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She loves him. She does.
And it should be the easiest thing in the world to say: Yes, I’ll marry you.
But for some reason she just can’t bring herself to say the words.
The first time he asks her to marry him is at the Landsmeet, after he’s been declared King of Ferelden. And every king needs a queen. And though he didn’t put it like that, she knows it’s true. (Even then, there was a voice in the back of her mind saying: Marry Anora. Not me. I’m not made to be a Queen.)
So, she says: Wait until this is over. Ask me again after we’ve won. If we’re still alive.
She doesn’t say the last part.
But by then she’s got more blood on her hands, and she’s asked him to do something terrible so they could all walk away from this in relatively one piece. It’s not his fault she can’t stop picturing the two of them together any time he goes to kiss her.
It’s a special kind of pain knowing you asked the man you love to sleep with someone else—
No, sleep is too kind a word. Fuck someone else to save him. Get a mad witch pregnant to save him. Because she knew even if she tried to make the final blow, he wouldn’t have let her.
She doesn’t want to think of that night. The fight they had. The way he asked her if she would still be here when he got back, and though he had been asking if she would wait in his room, she knew there was a part of him asking if she would still want to be with him at all. After.
They were both still so young then, she realizes. He was barely more than a boy. She was still naïve to the ways of the wider world. Even then.
He is still so young. Perhaps too young. What can he really know of love?
The second time he asks her is after it’s over. After the Archdemon is dead and they’re still alive and now there is nothing to hold her back, and yet…
She has grown used to being a Grey Warden, to having a purpose beyond herself. Once upon a time, she would have gladly married the king in shining armor and lived happily ever after but she’s not that girl anymore. She’s not a girl at all. In a day, she has aged a thousand years.
So, she says: Wait until you’ve have time to adjust to being king. Let me help rebuild the Wardens first.
And he agrees. What else can he do?
But then she’s being called away because the darkspawn apparently haven’t realized they’re supposed to have been defeated when the Archdemon was slain and there are more impossible choices to make and more blood on her hands until she fears it will never all wash off. Her hands will always be tinged red.
The third time he asks her is when she gets back to Vigil’s Keep. He’s there waiting for her in all his regalia. There’s a royal escort just outside the door. He asks her one last time.
It would be good for Ferelden, she thinks. A royal wedding. The two Grey Wardens who saved the world, who fell in love somehow in the middle of all that pain and suffering, together at last. A celebration. A distraction to make the people forget the Blight.
A good story to tell.
And she loves him, she does, but somehow, they are very different people from the ones who first met at the beginning of the end of the world, when he gave her a rose and told her he’d never felt like this about anyone.
Now he’s the King of Ferelden. And she’s the Warden Commander. A far cry from a bastard and a nobleman’s daughter.
She can’t even blame the ritual, or duty, or darkspawn. So, when he is quiet for a moment and then asks if there is someone else, she is surprised at how astute he can be sometimes.
And her mind goes straight to a man with a nose like a broken arrow as he wraps his arms around her to show her how to string a bow. A man she hated. Until she didn’t.
She simply says: I’m sorry. I love you. I do.
But I can’t.