#I don’t hate elwing but I hate Eärendil oops

[runawaymun]

Elwing and Eärendil? I have Thoughts about them and now I wonder what yours are

Oh boy you got me 😔

I know this is a really uh…controversial take, but I don’t ship them. Everything about them smacks of imprisonment. Like get a divorce already.

I think they got married way too young way too fast and that actually neither of them enjoyed being married, and Eärendil didn’t enjoy being a father and Elwing didn’t enjoy being a mother. Eärendil is constantly gone (????) and wanted to make the choice of Men, but Elwing talked him into making the choice to be counted amount the Eldar (entrapment) which then leads to him having his heroic big moment against the dragon only to be essentially imprisoned for the rest of his life as a star (entrapment). Like not to discount how cool they were for sailing to Valinor & petitioning for aid, and Elwing’s sacrifice to jump into the ocean with the Silmaril — but they both read as sort of an antithesis to Beren and Lúthien for me. Beren and Lúthien chose their destinies and went to them gladly. Eärendil seems to rage against his for his entire life only to be trapped by it in the end, and Elwing is a tragic victim of her birthright as heir to Doriath, a child monarch who is crowned before she’s old enough to understand what that kind of responsibility even means who “dies” well before her time, just as Dior did. These two are drenched in tragedy.

But like, not in a fun way IMO? I think Eärendil really resented Elwing for the Choice they both made and it really feels like he never wanted to be around at all, for the amount that he’s just not present in the narrative of Sirion — in theory he ought to be father and king consort — and also ought to be a ruler in his own right over the refugees from Gondolin. He’s heir to Gondolin after all. And he has two heirs of his own to raise. Instead he’s Eärendil the mariner and it feels to me like he just shirks all that responsibility because he craves freedom. He’s the classic runaway price archetype who does the Big Hero Things…but at what cost? Tolkien makes it clear in characters like Eowyn that the Big Damn Hero Thing is not really the ideal which he lauds. Better to live a quiet life than to yearn for a vainglorious death (again…Earendil’s fight against the dragon feels almost…suicidal to me? On the one hand it’s cool. On the other hand it resulted in the drowning of beleriand. It’s like Eärendil wanted to be the subject of songs and tales, always wanted to burn out fast and bright. Etc etc. and then he’s left in stasis with the Silmaril in the sky…)

I’m rambling oh my god, in any case I dislike both of them and I especially dislike them together. They feel to me like those couples who were really cute in high school but then got married before their brains were done developing, had kids too early, and now Dad is Always Working and Mom has postpartum depression and a wine problem and you just wish they’d get a divorce already but they won’t because they’re both too unpleasant and stubborn to do so. I don’t think either of them were ready or equipped to be parents and while I am grateful that they got married & had kids so then we get Elrond and Elros, I don’t think it was good for them and they would have been way better off apart.