Yvette Valmont

“By 7:97 Storm Sotiria was still childless, and the emperor sent her to a cloister so that he might marry his mistress. As anyone other than Etienne might have predicted, the Nevarrans took this poorly.” ―Brother Genitivi^[1]

Empress Yvette Valmont was the mistress and eventual third wife of Emperor Etienne Valmont I of Orlais. She was the mother of his twin sons, Reville and Gratien Valmont.

Background[]

Yvette was the mistress of Orlesian Emperor Etienne Valmont I during his marriage to his second wife, the Nevarran Princess Sotiria Pentaghast. When he failed to produce any children with her in fifteen years of marriage, Etienne set aside his wife in 7:97 Storm to marry his mistress. Although the marriage to Yvette angered Nevarra and almost caused a war,^[1] the new Empress soon gave birth to twin sons in 7:99 Storm. The birth of the princes,^[2] Reville and Gratien,^[3] after so long a period of uncertainty heralded what was declared the Blessed Age by the Chantry.^[2]

After the death of her husband in 8:21 Blessed,^[4] the former empress held the title of marquise during the reign of her elder son, Emperor Reville Valmont. Marquise Yvette acted as a calming influence on her son, who was so notoriously unstable that he was nicknamed "Mad Emperor" Reville. When she died^[3] in 8:47 Blessed,^[5] Reville fell into deep mourning and snapped, ordering the execution of his younger brother Gratien's entire family out of paranoia that the court preferred Gratien over him.^[3] Even after Yvette's death, the emperor was convinced that his mother's ghost continued to advise him.^[6] In 8:49 Blessed, Reville had the reflecting pool Miroir de la Mère constructed in Val Royeaux, evicting many shops and vendors to do so. The emperor demanded a reflecting pool large enough to draw his deceased mother back from across the Veil, but its construction was not completed until the week of his own death.^[7]

The meaning of the eight silks draped across the Belle Marche in Val Royeaux's Summer Bazaar were theorized by some to represent the twin sons of Empress Yvette, the two loops of the number 8 representing each boy. Others irreverantly supposed the number 8 was a slight against Yvette's figure, as she was rumored to be a stout woman, yet determined in her choice of corsetry. Both theories were dismissed by historians in the Dragon Age as nothing more than number fetish.^[2]