actually contend for the throne. she could have! the assembly liked her! but the assembly liked her because she was naturally charismatic and an incredibly promising warrior, and being good with a sword and at parties doesn't translate to legitimate political ability.

if she ended up in some sort of designated survivor situation where her father and brothers were all killed then i think she'd be ??? okay?????? as queen? the biggest problem would be that she'd be deeply uninterested in it, and i imagine she would end up pushing a lot of the day-to-day decision-making onto her advisors (who in this case would probably be harrowmont so. lol.) when she actually did get involved, i think she would do Fine but not particularly challenge the system in any way. for reference, like, in her origin she told that noble guy to stop harassing the scholar guy (agkjhag its been a year since I've played the aeducan origin can you tell), but also told the scholar guy to keep the false history in the shaperate. no use harassing someone just doing his job, but it's not use rocking the boat when it threatens a noble house's pride. she was open to the idea of restoring titles to some surfacers for the benefit of orzammar, but amended her position to "yeah we should respect the surfacers or whatever but they gave up their right to be here" as soon as she learned there would be political ramifications she didn't like. she's not as much of a strict traditionalist as harrowmont would be, and is pretty open to the idea of the casteless being like, people, but i think making any actual moves to reform or push back on reform would depend very heavily on whether her allies thought it was a good move strategically

the one place i do think she'd do a very good job and maybe lead to some legitimate change for orzammar is in the military. i imagine that's where she would turn her actual sights to basically immediately (and probably spent a lot of her reign off the throne leading expeditions in the deep roads and leave the at home ruling to whoever she got into a political marriage with. kind of cailan-esque. wait.) from there i don't think it would take her too long to realize how deeply fucked orzammar really is in their current position (which i don't think she thought of particularly deeply before being put into a commander position). from that perspective, i can see her taking a much more aggressive approach to the darkspawn, and eventually coming to some of the same conclusions bhelen did about training non-warrior caste soldiers, making a concentrated effort to retake abandoned thaigs, and, maybe even opening up more with the surface for the sake of getting reinforcements, all of which i can see having a positive effects on orzammar outside of just their survival.

so i guess i would say, probably better than harrowmont and hmm, it's tough to compare her to bhelen. less of a reformer but also less likely to vindictively execute you. honestly have not thought much about trian as a ruler so I'm not sure on that! i want to say she would be better because trian seems so petty and shitty but lbr how you act with your shitty siblings does not constitute what kind of king you would be.. need to think more on that