Skyrim: Here’s How To Marry Astrid With Mods

As you’re probably aware, Skyrim has a plethora of potential marriage candidates for you to choose from. There are numerous approachable male and female NPCs requiring nothing more than friendship before they are willing to join you in marriage. However, for some reason, players mostly get hung-up NPCs that are difficult or downright impossible to marry in Skyrim. One such character is Astrid, a mysterious and ultimately tragic former leader of Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood. She is as deadly as she is charming, and once you get to know her past her icy demeanor and tough attitude, you will begin to wonder, can you marry Astrid in Skyrim? 

Astrid’s story in Skyrim 

Astrid is a secretive and malevolent leader of Skyrim’s chapter of Dark Brotherhood. She is a Nord assassin and doesn’t stray from using murder to get what she wants. The first time you meet Astrid is during the Dark Brotherhood’s entry quest, “With Friends Like These.” She kidnaps you, places you into an Abandoned Shack, and forces you to kill one of the prisoners bound in the shack. 

From the first moment, Astrid lets you know that you are extremely expendable for her, and she puts the interests of her small Dark Brotherhood family above everything. Astrid is famous for making terrible choices in life, and that’s why she is a) an assassin, b) married to a werewolf, and c) gets herself killed. 

Soon after you joined the Dark Brotherhood, Astrid felt the tide turning. She felt threatened by both you and Cicero, and this is why she ended up betraying you and the Dark Brotherhood’s location to Penitus Oculatus, led by Commander Maro. 

Commander Maro used the opportunity to betray her in turn and nearly destroyed the Dark Brotherhood by sacking the sanctuary. When Astrid saw the giant mistake she made, she sacrificed herself as part of Black Sacrament and gave you the opportunity to kill her. At least you got the Blade of Woe out of the entire ordeal. 

Why can’t you marry Astrid in Skyrim? 

You can’t marry Astrid in the unmodded game for several reasons. First, Astrid is married. We’ve mentioned the werewolf in the previous portion of this post. In fact, her husband is one of the first NPCs that you meet when you enter the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary.

Astrid is married to Arnbjorn, and he lets you know about their relationship status as soon as you meet him in a pretty obnoxious way, if I may add. Sadly, the marriage was ultimately broken since Arnbjorn met his demise before Astrid did. 

The second reason why you can’t marry Astrid is that she was never supposed to “survive” past the Dark Brotherhood storyline. No matter whether you decide to join the Dark Brotherhood or destroy it, Astrid ends up dead. 

And this leads us to a third and final reason, due to Astrid being an extremely limited and short-term character, she never had marriage dialogues implemented, and those are essential when it comes to marriage in Skyrim.

A while back, we made a guide on marrying Sapphire. Sapphire is not marriageable in the game, but she has all the necessary dialogues to make it happen with the use of console commands. You easily make Sapphire both your spouse and your follower by abusing various relationship ranks to make it happen. This is not the case with Astrid. She has unique voice acting and unique voice lines and lacks all the necessary lines to follow you and marry you. This makes her off-limits, at least when it comes to the unmodded game. 

How to marry Astrid with mods? 

Marrying Astrid with mods is possible, but so far, I’ve managed to find a single mod that does exactly that. The mod’s name is Astrid Follower-Marriageable, and it does exactly what the title says. It allows you to use Astrid as a follower and potential marriage candidate. You can download the mod from this link. There doesn’t seem to be a version of this mod for Skyrim: Special Edition. 

The mod places Astrid in Solitude after the Dark Brotherhood questline has been concluded. She somehow survived, and you can recruit her and even marry her. However, in order for Astrid to appear, you’re going to have to clear the Wolfskull Cave quest first. The mod likely works by adding someone else’s marriage lines to Astrid. 

It’s not a perfect solution to the problem, but it’s at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a better way to marry Astrid. Even with commands, it’s impossible. 

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