#also Elrond decides that’s his sister. no he’s not taking any objections. his sister now.

[sparklecryptid]

Thought you'd find this funny-I don't know much about LOTR or the Silmarillion but your posts about Anordil were interesting and I wanted context and it took me like 5 minutes of refining my google searches and being very confused before I realised she's your OC 😅

That being said, do you have a lore post or something? She's intruiging ^_^

Okay this did give me a chuckle! I don’t have a lore post for her other than her verse tag #the light of dawn verse but I can give the lowdown on her general everything.

She started out as a shameless self insert that morphed into a proper independent OC. This is to say that she’s basically a Tolkien nerd that died and got reborn before the third kinslaying as Maglor’s daughter. Now. This wouldn’t be a problem usually.

Except the notes of her own personal Song do NOT match up with the Song that Makes Up Everything so instead of being able to change anything the universe treats her as an outlier and if she’s gone from an area for more than three days people forget about her and it’s like she never even existed.

This gives her as many issues as you think it would. The only person that mostly remembers her is Maglor and he’s off doing God knows what. So she basically spends three to four thousand years not staying in one place for too long because she knows just how easy it would be to be forgotten and how much it hurts.

Eventually though the Song starts to recognize her as Part of It. She does not know when this happens because she’s been a hermit for the past four hundred years. She only realizes something Changed when the feanorians that served her father and she grew up with recognize her when she delivers the twins back to Rivendell.

Anordil: you… recognize me?

Random Vassal of her father: yes. You got pie in my hair once.

Anordil: *silently freaking out*

(She also might have a weird thing going on with Glorfindel and Erestor and its a comedy of angst and Errors)

[grundyscribbling]

Eowyn

Because it’s me and one thing leads to another, that post about the movie version Helm’s Deep has gotten me thinking about Eowyn.

On one hand, I love that she’s a badass who ends up killing the Witch King in a Birnam Wood moment. She does that while also bringing Merry along, because she understands not wanting to be left behind. And she’s basically the only traditional hero we girls get. Galadriel’s nice, but she’s more a hostess/wise-woman/gift-giver than a hero, and we only see Arwen a couple minutes in Imladris, and then at the end when she shows up to get married and give Frodo her place on the ship. Aside from Ioreth, and a handful of hobbit ladies back in the Shire, that’s pretty much it for women in LotR. (Unless we’re counting Shelob, but we’re not, right?)

On the other hand, can we talk about how Eowyn was 100% in the wrong to run away to battle? Yes, it worked out, but in the fine glow of victory, it never gets addressed that she went AWOL because she didn’t like the duty assigned to her. (She’d appealed for permission to ride to battle multiple times, both to her uncle and to Aragorn. Theoden denied her permission; Aragorn had no standing to give or withhold permission and told her so.)

And she absolutely did have a duty. Take a look at the text:

“Behold! I go forth, and it seems like to be my last riding," said Theoden. "I have no child. Theodred my son is slain. I name Eomer my sister-son to be my heir. If neither of us return, then choose a new lord as you will. But to some one I must now entrust my people that I leave behind, to rule them in my place. Which of you will stay?" No man spoke. "Is there none whom you would name? In whom do my people trust?" "In the House of Eorl," answered Hama. "But Eomer I cannot spare, nor would he stay," said the king, "and he is the last of that House." "I said not Eomer," answered Hama. "And he is not the last. There is Eowyn, daughter of Eomund, his sister. She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone." "It shall be so," said Theoden. "Let the heralds announce to the folk that the Lady Eowyn will lead them!"

Then the king sat upon a seat before his doors, and Eowyn knelt before him and received from him a sword and a fair corslet.

-The Two Towers, Chapter 6 “The King of the Golden Hall”

With her uncle the king and her older brother the heir to the king both riding to war in Gondor, Eowyn was the ranking member - indeed, the only member - of the House of Eorl left in Rohan. She was the person the people had expressed their trust in as a leader, and her uncle charged her to rule in his absence. She was responsible for the care and defense of the Rohirrim. And she ran out on them, with no mention of having made any arrangement for who would be in charge in her absence.

Far from being given ‘women’s work’ as she complained to Aragorn, Eowyn was in fact being accorded an honor in being named her uncle’s regent - when Theoden looked around for a lord to leave in charge, he was told it was not a man, but Eowyn who the people trusted. As ignoble as her role might have seemed to her up to that point, the Rohirrim recognized her worth.

If Eowyn had a younger sister to deputize, or had her mother still been living, her decision to sneak out to the war would not have been so problematic. (At least, not from an objective point of view- I imagine her brother and likely her uncle would have strongly objected. She also would still have been going for dubious reasons, either glory-seeking or death-seeking.) In fact, had Eowyn’s mother Theodwyn been alive, she arguably might have been the more appropriate choice to act in Theoden’s place in his absence by virtue of her age/experience, so Eowyn wouldn’t have needed to desert her post in the first place.

This seems like an odd choice or oversight on Tolkien’s part. Eowyn would still have ridden to war had there been someone else of the House of Eorl, be it a mother or a sister to take her place in Rohan, but her action would not have been wrong in and of itself. And given how many dead or absent mothers* there are in Lord of the Rings, it would have been nice to see one living and contributing more than just her offspring to events. (Even Galadriel gets reduced to little more than the fruit of her womb - when thanking her for her parting gifts, Aragorn can think of no higher praise than to describe her as being she ‘of whom were sprung Celebrian and Arwen Evenstar.’)

It’s even odder that we never see this aspect of Eowyn’s actions mentioned in the story, particularly when Beregond’s far more minor dereliction of duty with the express purpose of saving a life is addressed publicly. Was Eomer so happy his sister survived that he never got around to chewing her out for dereliction of duty? Did he assume that she somehow talked their uncle into allowing her to ride with them? Did he wait and address it ‘off-screen’, maybe at some point once Theoden had been buried in Rohan? Or did he decide that the best thing to do under the circumstances was to let it slide?

*Major characters whose mothers are known to be dead/departed to the West: Frodo, Arwen & Elladan & Elrohir, Aragorn, Boromir & Faramir, Theodred, Eomer & Eowyn, Elrond

Major characters whose mother is never mentioned at all, not even a name: Legolas, Gimli

Major characters whose mother is only a name in the Appendices: Sam, Pippin, Merry.

I omitted any character whose mother might reasonably be expected to be dead of old age in the normal course of events, such as Bilbo. (I’m also omitting Galadriel, since she’s an exile by her own choice, so it seems unfair to add Eärwen to the dead/absent mothers list.)