Per their agreement to be—nice? horrible? it's hard to tell—to Adelaide's attaché, Alistair doesn't turn up in need of any making over. Finery might be overstating it; he's very Fereldan, and so are his clothes, stubbornly, despite a decade of expatriation and a general lack of patriotic zeal. But if he was underdressed for the soirée, in all this brown and leather, he's at least adequately dressed for lunch.

"I don't have a gift for you," he says on the approach, and he's not an actor—not even attempting—so there is no cloying apology in his tone. A friendly statement of fact, that's all. "I might later, though, if I can recover my things from Montsimmard."

That, too, is true. Maybe. If she's nice.

And on the theme of honesty: "You look nice."