I just saw in a massive reblog post that apparently some people consider Maedhros abdicating in favor of Fingolfin as evidence he would be a bad king.

I am puzzled by that line of thinking. There were multiple reasons for Maedhros to give up the crown as he did:

As King, he could potentially entangle all the Noldor in Beleriand in the Oath. (And after his time in Angband Maedhros arguably has a better idea than any of his brothers about both the potency of the Oath and the magnitude of what they’re up against.) As King, his first duty is to his people, but as a son of Fëanor, his Oath takes priority over all else. Those two things will inevitably be in direct conflict at some point.

There is no way the Noldor can fight against Morgoth effectively while divided among themselves, and that their internal division makes them vulnerable – Morgoth will absolutely exploit dissension between various factions. Maedhros needed to heal the rift between the Fëanorian host and the Fingolfinian host as a matter of urgency. That’s going to require him to make some concession to his uncle – something real, not something trivial. (And it’s better to err on the side of giving too much than giving too little, because too little might be taken as an insult and make the situation worse.)

Between the Oath and the (as yet not widely/publicly known) Kinslaying, the elves of Beleriand had good reason to be wary/not trust the Fëanorions. The Noldor needed a leader who wasn’t tainted by either if they were going to form strong alliances- and they needed allies. Yes, Maedhros might have been able to form those alliances, but then what happens when the news of the Kinslaying breaks? (Thingol was furious enough as it was, now imagine what he’d do if he was dealing with a High King of the Noldor who had been directly involved in the Kinslaying.)

The leadership/succession has a better chance of stability with his uncle and cousins than it did with Maedhros and his brothers. The Fëanorions are sworn to pursue Morgoth at all costs – that means their chances of being captured (which has already happened) or killed are high. And he can’t hold any of them back to protect them, because the Oath will drive them to do the exact opposite. Given the crisis Finwë’s death provoked, and how smooth the succession wasn’t, I think a pragmatic leader would want to find a way to lessen the chances of another bad transition/further fragmenting of the Noldor.

So Maedhros had some very solid reasons for handing off the kingship to Fingolfin, most of which are signs of a good/responsible leader. How does this mean he’d be a bad king?

Why do you always write Thindarin or use that symbol thing instead of Sindarin? That’s not what they called themselves?

nihthelm:

[Ahhh, this one. Okay, there is a very long story associated with this, including an entire essay written by Tolkien about the pronunciation of this sound. People have written better, and fuller, explanations of it than I have, and I admit to being no real Quenya expert at all.

But I’ll try to explain it briefly. The various elvish languages contain a sound often written with the character called a “thorn,” which would look like this: Þ (The symbol thing I use, yes?) This sound is known as the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative, as opposed to the voiced dental non-sibilant fricative. (In English, compare the words thorn and this. The initial “th” sounds are subtly different. Say them slowly, holding your windpipe as you do so, and you’ll be able to feel the difference.)

In Noldorin Quenya, the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative began to undergo a mutation after the birth of Miriel Therindë and before the birth of Fëanaro, becoming instead an S sound. However, Miriel preferred the original pronunciation of her name, Therindë rather than Serindë, and all her kin used it because of her wishes — even after her death, Fëanaro insisted that the Þ sound continue to be used, viewing rejection of the Þ as a rejection of his mother herself.

This is known as the Shibboleth of Fëanor — a shibboleth being a preferred pronunciation, basically. All of his sons kept to this shibboleth for his sake and that of his mother. So Caranthir will always use it in words which should take it.

Okay, so there’s the background on Th vs. S. Now we come to the Sindar or Thindar question.

When the exilic Noldor first arrived in Beleriand, the elves later known as the Sindar did not have a name for their entire people, other than eledhrim, which just means elves.

They instead used names to describe individual populations of their folk, like the Iathrim…the people living in Doriath. If I understand it correctly, until a brand-new and very different population of elves arrived in their lands, there had never really been a reason to establish a name differentiating their own “ethnic group” from another, if that makes sense?

But then the Noldor arrived and they named the elves living in Beleriand, the Sindar, the grey-elves, to distinguish them from their own folk and from the green-elves, etc.

So Sindar and Sindarin are, in fact, words in Quenya, not in the tongue of the elves they describe, the language commonly called Sindarin! These words are therefore, in fact, likely not what the grey-elves called themselves amongst themselves.

So since the Fëanorians use the Þ sound, they would say Thinda and Thindarin, while other populations of Quenya speakers would say Sinda and Sindarin. But the in-universe conceit of the Silmarillion is that it is a history later written down….by people who did not hold to the Shibboleth of Fëanor, and therefore used the mutated S sound.

Fun fact, though: Even if we decide to assume that the Sindar/Thindar adopted that name for themselves due to convenience (let’s ignore Thingol’s Quenya ban in so doing), Sindarin actually preserves the thorn!

See Thingol, as opposed to the non-Shibboleth Quenya name Singollo, for example. The element thin- in both Thingol and Thindarin comes from the same root, meaning grey.

So with a couple assumptions made, there’s a pretty good chance that after the Noldor arrived, the Sindar might have called themselves, yes, the Thindar.

Your headcanons about Mairon?

alia-andreth:

Mairon. For @barad-doom

I like Mairon, weeeell, maybe “like” is a strange word to use, but I think Mairon’s deeply cool. And interesting.

The first thing about him is that he’s a perfectionist–that’s actually how he was seduced into evil. As one of Aule’s maiar, he was a craftsman ofc, and at first his goal was, as it says in the Pokemon theme song, to Be The Very Best. To make the most beautiful things, the most useful things. And then it shifted to making things the most orderly, the most efficient, that he could. He started hanging out with Melkor and that’s when his authoritarian streak developed, and slowly he started seeing people less as people and more as tools, chess pieces. Melkor is chaotic evil–he’s got the Fight Club mentality, he likes to smash things up ‘cause it’s fun–but Mairon is lawful evil. More than anything, he wants control. He justifies it to himself, for the first umpteen 1000 years of his existence, that him being in charge would make things better, but around the middle of the Third Age, it’s just control for its own sake.

At his best (1st-2nd Ages), Mairon was clever and incredibly competent. While Melkor spiraled into narcissism and nihilism, screwing around in Angband, making orcs or cheating himself at Solitaire or whatever, Mairon remained connected to the world. He retained enough empathy towards his subordinates to make him an effective leader. His relationship with Melkor was…complicated. I’m going to assume you are an Angbang shipper, ‘cause like the entire Sil fandom is. As a point of disclosure, I feel…odd…about Angbang, and I really can’t headcanon Mairon and Melkor as being devotedly in love. I don’t like to trample on anyone’s ships. But whatever Melkor and Mairon’s relationship was, at one point, by the time of the War of Wrath I feel that Mairon grew frustrated with Melkor’s chaotic, erratic, give-no-shits nature, and their relationship deteriorated into an alliance of mutual convenience. The Morgoth-cults which Mairon started in the 2nd Age…I think it’s possible to interpret them as expressing Mairon’s remaining feelings for Melkor, but I believe Mairon would have seen it as cynical manipulation of lesser being’s passions, giving them a rallying point, using their religion to give himself a power base. At least, that’s how he would have justified it in his mind. I think. There’s a chance that he could be lying to himself.

Mairon swore he would not repeat the mistakes which Melkor made in the 1st Age–namely, treating troops like so many potatoes to throw at the enemy. But by the middle of the 3rd Age he had lost so much empathy, become so ambitious and power-hungry, that in the end, he did.

Send me a character and I’ll tell you my headcanons about them!

nenuials:

I want to take a moment of my day for Arwen Undomiel who is honestly one of the most badass female characters I know. But the thing I specifically want to talk about is that she gets to be the QUEEN OF GONDOR

Everything below is one of my interpretations on the behaviour of Gondor people, and what I think would happen if a bit more of realism would touch Middle Earth.

An elf who rules a kingdom of men. (albeit by the side of one) I can’t even begin to imagine the life Gondorian nobles must have given her, the gossip that must have existed about her. Snotty nobles wrinkling their noses about how one of their own daughters wasn’t good enough for the King. Noooo, he had to choose an elf, not one of his own kind. Snotty nobles who never invite Arwen to their parties and who never include her in their saloons or who never even meet her if it is not a diplomatic/compulsory meeting. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Imagine movie Denethor but multiplied and a lot worse.

The feelings of the common people after a period of accommodation after the War of the Ring changing from awe and respect, and falling into the other extreme of slight fear and caution, because she’s an elf. How can one of the fair people rule over them. What? Just because elves are supposed to be smarter and more beautiful and better at everything, more than humans gives her the right to act all supposedly arrogant and snobby. Who does she think she is? And I’m not even exaggerating, this is true human behaviour.

Arwen who at first tries her best to act as gracious as possible, charming her way through both nobles and common people alike. Who tries to show them that her experience in diplomacy and battle and many, many years make her an invaluable leader, that she is worthy of this title. But year after year it becomes harder and harder to be kind and towards the end, when Aragorn dies, she leaves Minas Tirith with no regret. Even in canon it says that she said goodbye only to her family and a few dear to her and left without telling anyone.

She observes of course that she is not invited to most “important gatherings”, she observes than even her handmaidens seem distant at times (they change frequently) and she tells Aragorn one time. But what can he do? Force all the city to just “like” their queen? In the beginning Arwen stays never too much in the seventh circle, but in the lower ones, helping her newfound people with their tasks, making her mission to help the orphans of war, donating what elven jewelry she has. But people forget the good done to them and when she stops after some years, her praise stops as well.

She stars to blame her father. He was the one who insisted that Aragorn had to be the King of both Arnor and Gondor in order to marry her. Would it have been so wrong for him to claim just Arnor? She knew Eriador like the back of her palm, the rangers knew and respected her and the country of hobbits was so close. And even the Bree men were more friendly than this lot. (We’re talking about the same lot who not even after 200 years after the War of the Ring started worshipping Sauron again. It’s canon, read in “The new Shadow”). Eowyn and Lothiriel become her closest friends, and Faramir and Eomer. They have fought the War, they know her struggles. In the end, the life in Gondor was harder than she could have imagined.