DAI: Knight-Enchanter Trevelyan

Series Metadata

Creator:
Series Begun:
2020-08-27
Series Updated:
2024-11-30
Description:

These stories are all related to Knight-Enchanter Galen Trevelyan. The only fic that uses his first name is Bold Indeed. Everywhere else is simply Trevelyan. Bold Indeed creates a version of Ostwick that worked as a comparatively "benign" Circle, a project which I then had some tremendously mixed feelings about. See my series note below for details.

And FYI, the reason there's an Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus tag and Adoribull tag in here is because of Counterparts, the fic where alt-universe Dorian from Cadash's universe ends up as an outside POV narrator on Galen/Dorian.

Galen Trevelyan, my art Dorian Pavus & Galen Trevelyan

Notes:

Revised note (April 2022): I had quite a journey writing Bold Indeed. For a long time I struggled with the ethics of my choice to give a mage character a safe, gentle experience of his life in a Circle. On the one hand, I often want to caretake for characters around things that would make them extremely vulnerable in their world. On the other hand, I started to see how I was putting forth themes that could express a longing for a life in which authoritarianism can be sanctified, downplayed, and pretended away as a more benign contextual backdrop for stories that prioritize romanticism, humor, and fluff. No one else commented or pointed this out to me. It just struck me with sudden clarity after doing more reading and thinking on my own. And then I felt really exposed. As if there’s this deeply terrible thing about my own moral viewpoint that just bleeds all over the page in my escapist writing — and everyone else can see it immediately, but I was oblivious. It created a real sense of panic and an urge to just confess and do penance for my deep, incurable badness. Not an optimal reaction, but that was my initial panic.

All along, I had attempted to contextualize a less restrictive Circle as something that would only happen due to the application of money, power, and the sustained will of an authority who could monitor templars and set the tone for an entire Circle. I really couldn't imagine a Circle "just being good" or something. Rest assured, that's not the way I ever envisioned it. Initially my thoughts for a "better Circle" were based on my past interest in liberation theology within Catholicism — so I saw myself positing a Knight-Commander who was as opposite to Meredith as a liberation theology priest in the 1970s or 80s might have been in comparison to a right-wing authoritarian leader within the Catholic Church. I won't go into it much, but it was influential in my choice to make Knight-Commander Oscar the character that he is. Chapters 37 and 39 — with Galen reading First Enchanter Lydia's letters — were my attempt to add some more nuance to the way in which Ostwick changed and developed.

As of now, April 2022, I'm thinking about whether I have it in me to write a fully revised version of Bold Indeed — keeping the world as I've made it, but with more of the Circle politics in Ostwick being apparent in the story from the beginning. I don't know. I'm also tempted to write a day in Galen's life at Ostwick when he's 34 or something, right before all the Circles revolt and, in this universe, Ostwick doesn't. That's when Galen is at his most Loyalist — really trying to encourage his peers to trust that mages need supervision and to be grateful that Ostwick is a gentler place than most. It's a position he changes from, but it's tied to a lot of deep feelings of shame and sorrow he experiences in being a mage.

Bold Indeed's Ostwick Circle timeline
In thinking about where this would fall with the events of Asunder, the timeline I imagine for Ostwick in this series is: First-Enchanter Lydia does not go to the White Spire for the conclave regarding Pharamond. When she learns there is to be a vote in Cumberland regarding what the mages will do, she holds a vote among all the mages at Ostwick. This is the vote that Galen refers to, in which it is far from unanimous. Galen votes with the Loyalist faction, and exercises a persuasive influence on others who are uncertain. Loyalists win out in Ostwick and so Lydia sends messages, but does not attend the vote in Cumberland either. Knight-Commander Oscar also sends a message in reply to Seeker Lambert's summons, but he does not attend any gathering of the Knights-Commander, citing his age and declining health. In effect, this is the point at which both Lydia and Oscar begin collaborating more intensively on their strategy for riding out the war. This leads up to the events of Lydia's death and Oscar's important decision.

Concrit is fine and generally welcome. Especially about all this. While I don’t think it’s ever good or fair for me to subject other people’s fanfic to critique as though it were published, large-scale, for-profit media, I do think it’s okay to engage in deep self-reflection about the unexamined assumptions that populate my own writing.

Stats:
Words:
245,403
Works:
15
Complete:
No
Bookmarks:
12

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