Aveline

Born to an Orlesian farmer in want of a son a newborn was cast out by her parents and left in the wild for the cold to take her. But before the cold could claim her life a camp of traveling Dalish elves found her, took her in and raised her as one of their own. Aveline, for that is what they named her, grew strong and skilled in many of the skills they taught her including archery, dueling, riding and survival and it wasn't long before the Dalish realized that their Aveline could best any man in battle. Wanting to show the cruel humans who had abandoned her the folly of their ways the Dalish elves sent Aveline to participate in a tournament, which at the time, was illegal for women to do. However, Aveline hid her face with a helmet that she refused to remove and participated in many battles under the guise of being a knight from Antiva.

Aveline bested many a knight in this grand tournament until the grand melee, where she faced a male knight by the name of Kaleva who was in service to the Orlesian emperor and considered the finest in the land. Having already been bested by Aveline in the jousting competition Kaleva was desperate to prove himself and determined to avenge his earlier loss. Kaleva fought fiercely but Aveline managed to match every blow and in an act of desperation Kaleva tripped her and forced her to the ground. The blow knocked off Aveline's helmet, revealing her identity to the crowd.

In a fit of rage Kaleva demanded that the competition be declared invalid since Aveline was a woman and women weren't allowed to participate in their tournaments. However, Aveline's prowess and skill had won over the crowd who cheered for her and jeered against Kaleva's demands. In a fury at being bested by a woman, Kaleva forced Aveline to her knees and slit her throat.

This is a story well known in Orlais of the knight chevalier Aveline. One who was known for inspiring the son of the emperor, Prince Freyan, who was present at the tourney to abolish the law which forbade women from joining the Orlesian knighthood known as the chevalier. Freyan ascended to the throne in 7:44 Storm and, newly crowned, posthumously honored and knighted Aveline as he banished the law against women knights. It is also well known that, despite female chevaliers remaining relatively rare, all those who choose this path of knighthood revere Ser Aveline as their patron knight. Orlesian smiths are notorious for forging new equipment of armor and weapons which they claim to have belonged to her and even those in Antiva accepted her as one of their own.

What isn't known is how the story continues, that the knight Aveline in spite of her wounds continued to live on and accomplish many great feats in other lands. In service to a lineage she had only just begun to know.

At first it was simply prudent to keep her identity a secret. If it were discovered that she had survived Kaleva's attempt on her life it would spell trouble for everyone involved (Prince Freyan included, for he had been the one to discretely hire the mage that healed her rather than cremating her body, not to mention the team of folks that had smuggled her out of the area afterwards).

So she kept her face covered, kept on the move, went by a different name in every city. She did manage to visit her Dalish family and reassure them that she was alright, even stayed with them for some time, but it was around then that she noticed something strange.

She wasn't aging like everyone else.

At first she thought that she was imagining things, but as time went on it became more obvious. Elves raised as her younger siblings began to wrinkle and gray while she remained as though frozen in her early twenties, when she'd gone off to the tourney.

This was what finally spurred her to look into her parents and lineage, to return to her birthplace of Halamshiral and find evidence of the Temporal Rifters amongst the ancient built-over elven ruins.