#thinks about all tolkien gave us as gathered in the palantiri chapter of unfinished tales and vibrates with excitement and righteous fury

[illegalstargender]

☕️ tell me about.. The palantirs and where they were kept and who used them again uwu

!!!!!!!! aaaaaa OH oh absolutely! ok OK SO let’s see ... how about a list to keep things sorta organized and contained??

Gondor was specifically charged with four of the stones, which became known as the Orthanc stone, the Anor stone, the Ithil stone, and the Osgiliath stone

If I think about what they might have been called before this, I’ll lose it completely so... just gonna pretend their history began in Gondor for know

the first three (Orthanc, Anor, Ithil) were kept in towers, the Osgiliath stone seeming to be an exception, however!

there are important architectural considerations to a room that houses a palantir, and those elements mean that actually, all four rooms are remarkably similar

one of those features is a domed ceiling, which in Osgiliath means, YES yes y e s! the stone was originally kept most un-secretly (though with great reverence and ceremony) within the Dome of the Stars itself, positioned at the center of the dome at one point, guarded by an honor guard similar to the one that guards the White Tree as we see in late third age Gondor

given the power of the stones themselves, the domed ceiling need not be at the top of the building itself, though! Meaning that in a tower like Orthanc, the room that houses the palantir is domed, even if the top of the tower itself isn’t, and this is no way impedes the stone’s function

as for who uses them WELL! they have a reputation of being associated with the kings by the time of the late third age, but this is more like we would associate jousting with medieval times rather than a specific indicator of usage, meaning people think of them in association with the kings because the height of their common use was during the time of kings in Gondor and Arnor

In fact, it is the stewards who were the stone’s caretakers and masters for the majority of their history in the hands of Men, for even during the time of kings, it was very rare for a king themself to use the stone, relying instead on their stewards (who perhaps even at one point themselves relegated the task to subordinate users)

and YES YES YES Denethor was the most legitimate and skilled master of a palantir at the time of the events of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien himself wrote this as FACT, I go spare pondering this and how his impression of Denethor shifted over time, only Aragorn could supersede him by right though he was clearly no match for him in skill, best not think about how things might have been different if they’d only had time to work together BECAUSE!

this is already quite long and that will turn this into a real and actual novella at least, so I will leave it here for now but I hope everyone who sees this knows I could, in fact, keep talking for hours about this, as Erran can attest uwu