[GUIDE] Bhelen or Harrowmont - Who should rule Orzammar? Paragon of her kind

One does not simply request aid from the dwarves... at least not without getting neck deep in politicking and going on an ungodly slog through the Deep Roads.  If you’d like some insight into the sort of choices you’ll make during that slog, please see Branka, Caridin and the Anvil - To Golem or not to Golem?

But before all that, you’ve got choices, kingly choices to be precise!

-Do you choose Bhelen, the progressive last son of the king and backstabby bastard?

-Do you choose Harrowmont, the traditionalist prejudiced old advisor but generally honorable guy?

-Do you wash your hands of this mess? No, you gotta choose.

Please note: There are a myriad of different epilogue cards in Dragon Age Origins, many of which don't hold true with the story as it progresses through DA2 and DAI. To get round this BioWare has said they were merely rumours and not hard facts. Thus, information past the ending of DAO should not be considered hard canon, with some exceptions.

Let’s look at the pros and cons:


Bhelen - Pros

Most will agree that the most appealing thing about Bhelen is his lack of regard for the caste divides of Orzammar society.  If he becomes king, Bhelen will expand the rights of the Casteless, allowing them to bear arms for Orzammar, which according to the epilogue leads to the greatest reclamation of Deep Roads territory from the darkspawn the dwarves have seen in generations. He also expands trade with the surface.

Dwarven commoner players will have an additional reason to think well of him, as their sister Rica is Bhelen’s lover.  In dwarven society, a child takes on the caste of their same sex parent.  If the mother is casteless and the father is noble, then a son would become a member of the noble house and the mother’s family is customarily adopted into that house.  As fate would have it, Rica and Bhelen recently had a son (your nephew!) named Endrin after his grandfather.  This makes your nephew the heir to House Aeducan.

If you’re a Dwarven noble player, you will probably have plenty of reasons to want Bhelen dead, but if you played a male and slept with a noble hunter (lower class woman that seek out noble men in the hopes of bearing a son to boost their status, like Rica) you will arrive in Orzammar to find that your dalliance has produced offspring.  You can ask Bhelen to accept your son and his mother into House Aeducan in exchange for helping him gain the crown.

The task you have to perform to gain his favor involves revealing Harrowmont’s supposed double dealings with House Dace and House Helmi, supposedly he is offering the same land to both families. This culminates in trip to the Deep Roads to find Lord Helmi and show him the supposed fraud.  This allows you to access a portion of the Deep Roads you would otherwise only be able to access in the Dwarf Noble Origin.

If you like two handed weapons, Bhelen will regift you his eldest brother’s maul after receiving the crown.

Bhelen- Cons

Bhelen is a fratricidal and possibly patricidal power hungry maniac who will kill anyone in his way.  Remember how I used “supposed” in that last section about Harrowmont’s double dealings?  That’s because it’s a load of bronto dung, Bhelen falsified the documents to turn House Helmi and House Dace against Harrowmont.  He has also been using the Carta, essentially the Dwarven mafia, to do his dirty work including arranging the death of his brother Trian, framing his other sibling, and fixing the Provings.  If Branka and the Anvil of the Void survived, he apparently supplies Branka with unwilling “volunteers” to keep the stream of golems flowing.

He is neither gracious in defeat nor generous in victory.  Bhelen’s first act as king is to have Pyral Harrowmont executed.  He then has the entire Harrowmont family systematically murdered by the Carta to the point where the last surviving member is forced to flee to the surface (This goes beyond Epilogue slides, as you actually meet this survivor in a quest during DA2).  If Harrowmont is crowned king, Bhelen will refuse to accept the result and attempt to kill Harrowmont right there in the Assembly with his supporters, resulting in his death.  Even then, a rebellion bearing Bhelen’s name haunt’s Harrowmont’s reign for years to come.

As king, he also eventually dissolves the Assembly and rules as an autocrat.  Whether that’s good or bad will depend on your feelings about the Assembly though.

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Harrowmont - Pros

Lord Pyral Harrowmont is all around a pretty honest and honorable man in his way.  He deals fairly and up front with Warden, and he is one of the few to defend the Dwarven Noble Warden in their Origin.  He’ll even take in the Dwarf Noble’s illegitimate offspring if you ask him to.

To earn his trust, you need to fight for him in the Proving Arena, as Bhelen has been intimidating or bribing his fighters.  Frankly, a lot of Harrowmont’s appeal comes down to how much more honest he is compared to Bhelen.  Declare yourself for Harrowmont and you’ll be invited to his estate.  Note: You can still fight in the Proving as an independent fighter after completing Bhelen’s quest.

Upon gaining the crown, Harrowmont also gives you a mage staff from his armory, which came into the family through a noble hunter who received it from a human mage.  It apparently spent time as a back scratcher, since a mage staff is pretty much useless to a clan of dwarves.

Harrowmont - Cons

Harrowmont turns out not to be the most effective king.  He’s a traditionalist and thus bows to the whims of the Assembly, resulting in Orzammar becoming more and more isolationist, with relationships with the surface nations suffering as a result.  This pleases the traditionalists in the Assembly, but the reduction in trade generated unrest among the lower castes.  Remember, Orzammar is dependent upon trade with the surface for foodstuffs.  It doesn’t help that he increases restrictions on the casteless.

His reign is defined by isolationism and civil strife in Orzammar.  He is able to crush Bhelen’s rebellion with Branka’s golems if she survives and eventually refuses to allow further dwarves to be used to create golems.  However, with the demand for golems to fight the darkspawn always high in the Deep Roads, he may or may not have sanctioned secret raids to the surface to capture human or elves to be used in the process.

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Conclusion

This will come down to how you want to roleplay it.  The material rewards aren’t significantly different.  On the face of it, Harrowmont is going to come across as the more moral choice, but Bhelen doesn’t come across so bad if you don’t dig too deep.  My personal canon Warden was a politically naive Dalish elf who supported Bhelen but didn’t realize his skulduggery until too late.