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sakasakiii · 1 year ago

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Hi!

I love your work!! Your art is very pretty. Do you have a specific idea of how old everyone is ? Do you lean more towards canon or do you have your own dates in mind ? If don’t wanna a answer it’s ok!

Hope u have a nice day

(Remember to drink water!)

hiiii nonnie!!! thank you for checking in, and im happy u like the stuff i put out!! when it comes to ages, it's difficult to answer sometimes bc of the way professor tolkien's timeline is-- it makes gauging one singular place where most of the cast can be compared something that makes my tired brain go 😵🤧🤕 but i love the prompt youve given! and thus heres my attempt at it

with most of my tolkien stuff, i always try to stick to canon wherever possible emphasis is on try lmao and the topic of ages is one such place. i do make exceptions to the Professor's canon sometimes for a few reasons: 1) i like some of the scrapped ideas in his drafts, or 2) i just prefer other options. with ages, i think the only charas with canon-established ages i deviated from are fingolfin, finrod, turgon, and aredhel. i try to keep cases like these minimal tho, so i hope it doesn't bother anyone too much... 👉👈

anyways i figured just dropping a list of numbers would be kinda boring to look at so heres an illustrated guide to what the ~rough~ ages of the finweans are in my head whenever i write or draw. Y.T. 1495 (the year Finwe dies) is the controlled medium ive used to enable a fair comparison of the Finweans

note: "born Y.T. xxx" means this is the canon date of birth listed on Tolkien Gateway. "est. born [xxx]" means this is a noncanon estimate:

the First Age gets a lot more muddled from there due to the hullaballoo of everything going on, so ill only be including the doriathrim and a few other denizens of nargothrond:

it's mostly the older elves that are more undefined/vague with their ages (i.o.w. others like elwing, earendil, the peredhil twins, and most Men all have set dates of birth), so they're all i'll be doing for now. but it's that vagueness which makes hcing all the more enjoyable, isn't it! plus since we’re on this subject, under the cut are just a few headcanons and musings ive had that i wanted to put somewhere 😙

Finarfin and Earwen were born within months of each other! Finwe and Olwe made a Really Big Deal out of when they found out their wives were pregnant at the same time. As a result, the two were often sent on many playdates with each other to “bolster healthy relations” between the Noldor and the Teleri. It wasn’t an arranged marriage situation, but I like to think they were goofy for each other from the start… Resulting in the two eventually getting married as soon as they came of age, the fastest out of all of Finwe’s kids to do so.

The reason the Ambarussa are significantly younger than the other Finweans (especially the Feanorians-- there’s a 100 Valian year gap between them and Curufin alone!) is because I imagine they were accidental babies that even Feanor didn’t expect to conceive. too bad morgoth said "its morgin time!" and started Messing Things Up shortly afterwards.....

Anaire was Lalwen's good friend long before she married Fingolfin; they met through Lalwen who wingmanned Fingolfin the whole time. i like think Anaire'd be the best out of all the wives at keeping good, healthy bonds with all the women of her family :DD

luthien's potential 姐姐/big sis dynamic with all the younger doriathrim elves is something i daydream about a lot 😌 but sometimes the fact that she's older than finarfin keeps me up at night

this has been really fun, so thanks again for asking-- annnd yessir, i am chugging water as i write this so you better be doing the same ❤️ have a great start to your week!

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nyxshadowhawk · 1 year ago

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I Read The Silmarillion So You Don't Have To, Part Three

Please read parts one and two first: https://nyxshadowhawk.tumblr.com/post/726120109073104896/i-read-the-silmarillion-so-you-dont-have-to-part https://nyxshadowhawk.tumblr.com/post/726261927846772736/i-read-the-silmarillion-so-you-dont-have-to-part

Chapter 4: Of Thingol and Melian In which Elwë/Thingol gets horny and abandons his quest, and behold, a language is born.

I said that Melian would be important, but that’s because the book said so. Unlike with Olorin, I don’t actually know anything about her in advance. So, now we’re going to find out what her role in the story is! Melian is a Maia and she lives in Lórien, where she is best known for her singing. The whole world stops to listen to her sing. Before dawn, she comes to the “Hither Lands” (Middle-earth?) to teach the birds to sing.

While the Elves are traveling, Elwë, the leader of the third group of Elves (the Teleri) is scouting by himself. He hears the voice of Melian and is entranced. He finds her in a forest glade, and as soon as he touches her, she traps him there. He stays in the glade while time moves on around him. His brother Olwë takes over the kingship of the Teleri, and Elwë never sees Valinor again. He and Melian are quite productive, though, and end up becoming the ancestors of an entire race of elves, called the Sindar, “Grey Elves” or “Twilight Elves.” Sindar are “grey” because they are neither Light Elves who saw the trees of Valinor, nor “dark elves” who chose not to go to Valinor. Elwë Singollo became known as Thingol, which still means “Greymantle,” but in Sindarin. Thingol and Melian became King and Queen of the Sindar.

To elaborate on the significance of this: “Elvish” is probably the best-known of Tolkien’s conlangs, but there’s actually two completely different Elvish languages. One is Quenya, the language spoken by those Elves in Middle-earth who are descended from the “High Elves” or Light Elves of Valinor, and the other is Sindarin, the language spoken by the Sindar. When you think of “Elvish,” you are probably thinking of Sindarin, because it’s the most common Elven language in Middle-earth. The Elves of Mirkwood are descended from yet another subgroup of Teleri Elves, called Nandor (no, not that Nandor), who split off from Olwë’s group and went off on their own to live in the forests. They have their own language, Silvan Elvish, but Thranduil definitely spoke Sindarin, and his name is in Sindarin. So, the Sindar are kind of a big deal.

Thingol and Melian by Elena Kukanova

Chapter 5: Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië In which the Elves settle into their new home.

The Vanyar and Noldor finally reach the westernmost coast of Middle-earth, and are confronted with the ocean that they have to cross to reach Aman (the continent where Valinor is). Ulmo comes and talks to the Elves, playing his shell pipes for them, and they lose their fear of the ocean. Ulmo drags up an island from the ocean, and brings it into the bay as if it were a ship, and all the Elves climb on it to sail it to the other side of the ocean. (Part of the island was broken off and remained in the bay, becoming the Isle of Balar.)

The Teleri arrived too late. They missed the island-boat, Elwë abandoned them for Melian, and now they’re stuck in East Beriand. They name Elwë’s brother Olwë as their king, and they learn about water and music from the Maiar Ossë and Uinen. Everything’s fine for a while, but the Noldor in Valinor missed the Teleri, and asked Ulmo to go and get them. Most of the Teleri are willing to uproot themselves again and continue on to Valinor, but Ossë (the Maia of waves) is sad to see them go, and persuades a few to stay so that they can continue to sing for him. The ones that stay become the Falathrim, the first mariners. Had enough subdivisions of Elves yet?

No you haven’t, because there’s another one — the friends and family of Elwë who are still wondering what the hell happened to him. They still want to go to Valinor, but Ulmo doesn’t wait for them to find Elwë, so they’re left behind. They call themselves Eglath, the Forsaken People, and live in the forests yearning for a place that they will never see. Elwë does eventually find them, though, and he looks so glorious and beautiful with his silver hair and his unusually tall stature that they almost mistake him for a Maia. So, they’re okay now. Presumably they become Sindar.

Ossë chases after the other Teleri. When they hear his voice, the Teleri beg Ulmo to lock the island in place in the Bay of Eldamar. Ulmo doesn’t mind doing this, because he didn’t think it was a good idea for the Elves to leave Middle-earth in the first place. The island becomes Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle. So, after all of that, the Teleri still don’t make it to Valinor (because they just love the sea too much, I guess). The Valar aren’t happy about this, and Finwë (the leader of the Noldor) grieves to hear that not only are the Teleri not coming, but Elwë got lost somewhere along the way. The Teleri are happy, though (and literally within sight of Aman so if only they had a boat or something…). The important thing is that this is why they speak a different language from everyone else. Like I said before, language is what drives the worldbuilding, as opposed to narrative or character or anything else. In Tolkien’s defense, this is definitely how real-life ethnic groups form (not islands magically moving and stopping, but groups breaking off from each other during migration) so he’s doing a great job on that front.

Eventually, the Teleri do make it to shore. Elves are like moths in that they’re constantly drawn towards the light of Valinor. So they change their minds, and ask Ulmo to bring them to shore. Ulmo tells Ossë to teach them how to build boats, and Ossë does, though very reluctantly. As a parting gift, he gives them swans to pull their boats. (My immediate thought was that this is a reference to the Tuatha Dé Danann in Celtic mythology, but I might be misremembering it, because I can’t find any proof of that. Moving on.) The Teleri come to live on the shores of Aman, within reach of Valinor, but closer to the sea because they like the water so much. The Noldor give them lots of jewels, which they scatter across the beaches, and they build themselves palaces out of pearl in their city of Alqualondë.

The Ships of the Teleri Drawn by Swans, by Ted Nasmith

There’s three cities in total: Valmar, the city of the Valar, Tirion, the city of the Noldor, and Alqualondë, the coastal city of the Teleri. The Noldor built Tirion on top of a hill called Túna (I know it means something in Quenya, but there’s no way I’m taking that seriously). They love Telperion, the White Tree, so Yavanna gives them one of its seedlings, which becomes another white tree that looks just like a smaller version of Telperion, except that it doesn’t glow. In Sindarin, the little tree is called Galathilion.

The Noldor like to learn things, discover things, and make things. They were trained by Aulë himself, so they’re experts in all kinds of craftsmanship. Their masons discovered precious stones hidden in the earth, which they learned to cut. Noldor have an insatiable love of learning, and whenever they find something new, they make up a new word for it in their language (Quenya). The dark side of a love of learning is that one might not know where to stop, i.e. “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” and “these were things mortals were not meant to know.” The Vanyar live directly with Manwë, which makes them both the coolest Elves and the least interesting because nothing about them is known to anyone else. The Noldor, however, still remember Middle-earth — dark, quiet, and full of stars. The grass is always greener, I guess.

We know next to nothing about the Vanyar because they stayed in Valinor, but the Noldor eventually came back, so we know their whole genealogy. As boring as that sounds, I do have to describe the whole thing here, because it is important: The King of the Noldor is Finwë as we’ve said before, and he has three sons: Fëanor, Fingolfin, and Finarfin. Fingolfin and Finarfin have the same mother, a Vanyar elf called Indis. Fëanor’s mother, however, is another Noldor elf called Míriel Serindë. Of the three sons, Fëanor is the smartest, Fingolfin is the strongest, and Finarfin is the wisest and the most beautiful. He eventually befriends the Teleri and marries one of Olwë’s daughters.

Finarfin, Fingolfin, and Feanor by _star热爱生活呀巴扎嘿

Fëanor has seven sons: Maedhros the tall, Maglor the singer, Celegorm the fair, Caranthir the dark, Curufin the crafty, and the twins Amrod and Amras. Fingolfin has two sons and one daughter: Fingon and Turgon are the sons, and Aredhel the White is the daughter. Finarfin has four sons: Finrod the Faithful, who eventually gains the epithet “Felagund, Lord of Caves” (really interested to hear that story), Orodreth, Angrod, and Aegnor. He also has a daughter — Galadriel. (Yes! Finally a character you know! Well, apart from Olorin, that is…) She is known for her golden hair, so shiny that it is if the light of the golden tree, Laurelin, shines within it.

That’s all the genealogy we need to know for now. Again, Tolkien gets points for authenticity here — a significant portion of real historical epics are long lists of everyone’s names and who they’re related to and who their kids are, which is of great interest to historians, but not very exciting if you’re primarily interested in a cool story about people killing each other. You know what, even if Amazon did get the rights to The Silmarillion for Rings of Power, they would probably have the same trouble adapting it that people usually have when they try to adapt epics like The Iliad or Beowulf: Epics just aren’t structured like conventional narratives. Even if there is a story, it usually plays second fiddle to all these historical details and other infodumps. Don’t get me wrong, epics are more than capable of being emotionally impactful, and I was pleasantly surprised by the Iliad and Odyssey more than once. But they don’t follow the same kind of five-act story structure that novels and films typically do. The narrative is interspersed with records of events and people, since an oral tradition needs to be able to preserve cultural history in addition to telling a good story, and the result is more like a series of significant events rather than an actual plot with a tidy ending. The cultural history is very important to the people whose history it is, and the people who study it, but when you have a complex cultural history of people who don’t actually exist, then the only people who are going to be interested are people who are already invested in Tolkien and his world. Basically, you can (sort of, barely) get away with infodumping if you’re intentionally following the conventions of an obsolete literary genre, and people already care about your worldbuilding.

If LotR is the story of the One Ring and the things that happen around it, then The Silmarillion is the story of this family, and the things that happen around or because of them. So, you’re going to want to keep track of them:

House of Finwe by @cy-lindric

Chapter 6: Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor In which we meet our… uh… protagonist?

You can tell just by the title that this is when everything goes to hell, right? It was too good to last. Although the Elves lived in bliss in Valinor for however many centuries, if someone didn’t fuck everything up, we wouldn’t have a story. That someone is Fëanor, who is the nearest thing this story has to a protagonist.

Fëanor by Insant

He was born in Valinor. His original name (or patronymic name) is Curufinwë, but his mother called him Fëanor (FAY-ah-nr), which means “spirit of fire.” Míriel, Fëanor’s mother, all but died in childbirth. After he was born, she refused to bear any more children, because all of her life-force and that of any future children had gone into Fëanor. Giving birth to him was like being burned away by fire, to the point where Míriel basically didn’t have any will to live… except that elves don’t die. So, Finwë went to Manwë for help, and Manwë allowed Míriel to go live in the beautiful gardens of Lórien with Irmo, the god of dreams. Once she got there, she basically died; her body went to sleep, but her spirit passed on to the Halls of Mandos.

Finwë was very sad at having lost his wife, but dedicated as much love and attention to his son as possible. Fëanor quickly proved himself to be one of those gifted kids who are naturally good at everything. He excelled in craftsmanship, figured out a way to make gems bigger and brighter by infusing them with starlight, and invented lenses. He didn’t invent writing — that was an elf called R��mil, shortly before he was born — but he did improve upon it to produce the Elven alphabet that Elves still use today. And that was all while he was practically still a teenager!

Fëanor marries an Elf called Nerdanel. His father-in law, Mahtan, learned metalworking and masonry directly at the feet of Aulë, so Fëanor learns a lot more about making things from Mahtan. Fëanor’s relationship with Nerdanel is summed up pretty well by this quote:

Nerdanel also was firm of will, but more patient than Fëanor, desiring to understand minds rather than to master them, and at first she restrained him when the fire of his heart grew too hot; but his later deeds grieved her, and they became estranged.

Yeah… that tells you everything you need to know about Fëanor. He’s one of those arrogant, hotheaded men who needs his wife to put a lid on him so that he’ll calm the fuck down before something blows up. And eventually, managing him becomes too much for her. I guess we’ll find out why.

Meanwhile, Finwë remarries. His new wife is a Vanya elf called Indis, a close relative of the High King Ingwë. Fëanor is not happy about his father remarrying, and mostly ignores his stepmother and half-brothers. The thing about familial strife amongst royalty is that it ends up affecting everyone else, too, usually in catastrophic ways. Looking back, the Elves wonder if everything might have been different if Finwë had just gotten over the death of his first wife and been content with having only one son, especially one as mighty as Fëanor. On the other hand, the world would also be lacking if Fingolfin and Finarfin hadn’t been born, so… this is one of those “what if we went back in time and killed Hitler” questions; history would have been so different if Finwë hadn’t remarried, it’s almost impossible to tell whether it would be for better or worse.

As Finarfin and Fingolfin grow up, Valinor’s heyday is already almost over. The thing about Sealed Evil in a Can is that it doesn’t stay sealed. Eventually, it gets out, and when it does, it’s like a volcano erupting. For once, though, it’s not because some idiot went and broke the seal on the can of evil — it’s because Melkor finished his sentence. The Valar decide that it’s time to put Melkor on trial again. Melkor’s envy and hatred are dialed up to eleven when he sees the Valar on their shining thrones and the Elves gathered at their feet like kittens. He also really likes the look of all the gemstones that the Noldor have dug up, and wants to steal them. But, he’s more cunning than to make his evil thoughts obvious. He really sucks up to the Valar during his trial, in the most cloying and pathetic way possible. He even promises to fix all the things that he broke (which, I’ll remind you, was everything).

Manwë buys it. I guess he just really wants to believe that there’s good in everybody? Or that everybody deserves a chance at redemption? Tolkien’s explanation for why Manwë pardons Melkor is that, just as pure evil cannot comprehend goodness or happiness or love, pure goodness cannot really comprehend evil, either. As far as Manwë is concerned, a sincere apology is all that’s needed, and why wouldn’t Melkor’s apology be sincere? After all, Melkor and Manwë were both Ainur created by Ilúvatar, so there must be good in him somewhere, right? The other Valar aren’t as easily fooled, though. Ulmo knows better than to trust Melkor, and Tulkas is just itching to punch him. But it’d be pretty hypocritical of them if they punished Melkor for rebellion and then turned right back around and disobeyed the orders of their king, so they don’t do anything.

Remember, Melkor blames the Elves for his initial downfall, because the Valar fought for their sake. And also because they’re happy-go-lucky little Elves in their little Elf world and everything is bright and shiny and so saccharine it makes your eyes bleed. So, Melkor responds by being even more saccharine and kissing up to the Elves as much as possible. “Oh, do you need help with anything? Can we be friends? Do you want to know everything about how the world was created?” The Vanyar aren’t interested, because who needs lore when you have trees? The Teleri don’t even interest Melkor because he sees them as weak and useless. But the Noldor, oh, the Noldor like making things and they like secret knowledge. They’re just the kind of people who would eagerly agree to a deal with the devil to learn all the secrets of the universe.

Melkor claims that Fëanor learned everything he knows at his knee, but as usual, he’s lying for clout. No one hates Melkor more than Fëanor. In fact, it was Fëanor who first called him “Morgoth” (“dark enemy”). Besides, Fëanor himself is just as arrogant, and insists on working alone. The only person he ever goes to for help is his wife.

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