Ohhh Evelyn, you audacious little heretic. :P
In actual Dragon Age: Inquisition mechanics: no, a female Inquisitor cannot romance Dorian in the unmodded game. Dorian’s romance is written specifically for a male Inquisitor, and that’s part of his character and story.
In glorious headcanon / modded Thedas / “Varric swears this happened but Cassandra keeps tearing up the pages” mode? Absolutely. The key is not “tricking” Dorian into wanting something he does not want, but letting Evelyn become the one impossible exception he never expected: not because she disguises herself, but because she meets him with wit, poise, danger, and a wickedly tailored sense of theatricality.
So, story mode:
Dorian Pavus had learned, over many years and several regrettable salons, that most people who called themselves irresistible were merely loud.
Evelyn Trevelyan did not call herself anything.
She simply appeared at the top of the library stairs in a fitted blue-and-black court jacket, silver fastenings catching the candlelight, pale hair like frost over a blade. She had the look of someone who had survived demons, nobles, apostates, templars, and Leliana’s silences, and somehow still had the energy to be trouble.
Dorian glanced up from his book.
“My dear Herald,” he said, far too smoothly. “You look like you’ve come to either save the world or ruin my concentration.”
Evelyn leaned one shoulder against the shelf. “Can’t it be both?”
“That depends entirely on how much damage you intend to do.”
She smiled.
A lesser man would have missed the danger in it. Dorian, being both brilliant and doomed by taste, did not.
He closed the book.
For weeks, their flirtation had been a duel fought with eyebrow raises, wine glasses, and remarks sharp enough to require healing magic. Evelyn had discovered that Dorian liked spectacle, yes, but not empty spectacle. He liked courage when it wore perfume. He liked honesty when it had excellent boots. He liked someone who could stand before a magister’s son and neither worship nor pity him.
And he did, regrettably, like watching her leave.
Especially when she knew he was watching.
One evening, after a council meeting that had somehow involved three maps, two assassins, and one very offended Orlesian, Evelyn paused at the library railing.
“You stare, Pavus.”
“I appreciate composition,” Dorian said. “There’s a difference.”
“And what, precisely, is the composition?”
He let his eyes travel with theatrical leisure: the shoulders, the waist, the confident set of her hips, the dangerous calm of her mouth.
“Defiance,” he said at last. “In a very flattering silhouette.”
Evelyn’s cheeks warmed, but she did not look away.
That was the moment Dorian’s expression shifted. The smirk softened. The performance remained, but only as candlelight remains on water after sunset.
“Careful,” he murmured. “Keep looking at me like that and I may begin to suspect you mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
The library went quiet around them. Even the books seemed to hold their breath, dusty little gossips that they were.
Dorian came closer, not quickly. He was not a man easily startled by desire, but Evelyn had startled him by arriving without apology. Not asking to be made into something else. Not demanding he become something other than himself. Merely standing there, luminous and impossible, offering him a door.
“I am not,” he said softly, “accustomed to being surprised in ways I enjoy.”
Evelyn’s voice dropped. “Then I’ll try to make a habit of it.”
His smile returned, but this time it was almost shy.
Almost.
“Well,” he said, brushing a gloved finger beneath her chin, “that sounds terribly dangerous.”
“It is.”
“Good.”
Later, when the fire had burned low and Skyhold had surrendered to snow and secrets, Evelyn told him—blushing hard enough to satisfy any Chantry muralist—that there were certain accessories, certain carefully chosen inventions, certain discreet little enchantments of intimacy, should he ever wish to explore the question of what admiration from behind might become.
Dorian stared at her for one full second.
Then two.
Then he laughed.
Not cruelly. Not dismissively. He laughed with delight: bright, startled, and helplessly fond.
“Maker preserve me,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest. “You have been planning logistics.”
“I am the Inquisitor. Logistics are my burden.”
“My dear Evelyn, you have turned seduction into a war table operation.”
She hid her face in one hand. “I knew I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No, no.” Dorian caught her wrist gently. “Never deprive me of a tactical briefing that begins with blushing and ends with scandal.”
She peeked through her fingers. “So…?”
“So,” he said, kissing her knuckles, “we discuss. We laugh. We set rules. We make no assumptions. And if the evening proceeds, it proceeds because we both want it to.”
Evelyn exhaled, relieved.
Dorian leaned closer, voice velvet over mischief.
“And for the record, yes. I did mean I rather enjoy watching you leave.”
Her blush returned in full force.
He looked enormously pleased with himself.
“But,” he added, “I find I may be developing an equally strong appreciation for watching you stay.”
And there it was: no conquest, no disguise, no cheap loophole in desire. Just two impossible people in a cold fortress at the edge of history, finding a private language between them—half banter, half tenderness, half scandal, which Dorian insisted was mathematically valid if one was sufficiently charming.
By morning, Varric would notice Dorian smiling into his tea.
Cassandra would notice Evelyn walking around with the serene expression of someone who had won a battle not recorded in any official report.
And somewhere in the library, a book would be found open to an entirely unrelated page, because Dorian Pavus, for once in his life, had been too distracted to finish reading.
Which, frankly, was how everyone knew it was serious.
