Men will sit here and tell you keeping up with the kardashians singlehandedly created a generation of vapid Instagram obsessed teens, but would spontaneously combust before they admitted that porn helped brainwash a new generation of misogynists
A double drabble written for SWG's 5/2/2026 instadrabble session using the prompt 'what could our mothers do but lose sleep, wake into prayer, prepare herbs & apples.' Also on AO3.
There was never a time Aredhel thought more about her mother than in the days of Lómion’s youth.
In her girlhood, she had taken pride in being as unlike to her mother as two women could be. Gentle, submissive Anairë; she who had taken Nolofinwë’s word as law, who had made herself small each day in the service of men far lesser than she.
How Aredhel had looked down upon her! How disgusted she had been, running laughing through Oromë’s woods in a dirt-covered white dress stained with the blood of the hunt, that any woman could allow herself to be so unmade. Could let herself be reduced to mere wife and mother, and to fight this unmaking not at all, and to so easily allow herself to forget who once she had been before woman became the only thing that mattered.
Aredhel rises now in the shadowed mornings of Nan Elmoth that are indistinguishable from its nights. She picks the strange fruits that grow in its darkened brush, and she washes and cuts them with a knife of her husband’s make. Lómion fusses, swaddled upon her breast.
Eöl comes when she calls him, and he eats, and he leaves.
Writing Aredhel’s POV for the first time rn and UGH she’s so interesting. The impulsiveness. The family drama. The need to constantly be moving. She married a guy who was exactly like her best friend while running away from her older brother. I have so much to work with here guys
“My father wanted to kill me,” said Lómion, articulating every word precisely. His face was haggard, but fair in the firelight, and Tyelcano could tell that he had been trying not to acknowledge this truth for a very long time. “What is the word for that, Counsellor, tell me? A son-slayer? You held a torch at Losgar and yet you would never do something like that, would you? Your face is whiter than the gems in my uncle’s vaults.”
fascinated actually by the structural-political underpinnings of eöl's death, doubly so by the fact that to my knowledge it's the only execution as such (not counting uldor's killing by maglor since a. it takes place in battle, and b. while maglor is a leader, uldor's death is ultimately neither precipitated nor presided over by the apparatus of the state; i.e. maglor takes him on as an individual rather than as a prince).
for clarity's sake, let's begin by stating that in this instance, i am using the term execution as a means of referring to what in legal terminology would likely be called the death penalty. while execution can and does take place under diverse circumstances, and can be colloquially used as a shorthand for a certain type of premeditated, often politically-oriented killing, for the purposes of this discussion we define it as constituting of three factors:
occurring under the auspices of a group or individual holding material power (in most cases the government of a state)
considered a means of merited retribution for actions done by the subject
not liable to be legally prosecuted under the system of the ruling body
therefore, while functionally the same, execution utilizes a different vocabulary than murder or killing, because it is considered within rather than outside the parameters of the state, i.e. legal. in the silmarillion, we see this as an absence in the text of any references to or condemnation of turgon as a kinslayer following eöl's death, despite the fact that eöl was not only an elf, but in an official sense, potentially part of turgon's immediate kinship group (the degree of confusion regarding elven marriage and the shades of legal/cultural/spiritual/physical distinctions therein being as nebulous as they are, we are not exploring the validity of his relationship with aredhel, but it is a connection of some sort nonetheless—simply put, eöl's son is turgon's nephew). curufin, of course, denies this latter aspect, telling eöl that "...those who steal the daughters of the Noldor and wed them without gift or leave do not gain kinship with their kin" (tolkien 171), but given the political nature of both curufin and eöl's positionalities in this dialogue—curufin a noldorin lord and a fëanorian, eöl a sinda whose claim to rulership may or may not be acknowledged, a guest protected by the rules of hospitality, and kin to the fëanorians' very vocal opponent thingol—as well as the pointedness of the statement itself ("steal the daughters of the Noldor" implying an ethno-political dispute rather than a strictly familial one concerning only aredhel), i am loath to assume that curufin is describing a universal cultural attitude rather than simply making a threat.
furthermore, turgon himself starts out by very explicitly greeting eöl as his brother-in-law: "But Turgon treated him with honour, and rose up and would take his hand; and he said: ‘Welcome, kinsman, for so I hold you" (tolkien 172). "or so I hold you" does possibly imply some debate about eöl's status (would others not hold him as their kinsman?), but certainly turgon isn't brooking it.
and then of course things get nasty, eöl gives his big speech, turgon retorts with horrible colonial rhetoric worth analyzing in itself about how the sindar owe their safety and freedom to the noldor (that kinsman stuff seems to have gone out the window pretty quickly upon eöl's refusal to comply with staying in gondolin forever), eöl hurls the javelin, aredhel is struck protecting maeglin, and the rest is history.
and now comes judicial procedure. "It was appointed that Eöl should be brought on the next day to the King’s judgement" (tolkien 173) implies pretty conclusively that gondolin lacks, at least in high-profile cases, a justice system beyond 'what turgon says goes,' and, although "Aredhel and Idril moved Turgon to mercy" (something to be discussed here about the masculinist construction of justice as punishment contrasted with the also patriarchally-constructed idea that women must temper 'their men's' violence while simultaneously being both beneficiaries (in the case of women in positions of privilege) and potential targets of it), aredhel's death is presented as a pretty implicitly rational underpinning for turgon to decide to execute eöl.
and for an individual to wish death on another individual, it would be! grief is powerful, and turgon-the-individual's rage at eöl would not only be understood, but likely condoned, even if he sought to enact violence against him—turgon the brother driven to despair attempting to throw eöl from the city walls would be for a lot of communities an image of tragedy and the psychological strain placed on turgon by his sister's killing (à la laertes in hamlet).
turgon-the-king, however, has a higher responsibility. he makes the decision to execute eöl not after carefully weighing the options available and speaking to his advisors (i.e. the image of a 'good king'), but out of emotion so strong it goes against his sister's final wish and the opinion of his daughter. turgon-the-king reverts to turgon-the-individual (we could do a freudian interpretation here and talk about superego vs. id, but let's not diverge too far from the point) and acts as such; herein lies a if not the central contradiction of monarchy—that the monarch is a person, subject to all the whims and caprices and failings of personhood, but that their power categorically cannot shift to accommodate something like, say, the death of a beloved sister that motivates them to utilize their immense authority in service of an individual goal.
the ready acceptance of eöl's execution on the part of the gondolindrim—we are told that "to all in Gondolin it seemed just" (tolkien 173)—could speak to several potential factors:
execution is common in gondolin and generally carried out via direct orders from turgon
turgon's position is such that his followers do not question the rightness of his actions and judgments
everyone is in such grief over aredhel that emotion is driving the collective response as well as the instigating action
eöl is perceived in such a negative light that and so meritorious of punishment that even if turgon's decision-making process is questionable, no one would've raised objections
and of course some or all of these can be combined. but i do think that both affection for aredhel and an implicit cultural recoiling from eöl as an other, a danger, an infiltrator, a thief likely played a role in this situation, and in how quickly it subsided into acceptability. this is not to say that eöl is not at fault or a flawlessly good person—during the conversation with turgon aredhel is described as being "afraid, for she knew [Eöl] was perilous" (tolkien 173), and he directly threatens maeglin with being "set in bonds" (tolkien 170)—but the link between his status as an outsider and his fate must be acknowledged in any thorough analysis of either the episode or the place of execution in noldorin society. had aredhel met and married some fëanorian follower who had refused to stay in gondolin, would turgon have reacted the same way? obviously there's no way to know, but based on his response to eöl's sentiments re: the noldor, it would be disingenuous to believe it wouldn't at least have had the potential to dramatically change the dynamics at play.
i think really at the center here is that at the end of the day, despite what fandom generally tends to focus on, the eöl section isn't actually about determining whether he is a rapist or a bad father or an abusive spouse or justified in his claims on aredhel and maeglin or actually a perfectly fine person all along (although these are all conversations to be had too!), but about the exercise of violence by the state, the acceptance of that violence by its citizens, the fluidity of differentiations between 'legal/moral' and 'illegal/immoral' violence (precisely because they are often controlled by the state and the state reifies its own systems), the malleability of kin designations, noldorin hierarchy and nationalism, the fatal inability of an absolute monarchic system to enact true or meaningful justice, the political functionality of the other, and the trope of 'our women stolen by their men:' its cruelty, its fundamental lack of compassion or concern over actual rape, its proponents' lack of interest in recognizing the personhood of a potential victim in favor of a symbol to be used to legitimize systemic violence.
it's fitting, although almost certainly beyond tolkien's intent, that turgon's choice to kill eöl ultimately knocks down the first domino that leads to gondolin's fall; the rot in the system of governance precipitating its eventual undoing.
I do agree but to me it's so important that Eöl is not just "also good-looking" but like, really good-looking.
Look at him !
"But Eöl, though stooped by his smith work, was no Dwarf, but a tall Elf of a high kin of the Teleri, noble though grim of face ; and his eyes could see into shadows and dark places."
He's tall and posh (v. important in Silm context), he has a severe, scowly face and probably a perpetually disapproving expression on his face, with probably the closest we get to "blazing eyes" for an Elf that did not see the light of the Trees (A high-born smith with a resting bitch face and penetrating gaze ? parallels with Fëanor ? Parallels with Fëanor ! Yes !!)
"(...) he devised a metal as hard as the steel of the Dwarves, but so malleable that he could make it thin and supple ; and yet it remained resistant to all blades and darts. He named it galvorn, for it was black and shining like jet, and he was clad in it whenever he went abroad".
He goes around in a black shiny armour. Clad head-to-toe in a black, thin, supple, shiny armour (did Eöl invent dart-proof latex ? It sounds a lot like dart-proof latex). Like if that's not seriously hot...
"There he lived in deep shadow, loving the night and the twilight under the stars". "There were his smithy, and his dim halls, and such servants as he had, silent and secret as their master."
And of course, he is a goth.
So yes Aredhel was "not wholly unwilling" I think in part because Eöl is dark!goth!Fëanor who also invented bulletproof latex. And wears it. It's not her only motivation but come on.
my heart's a sea (james norrington x wife!reader) supplemental masterlist
I'm staring a supplemental masterlist for 'my heart's a sea' since the first one was getting really long, but you can find chapters one through fifty (and all the info about the fic) right here!
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
snowghoul
2087
ellievsbear
gamechangershow
