#honestly just laughing at the thought of like half the room turning to watch glorfindel approach éowyn and éowyn being like 'the fuck???'

[morwensteelsheen]

I might have just hallucinated this but at some point i saw something (maybe it was a fic? Idk) exploring Eowyn meeting Glorfindel. Just for fun do you have any thoughts on how that might have gone? I always thought it was an interesting little detail that so many elves were present in Edoras for Theoden's funeral/the trothplighting and wonder what they might have made of all that. It seemed to me a changing of the guard in a way as the age of elves was ending and the age of men began ascending

Oooh, fun question, and that's really such a beautiful way of putting that, I love the idea of it as a changing of the guard.

You definitely didn't hallucinate that fic, I'm trying to find it now — will update when I do!

So I think there are a few main factors that go into deciding what Éowyn would have thought about meeting Glorfindel, and vice versa. I’ll start with Éowyn because that’s what I’m more comfortable with.

The three main questions to answer here are: 1) Éowyn’s thoughts on the Elves generally 2) Éowyn’s awareness of the prophesy/the lore surrounding the Witch-king and 3) the extent to which Éowyn is impressed (or not impressed) by impressive things.

We’ll start with 1. Which rocks because it’s the one we have the least textual evidence for — classic! Legolas is almost certainly the first Elf she’s ever interacted with, and we see basically no interactions between them. So we have to look to the next Elves she sees which are… Elladan and Elrohir. And on those fellas, she’s got nothing particularly interesting to say:

The Lady Éowyn greeted them and was glad of their coming; for no mightier men had she seen than the Dúnedain and the fair sons of Elrond; but on Aragorn most of all her eyes rested.

So, she (rightly) thinks they’re pretty and strong, but really has nothing much else to say beyond that. This is mostly because she’s focussed entirely on Aragorn, but you’d think if she was going to have any strong reactions, now would be the time. Textually this is all we get, so now I get to dive into my HC. I think she’s basically unimpressed by them generally. Not outright hostile, because she’ll have seen what part they played in the war and have tremendous respect for them for that, but they’re not really a thing that exists in her life, so to speak. Plus, the first person she really talks to for any extended period of time who’s going to have any strong opinions on the Elves is Faramir and he is, objectively, deeply ambivalent (see: his takes on dealing with Galadriel and the Elves in Two Towers. King of Not Giving A Fuck).

On the Elf Question, she’s probably going to come to them with a general level of ambivalence and, maybe, some scepticism, and maybe some feelings of discomfort. They’re just very, very outwith her ken.

Okay onto 2. The prophesy and the lore. Yeah, Éowyn almost certainly knows jack shit about this. Not because she’s dumb, but just because it’s, again, not really part of her world. The Battle of Fornost is a somewhat significant battle, all things considered, but it’s so far before the establishment of the Mark that it’s unlikely they’re going to be dealing with the specifics of it, and certainly even less so with the airy-fairy shit some twunk is spouting off afterwards. Going into her fight, she’s really not going to know why it should matter that she’s not a dude, she just knows that the Witch king is bad and she wants him gone. She might not even know who Glorfindel is, to be honest! Which is also going to be funny because for those in the know, Glorfindel is, like, literally Jesus Christ Superstar. The question really is how many people know? The Gondorrim fo sho, I struggle with the extent to which the Rohirrim are versed in this sort of stuff. Éomer, maybe. Certainly he’s going to be briefed, being the King of the Mark and all that, but how much gets passed along to Éowyn? I’m not sure. My heart says all of it, my head says basically none.

And 3., how much is Éowyn impressed by impressive things? Well, that can go either way. She’s obviously very impressed by Aragorn, but that could be/is as much an emotional response to the act of heroism she sees as it is to his general impressiveness. The next impressive thing we see her deal with is the Witch king and, again, this is coloured by emotion, but she really does not seem impressed At All by him. So unimpressed, actually, that where braver men turned tail and hauled ass out of there, she starts monologuing lol. The next impressive thing is Minas Tirith, Gondor generally, and Faramir. She’s very iffy on all of these things, she’s certainly not much impressed by the power or majesty of it all, and it takes a lot of concessions on Faramir’s behalf before she’s out and out ready to deal with him. So, yeah. Not easily impressed our Éowyn.

Glorfindel, by comparison, is an absolute delight of a character who is almost certainly deeply, deeply impressed with Éowyn. And, I think importantly, is not liable to get bogged down into the hooha about whether or not it’s Merry or Éowyn who fulfils the prophesy. I think he’s going to be fucking thrilled to death (in his own, neat and tidy way) about Éowyn being who she is. His approach to this is going to be much less complicated than Éowyn’s — he’s seen fucking loads of great heroes in his life, no matter how cool she is, she’s just another one of them, so he’s not going to be starstruck.

I think their actual meeting would be fairly lowkey, particularly if it’s at any sort of major event. I might even go so far as to say that Éowyn’s not really going to differentiate between him and any of the other Elves that are cutting about unless someone either 1) explicitly gives her a heads up in advance or 2) he goes out of his way to explain who he is and what their implicit relationship to one another is. For my part, I’m not certain he would.

Part of the problem with dealing with this question is that Glorfindel is Tolkien’s hero’s hero. He’s a hero nonpareil, basically so heroic that he lacks any real distinguishable personality beyond inherent nobility, goodness, and courage. In any interaction between them, Glorfindel would sort of being fulfilling the role of a character trope, and Éowyn would be providing the bulk of the personality. Given that, I think I’m pretty comfortable in saying that Glorfindel would probably approach Éowyn as a warrior equal, and would compliment her on her feat, but would not, I think, necessarily be hanging around to chat complex history with her. If anything it’s probably going to be a drive-by conversation. They’ll meet, he’ll congratulate her, he’ll go on with his life. I don’t think she’s going to be starstruck by meeting him.

I also think she’s going to be at a very specific point in her life at any point where they could reasonably meet where she’s probably not going to be all giggly/happy/proud of herself for having killed the Witch king. It’s still going to be a really sore, traumatic moment in her life that’s going to be wrapped up in so many other negative emotions (not least of which is her stunted catharsis — which I am intending to write about later) that she’s probably fine acknowledging it but is maybe a bit emotionally ehhh on it. If he, say, swings by Emyn Arnen in TA 3021, maybe she’ll be a little more up for chatting happily about it and swapping war stories. But I think at Théoden’s funeral or Aragorn and Arwen’s wedding she’s just not going to be in the right place for big hype over it. And I suspect Glorfindel would recognise that and be respectful of it — he, too, has seen some shit.

What would be fucking fun is everybody who’d be trying to watch that interaction, especially if it’s going on at an event or in public. The rubbernecking would be absurd. For all his Elf ambivalence, I’d put a decent amount of money down to say that Faramir would be hauling ass over there to be a part of that conversation — mostly out of a detached academic interest, it’s not often you see the heroes of your childhood stories/Tolkien Jesus come walking up to congratulate your wife on being radge as fuck. If Aragorn’s around/aware, he’s definitely got some level of pride going on over it, and would probably try to see it from afar, if not being around for it. Éomer’s definitely hyped even if he’s not really got the full significance of it down, there’s no way he’s not going to be impressed by Glorfindel’s biography. Everybody else, even those without a personal connection to either of them, is probably watching because it’d be a cool as shit thing to see. I don’t fully understand the significance of, like, public marriage proposals or whatever, but if I see one happening I’m gonna watch it. That sort of thing.