Character Info

[mage_hunter]

» Name: Marian Hawke
» Canon: Dragon Age 2
» Canon Point: Post-Game, after investiture as Viscountess of Kirkwall, after Mark of the Assassin and Legacy, but before the events leading up to Varric's abduction by Cassandra Pentaghast (the backdrop narration of the story post-canon)
» Gender: Female
» Age: 31
» Appearance:

A tall, healthy, pale-skinnned middle aged woman with hawkish blue eyes a straight, small nose and short-cropped black hair kept in an unruly fashion. She has almost statuesque features and a pronounced and somewhat cold demeanor in her bearing, and frequently dresses in chains and leathers, or in robes that show her allegiance to the chantry whenever possible. She doesn't wear much in the way of makeup unless in a formal event, and tends to like having small splotches of war paint over her nose. She is seen carrying about a long, golden staff with the symbol of Andraste at its crest, a stave that she has carried for the last seven years of her life.

Her voice is frequently very calm, cool and quiet, easily mistaken as the voice of a soft-spoken person when her anger is not riled. However, that temper can flare up very easily, especially if her family or innocents are involved, and she can take on a demanding, violent and brutish tone of voice, her features contorted into an aspect of wrath that has left a few wrinkles at the edge of her eyes.

Personality:
Marian Hawke is a complicated, torn and dark woman, haunted by the decisions she has made in the past, the people that she has trusted and the deeds that have surrounded her life. Hers is a life that is filled with sorrow, with pain and with want, and few are the comforts she has outside of those friends she has managed to remain close to over the years, friends whose associations have frequently caused a great deal of pain for her, and even for many people around her. It has made her prone to brooding and melancholy at times, though rarely in a fashion that she allows others to see openly.

On the surface, Marian is a harsh, cold and methodical person. She speaks in short, sometimes clipped phrases, and has the tact of a bulldozer crashing into a truck full of nitroglycerin. One cannot help but know her mind when they speak to her, as she will generally make her opinions abundantly clear in the baldest, flattest and most humorless fashion imaginable. What little sense of humor she has is reserved for the few people that she actually likes in the world, namely amongst them being her brother, Aveline, Varric and Fenris. Most others are treated with a certain amount of disdain as a general rule.

Her crude, even occasionally vulgar behavior is a learned response that has been heaped upon her already basic personality. Living a hard life as an apostate mage, constantly wary of the templars with her father's watchful eye guiding she and her sister Bethany in proper training, Marian has always been a suspicious and untrusting person, generally not willing to allow people to become close too quickly. Anyone aware of her apostate status could be someone that might turn her into the templars. While she might welcome a Circle's structure and its training, to allow herself that would have been devastating to her family in the younger years, might have crippled her sister's life and would have put her in a position where she could not help her aging mother and brother through difficult times. After the fall of Lothering in her twenties, she becomes increasingly suspicious of anyone that she meets who might cause harm to her remaining sibling, Carver, or her mother Leandra. Out of a desire to help ensure that they are cared for, she retains her status as an apostate in the city of Kirkwall, much of her early career being focused upon trying to protect those she loves most, wanting a fortune to allow her mother to reclaim the Amell family estates. However, with every passing year, she finds herself increasingly in deeper and deeper political underpinnings that both refuse to allow her the freedom to simply enter the circle, and begin to teach her one very important lesson that will pattern most of her life within the city.

The people of Kirkwall are collectively insane.

As much as this might seem like an over-simplification of the complex political situation that surrounded the presence of the Arishok and his Qunari contingent within the docks, and of the relationship between First Enchanter Orsino, Knight-Commander Meredith and Grand Cleric Elthina, at the end of the day, the learned and oftentimes crude responses to the situations of the city Hawke was forced to deal with proved to her that most of the people she met with any importance in the city were stark, raving mad. Almost every mage that she ever encountered within the Circle of Magi proved to be a blood mage in training, corrupted by the influence of demons and willing to go to maddening and destructive lengths to escape the Circle's Tyranny. Apostate mages in the area like Anders and Merrill were outright mad, trafficking with demons and spirits of the fade, one becoming an abomination and ultimately engendering a near global war in his crusade, and the other almost dooming the city and her entire clan before her insane clan elder took matters into her own hands. The Templars who watched them, too, were frequently depraved louts (such as in the case of Ser Alric and his “Tranquil Solution,” which involved caging and controlling magics as personal playthings in his sadistic mind games.) who were less focused on aiding and protecting the mages from their own oftentimes dangerous abilities, and more on personal power and control. The Qunari were universally half-mad heathen barbarians preaching a heretic religion and squatting in the city while they attempted to recover an item that it took years for Hawke to learn had been stolen by one of her occasional companions, a former ship captain by the name of Isabela, who frequently caused her more trouble than she was worth. Even the Chantry's leadership were either unable to make any declaration, or went infinitely too far and too brashly in their responses to the Qunari threat. Ultimately, Marian simply lost the patience to deal with the vast majority of these people in any sort of civilized fashion. She bludgeoned her way undiplomatically through every problem that they forced on her and tried to re-establish what she perceived as a sane, orderly situation: Heathen Qunari gone from her city, Rogue banditry slaughtered until they stopped trying to rise up, Mages in a Circle for training or under its watchful gaze and Templar behaving as their protectors and guardians against corruption.

She failed, miserably. It weighed upon Marian just how badly she failed in all of her endeavors. When she sought to get money for her family to rise in station through a Deep Roads Expedition, she nearly lost her brother forever to the Darkspawn corruption, and even then he became a Grey Warden who rarely saw his family, just as the two had finally begun to reconcile their differences. She lost her own mother Leandra to an insane blood mage's depravities. When she sought to aid in expelling the Qunari, the final result was being forced to save the city from itself in a massive fight in the streets that led to personal combat with the Arishok. Even as Champion, she could not control the situation brewing between Orsino's inability to control his mages and Meredith's insane paranoia about demons at every turn, corrupted by the very idol Hawke had inadvertantly led to being brought to Kirkwall. Only after six years and the death of every last one of the insane rejects but Merrill who had nearly destroyed the city, and the loss of countless other lives could the city of Kirkwall hope to have a moment's peace, something that could not last because of the global war these events helped to precipitate.

It all made Marian a bitter, cold and hard woman. She took her closest solace from the few people in the world that she trusted, most noteworthy amongst them being her brother, Varric and Fenris, with whom she spent most of her career at various times. To them was shown a kinder and somewhat more gentle countenance, the eyes of a tired woman who wanted people to just stop and listen to themselves once in a while. To the rest of the world, however, was shown a stern face of someone long past the point of being willing to suffer idiocy at the hands of people too selfish to see what they were doing to others. She, later on, came to realize some of her own hypocrisies in this attitude, as she herself was an intensely selfish person in her dealings that kept her safely out of the Circle until rising as Viscountess of Kirkwall. However, she was mollified in many respects by the knowledge that, like flotsam on the waves of a titanic sea, she was being pushed forward into a life as one of Thedas' most infamous apostates, though one that tried to ensure that it was at least under observation by the Templars towards her thirties.

Marian brooks no nonsense, and is an extremely demanding individual, one who favors an ordered, structured and calm society. She is a rigid and unyielding Andrastian and firm believer in all of the Chantry's most traditional teachings, only remaining out of the Circle out of care for her family and because of her father's extensive tutelage, and later only because of her status as “Champion” as proclaimed by the Knight-Commander of the city of Kirkwall, and later its Viscountess. She views her magical powers to be a mixed blessing, both a curse because of the connection to the fade and demons, but also a means by which a person who is trained and reserved in their dealings can help protect the lives and faiths of others, a test of one's faith as it were. She despises blood mages and abominations alike, and never trusted Anders or Merrill after their earliest dealings, remaining close to them more to keep an eye on them than anything, as the two apostates could have ruined her had they been captured (The fact that her defeat of Corypheus demanded a small amount of blood magic remains a fact that haunts her to this day.). She is almost humorless and extremely dour most of the time, something attested to quite frequently by the annoyed way that Isabela would generally deal with her when the two could stand each other's presence for any length of time. There is very little gentleness inside of Marian, most of this having been bled away thoroughly by her observations of the worst in humanity at large, and she is not known for being a patient or understanding person. In truth, her lack of patience can be so extreme at times that her blunt and bald retaliation to problems that she perceives can even come off as more than a little stubborn and dense.

Chief among her personal concerns are getting the job done, protecting the people who cannot protect themselves watching over her family and close friends. While some might believe that she would show the same sort of care to mages in a Circle of Magi, especially one as draconian as the Kirkwall Gallows, Marian would counter that it is quite obvious from the frequency with which these magi escape and the ferocity of their abilities in defending themselves against attack through blood magic, traditional sorcery and occasional other tricks such as those abominations possess, that they are far from defenseless waifs incapable of guarding themselves. In fact, she is always considerably more likely to view magi as being the sorts of people that others need to be protected from, not the other way around. Instead, it was the poor and the destitute of the city, those who were constantly at risk from the harm caused in armed conflict after armed conflict that receive her greatest attention. She has little respect for moochers and layabouts who abuse this sort of care, but she wants for all people to be cared for and tended in an orderly, reasonable and caring fashion. Despite being on the wrong end of the law frequently, she detests outright and active lawbreakers and has little to no tolerance for raiders, the Coterie, Carta or organized criminal gangs. Bending of the rules is one thing, but these actual predators hold little respect for her, and she is not above “Taking the Law into her own hands.” However, if she can acquire official sanction to act, she will almost always work to stay as close within the authority the law provides as she can.

Marian's relationships with her companions, as has already been stated, were frequently quite complex. With Merrill, Isabela and Anders, there were long periods of distrust, distaste and outright hostility. In the case of Anders, this relationship ultimately degraded when she saw the mad abomination “Justice” turn on and kill an otherwise innocent mage while attempting to cleanse the tower of a truly blighted and power-mad templar by the name of Ser Otto Alrik. She sent him away and wished never to see him again. When he returned after causing the death of countless clergy in destroying the Kirkwall Chantry, the man was beyond her forgiveness and she slew him without hesitation. Merrill, she despised as a blood mage, but was forced and bound to protect because of the intervention of the ancient sorceress Flemeth and her perception of being spiritually bound to an oath to Merrill's keeper, Marethari. With every passing year, however, she became increasingly convinced that Merrill was a danger to herself and everyone, wishing to bring back dark and forbidden magics to “Aide her people.” Finally, when those magics led to Marethari's death, Marian took full custodianship of Merrill to ensure that she could harm nobody else and denied her any further access to more power until the matter of the Circle could be resolved. Isabela was one step away from criminal scum in her mind, but she was useful “reformed” scum, and the two were able to work together, though Isabela's theft and hiding of the Tome of Koslun nearly drove a permanent rift between them that was only healed because Marian honestly hated the Qunari more than her. The Arishok himself was a man that she despised, but who she ultimately had some small semblance of respect for after years of arguing with him. He, among almost all the villains that Marian was forced to deal with, was perhaps the one honest man she had ever known in all of his dealings.

Her other relationships that were closer fared better than those. Varric, while a man of questionable moral character, never favored going to outright illegal ventures, and frequently helped her to deal with far greater threats. The man was trouble, but he was also her trouble and he could be talked out of really stupid mistakes when the time came to it, and even did the same for her on occasion. Fenris became the love of her life, and outside of her brother, was arguably one of the only sane people she knew. He was a touch too embittered by his days as a Tevinter slave, but she could never bring herself to speak ill to him over that issue. Her brother Carver was a man with whom she had extremely difficult relations at times, the boy no longer wishing to live in his sister's impressive shadow. Their mutual hatred for the folly of the local magi, however, helped to bond the two as they sought to protect their mother and provide for her. When he took off on his own as a Grey Warden, it was with her blessing after a fashion, in the hopes that his shortened life would be full of his own greatness, and a life that was of his doing. Aveline and she got along surprisingly well, for as much trouble as Marian tended to cause in the city. They did not spend a great deal of time together, but the two could generally count on each other as allies in helping to restore order where possible. Sebastian, frankly, she treated as something of a whining brat. She could understand the Grand Cleric's concern that he flitted about between oaths that he would take in hasty fashion, and ultimately she advised him to return to his oaths rather than continue down the self-destructive path he had been leaning towards when they first met.

In meeting new people, Marian is as prickly as a cactus. She does not trust easily, and new people are almost always going to get a certain amount of short shrift from her. Any sign of magical power will immediately put her on the defensive because of her terrible experiences with fellow magi, and her general attitudes towards the responsibility of most people. She can be coaxed out of this state, but only by those who demonstrate that they are themselves responsible and aware of the consequences of their actions. If there is anything that Marian has learned in her years of fighting one threat after another, it is that her choices have consequences, and those consequences can destroy the lives of countless people if she is not careful. To those who are both straightforward, honest and forthright in their dealings, and who are aware and savvy of the prices that they pay and the effects they have on others' lives, she has the utmost of respect, and can become a true, if very blunt and direct friend.

Sexual Orientation:
Heterosexual – While the “Protagonist” has the option of romancing any number of people, the decisions that the character makes reflect the sexuality that the character of Hawke actually expresses. She demonstrates no sexual interest in any of the three women who were available to her at any time (Isabella, Merrill or Tallis), nor does she spend any length of time at the local brothel in Kirkwall. She demonstrates active distrust of all three women for different reasons, and outright despises Anders with an unmistakable loathing that leads ultimately to his death. She displays attraction only to Fenris, rather frequently, and ends up in a complex and emotionally difficult relationship with the former Tevinter Slave, but shows signs of being able to express romantic interest in other men. This does not mean that Marian is incapable of a homoerotic attraction, but as she is displayed, she is only ever seen to express attraction for men, and defaults to this attitude.