The bard Leliana has gone by many names, including Sister Nightingale and the Left Hand of the Divine. She came to the Hero of Ferelden’s side under seemingly innocent circumstances, but has proven over the years to be anything but innocent. Her swift, eager blade and strong convictions have put her on the front lines of multiple wars and at the command of the Sunburst Throne.
The Lady's Grace
In Leliana’s most vivid memory of her early childhood, she sees herself, a child of little more than four, holding her mother’s hand as they stand on the stone terrace of an Orlesian villa, looking out at the cresting waves of the Waking Sea. Behind them are gardens of sweet orange and lavender, but the only fragrance that stands out to Leliana is the gentle scent of her mother’s gray linen dress. These days, Leliana is unsure if the moment is real or merely imagined, but cherishes it nonetheless, as it is one of the few images she retains of her Fereldan mother, Oisine.
Oisine passed away after Leliana’s fourth birthday. Oisine’s mistress, Lady Cecilie Vasseur, who had grown fond of Oisine and her bright-haired little daughter, became Leliana’s guardian. Lady Cecilie, who had no children of her own, was saddened by the shadow cast over Leliana’s sunny disposition after Oisine’s passing and gave the girl everything she asked for, hoping to see her smile again. The only thing Leliana ever asked for was books. She lost herself in stories of lost princes and lady knights. When she exhausted Cecilie’s library of Orlesian and Fereldan tales, she went to the elven servants and asked them to tell her stories of their people. Leliana’s obsession with stories led to a fascination with ballads and songs, and before long, Cecilie was hiring tutors to teach Leliana music and dance. Leliana recalls that one of her favorite places to practice her steps was on the stone terrace of the villa, with the gardens behind her and only a white balustrade between her and the sea.
When Leliana was sixteen, she accompanied the aging Cecilie to a soiree in Val Royeaux. It was to be Leliana’s first experience with the capital and Orlesian society. Leliana describes herself as being “thoroughly dazzled,” not least because it was at this function that she first met Marjolaine, who would become one of the greatest influences in her life. Marjolaine was introduced to Leliana as a wealthy widow and patron of several artists and musicians in attendance.
“She commanded the room from the moment she walked in,” Leliana says. “She knew everyone and people were drawn to her. It wasn’t just her beauty–and she was beautiful, though not in the style of the time, which was all about delicacy. Soft prettiness, like flower petals. Marjolaine was never soft. She was never pretty. She wasn’t like the rest of them. But that’s why everyone wanted to know who she was.”
Leliana says she realized later Marjolaine’s charm came from how well she played people. She could read them at a glance and discern their weakness. Those who desired influence, she flattered. Those impressed by power, she dominated. She was generous to those who valued wealth, and kind to servants, speaking directly and respectfully to them. She earned the loyalty of many that way.
“I only understood the significance of her manipulations when I caught myself doing the same, for the same reasons,” Leliana says.
The Huntress
Much to Leliana’s surprise, Marjolaine began calling upon Cecilie at the villa. Cecilie, who was growing frail, would often leave Leliana to entertain her visitor while Cecilie composed herself. Marjolaine and Leliana quickly became close friends, with Leliana enchanted by Marjolaine’s worldly ways. To Leliana, who had lived a sheltered life with the pious, kindly Cecilie, Marjolaine represented adventure and excitement: a knight-errant, come to rescue the lady in the secluded tower.
While on a hunting trip, Marjolaine presented Leliana with her first bow and taught her to use it. Leliana’s first inept attempts at shooting merely wounded the hart the hunters had run down. Distressed by the suffering of the animal, Leliana refused to finish it off. As Leliana watched, Marjolaine approached the wounded hart. With a practiced, steady hand, she pierced it through the eye with a long dirk, killing the beast immediately. Leliana vivily recalls Marjolaine’s words then: “Never delay the inevitable. If you can strike, strike.”
Later that summer, Leliana visited Marjolaine at her Val Royeaux estate. Marjolaine began teaching Leliana the arts of a bard: subterfuge, manipulation, and, of course, how to fight. “She was so subtle in it,” Leliana says. “It was always in the guise of a lady’s idle amusements: hunting, theater, or little games of seduction and sabotage. I didn’t see what she was doing. Perhaps I remained stubbornly blind because I didn’t want to see. And I became hers.”
While under Marjolaine’s tutelage, Leliana met new friends: Sketch, an elf, and Tug, a dwarf. Together, the three got up to adventures that spanned the length and breadth of Orlais and even took them into Antiva and Ferelden. Leliana remembers these times as some of the happiest and more carefree in her life. They would come to a swift end, however, when Marjolaine grew paranoid that, with Leliana’s growing skills as a bard, her protégée would one day turn on her. Staying true to her philosophy of never delaying the inevitable, Marjolaine struck, betraying Leliana and her two friends. All three were captured, and Leliana was stabbed and grievously wounded by Marjolaine.
Both Leliana and Sketch survived Marjolaine’s trap, thanks to the actions of one Revered Mother Dorothea. Tug, however, did not. The loss of Tug made it difficult for Leliana and Sketch to carry on as they had been. They parted ways, Leliana fleeing into Ferelden to keep away from Marjolaine. Leliana would continue to tell stories of the trio, often embellishing the details, and admits rather freely that it is her way of reliving a happier time. Sketch, on the other hand, is rather less fond of Leliana taking liberties with the truth, as evidenced from his letters to her.
On the anniversary of Tug’s death each year, Leliana opens a bottle of distilled plum brandy, imported from Antiva, and drinks it in memory of her friend. She pours a glass onto the stone for Tug, saying, “Antrast tunsha, salroka.”
A Shadow in the Sun
Taking strength and inspiration from the words of Revered Mother Dorothea when she was at her lowest, Leliana dedicated herself to the Chantry. She remained in Ferelden for several years, becoming a lay sister in a cloister in Lothering. The cloister offered Leliana a peace that she had never known before, allowing both body and spirit to heal. She believes she may never left Lothering if it were not for the Fifth Blight and her “vision.”
“First she tells me about this dream, of her falling into an encroaching darkness, allowing it to take her under,” recalls a fellow sister at Lothering. “She said it was so real, like she was there. And then she showed me this perfect white rose that she found from the cloister garden, from the rosebush beneath the arbor. It had been dead for two winters. And then, a single flawless rose, when there were no leaves, and no other sign of life–she thought it was a gift from the Maker. A message that He was watching and telling us to have hope. Nothing I said could shake the thought from her mind that this was a calling. With the Blight at our door and the darkspawn on our heels, she wanted to give people hope.”
Leliana picked up her bow and daggers, and, using the skills Marjolaine taught her, fought for Ferelden against the Blight. The bard who had cared only for fun and adventure was now infused with a purpose born of faith.
Following the Fifth Blight, she received a summons from Dorothea, now Divine Justinia V, who had been named successor to Beatrix III. Divine Justinia’s appointment was controversial: she was known to be a liberal and rather worldly revered mother, and those who saw her as a threat to Chantry tradition mobilized almost immediately. Answering the Divine’s call, Leliana went to Val Royeaux, where she was asked to assume the role of the Divine’s Left Hand: her spymaster, maintaining a network of agents who answered solely to her.
Justinia was a savior and an inspiration to Leliana, and Leliana was eager to repay the debt. To serve the Sunburst Throne, she had to call upon the skills learned over two decades, all with the purpose of furthering the Divine’s cause to reform the Chantry. From gentlewoman’s companion to bard and then to Chantry sister: with the Divine’s summons, Leliana was forced once again to reinvent herself.
“We are separated by years and death, but her hold on me is unrelenting,” Leliana says. “Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her smile, the dismissive wave of her hand, and I turn and see it is only movement in a mirror. I hear her words, and they are mine. She is the shadow that hounds my steps, because she is my shadow. My mother loved me, Cecilie nurtured me, and Dorothea saved me, but Marjolaine made me in her image.”
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oh please don't make laugh here because i can from head come up with characters that praise her to havens when mention her varric , solas , cullen ,cassandra ,sera and pretty much almost every companion and 
