Anghraine

So I started half-a-dozen scraps of things!

Here's some early canon-compliant Darcy:


Here's a bit about my headcanon for Elros's wife, early on:
Here's some Mass Effect!Shepard!Elizabeth:

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Tolkien on Cirion and Eorl:


Tagged:

#eorl thinking cirion is the noblest and wisest man in his world ;_; #anyway they would be super happy to know that cirion's heir and the sister of eorl's would one day marry #and i am one hundred percent sure that their legacy loomed very large at the wedding

It’s obviously not the worst part of that wtf take on the Stewards, but “most notably” Ecthelion? Over Mardil? Boromir? Cirion?

Pffft.

#but ecthelion liked aragorn so that makes him the best steward of them all #>_> #tbh cirion is probably the best ruler gondor ever had

For once, Quora sent me something relevant to my interests:

Hills I will die on:

Fíriel’s claim to the throne of Gondor and Arvedui’s claim to the throne of Gondor are not the same!

Arvedui tries to claim the throne for himself through Fíriel, under the pretense argument that that’s how it worked in Númenor. But in Númenor, Fíriel would be Ruling Queen, and Arvedui her consort, not the other way around. The only men who claimed to be king through their wives’ birthrights were usurpers. And Fíriel never claimed the Gondorian throne in her own right.

Arvedui also claims the throne as heir of Isildur (sort of—iirc his father was actually alive at the time?). This is the sole claim that Arvedui and Fíriel’s descendant Aragorn makes later, which perhaps suggests that he sees it as more legitimate or at least more persuasive. Regardless, it’s a separate matter from Fíriel’s rights, and I think the lines between the two distinct claims that Arvedui makes get blurred a lot.

Tagged:

#'fíriel should have been ruling queen' is fair (i wrote fic about it in my youth!) but also never under discussion in the story #and aragorn himself gives no indication of thinking he should be king as /fíriel's/ heir—only isildur's #and we know vanishingly little about fíriel's life much less her opinions #my headcanon is that she went back to minas anor with her daughters and lived in state as a princess of gondor #but #we don't know what she felt or did or anything #so it's always kind of weird when people defend arvedui's false representation of númenórean law bc fíriel got treated unfairly #jka;dfad it's not exactly everything that makes me defensive on aldarion's behalf #but like #arvedui: my wife being daughter of the king means i should be king actually #aldarion and ancalimë: *spinning in their watery graves* #yes i've talked about this before and yes i will talk about it forever

I reblogged a detailed sketch of a possible design for Boromir's armor and the Stewards' iconography from lesbiansforboromir on Tumblr. In the text, they (rightly IMO) criticized the design for Gondor in the Jackson films as "bland unsaturated fantasy medieval europe."

I reblogged and added:

#sing the song of my people #it's like..... tolkien explicitly said that the inspirations for gondor were ancient egypt + byzantium + italy #which would be SO COOL #and they gave us... that #anyway these designs are gorgeous :)

queen-of-carven-stone said:

“God forbid Gondor is something other than a vague reward for Aragorn” - AN ETERNAL MOOD

I replied:

It is certainly my eternal mood!

#gondor has a rich complex culture and history of its own #it includes large and beautiful stretches of land #coasts and mountains and valleys and farms and forests and rivers and waterfalls #it has a population of millions of citizens #there is so much there!!!! that has vanishingly little to do with being aragorn's prize! #like. aragorn himself realizes this!! #anywayyyy

This isn't the post on the subject I made on Tumblr, but the longer, rantier version I drafted before that and decided against posting there. Some people wanted the full version, but I didn't want to deal with Tumblr tag hell, so I thought—hey, I'll post it at Dreamwidth and link it for the people who want to read.

Okay.

I was thinking over the omission of the scouring of the Shire from Jackson's ROTK, which is both easily understood and one of the films' worst decisions IMO in terms of LOTR's treatment of war.

And, of course, I was also thinking of how underwhelming I find film!Gondor, which is largely reduced to Minas Tirith and the fields around it (clearly not farmland in movieverse Gondor), and which even with regard to Minas Tirith is pretty underwhelming to me. I think that taking a country inspired by ancient Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, and Italy more broadly (including some explicit Gondorian analogues to places like Venice and Assisi) and making it that blah and watered-down really takes some doing.

It then struck me that while these are both things that bother me a lot, and intellectually, I believe the omission of the scouring is worse because it's more integral to the main themes and arcs, there is an important difference.

It's this: the LOTR films love the Shire.

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An anon said, with regard to this and this:

I always read "all the ways of the City" as 'in all parts of the City'? Like, ways in the sense of highways and byways.

I replied:

Mm, it’s possible, but I think less probable.

Not everyone in LOTR respects Gondor the way I feel they should, but shout-out to the giant Eagles:


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