#;;anarioncanon

[anarinya]

BUT YES THE POINT IS... Anarion as the sun, Arien, warm and in love with the world to the point of agony and here to both cause change as well as lament it, large in spirit and knowing he must turn on the world’s axis but slow and reluctant to do so, his face is to the land he loves and his back to the shadow that claws and slavers to destroy it and him, looking not at the stars and ever tending to just the present. 

And Isildur as the moon, Tilion, cool and thrilled as quicksilver, both chasing and urging the sun across the sky, vigorous and enamoured with both past and future, adventurous and ever-reaching for something more, higher, distant and cosmic, in love with the stars and the light and the wide unknown, challenging and braving the shadow to reach for them, but only able to do so because the Sun is there to chase in the end. 

[anarinya]

In essence, Anarion’s faithfulness comes from his love of the world. Yes, the powers terrify him, death seems cruel, elves have asked so much of humanity’s faith whilst defying the demands faith places upon them, he has every empathy in the world for Kings men and their distrusts and desires. But, simply, Anarion cannot look at a beautiful world made by distant hands and believe that world’s makers to be unworthy of his devotion. And at every step in his life where Faith has asked too much of him, the question that always came to mind was did the world ask too much of me? And the answer he consistently finds is no. 

It isn’t until very close to his own death, with death all around him, after contending with God’s brutal vengeance and abandonment for a hundred years, that he begins to wonder, what if the world made itself? What if Sauron is closer to the image of the powers in the west than the humanity I perceive and the love I know? It is a despairing and heartbreaking thought that he cannot shake and his gentleness is greatly waned by the time Isildur and Elendil arrive with their Great Alliance to relieve the siege upon Osgiliath. 

Still, it is Meneldil he risks it all to save, having lost his helm in the chaos but heedless of the danger in the face of his son’s safety, and in that final moment he discovers that it matters not what the powers intend, this was always enough to die for. 

[anarinya]

Anyway (tucks hair behind ear) wow you have a sun-name? And you embody those aspects of the sun with your whole body and soul as set out in the realities of your world, being both a man for humanity and having it burned into your whole being to nurture? To tend and grow and allow your people to flourish in the light as you battle the darkness? Are you clutching the anxious babe of a new country, born into the world in calamity, personally victimised by divine judgement and abandoned by god but not by you to your chest and comforting it’s fears and gently guiding it out of the circle of your arms and into its own? Wow... girlmode of you, the transgender is leaping out.

[anarinya]

Originally, the two cities that Anarion and Isildur built were not called ‘Minas Anor’ and ‘Minas Ithil’, they were just called the eastern and western fortresses. The names were given colloquially by their populace as Anarion and Isildur’s influence and legends grew until the names were so ubiquitous that even Anarion and Isildur themselves began to use them.

[anarinya]

3314 S.A. Anárion wedded to Yávien // 3318 S.A. Birth of Meneldil // 

  3330 S.A. Birth of Fíriel // 3362 S.A. Birth of twins Nessanië and Artamir//

Yávien was an Archivist within the great library at Armenelos. She and Anárion were thrown together during the duration of his illicit spy-craft within the great city. Together they conspired to save many texts from burning for containing Faithful dogma and later she was instrumental in aiding him in more daring acts of rebellion against Sauron’s growing influence. 

Neither of them had any desire for marriage or family within such a tumultuous time, and Yávien in particular was no devout Elendili to wish for a Faithful husband and persecuted children. She had aided Anárion for the sake of her humanity, not her faith. And besides, Anárion had claimed he would never take a wife for ‘he was wedded to his people and their defense, no matter how hopeless it might be’, she had called him grim and morose and he had not disagreed. 

Yet within the other each found an aspect of fathomless understanding and contentment that neither had ever experienced before. Their connection sprung to love naturally, but went unspoken for some years until Anárion was forced at last to flee back to Rómenna. He had never intended upon speaking his heart, yet he dared imprisonment and much else to meet with her one last time and say his farewells. Yávien, however, apparently had other plans. 

In their meeting, she asked for a friend’s advice on matters of the heart and once he had belatedly offered his earnest yet pained guidance of, ‘Listen to your heart, and give yourself only in love’  Yávien told him he had put her in a worse conundrum than before. She did love, she said, but her beloved was unsuitable. Unsuitable? Anárion had asked, Is he married? And Yávien had told him, ‘in a manner of speaking’. 

Once he had caught to her meaning, Anárion was distraught. He asked her not to toy with his heart and she asserted she would never do so. He told her she could not choose him, that it was not his fate, but she was adamant.

'And thou wouldst choose this thing before thee? Grim and morose, as thou hast said?' He had asked her.

'Kind and brave, as I have seen. Argue not with me, friend, for I have already chosen.'

'Then thou hast chosen solitude.'

'Then I have chosen solitude, for I will accept suit from no other save thee. If thou wilt not wed, ne'er shall I. But this answer I shall have from thee: What is in thine own heart?'

Anárion had not answered, his face terrible to look upon. Yávien had touched his hand and in that moment he had seized hers in a grip that almost hurt. Raising it up to touch his cheek against it, press his nose to her palm, eyes closed, Anárion had appeared petrified.

'Friend?'

'I love thee.' His mouth had formed the words that were scarce to be heard.

'Then I am content.'

Even then, they had plighted no troth. Anárion had left as he had planned, with Yávien’s words and will hounding him all the way. But his adherence to his oathes did not take long to crumble and before long he was begging aid from both his brother and father to re-enter Armenelos in secret once more. In the span of a night he had made it into the city and by the morning, sleepless though he was, he had begged Yávienis hand from her father. With her blessing, he had accepted Anárion’s suit, being not un-sympathetic to the Faithful cause himself. They were married in Rómenna that year and, though many of Anárion’s worst fears came to pass, he never regretted his choice.

[anarinya]

Though Anarion might be a fair Captain and capable seaman, when compared to his father and brother his skills upon the high seas are better described as mediocre. No doubt he deserves his captaincy and as a navigator alone he might surpass his family, but Anarion’s strengths rest more in the ordering, leading and supplying of men on land. As a quartermaster he excels and often acted as bosun for Elendil or Isildur when they particularly asked it of him. 

And ever has it been thus with him. Where his young peers would race horses bareback across the plains of Andustar, Anarion could be found lounging in the creaking summer heats against the oxen of the city’s carts, their massive heads cradled in his lap. Or, indeed, ponderously trailing after shepherds and carrying the new lambs up to their spring pastures upon the higher hillsides. He loved the sea better for her coastlines and, rather than loving to race the waves of the deeper pelagic waters, he preferred to cast lines and haul nets. 

In his youth this simply meant he spent his time differently, but as he grew and worked his hands in other toils of the city, noting what it took to build or make or grow, it was all information that embedded itself within him with the ease of passion. Anarion, in essence, knew what men needed and knew how to provide it. And it was a talent that he practiced and used to serve his people for the rest of his life. 

[anarinya]

If I am certain of anything, it is that Meneldil was an accidental pregnancy. Not that he was in any way unwanted, not that Anarion and his wife did not have a loving partnership or wanted children, the times were just so uncertain, a fact that Anarion later found hopelessly amusing. For decades he had withheld himself from love, for fear of the future, for fear of becoming a husband and father of a Faithful family during a time of religious persecution. And yet, in the very last and darkest decade of Numenor’s fall, in the midst of the Great Armament no less, love claimed him in the commanding and impatient way love does. 

Ships were being amassed, supplies stored, Anarion poured over Middle-Earth using the stolen seeing-stones they had managed to claim from their watchtowers in Numenor’s chaos. Everyday more of their people were arrested, captured or even burned at Meneltarma’s height, Amandil had sailed away never to be seen again and Yavien was to be most often found lacquering ship-decks or spinning hemp into rope. They were taking every precaution, even in the face of the little time they had to spend together at all, and yet! It was the cruellest joke, a stroke of divine callousness that threw Anarion into the very worst version of his nightmares. 

His son was barely six months old in the flight from Numenor. Anarion tied him into his shirt when Yavien needed sleep in the endless squall, but he still directed the course of his two great-ships even so, charting their course by the stars and finding his son calmer when gazing up at the heavens. He was named Meneldil once the storm had cleared and their battered ships had finally reached safety of Gondor’s coast.