Ellana Lavellan

**Ellana Lavellan** is the First to Clan Lavellan, Dalish member of the Inquisition and former lover of Solas. She is the daughter of Mahanon Lavellan and Ranalle.

## History

### Early Life

Ellana is from clan Lavellan, a group of Dalish who migrate around the perpetually feuding Free Marches. Ellana's people travel along the borders of each city-state's territory, where Free March rulers will be less inclined to attack them, for fear of accidentally provoking neighboring cities. Ellana manifested a talent for magic as a child. Keeper Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan taught her how to control and hone her new powers. Ellana grew into a capable mage, far away from the eyes of the templars and mage Circles.

## Involvement

When tension between the two factions erupted into warfare, spilling into the countryside, Clan Lavellan was forced to pick up and move. Ellana's Keeper sent her to spy on the Conclave at Haven, as the outcome might determine the fate of her own clan.

## Physical Description

She has brown skin, darker than Josephine but lighter than Vivienne, and moss-green eyes. She has short curly black hair in a pixie cut. She is slender with a weak body. She has dark burgundy lips, and angular face like an inverted triangle, and the vallaslin of Sylaise over her left eye. She has delicate eyebrows, a slightly down-turned nose, and long horizontal ears. She has a delicate English accent.

## Personality

Ellana is poetic, kind, and altruistic. She is always eager to help a good cause. She loves being in nature, literature, poetry, helping people in distress, and intimate, authentic communication. Normally patient, she cares more for empathy for underdogs than quests for power, not caring for cliques or bravado. She loves having the freedom to imagine and artistic expression. She loves alone time, unstructured free time, time with animals, re-visiting favorite places, and re-listening to favorite songs. She is a humble, sensitive recluse hiding out in the woods to avoid reality. She likes spending time in a cozy cabin with endless writing supplies. She is a contemplative hermit, as well as kind-hearted and compassionate. She is open, honest, and egalitarian. She prioritizes patience, kindness, variety, honor, loyalty, and good-will.

Having never really faced racism, she does not understand it and is easily riled up by it. Over time, she becomes more outspoken in her morals, but is not listened to, as she is not the most practical, and comes across as both high and mighty and preachy. She is an empath, and the more she is vocal about what she thinks is the right thing, and gets ignored, she realizes how little power she has to enact any change in the world.

## Tropes

* Association Fallacy: Many characters stereotype you as an elitist bigot for being Dalish, unless you prove otherwise. Inquisitor Lavellan can also frequently assume most elves they meet care about elven culture or the shared elven struggle, and can frequently get called out on it. Lavellan: I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on elven culture. Solas: I thought you would be more interested in sharing *your* opinion of elven culture. You are Dalish, are you not?
* Boomerang Bigot: It's *very easy* to play Lavellan this way since most named elves you encounter (Solas, Sera, Minaeve, Briala, etc) are very critical of the Dalish and expect you to be too.
* But Thou Must!/That Came Out Wrong:
	+ Most Inquisition elves (Solas, Sera, Minaeve, etc) are openly critical of the Dalish, and most of Lavellan's early lines defending the Dalish sound as snide and haughty as possible, just validating the other's bigotry.
	+ Sera also opens up about her internalized racism a few times, particularly after the cookie rooftop scene, and Mythal. If Lavellan in particular tries to help Sera overcome it, Lavellan's lines are always written to sound like they're trying to make Sera more elfy like them, which just gives Sera reason to retain her bigotry because Screw You, Elves!.
* Character Development: It's possible to play Lavellan as a stereoptyical snobby Dalish early on. Most early Dalish-specific lines seem *designed* to sound stupid and haughty, and only become more warm, intelligent, and accepting later in the game.
* Cosmic Plaything: The female Dalish Inquisitor can become this *very easily*. To elaborate - by the end of the game, it's entirely possible for her to have lost her entire clan, her last attachment to them (the vallaslin), her love interest, and to be left with an obligation to Mythal hanging over her head. In *Trespasser*, she also loses her arm and (if she romanced Solas) her beloved a second time.
	+ There's also the fact that Solas has recruited thousands of agents from elves from various backgrounds, and she very possibly might have to lead a war against her own people - including Solas, who may have been her close friend or lover, but is now the leader of that army.
* Cunning Linguist: Other than Solas, a Dalish Inquisitor speaks the most Elvish out of any characters heard so far in the franchise. For example, in a situation where the Inquisitor can try to convince a Dalish mage to give them something they found together, a Dalish Inquisitor has the option to switch to speaking Elvish and, unlike previous characters just dropping words in, goes full sentences before twitching back. They are also supposed to be the only Inquisitor with subtitles when Solas speaks with his friend, or Nightmare speaks to Solas to reflect their near-fluent understanding of Elvhen.
* Damned by Faint Praise: The game gives you *plenty* of opportunities to condemn the Dalish, while the few times you can defend them it's much more lukewarm with sheepish acknowledgements of their flaws, rather than full embrace of their virtues. Solas: If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours... Perhaps I misjudged them? Lavellan [Honestly, not really]: Most of the Dalish care more about impressing other hunters with a good shot or talking about how awful humans are. There are only a few who care about the old ways. Lavellan: [Yes]: I don't hold the Dalish up as perfect, but we have something worth honoring. A memory of the ancient ways.
* Did You Just Romance Cthulhu??: A female elf Inquisitor who romances Solas, due to the revelation that he is actually Fen'Harel.
* Differing Priorities Breakup:
	+ No matter what, a Lavellan who romances Solas will be dumped shortly before the final battle, partly because Solas reasonably believes Lavellan wouldn't support his goal of destroying her modern world to magically restore his ancient elvhen one. In *Trespasser*, after she learns of his true nature and goals, she can confirm that she can't allow him to destroy her world to restore his own, and can vow to change his mind or stop him. Enforced by Solas himself, as Lavellan *can* express a desire to aid them in their goal, but Solas believes it would be too cruel to ask her to aid the destruction of her entire world and all her friends and family within, and he doesn't want her to see what he would become.
* Earn Your Happy Ending: Can do this for Clan Lavellan. The Clan Lavellan war table chain involves having to pick exactly the right advisor at every single step or the clan will be *wiped out*. If you can end it favorably, then the clan winds up saving and ruling Wycome, becoming a shining example of how elves can govern well and coexist peacefully and equitably with humans. In *Trespasser*, Varric (who has become the Viscount of Kirkwall) tells Inquisitor Lavellan that he's forming an alliance with Wycome, to give Clan Lavellan a little more political "muscle."
* Failed a Spot Check: Lavellan was raised Dalish. Most Dalish elves have our world's equivalent of Irish or Welsh accents. Minaeve, an elven mage scholar, has an Irish accent. Naturally, the "Dalish" dialogue icon has Lavellan lament that Minaeve wasn't raised Dalish, as she would do well with them. This just lets Minaeve chew Lavellan out for failing to identify her accent.
* Gameplay and Story Segregation: There's a few subtle hints that an Elven Inquisitor has a different voice than the English or American accented ones we can choose, since Dalish Elves have had largely Irish and Welsh accents in the previous games. For instance, no matter what voice is chosen, Varric doesn't mention recognizing a Marcher accent (read: English or Scottish) from them like he does a human Inqusitor.
* Heartbroken Badass: If the Inquisitor romances Solas. If Inquisitor Lavellan chooses to remain in the relationship, even *after* the breakup, it reveals that she could never recover from her heartbreak, even after two years and the reveal of Solas's true identity, never able to fall in love with another. But being heartbroken doesn't make Inquisitor Lavellan fight any weaker or shirk her responsibilities. If anything, her broken heart just makes her fight all the more stronger. Solas: Harden your heart to a cutting edge, and put that pain to good use against Corypheus.
* I Will Wait for You: The game implies that a female Lavellan who romances Solas does this after he leaves, as she cannot flirt with or romance anyone else after the breakup. In *Trespasser*, she can confirm that she is still not over him. If she doesn't dump him on the spot when they meet again, she can vow to redeem him with their love before he leaves again.
* The Last of These Is Not Like the Others: Played for Drama. Most Inquisitors come from backgrounds not too culturally dissimilar to Andrastian human culture: Adaar is a vashoth born in human lands, Cadash is a surface dwarf, non-mage Trevelyan is a human noble raised in the Chantry, and mage Trevelyan the same but raised in the Circle. Based on this pattern, you would expect Lavellan to be a city elf, but nope: Lavellan is *Dalish*, the only truly "foreign" playable culture, and one that is very much at odds with the Andrastian human nobility, Chantry, and Inquisition... and the game won't let you forget it.
* Love Redeems: If a female Lavellan romances Solas, she can attempt to invert this trope at the end of *Trespasser*, asking him to let her join him. However, Solas refuses to do so, believing that it would be cruel of him to have the love of his life help him essentially destroy the world as she knows it and kill countless innocents in the process. When that fails, Lavellan ultimately decides to either avert this trope, giving up on Solas and deciding to stop him at all cost regardless of her feelings for him, or attempt to invoke this trope, deciding to save the love of her life from himself, if she can.
* Meaningful Name: In Scottish folklore, a Lavellan is a kind of noxious water rodent that lives deep in pools in rivers. Considering Clan Lavellan wandered the forests avoiding humans, are treated like vermin in-universe, can get slaughtered and scattered in the Clan Lavellan War Table quest chain, a major quest near the end of the game involves drinking from the Well of Sorrows, and the game involves many, many, *many* instances of Screw You, Dalish!, this was probably intentional.
* My Species Doth Protest Too Much: As stated under Boomerang Bigot, it is absurdly easy to play a Lavellan who is very critical of and distances themselves from other Dalish. Lavellan also gets *far* more opportunities to disparage their own people than Adaar, Cadash, or any Mage Inquisitor.
* No Sympathy: If you thought you'd receive support from other elves because We ARE Struggling Together, think again. You'll be lucky if any given elven character you talk to throws you being Dalish back in your face only once.
* Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Most Dalish-specific dialogue during the first half of the game seems *designed* to sound as stupid or snotty as possible, from failing to spot Minaeve's accent, to confirming Sera and Solas's boomerang bigotry. Lavellan drops this tendency later in the game, though by then it's implied their time with the *Inquisition* has humbled them.
* Waif-Fu: A female Elven Inquisitor is thin, wiry and waif-like, and can fight as well as any other gendered/raced Inquisitor or companion. It's especially pronounced if she's a rogue, with a lot of elaborate twists, twirls and backflips in combat.
* You Are a Credit to Your Race: While all Inquisitors get this to some extent, Lavellan (especially Mage Lavellan) probably receives this sentiment the most. Not only from Andrastian humans who don't think very highly of heathen elves, but many major elven characters who can't stop badmouthing the Dalish. (Solas, Sera, Minaeve, Briala, Abelas, Ameridan...)

## Relationships

### Advisors

* Cullen
* Leliana
* Josephine

### Inquisitors

* Maxwell
* Malika
* Kaaras

### Companions

* Cassandra
* Solas
* Sera
* Cole
* Vivienne
* Blackwall
* Dorian
* Iron Bull
* Varric

He is a narcissist and she is an empath, their relationship has an unhealthy power imbalance, with her being absorbed by him and desperately trying to get him to stay with her and see the good in the world, he views her with pity but also as a precious rarity, like the pure and innocent heart of a child.

## Songs

* Sign of the Times, Harry Styles
* My Boy Builds Coffins, Florence + The Machine
* The Moss, Cosmo Sheldrake
* Bloom, The Paper Kites
* The Golden Age, Woodkid
* Dynasty, MIIA
* Dreaming, Kassy
* With you, Yang Da Il