#because Aerin definitely needs more trauma

[gwaedhannen]

Hitheth brings her own wedding dress from the closet, buried deep beneath two decades of Aerin’s outworn clothes, too precious to be repurposed when thread was plentiful. Each a burial shroud for a girl that was—and this final, for the woman that is. The elderly Easterling matron assigned as chaperone brooks no delay in taking measurements, pinching and twisting Aerin this way and that, deftly tying beads to strings in a recording system so convoluted it makes Hitheth’s head spin the way the matron’s eyes roll when faced with her ignorance. In the end, the alterations Hitheth makes are minimal, the work of a single night in the home which tomorrow will be hers alone.

Aerin stands in her mother’s dress before the looking glass, eyes unseeing. Hitheth adorns her with the jewelry which will be her dowry, the only riches of her house, the last gift of the elves who vanished into the mists as if they never were.

“Remember, my love, you must remember,” Hithleth whispers as she walks her daughter into the foundations where her new lord has decreed his hall will stand. Aerin knows the stones to be her cairn. “You are stronger than you know.”

[outofangband]

rambling/scattered thoughts at midnight about one of my least favorite topics; Morwen’s death

I will make an actually organized/elegant post but in the meantime

Feel free to skip over

Mentions of Canon death and suicide ahead

I will make a longer post when I feel up to it but I’m just mentally rotating Morwen’s death being seemingly non violent but at the same time utterly surrounded by the violence of decades (even the description of her right before, how she looks hunted!)

I think about how she flees from Glaurung twice and ends up in Brethil both times and the second time is to die, just as she implied would happen if she returned there from the first chapter.

I’m not entirely certain why but my brain connects that line about Brethil with Morwen’s seemingly calm declaration shortly before her death that she will die as the sun goes. Even though she is the only one of her family not to take their own life, it does sometimes read as her most strongly choosing to leave the narrative (this is not to say anything critical about the others obviously! Just something I was thinking)

There’s such a sense of fatalism and I don’t know which reading is more depressing to me; the fatalism of Morwen’s place as a character in a tragedy where ultimately so much of the fate of her and her family are decided by others or the fatalism of Morwen herself as a grieving and traumatized refugee, feeling the certainty of her death for as long as she can remember

And these things are not unconnected! They are intertwined just as Morwen’s pride is intertwined with her grief and trauma and certainty

Anyways I generally do try not to think about Morwen’s death because it makes me so so sad but I hope these rambling thoughts make sense and I’ll definitely add to them when I can

Two final notes:

I need to make a longer post specifically about this because I already brought it up once but it just devastates me how when Glaurung takes Niënor’s memory he takes any of the ways Morwen has tried to keep her culture or language or traditions alive in Niënor. Niënor loses all of that. (Along with memories of others living under occupation or after massive cultural destruction, songs of the Hadorians that Aerin would sing sometimes, memories of little drawings that relatives she could never meet did, etc)

Especially because Glaurung was instrumental in the destruction of Ladros I just find this so devastating

Oh and finally I think about Húrin’s line that Morwen was not conquered through the lens of her surviving of the Bragollach and the destruction of her people and culture. And the line in the Wanderings, “not even a wolf would do you more harm”. It kills me, just as it obviously kills Húrin, that no one can say this to Morwen until she is dead.

Anyways, screams

I wrote this up in like a minute and it definitely definitely shows but I hope to share my pain

[the-unconquered-queen]

Wrt the royal ending, I agree that the royal life isn't what he needs right now because I feel like he needs to find himself first after having his entire life defined by the throne leading up to now, but I feel like it wasn't necessarily the royal life itself that was to blame for the brunt of his trauma, but rather the way people treated him (his brother being abusive, his parents being negligent), and not only is Baldur already dead, but if Aerin is to become king, Arlan would be dead, too. So if you subtract them from the equation (and maybe have him make staff changes to remove people who looked the other way when he was being abused), I don't think being in the palace again is necessarily as bad for him as it was before.

But yeah, he definitely needs to discover who he is beyond titles and everything (not to mention get a better understanding of other walks of life) before he rules, if it comes to that. I think his experiences might even make him a stronger ruler (it's already been kind of established that despite never having been expected to rule, he's actually quite qualified for it in terms of knowledge and skills), and also make it more likely that when he has heirs, he will ensure that they're raised with the right morals and be held accountable as needed to prevent another abuser like Baldur and another victim like himself.

Well now that you've said there are multiple outcomes you'd like for Aerin in Blades... wanna share what those are?

😅 Ah, well, you asked for it. Disclaimer: they are absolutely just personal wish fulfillment for me (post I will be referencing)

The ending where I see him being the happiest is, as I mentioned, with the goblins. To reiterate what I said about that, he'd probably be better off "[living] a simple life with the goblins—who actually appreciate him and don't judge him for his past—while still getting to be intellectually stimulated by the processes of designing their village and helping people". It's possible if he's completely struck from the line of succession and Arlan either doesn't know about him or is content to pretend he doesn't exist to avoid being associated with him. Anyway, I think in this ending Aerin might be well on his way to becoming the second-ever non-goblin to serve as an elder. He clearly enjoys their company and works to improve their community, so yeah, best case scenario for him.

Another ending is the royal ending. Maybe Arlan realizes that he has no one else to carry on the Valleros line and has to suck it up and reinstate Aerin. Maybe MC ends up in charge and Aerin rules as their prince consort (I prefer this second one mostly just because it's funnier, like I said in the other post). Either way, I think this is a good chance for a full circle moment for Aerin. Moreover, it's the only way he can achieve some sort of wider-scale redemption in the eyes of his kingdom. They all know him as the traitor prince who tried to murder his way to the top, but if he gets to be king now and actually does good in his role, then he can redefine his legacy. If he ends up married to MC, they'd even make a good team, because he brings the insider expertise when it comes to ruling a kingdom and MC brings the popularity and good reputation he can sort of piggyback off of.

The following endings are not necessarily the endings I think are the most in-character and much less the most likely, they're just endings based on the relationship between Aerin and my MC:

3. Since I feel like my MC will always be a Riverbender at heart, I imagine she would want to go back at some point, and so I sometimes picture Aerin going with her. The issue is that, unlike the goblins, the townies do very much remember what he did and are not initially as welcoming. I could see him doing several things there:

For one, I like the idea of him opening up an apothecary shop and sort of becoming the village healer, because 1) it would use his alchemy expertise, 2) it would use the healing expertise he's shown to have, and 3) it would be a job helping people, which not only would make him feel useful and like he's doing a good thing, but it could eventually improve the townies' perception of him.

Another I thought of later that I'm also quite fond of now is him becoming a sort of schoolteacher. I can imagine that one happening completely by accident, like he's just reading a book by himself somewhere some day and a little kid (who doesn't know who he is) goes up to him and starts asking him questions, and a while later he's got a whole bunch of kids he's telling stories to. It would let him put his expensive and very exclusive education to good use and also greatly benefit the people of Riverbend, whose kids could now have a much better education than they might've otherwise had (and hey, he might even take the time to tutor some adults too, if they're not assholes to him—overall this man could have literacy rates soaring in Riverbend for all ages). And if the adults are slow to warm up to Aerin, their kids aren't, which helps their parents like him better in the long run. Just the idea of Aerin working with kids because they have the same traits he values in goblins and that make him protective of them makes me happy.

The last thing isn't anything solid or at all likely, but just if MC goes back home and takes over tending to the farm she grew up on, Aerin helping out with that, because there's something about a lot of time passing and people who either were too young when the whole Baldur/Dreadlord shit went down or aren't as familiar with who Aerin is hearing gossip about how that guy over there used to be a fancy prince, but they look over and it's Aerin doing manual labor or some shit and they're like "that one??? 🤨"

4. Absolutely not likely, not in the slightest, but because I like to imagine that my elf MC at some point takes it upon herself to return to Undermount to restore her house as a way to keep her family's legacy alive, sometimes I think about Aerin going with her. As someone raised in the royal court, he'd have a lot of expertise that would be very helpful, and although I think living a simpler life is what's best for him, there's something deeply amusing about the prospect of King Arlan someday visiting Undermount for whatever reason and attending a grand ball and getting hit with the shock that the loser son he thought was either dead or destitute is the hostess's trophy husband who's actually been doing pretty well for himself the whole time.

So that's about it! Again, I'm not necessarily basing these on what I think is most likely to happen or even what I think is best, I'm just going off of vibes and, like I said, personal wish fulfillment to try to make his and my MC's relationship with the ideas I have for her. Also, sorry for taking so long to answer, I just didn't wanna forget anything :)