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My father has been dead for a long time. He left me, his eldest, to take care of our family. He shouldn't have. I was always a clumsy, stubborn child. How could he leave us? Leave me in charge? By the Maker, I have done my best, and it is never enough.
The Fifth Blight took my family's home. We clung too long, fled too late. Darkspawn swept the country and murdered thousands. In a sense we were lucky, getting out at all.
An ogre, of all things, took my brother, it ripped Carver apart in front of me and I could do nothing to prevent it. The ogre is dead, but I could only comfort my mother and sister the best I could and look toward our shrunken family's future over his broken body.
The Templars took my sister. Bethany is alive, in the Circle, and I hear from her occasionally but it will break her, I know it. She went peacefully for all our sakes, so as not to cause trouble. I should have killed them. I stood there uselessly, and let her be taken from everything she ever knew, to be ruled and tormented by strangers.
A sick, twisted necromancer, a murderer, a serial killer who stalked the streets of Kirkwall, took my mother and used her for parts. He stitched her head to another woman's body, and another woman's fingers, and another, and another - and raised the mutilated body to stumble brokenly beside him. I knew as soon as I heard about the lilies Leandra received, his bloody signature, that one more piece of my life had been torn to shreds. I tried to save her anyway. I killed him. I was too late. What was left of mother died in my arms. When I returned home and could lay down my weapons, I sat and stared at the wall for days.
Piece by piece, everything I have ever had and loved has been taken from me. I was useless. Helpless. I could do nothing to prevent it.
...
I swear by everything I am and could be that I will not lose Anders.