5 facts!

The lovely @lyriumyue tagged me to write five facts about a character! Thank you so much! <3 I’m going to go with my fave boy Aedan Cousland, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

1) Aedan is a great singer. You can bet Bryce Cousland made sure both his sons were trained to succeed where he had failed lol. So both Fergus and Aedan have been taking musical lessons since they were children, but where Fergus favors the wood-flute, Aedan’s best instrument was always his voice. He has a very rich baritone and always loved to sing, especially in prayer. It happened once or twice that he sung during the Blight, so the companions are aware of it, but it wasn’t often… Let’s just say the mood wasn’t there.

2) He was horribly afraid of Flemeth growing up. In my hc Highever has a lot of legends about her, she’s a figure of sorrow and horror who represents a lot of things, like the powers of nature, magic, and the dangers of passion, revenge, the threat of violence, justice… When the wind howls through the narrow streets of the town, Higheverians call the sound the Widow’s Wail, and toddler Aedan would hide under his covers shivering whenever he heard it, fearing the Grey Widow would come take him… Fergus always made gentle big-brother fun of him for it, but whenever things would get really bad he would come to bed with him and tell him stories to distract him until he fell asleep in his arms <3 Meeting - and killing her - for real during the Blight was… an interesting experience.

3) Fereldan nut-cake is a baked sweet loaf similar to spice-bread, made with rye flour, cloves, honey, pepper, and of course, whatever nuts and candied fruit you have available. Aedan. Hates. It. It’s unclear why, since he likes all the ingredients well enough separately. Maybe it’s the texture, or maybe he’s eaten too much of it once and lost the taste for it. Who knows. Fact is he can’t stand it, and can barely bring himself to force it down even in the direst of circumstances. Alistair was very perplexed but he would have his share so that was fine.

4) Another skill of Aedan that he didn’t get much use out of during the Blight is that he’s a fierce swimmer. Being a Coasltander makes it sort of inevitable but Aedan, just like his mother, really had the taste for it. He’d swim with the other town children until he was well of age, and throughout all his teenage years as well. It was a great way to keep his body trained, but he also loved the feeling of it, the serenity, the effort, the communion with the sea. Sometimes him and Eleanor would go on swimming trips together: They’d strap bundles of waxed sail fabric to their backs and swim to the nearest small island. There they would sit on the beach, or on some rocks, and eat the snacks they carried with them, talking, or sometimes just sharing the silence. Aedan is the one who taught Oren how to swim, cheered on by the rest of family of course.

5) Aedan is a fervent Shartan inclusionist. Ever since reading of the Dissonant Verses, baby Aedan became quite obsessed with the way Andraste’s story was told and retold, with which passages were considered holier than others, and with how closely the events of the Chant could be linked to the actual historical chronology of Thedas. There’s zero doubt in my mind that, had the Blight not  happened, he’d have gone on to write at least a few pamphlets on the subject of the Missing Verses and of the quest for traces of the original close circle of Andraste’s advisors, like Justinia the First and of course, Shartan. “Andraste and Her Allies, A response to Sister Petrine’s “The Dissonant Verses"” or something lol

Well, this was fun! Thanks again for tagging me! I’m tagging @mikkeneko@jawsandbones@cupofrenchtea@minwrathousand@effelants