Hello everyone! This is my first post so please forgive me for any mistakes or misspellings.
I have played through all three games now (with all of the DLC, including items) and I have been very careful about my choices, and so I had a question about one thing in particular.
In my game, Alistair became the king of Ferelden, not married to Anora or Elissa, and I had a very particular reason for this.
In the Return to Ostagar DLC, there's a codex entry entitled "Cailan's Documents - Page 2 of 3". This particular codex entry is a letter from Arl Eamon Guerrin to his nephew, King Cailan Theirin. In this letter, the Arl points out that Queen Anora is reaching her thirtieth year and has not yet produced an heir, suggesting that she may be infertile, and so Cailan ought to consider setting her aside in favor of another woman (from the other documents found in the king's tent, it appears that the woman Cailan intended to marry instead was Empress Celene).
After Cailan's death, it appeared to all parties that the Theirin line was completely eradicated, with the sole exception of Alistair. King Maric was the last of his line during the rebellion against Orlais, and he fathered only one two sons. The other Theirins, those who lived during the reign of King Vanedrin and King Brandel, were slaughtered by the Orlesians and King Meghren, leaving only Moira to continue the line of King Calenhad, and she had only the one son, Maric, who had two sons, Cailan and Alistair. Cailan died childless at Ostagar, so now Alistair is the last of his line.
Now, in deciding who would take the throne of Ferelden, I was determined not only to make a Theirin the ruler, but also to make sure that the Theirin line endured into the future. I chose to have Alistair rule alone, unmarried, and I list my responses for each possible outcome here:
-Male Cousland x Anora:
In this ending, Alistair is either dead, an exile, or a Grey Warden, and the throne is completely outside of Theirin control.
-Female Cousland x Alistair
In this ending, the Alistair is married to the Warden, and both of them have tainted blood as a side effect of the Joining. As a result, according to Alistair's dialogue if you romance him and do NOT marry him, it is impossible for two grey wardens to produce children together. So in this ending the Theirin line is still permanently ended, at least legitimately.
-Alistair x Anora
In this ending, Alistair is wed to Anora, who according to Arl Eamon's letter is quite possibly barren. It is also possible that Anora was not barren, and that either Cailan himself was infertile or the couple was simply unlucky. But I decided that it was too risky to have Alistair marry a potentially barren women, especially since he is the last of Ferelden's royal line. I also didn't particularly like or trust Anora after she betrayed the Warden and Alistair in the Arl of Denerim's estate.
-Anora rules alone
In this ending the throne is completely outside of Theirin hands and Alistair is either dead, exiled, or a Grey Warden.
-Alistair rules alone
Now at least we come to the ending I chose, despite the fact that I romanced Alistair as a human noble. In this ending, after Alistair is chosen at the Landsmeet, he speaks with the Warden afterwards. Since my Warden was romanced, he has some very interesting dialogue regarding his duty to marry and produce an heir in the future.
"I will need to find a wife, one who can bear a child. Who will live to raise it. I don't relish it, but... I will have a duty as the king"
So, from this we can conclude that, if Alistair is made the sole king of Ferelden, he intends to find a wife and produce an heir. Since Anora is imprisoned and disgraced, it can be safely assumed that he won't be marrying her, and he won't be marrying the Warden either. According to Morrigan's dialogue when she proposes the Dark Ritual, she required a Grey Warden who had not been tainted for very long in order to produce a child bearing the taint. This why she must sleep with either the Warden, Alistair, or Loghain, and not Riordan. So Alistair has a time limit on producing this child, or else the taint will eventually render him infertile.
So, now we know that Alistair is fertile, and, if he is made sole king, that he intends to marry a woman of childbearing age and attempt to produce an heir. My question to Bioware is this: Does he?
The Fifth Blight happened in 9:30 Dragon, and after the events of Trespasser it is, by my count, 9:43 Dragon. 13 years have passed since Origins, meaning that Alistair only has approximately 17 years left until his Calling, and making him around 31-38 years old, assuming he was around 18-25 in Origins. He must have married during that time; does he have an heir yet?
In future Dragon Age games, I would like to have the matter settled, for both Anora and Alistair if either one of them was left to rule alone. Who knows, perhaps Anora wasn't infertile after all, and she could also have married, or perhaps even produced an heir with Alistair and founded a new line of kings of Theirin and Mac Tir blood after all. I think myself and other fans of the franchise would be interested to hear the end results of the choices we made regarding Ferelden's royalty.
Thank you for reading my long and poorly written wall of text. Hopefully my first post on here was satisfactory. ![]()





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