#thanks legolas for your quote contribution

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Dagoth Ur: The Tribunal may judge me, but their sins outnumber my own.

[tom-bombadil-is-transgender]

LOTR themed tag game! Reblog with your own answers and tag three or more people you want to get to know better!

thank you @anythingbyadriannelenker for tagging me!

How old were you when you read/watched LOTR for the first time: I first watched the Jackson movies when I was like 6 because my parents were nerds and wanted me to see them. Took me until I was a teenager to read the books. Watched other LOTR movies after I read the books.

Favourite LOTR character: Very hard question. Obviously I love Tom Bombadil but considering he is there for like 2 seconds I feel like I should pick another one too. I'd probably say Gimli? Only in the book though, they butchered my boy in the movies. He's just always really touched me when I've read his parts, the way he appreciates all the beauty around him and finds so much joy in it even in the worst of times.

Books or movies: Books obviously but every single movie iteration has its own special thing to contribute so I would never want to be without them. Special shoutout to all the movies that came before Peter Jackson's. It was rough out there.

Favourite movie: Return of the King???? Maybe??? You just can't beat "I'm glad to be with you Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things".

Which location in Middle Earth would you want to visit most: Lothlórien. Easiest question yet.

Favourite scene: I cannot possibly choose one. Tom Bombadil's rescue, everything that happens in Lothlórien, all the stuff in Fangorn, Sam's confrontation with Shelob and rescue of Frodo, on Mouth Doom post ring destruction, etc.

Favourite quote: Spoken by Gimli- "'Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy.'". I wish I could go back and read that line again for the first time, it gave me such a visceral feeling. Still does. Another of all time is when Gandalf says, "'Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things." Goosebumps.

What Middle Earth race would you want to be: I am torn between hobbit and dwarf

Favourite LOTR ship if you have one: Can't choose between Sam/Frodo and Gimli/Legolas honestly

tagging @vampiricshadow @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @filthy-lil-bugger @lotrmusical and @elen-ancalima for this one

[anghraine]

I love your take on Gondor. What do you make of Boromir's quote in the council of Elrond paraphrasing "those who shelter behind us give us much praise but little help". I presume he is talking about other Gondorians. And the Stewards are often referred to as Lords of Minas Tirth or lord of the city.

What does this mean for how Gondor and its provinces view themselves and how its armies function. Are the Princes of Dol Amroth minting their own coin? Do the lords of Morthond present their daughters at the Stewards court? Are all the lords related to each other in a tangle of blood and marriage ties or do they keep to their home fiefs? It could be envisioned so many ways I am curious to read your perspective.

Thanks!

I’ve always taken the opposite reading of Boromir’s line—that he’s talking about the peoples of Middle-earth sheltering behind Gondor generally, and this is why (if I’m remembering correctly) the others at the council go out of their way to point out that it’s not just Gondor that’s protecting the people of Middle-earth.

That said, Tolkien described the Princes of Dol Amroth as almost independent, but not quite; they’re “tributary princes” who contribute ... something ... to Gondor as a state. So while it might not look exactly like taxation as we’d understand it and could refer to things other than money, I do think it suggests some degree of cohesion, if even the Princes of Dol Amroth (definitely the most powerful and independent of the regional nobles) have to contribute to the whole.

We do see that the fiefs have a lot of authority when it comes to what troops they raise and where they send them. They only sent 1/10th of the forces at their command to help defend Minas Tirith because they were so worried about their own people, and seem to have been entirely free to make that call (and the people of Minas Tirith are disappointed but not enraged). So there’s still quite a bit of regional power in the military sense, at least. But Tolkien also said that a Dúnadan king (or Ruling Steward) was a fairly absolute ruler in other ways (esp dealing with interpretation of law), so it may be that the lords’ authority is particularly pronounced in military matters and more limited in others.

I do imagine that there would be a lot of intermarriage between the Dúnadan noble families, given that there are only so many of them. While Gondorians have less hang-ups about ~purity than in the Kinstrife days, I think it’s still something people are conscious of, as with Éowyn’s joke that Faramir’s people will wonder why he didn’t choose a woman “of the race of Númenor” to be his wife (she doesn’t seem to think her 1/4 Númenórean ancestry will count for Gondorians). 

IMO it’s entirely probable that the Stewards and Princes of Dol Amroth have intermarried multiple times, say—not with first cousins (I think that taboo became pretty non-negotiable post-Akallabêth), but more distant connections. Perhaps Imrahil is recognizable as part-Elvish to Legolas despite the generational distance from Mithrellas because Imrahil’s actually descended from her many times over. Etc.

[anthropologyarda]

Personal headcanon: When heroic Edain are described as elf-like, it’s not meant literally. Human heroes don’t really look similar to elves, and can’t generally be confused with elves, unless you have never met both an elf and a human before. They look different, and they move differently. Also, beards. The few cases this might actually be true are when the human has elf blood. Legolas knows at first sight that Imrahil has elvish blood in him, for example, despite the many generations between him and his elvish fore-mother.

The mundane explanation is that humans and elves are both bipedal and similarly formed, so confusing one race for the other occasionally is understandable. It could easily be caused by poor visibility, long distance, having the face obscured, having their back turned, having a particular hair color, dressing like an elf, speaking or responding in one of the elf-tongues, or being unusually tall.

For example, Nienor disguises herself as an elvish marchwarden by putting on a matching grey cloak and being tall enough to blend in (she is so tall that only one marchwarden is taller than her, which is pretty neat). Mîm confuses Turin for an elf “by your speech and your voice.” This makes perfect sense if his speech has the cadence or accent of the Sindarin he spoke during his fostering, or if he is in fact speaking Sindarin.

Turin must be considered separately thanks to this quote, “he was in truth the son of Morwen Eledhwen to look upon: tall, dark-haired and pale-skinned, with grey eyes, and his face more beautiful than any other among mortal men, in the Elder Days. His speech and bearing were those of the ancient kingdom of Doriath, and even among the Elves he might be taken at first meeting for one from the great houses of the Noldor...and many called him Adanedhel, the Elf-man.” Now, the text tells us that Turin could be confused with an elf, but it doesn’t actually show this. His coloring, and height would account for being confused as a Noldor elf as long as he’s clean-shaven, but none of the characters who meet him, like Gwindor or the Falathrim ambassadors, seem to have trouble doing it. Turin was fostered by elves, which would give him knowledge of elven customs and practices that would make it easier to confuse him with biological elves. Calling him elf-man might equally well refer to his elvish habits and upbringing, but I’ll classify Turin as a borderline case.

His cousin Tuor is even weirder, a special case where we have direct proof of a Man being frequently confused by elves as an elf, but Tuor is frequently spiritually grouped with the elves and kind of an outlier. Tuor is cloaked, wearing the armor prepared by Turgon, and standing on a high terrace when Voronwe at first takes Tuor to be an elf. Tuor is confused a second time for an elf while wearing Ulmo’s cloak, but I am explaining that as Ulmo’s magic being the cause, and that something relating to ‘magic’ or the Unseen can cause misidentification. So I’m putting Tuor in a third category labeled ‘who knows.’

Beleg is the only case I know of where an elf is confused for a Man, and again environmental conditions are the contributing factors, “In the dim dusk of a day in midwinter there appeared suddenly among them a Man, as it seemed, of great bulk and girth, cloaked and hooded in white. He had eluded their watchmen, and he walked up to their fire without a word. When men sprang up he laughed and threw back his hood, and they saw that it was Beleg Strongbow. Under his wide cloak he bore a great pack in which he had brought many things for the help of men.” So Beleg’s outline and size are distorted by his clothing and bag.

The other strong possibility is that the description of heroes as elf-like is more of a poetic epithet, and all of the ‘look like elves’ superlative bits are just unfamiliarity with elves or hyperbole and propaganda by the Dunedain. The Silmarillion in-universe has a textual history, and the version we’re reading has been passed down by the scribes of Gondor. Those scribes have a clear motivation for making their ancestors look heroic.

Stories shift and change as generations of storytellers repeat them, and exaggeration of a hero’s characteristics makes for a better story. Ancient epics in our world are full of heroes and villains described in superlatives (god-like Achilles etc.), and I find it reasonable that the same is true of Tolkien’s ancient Edain. Tuor, Turin, Morwen (called Elfsheen for the light of her glance and the beauty of her face) are all characters with high destinies and who are described as elf-like and whose traits could have been exaggerated for narrative effect.

Elvishness also has a thematic context as shorthand for goodness, beauty, and behaving according to tradition and natural law. Even if we know this isn’t an accurate shorthand, it is one that seems to hold weight to an in-universe acculturated reader. In the beginning of the story of Erendis and Aldarion, for example, Erendis is frequently noted to have qualities reminiscent of elves and is also described as looking like an elf. These descriptions disappear entirely in the text as the tale winds down it its unhappy conclusion, culminating in the dismissal of the elven birds when she and Aldarion reject each other permanently. Loss of elvishness correlates to a loss of virtue, alignment with morality and ‘right’. 

The description of men-like-elves by their contemporary Edain can also be explained by the context. When elvishness has social capital, applying this label has power even if it isn’t strictly true or accurate. And being like the elves was a powerful concept among the Dunedain for a long time, both out of genuine admiration and for more pragmatic motives. It was deliberately invoked for political reasons by the three houses of the Edain, the Numenoreans and the Elendili, and their Dunedain descendants in the Third Age.