Key Takeaways
- In Dragon Age: Origins, Alistair reveals that he believes his mother was a servant who died in childbirth.
- However, a spin-off book revealed that his mother was actually an elven Grey Warden mage called Fiona.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition was going to include a scene where Fiona confessed the truth to Alistair, but this was cut.
Alistair’s backstory isn’t a particularly cheery one. After spending some time with him in Dragon Age: Origins, he’ll eventually tell you that he’s the son of a king and a servant. His mother died during childbirth, and he was instead raised by the king’s brother-in-law.
Except, that’s not true at all. Alistair’s mother was actually an elven Grey Warden, Fiona, and this was kept from him because she felt he would have a better life if no one knew he was elf-blooded. This is revealed in the book Dragon Age: The Calling, with Fiona later making her video game debut in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Related
Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Warden Cameo Was Cut At The Last Minute
The Warden was replaced at the very last minute, according to David Gaider.
Even though Alistair can appear in Inquisition too, they never get a chance to connect. However, this wasn’t always going to be the case, with former series lead David Gaider at one point planning to have Alistair be told the truth about his mother.
Alistair Almost Found Out Fiona Is His Mother In Dragon Age: Inquisition
Speaking on BlueSky, Gaider revealed this in a thread detailing how Alistair was written in the Dragon Age series
“I actually had a whole scene written in [Inquisition] where Fiona tells him, but the requirements were so specific for them both to be in Skyhold and it seemed like it’d be relevant only to a small small sub-section of fans (and confusing to everyone else) so it was dropped,” says Gaider. “Rightfully so, I guess.”
True enough, it isn’t guaranteed that they will both be at Skyhold at the same time. For Alistair to show up, he needs to have survived the events of Origins (not executed, exiled, or killed by the Archdemon), and remained with the Wardens, so not made king. That’s situational enough, but then Inquisition players would have also had to side with the mages over the templars, since Fiona doesn’t show up otherwise. That might mean only a small percentage of players would have ever seen this.
Despite this, Fiona does get some lines of dialogue that reference her being Alistair’s mother. Regardless of whether he’s a Warden or the King, she will ask the Inquisitor about him, but shoot down the idea of meeting him.
Fun fact: Alistair actually is meeting his mother in the feature image for this article. This only happens if he is king, as he shows up at Redcliffe to banish her from the country for working with the Venatori. Actually, this is not a very fun fact at all.
Alas, a happy family reunion wasn’t meant to be. Presumably, Alistair never found out who his real mother is, and has no idea that he is elf-blooded. Dragon Age: The Veilguard didn’t give us an Alistair appearance either, so we have no idea what he’s up to now. Maybe we can just give him a good ending in our imaginations, yeah? Unless you left him in the Fade, I guess. God, there are a lot of ways to kill this dude.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third in the popular action RPG series from BioWare, and serves as a sequel to the events of Dragon Age 2. You must travel the continent of Thedas in order to seal the ‘Breach’, a kind of portal that is sending demonic enemies into the world.