The companions of Dragon Age: Origins brought an opportunity for the Grey Warden player character to explore love while battling against the darkspawn during the Fifth Blight. Male Wardens could romance Leliana, Zevran and Morrigan as their approval ratings began to grow. However, Morrigan was the most difficult to understand and keep, even though the love she developed was genuine.
Having grown up in isolation, a Witch of the Wilds watching her mother lure in unsuspecting templars with her feminine wiles to make them disappear, Morrigan's understanding of love and romance were mildly skewed. An incredibly powerful woman raised her, her father not even so much as a mention in her life, and much like Flemeth, Morrigan holds onto her control over her own life and future with pride. However, that doesn't mean she isn't interested in love, even if her initial responses to flirtation and intrigue are met with yawning boredom.
The approval system in Dragon Age is essential to earning companion loyalty, and loyalty can often lead to more than just friendship. Early on, Morrigan is often short-tempered, condescending and brash in conversation, believing everyone is out to get her because she's a mage, so earning her approval is required even to encourage her to think about friendship, much less love.
Morrigan's approval can be garnered through supportive dialogue that tends to agree with her point of view. She can also be swayed with various gifts, including silver chains and golden broaches, demon pendants, and grimoires. Finding these while traveling through Thedas and gifting them to her helps boost her approval, as does completing her personal quest to kill her mother and obtain Flemeth's personal grimoire. The Feastday Gifts and Pranks extension offered a gift for Morrigan that boosted her approval significantly, bypassing all of the smaller gifts and conversations and winning the chance for her heart a bit sooner.
Morrigan's wants and needs aren't outlandish, but to secure a romance with her, they need to be taken into consideration. She craves power and control above all things. She wants to take charge of her life, and anyone who dares to stand in her way will be crushed and left behind without a thought. She is a huge believer that only the strong survive, and she will not be agreeable with a Warden who lowers himself to help others who cannot or won't help themselves, basically disagreeing where Leliana, Wynne and Alistair would be more inclined to help out. As what the Chantry considers an apostate, she also has a deep disregard for anything that has to do with the Chantry.
She will also not tolerate a Warden who doesn't know what he wants, so if the player is romancing other companions, she will force them to make a choice - them or her - and if the player chooses anyone but her, it results in a significant drop in approval. Once the relationship reaches 70% approval, Morrigan will give the Warden a special ring, a token of her affection that allows her to connect psychically with her lover. The romance can advance significantly if the player doesn't mock her sentimentality and accepts it while also expressing the same concern for remaining connected to each other.
Falling in love with the Warden becomes a problem for Morrigan, especially after getting her hands on Flemeth's grimoire. She has never really been in love before, and the feelings terrify her because it means she might have to put someone else first. The conversation she starts can be tricky, even causing her to leave the party if not handled carefully. However, if she does stay and is in love, she will stop allowing the Warden into her tent to be intimate with her.
Morrigan's unique role in the franchise could help make her an essential part of the archdemon's ultimate defeat. When an archdemon is slain, the soul inside it seeks out the closest tainted being, which is what makes Grey Wardens the only ones who can actually kill them. They die with the soul inside them, keeping the archdemon from rising again. After studying Flemeth's grimoire, Morrigan discovers a ritual she can perform with a Grey Warden to conceive a child. Because that child's blood will be tainted with the blight, it attracts the archdemon's essence, and the child will be born with the soul of an old god inside it.
The Grey Warden can choose to sleep with Morrigan before the fight and conceive a child, and that child plays a significant role in the future. The bond of a child ties Morrigan to her Grey Warden lover beyond the game, and there are even special scenes between them in the Witch Hunt DLC. Though life is often complicated for them after the Fifth Blight, they still find a way to be a family, something Morrigan has never really known.
Morrigan even references the Warden in Dragon Age: Inquisition while talking about their son, Kieran, and a certain fondness can be heard in her tone. It seems that Kieran grew up knowing his father, which is far more than Morrigan can say for her own youth, or more than one of the other choices for a father if the Warden doesn't sleep with her, can say of their relationship with Kieran. She is still headstrong, power-hungry and absolutely bent on taking control of the world around her, but there's a subtle softness to a Morrigan who has known love. When all is said and done, and Corypheus has been defeated, Morrigan and Kieran disappear for parts unknown, and it is assumed that she reunited with her love.
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