Dragon Age lead writer shares the heartfelt process of creating Inquisition's Dorian, says his 'story is not MY story, but it's also not far off'

GamesRPGDragon AgeDragon Age: InquisitionDragon Age lead writer shares the heartfelt process of creating Inquisition’s Dorian, says his ‘story is not MY story, but it’s also not far off’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Dragon Age Dorian

In case you’re unfamiliar, while homophobia isn’t necessarily a big, institutionalised deal in Thedas, Dorian’s father attempted to change his sexuality using blood magic, because he was both gay and also unwilling to supply House Pavus with an heir. While blood magic doesn’t exist in the real world, “conversion therapy”, a relic of an era where homosexuality was criminalised and pathologized, unfortunately does.

Gaider, who is a gay man himself, led the charge on some of Dragon Age: Origin’sbisexual romances, which were a pretty big deal back in 2009. Dorian, however, was his first gay character: “It’s no big secret I have a lot of feelings about Dorian, not least of which because he was my first (and only) gay male companion. There’s a lot more to him than that, of course"Gaider writes, “(as there should be), and it was quite a trip.”

He explains that Dorian’s initial concept was born out of a set of short character briefs to help the artists design them better. “We stuck to vibes and the emotions we wanted the concepts to evoke,” Gaider writes, before explaining that Dorian’s elevator pitch was “rock star mage”. In a stroke of both tablet pen and genius, Dorian’s concept artist turned Freddie Mercury into a mage and gave him a monkey. “Sadly, we had to lose the monkey.” We can’t have it all.

(Image credit: @davidgaider.bsky.social)

Concept art of Dorian from Dragon Age: Inquisition, with the following text: “Me: “He looks kind of like… Freddie Mercury?“Him: “Is that bad?“Me: “NO ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS AMAZING"Plus there was a monkey. Sadly, we had to lose the monkey.There were iterations to come, but this was really where Dorian was born: Tevinter mage, noble, savant, and too cool for school."

His sexuality, however, didn’t pop up until a later writer’s meeting. Gaiderwrites thathe even “didn’t think that could work. ‘Rich kid gets kicked out of the house for being gay’ wasn’t a trope I wanted to explore. But, then again, magister families in Tevinter are obsessed with the appearance of perfection.

“Any deviation from the ‘norm’ is considered scandal-worthy. It said weakness. It said you couldn’t control your house. Now… THAT had real promise. The writing pit discussed it a lot. So I think it’s fair to say that the gay fairy was already circling Dorian even before we got to the romance talk.”

While Gaider doesn’t go into any details (and is certainly not under any obligation to), hedoes go on to hintthat “Dorian’s story is not MY story, but it’s also not far off. I wrote the entire confrontation scene in one go. After I was done, I probably cried harder than I ever have in my life.”

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The scene he’s speaking of is whenDorian confronts his fatherabout his attempt to preserve his family’s legacy at the cost of his son’s agency and trust—it’s a heartwrenching bit of writing, made more impressive being allegedly written in one go, with Gaider saying the only feedback he got was a tearful “it’s good”.

He then goes on to make apretty salient pointabout his work: “I don’t think a writer needs to be a minority in order to write a minority. Sometimes those characters should simply exist, and we want them to. But if that character’s story is about their experience as a minority? That’s different.

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