The city arched into the rock like a wave cresting; there were towers and archways and the white sails of the ships in the bay, stone worn smooth by time, carvings delicate as lace. And the people –
Alqualondë was –
Elwing dug her nails into her palms, trying to make sense of it. She had been born in Doriath; she had seen cities; only, it had been such a long voyage –
The Teleri she had met, on the shore, had been almost embarrassingly kind, offering her what she was told were travel-rations and working-clothes to replace her own much-mended skirts. She had not liked to say how fine it all seemed; but she had done her best to thank them, after she had managed to stop weeping.
Olue, one of them had said, and that was a name she thought she recognised, in all the bewildering strangeness of their speech, which was neither the Sindarin of her birth nor the Quenya her husband’s people sometimes spoke amongst themselves. We must take her to – the king will know what to do –
She was Dior’s daughter and Lúthien’s granddaughter, who had faced down Powers alone, with only her voice and a cloak made from her own cropped hair. Elwing straightened her spine, and refused to be afraid.
It was only a short wait, in the small, private room her escorts showed her to, with nervous murmurings. Elwing bore it patiently, resisting the urge to pace.
At the noise in the corridor – voices, urgent – she felt her head snap round, despite herself.
The man who stopped in the threshold, staring at her, was tall, and silver-haired, his braids set with pearls. Elwing drew herself up, fiercely –
“His – ” the man was saying, staring at her, his eyes wide and startled, and then another stream of words she could not quite seem to catch. “Elue’s – look at – oh, child – ”
There were words she had meant to say; she could not quite seem to find them.
“Elwing,” the man who must be the king of the Teleri, and Elwing’s great-grandfather’s brother, said, wonderingly, coming forward and taking her hands; and then she was crying again, despite her best efforts, but somehow it seemed not to matter.
second age Numenorians totally had tavern brawls about this
Someone would be singing a random Elwing-Earendil song and then she became a swan and are you drunk???? It was a Seagull, but pfft a queen into a seagull yeah right but EXCUSE YOU IT WAS A PELICAN
Y’all, because I’m new to expressing online my fandom opinions, I’m trying to wait a while until I start talking about certain characters.
Because a lot of what I feel I’ve discovered seems to run counter to what the majority of opinion I come across. But it’s hard. I’m biting my tongue and waiting for when I plan on mentioning it where I think the appropriate time to ease into it.
However- I will say this- I was always sympathetic to Elwing and don’t criticize her for leaping off the cliff with the bloody Silmaril.
Reblogging this old post yet again, and thinking about rewriting it. But the basic gist being that I have NEVER blamed or desired Elwing to hand over the Silmaril instead of flinging herself and Silmaril off the cliff. And I wish that Maedhros’s decision to fling himself into a fiery chasm after flinging the Silmaril into it – and Maglor’s own chunking of the Silmaril into the ocean- was given half as much scrutiny and disdain as Elwing’s choice. Because they too were deciding that if they couldn’t hold the Silmarils and fearing they would soon be captured, no one could benefit from them.
Because the Fëanorians had sacked and destroyed Sirion, killing the overwhelming majority of people there, of which many were survivors of the previous time the Fëanorians had invaded and sacked and killed off a major city, and thus there was NO WAY anyone believed they would show mercy. Because the way to stop them would be to remove this cursed gem from the equation, plus a guarantee that by throwing herself and the Silmaril into the sea she was also keeping it out of Morgoth’s hands (seriously people, do you think even if Maedhros and Maglor reclaimed that Silmaril during the Third Kinslaying they would have been able to stay out of Morgoth’s hands when they were ridiculously overwhelming outnumbered and had burned just about all possible bridges with allies and Morgoth was controlling 99% of Beleriand at this time and tell me how well Maedhros’s last confrontation with Morgoth went. I’m waiting.)
Because the Fëanorians value ownership of the Silmarils over consideration of other people’s lives. Explain to me how that isn’t canon. Please.
Because I am so tired of the sexist damnation of her as a bad mother. Because as long as Elwing was taking the Silmaril to the edges of the city, away from the cave where Elrond and Elros were hidden, she was drawing them away from her children. That this scenario is the one that first came to me as I read the text and the one I thought obvious – that she wasn’t making this ‘bad mother/leader’ decision to choose the Silmaril over her sons’ lives, but was trying to save them, to buy time for them to escape, or even just to get that one last act of defiance and revenge against the people that had murdered her mother, father, older brothers, destroyed her first home, was in the process or were completing the process of destroying her second. And why isn’t she allowed by readers to have that desire? The Noldor were motivated by revenge (and xenophobia and colonialism). Because she’s a young woman? Because she isn’t one of the ‘fan favorite bad boy’ Fëanorians?
And it’’s that damn Plot MacGuffin Silmaril that messes with people’s minds and brings as much woe as the One Ring and too bad there was no Mount Doom to destroy the damn things that shouldn’t have been made, if you want my bitter true opinion.
My very first meta post to tumblr was a defense of Elwing and my low-key rage at criticism that she was a bad/selfish mother and that Maglor and Maedhros, the twins’ kidnappers, were better parents. Even long ago in my first fandom year when Maglor + twins wasn’t the rage button it now is, negative attitudes towards Elwing and Earendil were still loathsome to me. Look through my tumblr Silm posts, especially the earlier ones before I blocked and ignored most stuff, and this should be very clear. I haven’t seen the Elwing bashing post; i don’t need to. Don’t want to. There’s nothing new and nothing I accept as true. And choosing not to kill the twins (despite anybody including remaining family believing the Feanorians capable and willing to) is not Maglor’s redemption – now if he actually returned the twins to their family and people instead of keeping them with in the hands that murdered almost all of their neighbors and friends and sacked their only home…then we’d start to get somewhere.
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