For starters, let me clarify: this is not a thread to bash Josephine's character. I quite like her character; if I didn't, I wouldn't have romanced her to begin with. None of the problems here really have anything to do with her character; they mostly have to do with story structure and the entire romance's bizarre implementation. Two primary flaws jump out at me.
1. Josephine's attraction is based on nothing.
I will admit, I'm not really a fan of DA2's style, and DAI's perfection, of gating any sort of romantic thoughts behind PC-initiated flirt dialogue options, as they make LIs seem like androids who have switches to flip to activate their romance modes. However, no one (whose romance I've played) has it worse than Josephine. While companion romances at least have approval to give some kind of reason as to why they like you, which could be expanded further by the PC flirting with them, this isn't strictly necessary; ME1 had both of your potential LIs bring up crushes they had on you, and ME2 has various solutions for all the LIs who don't. Kelly's interactions with Shepard enters a state of mutual flirtation very early on if you pursue that, with both of them clarifying it in the next conversation; Garrus' romance is based on a FoB agreement that turns abruptly romantic at the end, Thane appears to be just lonely and looking for companionship (I have no idea about Jacob, I admit). So, approval isn't actually needed.
However, Josephine's romance appears to be built to emphasize every possible flaw of both the approval-less system and the flirtation-gate system. It's true that Josephine does sometimes respond positively to your flirts (other times, completely ignoring them in a manner that seems wholly OOC for someone so socially adept), but all of this is completely obviated when Leliana tells you that Josephine is oblivious to your romantic interest, and has given minimal if any signs of feeling any herself. Once the conversation where you actually start your relationship appears, the artificiality of the entire arrangement comes to a head when Josephine's response to your just stating outright that you're romantically interested in her is, paraphrased, "You've only known me a couple of months, this makes no sense." Then, once you compliment her, she's suddenly willing to get romantic (or rather, "would not object to" doing so) without giving any indication whatsoever of why she wants to do so with you. Furthermore, Josephine never says, in the entire romance, why she actually likes you. It's definitely not because of philosophical agreement, as you can completely disregard her wishes in her personal quest by having Leliana attack the House of Repose vault, and that only gets worse when you consider...
2. The duel is horses*it.
Apparently, this is the scene that her animation budget was used on instead of a sex scene. I still think that you could include a sex scene for those who wanted it and skip it for those who didn't, as I'm fairly sure was done in other romances, but that's actually secondary to the main issue, which is that the big culmination of Josephine's romance is terrible in every possible way, except maybe voice acting.
The biggest, most egregious problem is that the duel completely disregards Josephine's wishes; Josephine is the only LI where barging into her personal life to "solve" a problem in a manner that she explicitly does not want is actually mandatory. This would be a huge black mark by itself, but it compounds on the stupidity in several ways:
-The duel is called via war table operation, with Cullen, in the same room as Josephine, meaning that it makes no sense at all that she wouldn't know about it.
-The duel is in a style that the Inquisitor is wholly unfamiliar with. There's really no logical outcome to this other than the Inquisitor looking stupid and losing Josephine.
-It relies on ridiculously convenient timing for Josephine to show up right then.
-It also relies on even more ridiculous romantic cliches for Josephine to be stunned into a romantic stupor by the Inquisitor recovering by saying "Because I love you!" Which is a terrible line itself, because one would think that actually loving her, as opposed to trying to prove some idiotic point, would entail letting her handle her bloody engagement problem in the way that she wished to.
-It completely undermines Josephine's character and themes, which are consistently based around diplomacy, intelligence, and nonviolence, by finishing off her romance with a completely moronic act of ill-considered violence that only turns out well due to dumb luck. To me, it feels like if Sera's romance culminated in the Inquisitor rescuing a Tevinter magister from his own angry slaves, or if Dorian's romance ended in a threesome with a woman.
So, there you have it. Josephine really is a good character, I just wish she'd had a romance to match.
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