#éowyn had just gotten to rómenna when i stopped ;_;

[anghraine]

I was looking for a different old post, and instead found an unfinished series of fic scraps for a Númenor AU I'd completely forgotten about. I'm sort of fascinated by it despite having no idea where I was going with it.

The premise, as far as I can tell, is that for whatever reason, the Númenórean invasion of Valinor never happened. Maybe Pharazôn never came to power, or Sauron was never brought to Númenor, or ... idk, but it didn't occur. As a consequence, there was no sinking of the island, and Númenor remains a major power throughout the Third Age.

However, it took a comparatively isolationist turn at some point, and by the War of the Ring, has largely withdrawn from involvement in Middle-earth except when absolutely necessary to preserve the old Númenórean colonies they've hung onto. Gondor is one of these and not an independent nation, though Númenor does delegate a lot of its governance to regional authorities answering to the Prince of Gondor, who in turn answers to a typically indifferent Númenor.

The Gondorian regional government did manage to get permission to relinquish Calenardhon to the Eorlingas, so Rohan still exists in this universe. It was supposed to make Gondor less dependent on costly reinforcements from Númenor that would take time to get there, and thus make things more convenient for the Númenórean government, since Calenardhon wasn't particularly valuable to them. And the arrangement did work for a long time, but things are really bad in Rohan at the moment, and the regional government in Gondor is (for their own reasons) dragging their feet about appealing to Númenor.

So after all this backstory, the fic was actually about Éowyn and her journey to Númenor to try and get aid for Rohan from Tar-Elessar. Even for me, this was a "wtf?" read, but also, I kind of love the idea and wish I'd written more of it.