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She finds Kieran in the dust flecked light of a stained glass window, head tilted upwards as he takes in the scene it depicts in flowing lines and an array of colors. The Battle of the River Dane, or an overtly romanticized version at least. Her father would often point out its indulgences and inaccuracies whenever they passed it together. Loghain stands tall at its center, rearing his sword at a retreating Orlesian force on the banks of a shore, young, defiant and battle weary. King Maric, ever at his side, sports a shield with the Theirin heraldry, and silhouetted behind them both is the symbolic wreath of an approaching dawn. They’ve left out all the mud , her father used to mutter.
She wonders what it is about it that draws him now. Kieran had shown no interest in his paternal history before. She can't read the placid expression on the youth’s face, and even that moniker doesn’t seem to fit him, despite their thirty some odd years of separation (she could be his mother, for Maker's sake). There is an agelessness to his twenty year old countenance.
Since his arrival at court, Anora has searched Kieran’s features for traces of her father, but the longer she looks, the more she comes away with only contrasts. His eyes are the most startling of these, an intense golden hue, almost unnatural in coloring. His skin is olive toned, warmer than Anora’s or her father’s light pallor. He carries Loghain’s height, but not his build, slender and wiry in all the places her father held the bulk of a life-long warrior. Even the way he adorns himself in a quiet elegance, with the spindling mages staff at his side speaks to this antithesis.
“Your Majesty,” he says without turning to her, but still inclines his head with deference and maybe it’s there that she finds a remnant of Mac Tir, in the squaring of his shoulders, the tempered way that he holds himself. Or maybe she’s imagining it. “‘Tis a very flattering depiction. Flashy for Ferelden,” he continues with an undercurrent of irony.
She steps beside him until their profiles align and he is tall, but so is she, their heads reaching within close proximity.
“King Maric had it commissioned from Antivan artisans for father’s appointment to Teryn,” she says. “I’m told he didn’t attend the unveiling. He was never one for pomp and ceremony. He always said his deeds weren't something to be gilded or admired, that they would endure longer than any monument.” She questions if that rings as true to her now as it did as a girl. If the heroism of the “Traitor Teryn” will live longer in the hearts and minds of the people, or stay confined to this solitary pane.
There had been a few disgruntled Bans in the wake of the Blight who had petitioned for its removal, likely as a scapegoat to cover their own misdeeds and advantages taken during the chaos. The matter had dropped from a lack of traction, but Anora will do whatever she can to preserve both the legacy and the architecture that commemorates her father, so long as she draws breath.
But the past, however worthy of remembrance, is still the past. She turns her back to the window and sets her eyes on the adjacent heavy oak doors. Beyond them lies the throne room and all that will shape the future of her country, with one declaration of Kieran as her heir apparent; the product of a circumstantial union between her exiled father and an apostate witch that Anora had been in the dark about for decades. Who had been raised in the Orlesian court of all things. She has complicated feelings on the entire matter and there's a strange mixture of pride and distance when she watches Kieran with his educated answers and quiet intensity. He in turn respects her, is deferential to her judgement, but still she feels the caution he regards her with. Sometimes she can sense his eyes on her, dissecting her. Sometimes she thinks he might resent her so, for thrusting this destiny on him even if she made it clear it is nothing he cannot walk away from. He is a very odd boy.
She profers her arm, her sleeve heavy with red velvet and fur-lined at the wrist.
“Are you ready?”
His eyes are finally drawn from the visage of their shared father. He hesitates with that analytical edge he seems to regard everything with, and then his hand, slim and steady, clasps around her arm. In the other, he grips his staff.
“I am - sister. With lofty ambitions not to trip on your gown.”
She matches his humor with a dour expression, maintaining her straight-backed posture as she guides them both forward. “You bring an optimistic outlook to the monarchy. How very un-Fereldan.”
If Anora hadn’t punctuated this remark by pushing open the doors, she might have heard him laugh - low and derisive, might have glanced back at the glassy specter of her father as though it had come to life.
But she doesn't hear it, and together they stride through the doors into the maw of Ferelden's court, side by side.