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Aeden Hawke has two shirts, before the Blight, when the Hawke family live in Lothering and are mostly whole and happy.
Aeden Hawke has two shirts and while they are old and faded, they fit him well and the patches sewn into them are colour-matched to the original cloth as best as his mother could manage, because fabric is expensive and they are a family of five (and then four) and the twins are still outgrowing their clothes every six months when Aeden had stopped doing so at thirteen. One of these shirts he has worn since he was sixteen, and will continue to do so until he returns from a Deep Roads expedition that leaves him both wealthy and aching beyond imagining. Both him and his mother have sewn and resewn the seams many times over, carefully washing out stains left behind by dirt and drink and, later, blood. The first shirt had never been dyed - it was worn and washed too much for that, and Aeden had never wanted to trouble his mother over it.
The second of these, the nicer of the two, saved for the Chantry and when his mother invited guests into the Hawke household, Aeden inherited from his father. His mother had dyed it a greyed, muted blue - a dye that is easy to make and keep, more resistant to harsh peasant washing than the brilliant scarlets and jeweled blues Leandra wore in her youth. The cuffs and neckline are embroidered with Aeden's own clumsy and imperfect stitching, patterns stolen from fleeting glances (jealous glances, the kind a Chantry Mother would have chastised him for) at what the Bann and his children wore. Painstakingly careful stitches made by the firelight under the guidance of his mother. She would have done it for him, had he asked, but he had not wanted to trouble her so. His mother is busy enough with tending to a farm and three children and a thousand other matters and she does not need to busy herself with his fanciful whims. He still keeps this shirt tucked and folded neatly at the bottom of his closet in the Amell Estate.
(Not that it matters. He hasn't been back since the Chantry explosion. It's more than likely he will die before ever returning to Kirkwall and the estate his mother had so desperately wanted to reclaim for her children.)
Many of the clothes in the Hawke household were passed from one person to another - cloth is expensive, and so is good dye, and the Hawke family did not keep their own sheep. Aeden's old clothing went to the twins when they were younger, his old dresses to Bethany, and his shirts to Carver, after he told his parents he was a man. The clothing they didn't burn Malcolm in went to him. What became too worn to unseam and resew found use elsewhere.
In his time in Lothering, and in his time in Kirkwall, Aeden Hawke, with his two shirts that are faded and patched and well-worn but little-loved, looks upon the nobles and merchants around him with their dazzling fabrics and unpatched clothes with such burning jealousy that he's sure the Maker would call it a sin.
(If the Maker cares about it at all.)
He daydreams about clothes dyed as bright as the blue sky and as rich as red blood, about panelled embroidery not made with shaking, clumsy hands and delicate gold beads sewn into his collar. He thinks of what his mother tells him about growing up as a noble in Kirkwall, of beautiful ballgowns and finely tailored coats and shoes that do not have holes in them from being worn year upon year upon year. He wonders what it might have been like, if he had grown up in that life - what he might have been like. That thought is one he dismisses quickly. Living a life like his mother's is half-unimaginable to him, one mage out of three in a family of farmers living in the backwaters of Ferelden. He occupies himself with the growing of turnips and wonderings about if he could fiddle out a spell to make the plants water themselves.
(The dirt will stain the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his pants and his mother will scold him, because she does not want her son walking around the village looking like he's been rolling in the mud, and the next time he does the washing he will take great pains to beat the dirt from his sleeves. And he will try not to think about somewhat bitterly asking his mother to dye his shirt brown, if she is so worried about dirt staining her farmer son's clothes.)
The first year and some he spends in Kirkwall, he contemplates buying new clothing, if only because this is no longer the backend of Ferelden and he is no longer a farmer wearing farmers' clothes. But cloth is expensive and tailors more so, even in Lowtown, so Aeden Hawke cuts the sleeves off the shirt he wears every day except Chantry days (much to his mother's chagrin) and fits a leather cuirass the Red Iron gave him over it and considers himself a mercenary. He does not look the part. He looks like a Ferelden man with the sleeves cut off of his shirt trying, and failing, to convince everyone around him he is a Kirkwaller and a mage who knows about magic far beyond its uses in agriculture and sewing. This is something he will get better at, eventually, and he will have to get rid of the shirt, eventually, because he will run afoul during a fight and it will become too blood-stained and torn to salvage.
(And his mother will scold him, for getting injured, and Carver will bitch and fret to hide his concern for his older brother, and Aeden will feel hollowed out with guilt for making them worry and for ruining his shirt. Neither Leandra or Carver think of his shirt in the slightest, but Aeden will. Leandra will feel guilt about what she's allowed her son to do, to get them into this city, as she washes the blood out of her mercenary son's clothes.)
After Aeden Hawke returns from the Deep Roads and settles what remains of his family into the Amell Estate in Hightown, he has many more than two shirts, in colours dazzling and bright enough to make any lord jealous and wanting. He does not have to worry about stains, or tears, or so very carefully matching the colour of the patches to the colour of the cloth. He does not need to worry about money, and feeding a family of five (then four, then three, then four again) and does not need to rip himself away from the glittering displays of jewels he sees in the Hightown markets. He can purchase armour, and no longer has to wear his only shirt under a thin cuirass that wouldn't have stopped a well-sharpened blade, because even though he no longer works for the Red Iron, he is still a mercenary. Or he might as well be, at the very least.
So Aeden Hawke adorns himself in the silks and velvets and jewels he could never have before, and plays at being a nobleman in Kirkwall the same way he played at being a mercenary in Lowtown and didn't play at being a farmer in Lothering. His mother is delighted that he dresses so smartly and does not have to stain his sleeves with dirt and she will not have to wash the blood out of his ragged shirts.
Things are alright in Kirkwall, for a good while. Leandra is happy. Aeden is happy for her, and tries to be happy for himself, in a way that matters. His mother has her childhood home back, her wealth and status restored, and the familiarity of a city she had always wanted to return to. Aeden has friends, close friends, material desires he has never before had the chance to have, and the ache in his chest of a thousand failings that have only just begun to weigh on him. He turns his hair a paler shade of blonde and wears a ruby-red stone on his ear and laughs, loudly, with his friends in the Hanged Man and pretends that everything is fine, until it isn't.
(His mother does not return home one night and Aeden tears up half the city of Kirkwall, desperately, desperately looking for her, and blames himself more than anyone else when all that's left when he finds her is her corpse.)
Aeden Hawke has many shirts and the only one he wears in the week (or more, perhaps) after his mother's death is awful and stained with drink and blood that is both his and not his, from a fight in the Hanged Man that Anders practically has to drag him, insensate, away from. He will not remember what happened there, in the morning, or the majority of the conversation they have that night, but he will remember guilt, and tears, and the fact that he ripped the buttons off his shirt in frustration. And he will feel guilt, for worrying Anders, and guilt over what his mother would think, seeing him like this, and guilt over his shirt.
(Only one of these things has real, tangible consequences, and this will not be the last time Anders worries about Aeden, and what the man does to himself.)
He will, later, sit alone in a chair in the Amell Estate, struggling to sew the buttons back onto the shirt, without his mother's guidance, stabbing himself in the fingers with his clumsy stitches and tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He gives up, after a while, and throws the shirt into the fireplace out of sheer frustration. His mother always said he was an impatient man, and this statement holds true in many aspects of Aeden's life.
He has many more shirts. Throwing one into the flames of his hearth means little, in the grand scheme of things.
Time passes. He washes blood out of shirts that he does not want Orana or Bodahn or Anders to see, and continues to play the part of wealthy nobleman and then Champion of Kirkwall, with a charming smile and a dazzling wardrobe. He plays pretend, the way he has since coming to Kirkwall, because he does not know what else to do. He lies and laughs and dances - whatever dancing might mean at any given moment - his way through this hollow, rotting city, and buries himself in purples and scarlets and tries to make the Champion of Kirkwall who he is.
Then, the Chantry explodes, and Meredith Stannard becomes a Red Lyrium abomination and dies, and Aeden Hawke flees Kirkwall with Anders, and plans on never looking back.
Aeden Hawke has two shirts, and sleeps upright in his armour, despite Anders fretting about how he needs to rest more (and rest better). He is simultaneously beyond relieved, and more on-edge than he's been since fleeing the Blight in Ferelden, almost ten years ago now. He keeps two shirts in the small bag he carries with him, the only remnants of anything he brought from Kirkwall. They are plain, but still beautifully dyed, and fading as the years go on. He and Anders spend years hiding from templars and anyone who might sympathise with the Chantry, after the events of their final days in Kirkwall. Shirts matter very little, outside of the fact that they must be worn. He keeps the ruby-red stone in his ear, though his hair has long since returned to his natural brown, and he thinks more of keeping Anders fed and alive and safe than of silks and fashionable clothes. Time wears on, and he wears the not-quite-peasant-clothes more than his armour. Anders, stubbornly and insistently, continues to wear his feathered pauldrons and not-at-all conspicuous jacket.
In moments between running, occasionally spent sewing by firelight, in a hut or a cave or the open air of a clearing, Aeden thinks about farming.
He wonders what it would be like, building a homestead in some distant village in the backwater of somewhere with Anders. He thinks about rearing sheep (cloth is less expensive when you provide the wool) and what he might grow, depending on where they live, and what Anders might like to do on a farm. They could have an herb garden, he muses. Elfroot and spindleweed and embrium, for healing and poultices. Anders might like that, he thinks, and plans on asking sometime, but never quite gets around to it. He thinks of crops, of turning rich earth over turnips and barley and rye, and how it will stain his shirts and he will not care. It will be hard work, he imagines while pricking his finger on the needle, but he would be happy.
Aeden sews patches that don't quite match the colour of his shirts over holes made by wear, knives, and poor stitching. He does the same for Anders, because Anders never quite learned how to sew, and Aeden is more than delighted to do it for him, even with his clumsy and uneven stitches that never really get better, try as he might. He sews a tiny little cat onto a patch in Anders' undertunic, with as orange of a thread as he can find, because he thinks Anders would like it. He is quite right about this, and overjoyed at the fact. He thinks, after a while, that he is content to live like this for the rest of his life, if he must. Running across all of Thedas with the man he loves, with their possessions crammed into too-small bags and no one but each other. Perhaps there will come a day when he is a farmer again, and perhaps not. He will content himself and be happy with this, while it lasts.
And then the Inquisition comes calling. And their little peace shatters, and Aeden leaves his two shirts with Anders and takes his armour with him to Skyhold, and does not return.
Not for a long while yet.