My 6 Favorite Video Game Wives

I’ve been playing a lot of video games the last few months toΒ keep fromΒ lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and worrying myself into an anxietyballΒ about the election. Sometimes it’s nice to lose yourself in a world where theΒ only thing standing between an imperfect but evolving society and the end of the world is you, and you can actually do something about it. You know, like slaying dragons and closingΒ demon portals and blastingΒ aliens. It’s also nice to think about how four of the last five Games of the Year have gay romance options! SoΒ with that in mind, I made a list of my six favorite video game wives. Just a fewΒ years ago I’d never even been married once!Β Progress is happening even in the face of this backwards-facing voting season.


Uthgerd the Unbroken, Skyrim

uthgerd

Uthgerd was the very first woman I ever married. I didn’t even know you could get married in Skyrim! But one day Uthgerd and I were exploring a cave (not a euphemism)Β and I found an Amulet of Mara and put it around my neckΒ and next thing I knew we were saying “I Do” at the temple in Riften. She was a grumpy broad, that Uthgerd. Sometimes, out of the blue, she’d say, “Keep walkin’, softgut! I’m more woman than you can handle!” SadlyΒ Skyrim followers don’t level up with you so evenΒ as I became a legendary archer, known throughout the lands, Uthgerd never sharpened her skills. When IΒ left her at home in Whiterun to keep her safe, I’d always return to the Bannered Mare to find her drunk at 10am, slurring along to with the bard to a song about decapitating insufferable men. She died fighting a couple of low level draugr, and I loved her too much to loot her Orcish armor. My curmudgeonly two-handed misandrist.

Piper, Fallout 4

piper

Even though it was a literal wasteland out there, PiperΒ still wanted me to Do Right. And not in that chaotic good way, either; she wanted me to fix the world without picking locks, stealing stuff,Β or letting people die (even if it was for the good of the Commonwealth!). SheΒ wasΒ a little clingy; she hatedΒ it when I flirted with Cait. And she madeΒ it impossible to navigate tricky situationsΒ with forceΒ because she gotΒ mad at meΒ every time I was even a little bit rude. But gosh, I love me some do-gooders.Β Falling in love with Piper in Fallout 4 was like falling in love with an apocalyptic Lois Lane. It was perfect.

Emily, Stardew Valley

emily

I started playing Stardew Valley because Rachel played Stardew Valley and also I loved Farmville so far beyond what was cool that all my Facebook friends hated me.Β But it’s not just harvesting corn and fighting angry slimes in the mines; you can also romance half a dozen women in this game! There’s Haley, the prom queen with the secret heart of gold; Maru, the brilliant scientist; Leah, the artist with the ex-girlfriend who had a terrible alternative lifestyle haircut and never believed in Leah’sΒ dreams; Penny, the depressed schoolteacher; Abigail, the goth gamer with an adventurer’s heart. And there’s Emily. Emily works at the pub and makes her own clothes and rescues/rehabilitates wounded magical birds, and on our first date she astral projected me into her dreams! She held a town-wide fashion show to protestΒ gender norms and empower self-expression! We got married in the fall and she set up a meditation field on my farm and wakes up early to put water in the cat’s bowl.

Josephine, Dragon Age: Inquisition

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Josephine may seem like a cool-headed diplomat who never tips her hand, but after I saved her from her arranged marriage, she sure did run to me and wrap herself around me and dance with me like nobody’s business at the Winter Palace. I mean, okay, at first she was like, “Why are you trying to rob me of my agency and also why are you risking your life inΒ a dumb duel when you’re the only one who can close the fade rifts and save the world?” Which: fair. But then after I told her I loved her so much, that’s when she ran to me and smooched me right on the mouth. I twirled her around. The music was like, “OMG, happily ever after!” And, reader, it was.

Mjoll the Lioness, Skyrim

mjoll

Mjoll was my best Skyrim wife. A complete teetotaling, self-righteous flibbertigibbet who spent half our battles yelling that she’d never been a sellsword. The problem with Mjoll was her ex-boyfriendΒ Aerin, just your averageΒ Nice Guy. He followed her everywhere in Riften, begging her not to leaveΒ town, reminding her every second of the day that he saved her life that one time. One night I returnedΒ home to find that Aerin had walked all the way to Solitude to watch Mjoll sleep. She would never have abided me running him through with my sword, so I waited until he left andΒ sneakedΒ behind him all the way back toward Riften, until a dragon descended from the sky and burnt him to a crisp. Mjoll never even mentioned it.

Liara T’Soni, Mass Effect 3

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Okay, soΒ Liara T’soni and I didn’t exactly get married, but we totally fell in love and went on down to Scissor Town. It was a very typical lesbian romance: I stopped by after every mission and processed all the details and my feelings with her, asked her to help me with a “special mission,” invited her to my quarters and told her I wasn’t over her (from Mass Effect 1), and she kissed me real good. Youngster specialists Traynor and Allers tried to turn my head, but it never bothered me that my elegant babe Liara T’Soni was 106. Sarah PaulsonΒ and I have that in common.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1719 articles for us.

60 Comments

  1. I literally just wrote in the survey that a regular video game column would be awesome and then I saw this.

    My fave (not actually married) wife is Leliana from Dragon Age. I was so giddy when my Hawke met her ?

  2. Oh Heather, you and I just had to have the same wives. Besides Uthred – whom I’ve never met- and Emily -whose game I’ve never heard of- your list is pretty much mine.
    There’s just something about piper isn’t there? It’s amazing that even in the depressing, hope barren wasteland you can find someone so naively committed to doing good.
    Josephine will always be bae. Not only is she a woman of culture she’s just so adorable and intelligent! I approve of this list.

  3. I got so angry and murdered Aerin right in my house. Mjoll would get REALLY upset every time she saw his corpse so eventually I dragged him to the fireplace and covered him in cheeses and baskets so she wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. Marriage saved.

    My Inquisition wife is Sera. Her romance is honestly my favorite one ever even though at first she’s annoying and I only picked her because she hit on me so shamelessly. But she updates her journal throughout the game and it’s very sweet and you can marry her in the DLC and I love that crass little elf so hard now.

      • Oh man baskets actually have one other VERY IMPORTANT use. If you want to steal things but can’t get hidden, you can put a basket on people’s heads to block their line of sight. They can’t perceive you though their wicker face-prison. It’s a beautiful thing.

        • Sweet! Added basket sneaking to Skyrim remastered goals, right next to do not accidentally, and sadly, fatally fus ro dah Lydia right off a cliff two hours after her joining you.

    • I know little to nothing of this game, but love the idea of resolving issues about your lover’s ex’s corpse by piling cheese and baskets on it. Like, what?!

    • That’s hilarious.

      I got a mod that let you marry Serana. We had bandits attack our house, and one of them ended up following us around after Serana brought him back (girl loves her necromancy magic). So, it”s probably good that I never killed Aerin or another NPC around her:p

    • This comment (and strategy for dealing with the consequences) is the best. Oh, video games. Never change your ridiculousness.

  4. Thank you Heather for this awesome list. Liara was my first video game wife, and Josephine is my forever video game wife.

    I’ve started DA:Inquisition multiple times, but whenever I romance anyone else, I feel like I’m cheating on Josie. She is so adorable but she won’t take any shit.

  5. I am in love with literally every video game woman I’ve ever romanced so this list speaks directly to my soul.

    Seriously though, Bioware done us good. In my Thedas, the three most influential people of the Age all have girlfriends. And Divine Leliana straight-up changed the rules of the Chantry just so that she could openly kiss her lesbian lover. It’s the gayest Thedas and I love that that’s even possible.

  6. Great choices. For Dragon Age: Inquisition, I usually tended to get with Sera for a female PC. She just made me crack up so often, and her romance was so sweet!

    Two other games that I would add, even though there’s not really any sort of marriage in them: Shanlotte from Dark Souls 2 (well, I feel like something’s there!) and Heather Poe from Bloodlines (even if it’s not maybe the healthiest relationship ever).

    And, of course, Fang and Vanille were a couple in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. I’d have gone for Lightning myself, though.

  7. Liara will always be with me. Mass Effect is my favorite game series of all time even though I’m pissed to this day about how they screwed us over with ME3. I WANT MY LITTLE BLUE BABIES.

  8. Aela the Huntress from Skyrim is my FAV WIFE (it’s okay I don’t have a non-pixel one). We’re a sapphic werewolf couple with two adopted daughters, a fox and a dog.
    I did one behead her in the heat of battle, but I discarded that save and fought a dragon again in order to save her. That’s true love.

  9. Aela the Huntress from Skyrim is my FAV WIFE (it’s okay I don’t have a non-pixel one). We’re a sapphic werewolf couple with two adopted daughters, a fox and a dog.
    I did once behead her in the heat of battle, but I discarded that save and fought a dragon again in order to save her. That’s true love.

    • I always liked how Aela, even disagreeing with Kodlak Whitemane about the werewolf blood, still charged in yelling “FOR KODLAK” during the last Companions quest. Says a lot about her as a person and the Companions as a family. =)

  10. I just started DA: Inquisition, so I haven’t gotten into full on romancing yet, but I definitely have my eyes on Cassandra!

    • I just googled it and found out I cant Romance Cassandra because I have a female character! WHY DRANGON AGE?!?! WHHYYYYY

      • This is the most upsetting thing about that game. There are mods that make Cassandra bi, but I don’t know how well they work.

        • They work fairly well in that they don’t crash, but she’ll refer to you using male pronouns and most of the Inquisitor’s lines will be unvoiced.

      • There is SO MUCH Cassandra femslash on AO3. (I, ah, may or may not have written a nonzero amount of it, myself.) Fanfic to the rescue!

  11. “Well, actually” Piper loves picking locks! It’s a great way to gain affinity points with her. The rest of that is right on, though. :)

  12. Mjoll is amazing because she is quite literally immortal. She is marked as essential throughout the entire game.
    And yeah, I always murder Aerin and stuff his body behind a bookcase in his own home. :D

  13. Haha. I ended up marrying Mjoll too! I wanted to marry Serana though. Aela was my second choice. Still don’t know where it went wrong there. Definitly need to play it a second time!

    Now playing Dragon Age Inq. and haven’t gotten married yet. Wish I could marry Morrigan, she’s way hot. But I did dance with Josephine, so that’s always a possibility..

  14. Oh video game wives, how I love thee. Along with these ladies I would definitely give props to Leliana from Dragon Age despite not being able to romance her in 2 or Inquisition. Inquisition put her BAMF factor in overdrive.

    The one thing I loved about mods for Skyrim on the PC were the ones that let your followers level with you and Not die. There’s also one that lets you romance Serana from the Dawnguard DLC. Hopefully they make those available for the special edition soon.

  15. I married Aela in Skyrim because she was a hot werewolf who never gave me grief about stealing around her. I learned how to mod so I could hack the game to make her immortal and call her character to me when she got lost. She’s so naturally aggressive she’d die fairly fast in my more advanced quests when she charged monsters I was trying to sneak around.

    We have two kids and I made another werewolf friend of ours my caretaker so he watches the house and kids while we adventure and bring the kids home presents.

    Only other game wife I got super attached to was my wife in Fable 3, who was just a townsperson but looked randomly just like the woman I was dating at the time. We were awesome until I got hurt one too many times and got a scar on my face and her status went from “in love” to “happy.” Never felt so rejected.

  16. I was always partial to Curie from Fallout 4. Something about her French accent and the crazy, innocent view she had of the world. She cracked me up!

  17. Samantha Traynor from Mass Effect (I’m a sucker for her accent), Isabella in Dragon Age II, and Aela the Huntress in Skyrim for me. Best fictional wives ever.

    • Isabela is one of my all time favorite characters but in DA2 i romance Merrill because I ship Isabela and Aveline so hard. In my headcanon, after the fall of Kirkwall Aveline escapes on Isabela’s pirate ship and they fight and fight until eventually they bang and bang.

      I always also begin the Anders romance just so I can break up with him when he tries to move into my mansion out of his sewer-nest after we hook up one time. He is the worst.

  18. I would love a more regular video game opinion piece! Specially since some upcoming games are expected to have same-sex relationships. For instance, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Divinity Original Sin 2.

    To add to my set of Video Game wives:

    1. Chloe from Life is Strange
    She had blue hair, swore at her parents and smoked weed all day. You knew you weren’t supposed to fall for her, but dammit, you did anyway.

    2. Shaundi from Saint’s Row 4
    She may work for the mob, but she’s got a heart. She’s saved my butt countless times in the rough and tumble streets of Steelport.

  19. Oh man can we add on our own favorites to this already amazing list

    1) Isabela from Dragon Age 2. Because who doesn’t love a pirate queen who can get away with not wearing any pants for 7 years, right?
    2) Medusa from Astoria: Fate’s Kiss, who hits all my favorite tropes. Book-seller? Check. Cool-headed romantic. Check. Ex-mobster with family drama and temptations of going back to her life of vice and power? CHECK CHECK CHECK OMG CHEEEECK
    3) Cassandra from Dragon Age Inquisition. I know the game says she’s straight but that hair says she isn’t. Bless the modders.
    4) Camilla Valerius from Skyrim. Admittedly I didn’t marry her out of love. I married her because of the two guys in town who tried to pay me to lie to her about each other to make themselves look better, fucking with her feelings and winning her love with falsehoods. SO I MARRIED HER INSTEAD

  20. I’d been thinking of getting Stardew Valley cause I’m more of a casual gamer and it looked fun, but now that I know there’re all these awesome ladies to romance, I feel like I have to get it!

  21. In my brain “My 6 Favorite Video Wives” translates to favorite video game rifle/ gun because for half a second my brain forgets people get attached to the characters not the weaponry

    <_<

    No one asked but I'm telling anyway:
    Ridiculous lava arm cannon from the 2013 Deadpool is my one true love, the wife I wished I could have and hold for the rest of my video game life.

    • For me there’s just something about the railroad gun/rifle in Fallout. Not so ridiculous, but I’d get unreasonably happy every time I pinned the head or limb of an enemy to the wall or some debris with a railroad spike.

  22. I loved the romance with Samantha Traynor in ME3…though a lot of that is because I love the voice actress for her a lot as well. I was super happy to see her voicing the main character in DAI!

    In Skyrim I liked marry Sylgja. She works in a mine and had been injured in the past, and marrying her lets you move her into a much nicer part of Skyrim, which always felt nice. I wish Serana had been marriable though.

  23. This makes me so happy. But also sad because I can’t play any games right now as our graphics card isn’t working. Also my vampire follower won’t marry me on Skyrim because I am human.

  24. Oh this is so relevant to my interests and has brightened my morning immensely.
    I played mass out of order so only got the Liara romance last Christmas break when I played ME for the first time, with the aim of carrying that through. Scuppered by lack of two disc support on Xbox one. Damn it!
    Piper Wright may be the purest soul in the wasteland.
    In my second DAI playthrough I tried to romance Josephine but the pull to Sera was too great, a third attempt may be made…I can’t see it going differently. The combination of Sera’s adorable diary and being an insufferable tit but also genuine and always honest is too much for me to walk away from.
    As for skyrim, I never married in my first playthrough but I am taking all of your wives under advisement commenters and HH. The idea of starting again is daunting though.

  25. Josephine is my inquistion wife! But I have a huge soft spot for Leliana and Isabella, my other DA wives.
    I married Maru in Stardew Valley and do not regret it at all! She’s wonderful and makes me inventions and I have the best in-laws in the game!

  26. I’m a DA2 girl and I managed to sleep with Isabella and Merrill in the same playthrough. And lowkey I think Isabella wanted us all to threesome with her on her pirate ship, which I was totally onboard for.

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