Anghraine

Normally I just vaguely describe text posts I reblogged on a certain date, but this one really cannot be paraphrased:



[Text: Tumblr user problempippin posted on 15 Jan 2019 that "pippin is buff and the reason why boromir and other men of gondor describe him as childlike is bc in gondor all children are fucking shredded"]

I added:

#finally quality gondor content

[ETA 5/24/2024: this was mostly but not entirely tongue-in-cheek on my part! Tolkien is pretty clear that even Third Age Dúnedain are bigger and stronger than other people, including Elves, and their standards of physical strength are pretty distinct. I could believe that kids in Minas Tirith are shredded :P]

An anon on Tumblr said:

First of all congrats on nearing the end of your PhD program!!! Woohoo!!!

Second of all, I’m muy late to the party here (been off tumblr for a bit) but WRT these tags ( https://www.tumblr.com/anghraine/749212904253947904/khazzman-tolkien-elendil-was-called-the ) what do you mean the pregnancies were strange lol how strange can they be…?

[The tags in question: #and that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how distinct and peculiar númenóreans are #fandom has slept on it for decades but they are reallyyyyyy unusual #they have weird pregnancies (and few of them) and horse telepathy and can rarely even get injured much less sick #there's this part where tolkien is trying to mathematically figure out elvish aging (hilarious tbh) and pencils in 'and númenóreans' #that's not even getting into the uncanny valley of númenórean kids...]

My reply:

As for the first point: Thank you! I'm really looking forwards to being done, lol.

As for the second point: anon, I delight in your innocence.

( Read more... )

An anon asked:

forgive me if you've answered this, but why do you think faramir was able to go from the way we saw him in ttt & early rotk (including seemingly having some prejudices against the rohirrim) to him suddenly being softer (& falling in love w/ a rohir) once in the houses of healing? it always seemed a bit of a jump to me & occurred so fast (although i guess having a near death experience is as good a catalyst as any) & id love to hear your thoughts on it (if you have any & want to of course!)

I replied:

Hmm, it’s an interesting question!

I will say that while I’ve seen the “Faramir is wrong and unfair about the Rohirrim in TTT” thing going around, I think that take pretty actively rejects Tolkien’s values and themes. I don’t think Tolkien remotely intended Faramir’s arc to involve coming around to respect the valorization of war and glory in Rohan, and increasingly in Gondor. He never does and he never will. If anything, it’s the reverse; Faramir’s reservations about the prioritization of martial prowess in the modern societies around him are Tolkien’s reservations, and Éowyn’s adoption of his ethos / at least partial rejection of Rohan’s is a conversion to a more mature and right way of thinking about these things in Tolkien’s treatment of it.

I mean, it’s fine for people to be uncomfortable with that (there’s a degree to which I am myself). But I think that people sometimes ignore that Faramir is the character most like Tolkien, and part of his function is to deliver Tolkien’s views within the story and influence other characters towards the values that Tolkien held. So that’s part of what’s going on.

Jumping back in-story, though:

I think the main issue is that in TTT, Faramir is acting as a commander among his men in a very tense situation, dealing with people he believes might have betrayed his brother to his death, and who certainly know more than they’re saying in any case (brief detour to the meta level: the ambiguity over what Faramir’s really like and what he’ll do in TTT also helps maintain tension in some very talky scenes).

Meanwhile, in early ROTK, he’s still acting as a commander, but with his own leader, whom he disagrees with about both his previous actions and their current tactics. Denethor is also his father, of course, and Faramir’s conduct there is influenced by their messy and painful mixture of love and opposition, but Tolkien notes in the letters that another major factor in how Faramir relates to Denethor is that Faramir views himself as a Númenórean before the last Númenórean head of state. This is a big deal for him.

And then he falls in battle, and when he wakes up, Denethor is dead and Faramir is the Steward of Gondor. Even though he still has someone he’s going to relate to in that Númenórean-to-Númenórean-lord way (Aragorn), it’s not the complex, concentrated thing it was with Denethor, nor the high-octane intensity of his situation in TTT. There’s no Ring, no soldiers, no dubious captives, no authority to answer to. He can simply act as he sees fit. Faramir with Éowyn is, I think, Faramir at his most natural, without these incredible pressures on him. He can afford to be softer, gentle, and compassionate, vulnerable in some ways, confident in others.

It’s more headcanon, but I also think that … yes, losing his family is freeing in some ways, but it’s also horrible, obviously. And I think part of what’s going on with him is that he’s dealing with loss, first with Boromir and then Denethor, and with the latter, that loss happened with everything unresolved, and he’s got to know there are things people aren’t telling him about it. I’ve talked about it before, but I do think there’s a lot going on in his head at that point, and he’s the sort of person whose grief makes him more sympathetic to other people’s. So I think that’s part of what’s going on, too.

And then after all of that, he just falls like a ton of bricks for this incredible woman. I don’t think he’d ever have minded that Éowyn is Rohirren—IMO his TTT remark that “we love them” is foreshadowing for this—but if he did at some point, he’s well beyond giving a single fuck about it by then. As we see with the very public kiss, of course.

So that’s pretty much where I stand on it all!

chestnut_pod left an intriguing comment on my post here in terms of racial purity/elitism in regard to Gondor c. LOTR and the characterization of contemporary Gondor by other characters, most glaringly Elrond. I started to reply more concisely, but the rant grew, so I'm just posting it here:

I always struggle with the reality that much of what Elrond says about Gondor at the Council is objectively wrong as well as repugnant, but the narrative doesn't really frame any of it as incorrect or morally dubious or a reflection on his character at all (despite the semi-corrections made by Faramir later, which somewhat ameliorates this, but only somewhat). In fact, the person who is framed as suspect in the Council interactions is Boromir for being offended and "rudely" outspoken about it (both on behalf of Gondor and Rohan) in addition to being ambivalent (not even especially negative! just unsure!) about the practical significance of Aragorn's pure royal blood.

Elrond also glorifies Gondor's former imperial power through comparison with Númenor's. His regret over Gondor's decay is tied to ideas of racial impurity (which in Gondor is a direct consequence of Númenórean and Gondorian imperialism, and which in any case is a bizarre characterization choice for him specifically) and to Gondor's inability to sustain its empire. I feel like all these sentiments are treated in the text as pretty understandable and sympathetic and right-thinking, even if Elrond turns out to be mistaken about some specific things.

Basically, it feels like the general perspective is that the Stewards were wise to move towards a more diverse and integrated Gondorian society, to recruit outsiders, to do what was necessary to keep Gondor standing and opposing Sauron where multiple purer and more insular factions failed. They were wise to relinquish imperial holdings they didn't have the power or inclination to control. But this stuff also seems to be treated as a regrettable necessity. All this is tragic and everyone who cares is kind of sad about it. As a result, Elrond's melancholy over modern Gondor, while mistaken on specific points, seems somewhat validated by the narrative framework.

For instance, in the description of the (100% heroic) people of Lebennin, we can see that element of reservation about modern Gondor with regard to race and racial mixing:


And I think Aragorn and his royal purebloodedness are deeply bound up in this. To an extent, this framework also validates the Northern Dúnedain's prioritization of Númenórean purity above all else. The negative extreme of their position is mediated through Gondor (in the Kinstrife) and then (~sadly but necessarily) becomes less of a priority over time. Thus Gondor survives through "hard" choices like "sustaining the population through interracial marriage" and "including local indigenous people as full citizens." So there's still a substantial polity left for the ultimate result of the Northern Dúnedain's blood purity—Aragorn—to rule over and "restore". But the Northern Dúnedain themselves don't have to compromise their valuation of purity for this to occur, and in fact, the purity they so carefully maintained in the royal line only makes it all the more natural for Aragorn to rule over the racially and culturally "impure" Gondorians and to forge their nation into a new, kinder and gentler(...) empire.

Further tangent: It's unsurprising that Tolkien struggled a bit with figuring out who would be suitable for Aragorn to marry and thus whose blood would mingle with his into the next generation. If I recall correctly, Arwen was created pretty specifically to be Aragorn's queen and to reinforce his bloodline (this was done in a fairly evocative way, but still). I do get why Tolkien felt Éowyn was too young etc for Aragorn, and I prefer Faramir/Éowyn by a mile, but I am not convinced that Éowyn's "lesser" racial status (in-world) was not also part of the calculus.

Anyway, I guess Aragorn's rule is the intended compromise between Faramir's explicit "a king would be nice but not dominating other people" and the various awful imperial legacies at play. But it feels to me like the suggestion here is that the problem is doing empire wrong rather than doing empire at all.

I do think that Tolkien had pretty messy feelings about this and you can see him trying to complicate various aspects in some of his post-LOTR writings. LOTR frames early Númenórean imperialism as uncomplicated benevolence towards, I think he said, "lesser" races of men; over a very long time, their dominance in Middle-earth becomes corrupted and nightmarish. But by "The Mariner's Wife," it's evident that their involvement was morally compromised and horrific from day 1, yet Tolkien also tries to complicate that with Aldarion's mixed motives (partly it's straightforward empire-building for its own sake, but partly he's trying to prepare for a very real threat and Ancalimë's refusal to continue his policies in Middle-earth is not exactly bad but certainly not good). Tolkien even argues in Peoples of Middle-earth that the High Men/Middle Men/Wild (or Dark!) Men distinction in LOTR is entirely about cultural affinity for "The West" rather than race as such (I doubt this was quite the intention in LOTR itself), and moreover adds that plenty of people had pretty good reasons for cultural opposition to "The West" because of devastation previously wreaked by Western powers like Númenor. (The subtext is not subtle.)

But I think there's always this partly-aesthetic, partly just racist appeal of the "good" empire ruled by a(n ideally pureblooded & superior) racial elite for him, alongside his ever-increasing skepticism about what this entails and what it can lead to and if it will inevitably be corrupted and how that interacts with (in his view) the intrinsically fallen nature of humanity. So it's a mess and there are these points of reservation and skepticism and outright criticism of things like racism and empire and the interrelationship between them embedded within his work that can give us some room to maneuver, I guess? But the overarching trends voiced by characters like Elrond and Aragorn are still really present and unavoidable.

I reblogged a post originally from sauronnaise asking Silm fandom to make a "brief but unhelpful" summary of The Silmarillion for The Hobbit+LOTR fandom. Silm fandom tends to be overwhelmingly focused on Elvish characters in The Silmarillion, especially the Noldor, and insistent that characters with big fanbases like Fëanor are more central to The Silmarillion (or even the Silm+LOTR) than I think they are, so at least the first posts focused on them. jubaah then responded:

Dunedain tragic backstory

I reblogged from her and added:

#'dúnedain tragic backstory' is the best and most accurate :P

There’s a line in LOTR about how the people in Minas Tirith stare at Legolas because they’ve never seen anyone so beautiful, and—

Well, it presumably predates Tolkien’s later idea that Númenóreans are barely distinguishable from Elves in appearance; modern Gondorians might look different these days, but at least some of them are said to look like ancient Númenóreans.

And, after all, some of the Edain also were virtually indistinguishable from Elves. Tolkien’s later work tends to treat the human-Elvish difference of appearance as more of a spectrum than a hard line. It seems a little continuity break, if a very minor one.

… But “Elvish” there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Elves don’t all look alike! And the Edain who look like Elves specifically look like Eldar, so perhaps when Tolkien says Númenóreans looked like Elves, he means Eldarin Elves in particular.

Headcanon conclusion: Legolas looks Silvan, and Gondorians just think Silvan Elves are super hot.

Tagged: #i'm really entertained by the idea that gondorians think noldor et al look 'like us but More' but silvan elves are where it's really at #deep blogging #truly the deepest #also i appreciate that this is apparently reciprocal to some extent? at least legolas thought boromir was notably pretty