Veilguard Character Appreciation: Davrin
As mentioned on my Emmrich & Taash posts, this is a very self indulgent post for me to ramble about things that I appreciated about the companion characters in Veilguard. I'm planning to post one per character, loosely following the order of the Veilguard Appreciation Week prompts! Please feel free to reply or reblog with your own thoughts if you are so inclined c:
Davrin is one of the two characters that I was very excited to meet, even from the very little amount of pre-release material I saw. Suffice it to say, I am not immune to the allure of Grey Wardens, nor the allure of extremely handsome men, nor the allure of extremely handsome men with cat-bird sons, so I was super excited to meet him.
And it was funny, because as I got closer to meeting him, I was like, alright, every other character I've met so far has far exceeded my expectations. I love them all. So Davrin is going to have to be the disappointment, right? (Wrong. Very Wrong)
From his very first quest, you get a glimpse at the type of person he is - deeply passionate, deeply compassionate, and extremely self-sacrificing. The fact that in the first quest where you meet him, he reassures every griffin by name - even though he downplays himself as just the bodyguard, it's obvious how much he cares.
And he subscribes himself so fully to the Warden philosophy. This man lives and breathes In Peace, Vigilance, In War, Victory, and In Death, Sacrifice. He is so ready to die in Weisshaupt - the conversation afterwards, where your Rook can ask why it's a problem to not have died - it still gives me shivers, no matter how many times I do it.
And then there's the whole fact that he clearly is so torn on how best to raise Assan, and so passionate about his work as a monster hunter - he sees himself as a shield, as someone to stand in between innocents and danger, and it shows in everything he does. Even the fact that he wants to write his own monster manual, and carves his enemies - it shows not just a deep understanding of his enemies, but it shows a desire to teach, and to correct things that put people in danger.
The practicality of everything he does is so interesting. Like the reaction he has to all the revelations about the history of the elves - all he cares about is how it affects the elves of today if it gets out, which is such a valid take to have and really so important! He cares about advocating for the helpless.
He's also just so honest and frank with Rook. All the companions have levels of honesty, but Davrin is so up front about his past when asked? It's really refreshing - he's not afraid to say what he thinks or what he wants to, but he's also generally not an asshole about it.
I just want to give him a hug, honestly. So much of the game is him finding out all of these horrible, earth shattering things about his people's history, and the Warden's history, and the griffon's history, that I feel like he deserves it.