#Cause everyone knew what Crown Prince Feanor was like

[youareunbearable]

Tonight is a great night to think fondly on Haleth and Caranthir. I think they would make such a funny couple.

Imagine??? The Big Tall Broody Scowling Kinslayer Who Is Also The One Reason The Economy Is Functioning At All Between The Different Races/Elvish Factions Who Probably Is Dying To Tell King Thingol/His Cousins To Fuck Off At Any Given Moment and hes looming over this short human lady??

This short human lady that Can, Will, and Already Has told him to pull the stick out of his ass and bullies him into doing normal townsfolk chores??? Lord Carathir, Master Economist and a Weaver with the skill to rival his grandmother, sitting there and darning socks cause his tiny mortal wife told him too. His reward will be a kiss on the cheek but she'll scold him while he does it because he said a mean thing about his Cousin Finrod in his last letter to her while he KNEW Finrod was visiting her.

Only three things in the world keep Caranthir in check: His Eldest Brother, The Lord Himring, The Current Head of the Feanorian Faction of Noldor, and Former High King; the idea that if he didn't complete his brothers' tax paperwork and run the Trade Routes then the Nolofinweans and Arafinweans would become more economincally important And We Cant Have That; and his 4'11 wife he met bloodied and wrathful on a battlefield screaming at an orc over the corpse of her brother-- it was love at first sight

[daywillcomeagain]

I don’t understand the idea of finarfin choose peace? There is no peace to be had with Morgoth, he made that clear. Either he was gonna die or you were gonna be enslaved by him, if more people had followed finarfin’s lead it would have meant leaving men, dwarves, other elves to rot: I don’t think that’s peace I think that’s the same weak justification the Valar use to justify their gross inaction when it comes to beleriand and middle earth.

Oh man I have SO MANY FEELINGS. okay. (clears throat) 

(sorry for taking this as an ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY PROMPT i just. the feelings.)

So…. Finarfin has no way of knowing this. As far as he knew, that might be true, but it might also be true that all the elves and dwarves of Middle-Earth were already dead and Men wouldn’t exist for thousands of years–in which case the clearly right thing to do is “stay and build up strength until you can actually defeat Morgoth instead of just slowing him down”. They don’t know. None of the Noldor know! And it’s made pretty clear that the Noldor who do go to Middle-Earth are, by and large, not doing it from a motivation of “wanting to help Men” (the rousing speech that helps convince them to leave Valinor includes “No other race shall oust us!”, it’s remarked that both Fingon and Galadriel want to see the world and have a kingdom of their own, there’s the obvious motive of revenge and taking back what was stolen, etc.). The concern for the dwarves, other elves, and Men all comes later. I love reading and writing stories where that is a primary concern of the Noldor leaving Valinor, to be clear, but I just want to be clear that they are–not really on anyone’s minds, quite yet.

It’s also really relevant to me that the Valar disapproved and refused to help from the beginning. Finarfin wanted to help, he wanted to come, he wanted to join and do good.

And then he saw what people do for the sake of action and a worthy cause. He watched his neighbors fighting his family, his wife on one side and his brother on the other. None of them were Morgoth. He saw people say “let’s leave Valinor and fight Morgoth” and he said “yes, count me in”; he saw them stab innocents, and then he said “…wait, no, maybe not that, maybe let’s go with Plan B.” I understand and have argued on behalf of the Noldor, including Feanor, for making choices that were reasonable given their circumstances, but– “massacres are never okay actually, I am not going to follow people who claim they want to fight Morgoth but in fact have done nothing but kill civilians” is not a weak justification, IMO! It is a valid stance that makes a lot of sense! That is also a reasonable choice given the circumstances!

And… Finarfin didn’t choose inaction. He fought in the War of Wrath. Finarfin chose waiting. Finarfin chose to repair the peace of Valinor–alone, because he had a Telerin wife and his children left for Beleriand–rather than lead his people to what he knew would be their deaths. Repairing a community, comforting the grieving–this is not inaction. Fighting and war is not the only action that counts. You might argue that he shouldn’t be focusing on minor problems when there were bigger ones to hand, but that’s a fully general argument for never caring about any problems that aren’t the Worst Problem In The World. If my sibling were to massacre my town ~for a good cause~ and I were to build a memorial instead of volunteering for a charity that promotes the relevant cause, it would be a douche move to be like “oh but that’s the same weak justification that the government uses to not promote [good cause]!” 

I think that it’s fair to say that the Valar had an obligation to help; Manwe positioned himself as King of all of Arda, and that comes with an obligation to all of Arda. They do have information, and they have reason to believe that they would be able to win or at least give a good fight (they did it before!). I don’t feel that anyone else, ever, has an obligation to go to war. (Similarly, I can be like “x government should go to war with y government” without supporting a draft; I feel like the Valar are more analogous to a government in this situation than an individual, and that if they do not want to do the things that being-the-government obligates them to do then they should step down.) Nobody ever has an obligation to do things that will almost certainly kill them for the sake of other people. It can be a brave thing and a beautiful thing to do voluntarily, but it should never, ever be the bare minimum Requirement To Be A Good Person. That’s something I feel very strongly about; I made a post about that here. He’s not King at this point; he’s a prince, and not even the Crown Prince. For most of his life, he’s expected to be–let me count this–fifteenth in line for the throne, in a land where nobody dies (this can be brought down to ‘fourth in line’, depending on who you count, but it’s still pretty far from ‘next in line’). He’s told, flat-out, in a prophecy from Mandos, that if he goes he and all of his people will die. His job, unlike the Valar’s, is not “protect everyone, promote good things in full generality”–it’s “protect my people and do what my conscience calls me to do”. He does that.

Also: the Valar have a lot more power than Finarfin in this situation, given that they can do things like “sink all of Beleriand” when they decide to help, whereas if he were to go help, he would’ve done–what? Held a territory, protected some elves, and almost certainly died. In the Bragollach? In the Nirnaeth? Before then, on the Ice, in the battle of the Lammoth, in the Aglareb, in the Fall of Nargothrond? It’s impossible to say–honestly, it’s hard to tell if those later battles would even have existed in the same form if Finarfin had come to Beleriand, politics in Beleriand were very fragile–but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t have single-handedly defeated Morgoth. (Though he could single-handedly unite the Noldor of Valinor and work out peace with the Teleri, such that the elves of Valinor are ready to come and help when the Valar decide to help defeat Morgoth. Comparative advantage is a thing!)

I also feel that it’s relevant that Finarfin has just had, like, five traumatic experiences in a row. His father dies; he joins a rebellion; he watches his family, I repeat, massacre his neighbors; his wife and children leave him. I judge decision-making under those circumstances significantly less harshly than I judge “a panel with much less intense personal connection debates for a while and comes to a conclusion”. People make mistakes in intense circumstances! I love characters who make mistakes like that! (gestures wildly at feanor & sons, at turin, at half the characters in this book)! “Finarfin made a mistake” is something I think is absolutely a valid argument, though I don’t personally agree. But I don’t think his choice reflects badly on him, or that it was selfish/cowardly/callous; I think that he made a hard choice in a painful situation, and that he was trying his hardest to do the right thing, and that there are lots of basically good and reasonable people who would do the same thing. (I am willing to defend this as a possible interpretation for every single character in the silmarillion except for outright villains such as Morgoth, incidentally.)