#(i always imagine him as gaspard u.lliel)

[carelessgraces]

on astoria’s failed relationships ( iain blackwood ) —

Astoria’s relationship with Iain carries through all verses, though it impacts her to varying degrees. It’s the most straightforward in her canon verse: Iain is a Slytherin student a year older than her, with a strong & stable moral compass. He and Astoria fall in puppy love when they’re very young ( thirteen and fourteen, respectively ); she wants to get involved with him during her fourth year, but his interest seems to flicker in and out as she turns more and more of her attention to the Carrows’ instruction. They finally date in Astoria’s fifth year, starting in the very beginning of the year. He’s the first person outside of the Death Eaters to learn that she’s been Marked, and the only person until the war’s end ( including her sibling(s) ). They’re together for about three weeks, but it’s an absolute disaster, and Astoria learns very quickly that while Iain cares about her very much, he believes she can be a much better person, and is trying to save her. It’s the first time that Astoria looks at her options and realizes that she doesn’t want to be saved, and certainly not like that, and so they agree, relatively quickly, that they can’t continue seeing each other. 

     Iain is based a bit on an OC a friend wrote years and years and years ago, which is why I’ll never write him myself except in passing, and why I’ll never ask anyone else to write him. He was Astoria’s first ship, and hugely important to her development in those early stages, and things didn’t work mostly because Astoria didn’t want to become better, and because she connected with someone who wanted her to remain just as awful as she was. He’s present in all verses, though things are extended in her main & modern verses.

     DRAGON AGE. Lord Iain Blackwood is a minor lord from Starkhaven, and another student at the University of Val Royeaux. He and Astoria meet shortly after her arrival, and begin a flirtation; about a year later, they become involved. It’s an on-again, off-again romance that lasts for years: they talk about marriage, children, Iain leaving Starkhaven to come back to Seleny with her. He meets her father, and asks for his blessing to propose to Astoria, and when she’s twenty, he asks her to marry him. Astoria says she needs time to think: they are fundamentally very different people, with very different goals. Astoria has spent years lying to him about how she spends her time ( Astoria, like many other young nobles, spends her time in Orlais learning to play the Game, and training to become a bard ), the threats to her life ( by the time she’s twenty Astoria has survived three assassination attempts; the last two end with her killing her would-be assassins ), and how she intends to rule ( Iain wants her to release the Crows under her command from their bond with her family, whereas Astoria believes that their fair compensation and reformed recruitment practices make them no different than court spies and assassins, the latter of which Iain dislikes regardless ). A week later, she turns down his marriage proposal, insisting that they’re too different to work. 

     For another year, they remain involved on and off, both of them very much in love with the other, and both of them absolutely certain that things won’t last. Iain returns to Starkhaven when Astoria is twenty-one and, three months later, marries the daughter of a minor lord in Markham. Astoria is not invited to the wedding. They see one another rarely; Astoria isn’t particularly bothered by his choice to marry someone else, or by the end to their relationship. Iain has a much harder time with it, particularly with her apparent indifference. They briefly reconnect ( strictly as friends ) during the Conclave, but Iain is killed in the explosion. Astoria, as Inquisitor or as merchant princess, helps support Iain’s widow and two children. 

     MODERN WITCH. Astoria meets Iain while she’s at St. Colman’s in Boston. She’s the captain of the cheer squad, with a very, very charming Dublin accent, an air of mystery, and an inexplicably unflappable personality; he’s a year ahead of her, captain of the soccer team and head of the debate team. Getting together takes some time: Astoria dates a lot, but never for particularly long. They go to homecoming together, and prom ( she wins homecoming queen and prom queen both in her senior year, Iain is very amused and very fond ) both years that she’s at St. Colman’s. They maintain contact when Iain goes to Harvard, and when Astoria goes to Columbia, both of them seeing other people the whole time and both of them very aware of how they feel about each other. When Astoria is nineteen, Iain comes to visit her at Columbia; she kisses him in Central Park at night during a rainstorm and skips class for the next three days because they barely leave her dorm. 

     They maintain the long-distance relationship for a while — they try an open relationship for a bit and hate it, they break up a few times and get back together usually within two weeks — and when Iain graduates he moves to New York, where they get an apartment together. They both apply to, and are accepted at, Berkley, and they move to California together. They get engaged the night before their first semester at graduate school, and they start to realize how incompatible they are. They push back the wedding for a year, and then for another, and finally, they sit down and acknowledge that they’re not happy together anymore. They call off the engagement, stay living together, and continue on a more casual level until they finish their master’s degrees; Astoria moves back to Boston, and Iain moves to London. They see each other occasionally, remain Facebook friends, and end up in bed together any time Astoria’s in London until Iain marries a nice Scottish girl who works for a newspaper, and they fall out of touch.

     MODERN ( LAWYER ). Everything’s the same through St. Colman’s, but Astoria goes to Stanford, rather than Columbia, to do a pre-law degree, and Iain remains at Harvard. He does come to visit her in California, and they do start sleeping together while they’re undergrads, but it’s a long-distance, “casual” relationship, with neither one of them admitting that they hate it. They end up moving in together when Astoria gets accepted to Georgetown to do her master’s in political science, and decide to try exclusivity there. For the most part, it works, but they both get restless, because after more than six years of trying to get this to work, they start to realize that they’re just not as compatible as they thought they would be. 

     They have a pregnancy scare the summer before Astoria starts law school, and when it turns out to be just a scare, Iain proposes, and Astoria accepts. They’re engaged for Astoria’s first year of law school, and this is when things really start to fall apart: the more time Iain spends with Astoria in her element, the more he realizes that they are fundamentally different people with deeply incompatible codes. Iain is uncomfortable with Astoria’s vicious ambition; Astoria is uncomfortable with Iain’s apparent lack of drive or direction. Iain is uncomfortable with Astoria’s ease with lying, bending the truth, and helping guilty people go free; Astoria is uncomfortable with Iain’s moralizing. It’s not the sad and quiet death that their relationship gets in the witch verse.

     Finally, they have an explosive fight when Astoria cancels on a dinner with his parents, visiting from Edinburgh, to attend a lecture. They shout at each other until they’re hoarse about their different priorities ( Iain wants a family, Astoria doesn’t for a while; Iain wants to plan the wedding, Astoria wants to focus on her law degree; Iain wants her to commit to being a better person, Astoria thinks that she’s fine the way she is ). Iain says he feels like he’s wasted nearly a decade of his life waiting for her, Astoria gives him back the ring and says that he doesn’t need to keep waiting around. He leaves, and she ends up sleeping with one of her classmates. 

     It’s the end of their relationship. It takes some time for them to recover enough to be friends again, and the friendship is casual and somewhat strained; Astoria refuses to get involved seriously with anyone after that for the rest of law school, and Iain heads back to London, where he’s married within the year. Where Astoria seems to be indifferent, she’s heartbroken; she knows that the relationship wouldn’t have worked regardless, but she’s miserable about it all the same, and she refuses to get involved in an emotional relationship with anyone for years after that, preferring instead to date casually. As soon as things get serious, she leaves. ( For a while, she keeps a picture of them with her sisters and brother the night they got engaged sitting in her office. There comes a point when she forgets it’s there. )

#ii. i think i might have inhaled you. ( iain ) #i. i smell backstory and i love backstory. ( worldbuilding ) #(i keep mentioning iain and forgetting to write abt him so here he is) #(i always imagine him as gaspard u.lliel) #(anyway! love iain. sorry u had to date this fuckin dISASTER) #i. you never hear of anyone storming a castle on a wednesday. ( character development )