Fanatic

[promin-blog]

“All that he taught seemed good, for he had great knowledge. But ever more and more he would speak of the Dark.

‘Greatest of all is the Dark,’ he said, 'for It has no bounds. I came out of the Dark, but I am Its master. For I have made Light. I made the Sun and the Moon and the countless stars. I will protect you from the Dark, which else would devour you.'” (Tale of Adanel, HOME 10)

[archamion]

“He appeared as the fairest of all the children of the world, of threefold race: of the Edain, and of the Eldar, and of the Maiar of the Blessed Realm.”

Day 7: Dior son of Lúthien

[polutrope]

I said, outside Lichfield Cathedral, to a friend of my youth — long since dead of gas-gangrene (God rest his soul; I grieve still) — 'Why is that cloud so beautiful?' He said: 'Because you have begun to write poetry, John Ronald.' He was wrong. It was because Death was near, and all was intolerably fair, lost ere grasped. That was why I began to write poetry.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No. 43

[arofili]

Fëanor’s age at the time of his father’s remarriage

Over the years I’ve seen many different claims about how old Fëanor was at the time of Finwë’s marriage to Indis. I wanted to clear up the “truth” of this canon…mostly by acknowledging that It’s Complicated.

This is all very complicated because Tolkien never really made up his mind on a) timekeeping and b) the rate of elven maturity. Personally I ignore any attempt to make a Tree Year 10x or 144x longer than a Sun Year because it makes my brain hurt, and I generally go with the logic that elves have important age milestones at ages 50 and 100, but these are all deliberate choices and certainly not the only interpretation of any text.

But what information do we have on this subject? Generally, we know less about Fëanor’s age at Finwë and Indis’ marriage, and more about his age upon Míriel’s death, an event that necessarily precedes the remarriage.

The Shibboleth of Fëanor (in Peoples of Middle-earth) states that Míriel did not die until Fëanor was “full-grown”:

Her weariness she had endured until he was full grown, but she could endure it no longer.

Thus, he would have to be an adult at the time of Finwë’s remarriage, because Finwë certainly did not remarry until after Míriel’s death.

In Laws and Customs among the Eldar (Morgoth’s Ring), the section “On Naming” says that Fëanor never knew Míriel at all:

But the name of insight which his mother Miriel gave to him in the hour of birth was Feanaro ‘Spirit of Fire’;* and by this name he became known to all, and he is so called in all the histories. (It is said that he also took this name as his chosen name, in honour of his mother, whom he never saw.)

Further down in LaCE, we get the story that the published Silm pulls from most heavily:

At their parting (for a little while as he deemed) Finwe was sad, for it seemed a thing unhappy that the mother should depart and miss the beginning at least of the childhood days of her son.

LaCE also gives an interesting detail about his age at the time of Fingolfin’s birth:

As soon as he might (and he was wellnigh fullgrown ere Nolofinwe was born), he left his father’s house and lived apart from them…

I take that to mean that he wasn’t quite an adult, but was close to it, when Fingolfin was born, and that this is the first time he was leaving the house, so it was unlikely that he was already married to Nerdanel at the time.

The Annals of Aman, also in Morgoth’s Ring, give Fëanor’s birth year as YT 1179, which is later changed to 1169. Then we learn that Míriel dies in the year 1170, when Fëanor was 1 year old. The Statue of Finwë and Míriel is decreed in 1172, and Finwë does not marry Indis until 1185, fully 13 years later when Fëanor is 14 years old.

So: it seems to me that while the story differs between drafts, Fëanor is very young when Míriel dies (either a baby or a young adult) and there is some time between her death and Finwë’s remarriage. If you go with the version where he is older, he is still not fully an adult at the time of Fingolfin’s birth, and therefore probably wasn’t married himself - though since all we know about his own marriage is that it occurred “in his early youth,” it’s still a possibility! But since the same text then says that he left his father’s house at the same time, I think it probable that he wasn’t married - perhaps he was moving to apprentice with Mahtan? Which would place his marriage not long afterward.

Basically, we have 3 versions:

1. Shibboleth: Fëanor was full grown when Míriel died. Therefore, he must have been full grown when Finwë married Indis.

2. Laws and Customs: Fëanor was an infant when Míriel died; he never even saw her. We don’t know how old he was when Finwë married Indis, but we do know that he was almost but not quite an adult when Fingolfin was born.

3. Annals of Aman: Fëanor was 1 year old when Míriel died. He is 14 years old when Finwë marries Indis. This is my preferred version, but it’s complicated by questions about how long is a Tree Year, anyway? And how fast do elves grow? Are those two things in harmony with one another? We know numbers here, but not necessarily what those numbers mean.

In conclusion, there is no one true canon, though the story that most resembles the one appearing in the published Silm is the one in LaCE.

Make of this what you will! There are several options, and many interpretations of each, especially when it comes to the interpersonal relationships of Finwë, Míriel, Fëanor, Indis, and Fingolfin. I would advise against claiming any one of these as “more canon” than another - and if you’re going to post about your headcanons, do mention which draft you are building off of!

But overall, you can make up your own mind on how you think this went down. Pick your favorite draft - or pick your favorite details from each draft! The fun thing about the complexity of Silm canon is that we can all make our own decisions and shape our own stories!!!

[arofili]

@finweanladiesweek day one | míriel þerindë

Her hair was like silver; and she was slender as a white flower in the grass. Soft and sweet was her voice, and she sang as she worked, like rippling water, in music without words. For her hands were more skilled to make things fine and delicate than any other hands even among the Noldor. By her the craft of needles was devised; and if but one fragment of the broideries of Míriel were seen in Middle-earth it would be held dearer than a king’s realm; for the richness of her devices and the fire of their colours were as manifold and as bright as the wealth of leaf and flower and wing in the fields of Yavanna. Therefore she was called Þerindë.

—The History of Middle-earth: Volume X: Morgoth’s Ring, “The Later Quenta Silmarillion”

[bretwalda-lamnguin]

The build up to the Kin-Strife is insane when you think about it. Valacar is sent as emisarry to Rhovanion in 1250, marries Vidumavi sometime before 1255 when she gives birth to Vinitharya, and they return to Gondor in 1260 where Vinitharya and Vidumavi both take Gondorian names, Eldacar and Galadwen respectively. Romendacil II, who sent Valacar north doesn't become king (in name at least) until 1304. Vidumavi dies in 1332, presumably at a very old age, 77 years after giving birth to Vinitharya. Valacar becomes king in 1366 and rules for 66 years, dying 1432. Eldacar takes the throne and the kin-strife begins, with Castamir overthrowing him in 1437.

This is an insane timeline for a civil war, from root cause (Eldacar's birth) to outbreak is 177 years! Vidumavi is dead 100 years before her son takes the throne! What on earth was going on in Gondor in this time? Did Romendacil II guess that this would cause a civil war? Did he support Valacar completely or try and encourage him to ditch Vidumavi? Was Vidumavi taking a Gondorian name an attempt to hide her ancestry? Did her hair and ageing give it away? Was this a scandal? Could Romendacil II have prevented a civil war by purging the army and navy of blood purists? Or was there no way of knowing? What was it like under Valacar, was everyone just waiting for a civil war? A conflict generations in the making. It's such a strange situation.

I feel so sorry for Vidumavi in this situation, I doubt anyone would have been rude to her face, but there must have been snide coments behind her back, and an absurd amount of pressure to be perfect, and to fit Gondorian customs. Did she realise what was coming? Did she ever regret marrying Valacar?

[arofili]

lord of the rings ladies week day two | women of the north | vidumavi galadwen | @lotrladiessource

Valacar gave to his son the name Eldacar, for public use in Gondor; and his wife bore herself wisely and endeared herself to all those who knew her. She learned well the speech and manners of Gondor, and was willing to be called by the name Galadwen, a rendering of her Northern name into the Sindarin tongue. She was a fair and noble lady of high courage, which she imparted to her children; but though she lived to a great age, as such was reckoned among her people, she died in 1344.

—The Histories of Middle-earth: Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, “The Making of Appendix A”

[balrogballs]

I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate about the Tolkien and race post, I agree with most of what you’re saying about the denial. But modern non fiction Marxist critics forget one thing that hopefully fandom doesn’t, that is to give the author grace instead of immediately deciding that the racial politics of his work is intentional. I accept Tolkien was a conservetive, but I find it hard to believe that he was exposed to anti racist thought like we are today. I think it’s important to acknowledge the biases in his writing, but not decide it as intentional, because he’s a linguist based in a very white part of England, whose background is in European history who did not anticipate a world where migration is the norm. Of course that doesn’t make the text less racist but it’s an important thing to consider. That’s all, I agree with your other points. 

Thanks for the question, and please bear with me re asks gang, I was stupid enough to leave inbox on for a while, not realising the post would break containment, so I’m snowed under atm ☠️

So there’s a lot of talk about Tolkien being ‘of his time and class’ but precious little about what that environment actually looked like other than comparing him to his fellow religious conservative Oxford dons. ‘Of his time’ is not a neutral statement and it certainly isn’t applicable to Tolkien, but more importantly, ‘norms of his time’ seem to often be, in this fandom, calibrated to ‘what Tolkien said’ rather than ‘what was actually happening then’.

Anyway, I will try to be a little more direct than in that last post. So the “the fundamentally racist elements of the legendarium are because Tolkien was a man of his time” line really annoys me (and others!) because imo it lets Tolkien's own Oxford tea table stand in for the entire twentieth century as if there wasn't an entire world outside the Inkling Orgy arguing furiously about race and empire.

I can give you an example literally from Oxford itself! The Indian Majlis had been meeting at Oxford since 1896! The Majlis, for those who might not be aware, was a full-on political and debating society which produced a fuckton of the people who'd go on to lead independence movements across South Asia. This was not some obscure footnote he would need to trudge to a specialist archive to dig up, and I can confirm that attending debates and discussion groups is, was, and has always been a large part of Oxford University life. Ie this was happening in his university in his lifetime among people of his class group he'd have had every opportunity to meet and engage with, whose existence he absolutely would have been aware of.

Beyond the Oxford ventures, you have things like Moody’s League of Coloured Peoples, founded in London in 1931 and organising against colour bar practices in Britain itself. The West African Students' Union had been running since 1925, building a public anticolonial intellectual culture that fed directly into multiple independence movements of the following decades. CLR James was in England from 1932! And so on and so forth! And many in these organisations were white British activists or public intellectuals or writers! This was a live political and literary scene running in parallel with Tolkien's and explicitly arguing against the racial categories his fiction sought to preserve. Which is to say, I think what’s more likely than ‘the legendarium is the way it is with regards to race because Tolkien didn’t know any such antiracist thought existed’ is that ‘the legendarium is the way it is with regards to race specifically because Tolkien did know such antiracist thought existed’.

can i say i am so glad the guy was not a lazy writer and also that he disliked direct allegory because if one of sharky’s minion gangs in scouring of the shire were called the hobbiton majlis or something, i would probably start cooking people’s cats

Anyway, I’m so tired of how “of his time" just keeps getting used to mean "the time as understood by conservative Oxford dons," when the actual record shows Black British and colony diasporas and white progressives were producing sustained public counter-discourse in the same space the whole time, in his own country, in his own language, in his literal university. So when people say he was "just a product of his environment," I just always want to know which environment they mean exactly, because the one he was actually in very much did sustain quite a lot of anticolonial thought. 

Also just to get into the basics again, bro was famously a philologist, ie not exactly a profession where you could plausibly bumble through life without ever encountering race-as-a-formal-category. Philology in this period, and especially in Oxbridge, was literally a primary engine of race science. The Indo-European/Aryan linguistic apparatus that mapped language families onto racial stock was built by people doing Tolkien's exact job, so I really don’t think he passively inherited racial categories without noticing, he inherited them deliberately through years of formal study, with copious footnotes and his own academic judgement. Like I always find it so funny when people, even on that post, refer to the racial dynamics of the legendarium as ‘unconscious bias’ because I just know Tolkien is spinning like a power drill in his grave every single time, because they just implied he was shit at his job 😭

Anyway, the entire feudal value system of the legendarium runs on inherited blood as a determinant of worth (even within the Shire, ie the most ‘normal people not kings of men’ place, where Sam is placed as a Good Man Friday), and this is a very well known fact within fandom. Aragorn's legitimacy is genealogical-first and earned-second, the blood of Númenor "running true" in some lines and "thinning" in others is outright presented as a real, quasi-biological fact about a person's capacity for greatness, and not to forget Faramir’s entire speech about greater and lesser men, and the ‘childless lords sit alone while barbarians bay at the gates’ bit.

Or if you prefer a Silm example, (note: the context of the exile and whether or not you think they deserved what they got is irrelevant to this point) but the Doom of Mandos and the Noldorin re-entry ban, when viewed as a mechanism detached from context, is fundamentally just the ontological excision of a ‘birthright citizenship’ as a consequence of a person’s actions. Idk how big this was outside the UK but remember when Shamima Begum was extensively groomed as a child and fucked off to join ISIS and the UK decided to strip her of citizenship and leave her stateless? This is basically just that, ie the legitimisation of an ontologically confirmed birthright citizenship that can be granted to exceptional cases at the behest of the ruling body (see: Hobbits, Peredhels) due to their extraordinary actions, but also can just as easily be taken away by the same ruling body in response to a transgression. Like this is literally just present-day ‘migrant criminality’ discourse, how can you say he didn’t anticipate the rise of postcolonial global migration 😭

(once again to the reader, please let me reiterate i am simply comparing the mechanism of the exile alone, i am not saying that the Fëanorians are fucking ISIS, and i certainly am not saying that the exiled Noldor are the equivalent of stateless refugees, so pls don’t jump up my ass 😭)

Tolkien wasn't writing this in a vacuum where phrenology was a fringe pseudoscience nobody respectable touched, it was institutionally embedded and state sanctioned British science well into the interwar period, with its own society and journals, and an enormous presence in Oxbridge. Moral and mental character of Great Men™️ being first fixed by descent and the subsequent positive/negative shaping of character by choices and environment being seen as a somewhat effective yet undeniably secondary mechanism, is literally the loadbearing premise of race science. It’s not a borrowed aesthetic! The entire legendarium runs on this logic! 

Once again, and this is also re: a few reblogs of my original post that take a similar route, what do you mean ‘he did not anticipate a world where migration is the norm’??? 😭The legendarium isn’t a product of 1937 alone, bro was notoriously still tinkering with its genealogies and societal architecture well into the 1960s and early 70s and pretty much until the day he died, like a fucking dweeb (for once, complimentary), hence why it takes the fragmented form it does. That's a working lifespan that runs through major global decolonisation, Windrush, the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, through literally the entire long and convoluted and drawn out process by which Britain had to publicly and unavoidably reckon with the idea that the empire's subjects were now their neighbours. At some point we need to truly engage with what "of his time" means, ie we have to reckon with the fact that “his time” kept moving and the foundational elements of the legendarium didn’t. 

And to bring up the same example from my original post but in a different light, Tolkien was completely capable of precise and deliberate racial argument the second it was framed as being about himself rather than his fiction. In said well known example, in 1938, some German publisher wants confirmation of his "Aryan" descent for translation rights, and Tolkien's (drafted) response is sharp and furiously specific, knowing exactly what's being asked of him by the Nazis and exactly why it's grotesque. Compare that to the total absence of literally any comparable interrogation applied to the Haradrim or orcs, or the entire chronology and geography of Middle-earth where evil consistently arrives from the same two compass directions wearing the same coded features. Man like. Tolkien was honestly a pretty clever guy, and ngl I feel it does him a (very funny) disservice to assume he didn’t have the capacity to scrutinise race to the level he does ☠️

Anyway I think where the fandom focus on “unconscious bias of the era" does not actually originate in a true desire to absolve Tolkien (fair enough, because this is a man who has never once asked to be absolved of the opinions he holds strongly enough to work into his narrative at such depth) the individual, and but rather in the interests of keeping the emotional crutch of loving a beloved childhood text without having to acknowledge that the person who made it was making choices in the same way Rudyard Kipling or Rider Haggard was making choices, and yet very few people offer Haggard this kind of protective custody in present day.

Almost nobody aside from hardcore conservatives sits around saying King Solomon's Mines just "reflected the assumptions of empire" as if Haggard had no hand in shaping said assumptions himself, we read it (correctly) as a deliberately shaped ideological project worth taking seriously as an argument. Tolkien, specifically due to the fandom culture around him both then and now, often gets a pass that even Kipling doesn't, and imo it's not because the textual evidence is thinner but because the fandom loves him more and flinches harder when he’s hit. Which is to say, the insistence on ‘Tolkien was of his time and his time was bad’ being the chosen interpretive lens is less a claim about ‘the time’ Tolkien existed in than it is a claim about us as a fandom today. 

On a vaguely related note, I also think ‘this fandom gives grace to the author’ should not be treated as a complimentary statement, especially because one of the elements of the Tolkien fandom which genuinely baffles me is the general air of author-genuflection across the board regardless of what fandom pocket you’re in (and a towards Christopher LMFAOOO) never have I been in a fandom that consistently deifies the creator to this extent, and it’s doubly baffling considering that he isn’t exactly a sensitive up and coming artist but a dude who has enormous mainstream cultural impact and, crucially, has been dead as a doornail for decades. 

Like it is quite funny but also on a serious note, whilst the sentiment is understandable because yeah the world and its languages are as immense as the work he put into it and it is very important to so many of us, I think a publicly performed culture of ‘grateful to the author for this wonderful world’ is one of the things that preclude a deeper critical understanding of the legendarium itself. Amusingly, this is literally the only thing that makes me miss the bloodsoaked battlefields of anime fandom, because Masashi Kishimoto may have painstakingly drawn 3 billion pages of Naruto, but 95% of the fandom would probably, upon meeting the guy, tie him to a chair and beat him repeatedly on the head with a rubber hammer going ‘why the fuck did you do this? what the fuck is wrong with you? did you hate twelve year old me personally?’ 

Inshallah, we too shall get there one day. 

[arofili]

What the Valar Look Like, Part II: Vestures of Purpose

a meta written for @esotolkienweek, Day 5: Art. in line with esoteric’s meaning of “intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest,” this is definitely something for a small audience...I hope it finds those who can use it!

Part I: Fanar, the Shape and the Raiment

These fanar were, however, also personal expression (in terms suitable to the apprehension of the Incarnate) of their individual ‘natures’ and functions, and were usually also clad in vestures of similar purpose.”

—Parda Eldalamberon No.17

Part I was a meta establishing what a fana is and how fanar work.

In this post (Part II), I will share a collection of quotes from a variety of sources describing the canonical appearances of the Valar, broken down by each individual Vala. Some of these descriptions will be rather tenuous, vague, or downright countercanonical given their place early in the timeline of the Legendarium’s development, but all will be at least somewhat connected to the Valar and their aesthetics. Then I will give a brief description of my headcanons of what the Valar look like. I’ll also link to any visual depictions I have made of the Valar.

Speaking of, here are a few to start you off...

Visual depictions I have made of all (or several of) the Valar:

Servants of the Valar (graphic; 2025)

The Valar & the Orixás (graphic; 2022)

Mansions of the Valar (graphic; 2021)

~~~

MANWË 

His raiment is blue, and blue is the fire of his eyes, and his sceptre is of sapphire, which the Noldor wrought for him.

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Beginning of Days”

Lo, Manwë Súlimo clad in sapphires, ruler of the airs and wind, is held lord of Gods and Elves and Men, and the greatest bulwark against the evil of Melko.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Music of the Ainur”

But when the great Gods and all their folk were armed, then Manwë climbed into his blue chariot whose three horses were the whitest that roamed in Oromë’s domain, and his hand bore a great white bow that would shoot an arrow like a gust of wind across the widest seas.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Chaining of Melko”

Now is a court set upon the slopes of Taniquetil and Melko arraigned before all the Vali great and small, lying bound before the silver chair of Manwë.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Chaining of Melko”

But those of the Noldoli whom Aulë had most deeply taught laboured in secret unceasingly, and of Aulë they had wealth of metals and of stones and marbles, and of the leave of the Valar much store too was granted to them of the radiance of Kulullin and of Telimpë held in hidden bowls. Starlight they had of Varda and strands of the bluest ilwë Manwë gave them; water of the most limpid pools in that creek of Kôr, and crystal drops from all the sparkling founts in the courts of Valmar.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr”

Sapphires in great [?wonder] were given to Manwë and his raiment was crusted with them...

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr”

Now this babe was of greatest beauty; his skin of a shining white and his eyes of a blue surpassing that of the sky in southern lands—bluer than the sapphires of the raiment of Manwë and the envy of Meglin was deep at his birth, but the joy of Turgon and all the people very great indeed.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two, “The Fall of Gondolin”

Of that last battle of the upland heath whose roof is the wide sky—nor was there any other place beneath the blue folds of Manwë’s robe so nigh the heavens or so broadly and so well encanopied—what grievous things I saw I have told.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two, “The History of Eriol or Ælfwine”

My personal image of Manwë is of a tall, pale, thin, birdlike figure; he is partially concealed by clouds and feathers, but his eyes are a bright, piercing blue.

Visual depictions of I have made of Manwë:

Manwë & Melkor (graphic; 2025)

Manwë (graphic; 2020)

~

VARDA

Too great is her beauty to be declared in the words of Men or of Elves; for the light of Ilúvatar lives still in her face. In light is her power and her joy.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

With Manwë dwelt Varda the most beautiful...

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Beginning of Days”

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! O Queen beyond the Western Seas! O light to us that wander here Amid the world of woven trees! Gilthoniel! O Elbereth! Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee In a far land beyond the sea. O Stars that in the Sunless Year With shining hand by her were sown, In windy fields now bright and clear We see your silver blossom blown! O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! We still remember, we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees, Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

—Song to Elbereth, final version (The Fellowship of the Ring, “Three’s Company”)

(I highly recommend listening to Adele McAllister’s rendition of this song!)

O Stars that in the Sunless Year Were kindled by her silver hand, That under Night the shade of Fear Should fly like shadow from the land! O Elbereth! Gilthonieth! Clear are thy eyes, and cold thy breath!

—Song to Elbereth, excerpt from draft version (The Return of the Shadow, “From Hobbiton to the Woody End”)

Varda it was who at the playing of the Music had thought much of light that was of white and silver, and of stars...

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Music of the Ainur”

There Bredhil the Blessed  the bluemantled, the Lady of the heights  as lovely as the snow in lights gleaming,  of the legions of the stars, the cold immortal  Queen of mountains, too fair and terrible  too far and high for mortal eyes,  in Manwë's court... 

—Lays of Beleriand, “The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor,” vv. 45-50

With him was Varda the most beautiful. Now the Ainur that came into the world took shape and form, such even as have the Children of Ilúvatar who were born of the world; but their shape and form is greater and more lovely and it comes of the knowledge and desire of the substance of the world rather than of that substance itself, and it cannot always be perceived, though they be present. And some of them, therefore, took form and temper as of female, and some as of male. But Varda was the Queen of the Valar, and was the spouse of Manwë; and she wrought the stars, and her beauty is high and aweful, and she is named in reverence.

—The Lost Road and Other Writings, “Ainulindalë”

And Manwe and Ulmo and Aule were as Kings; but Varda was the Queen of the Valar, and the spouse of Manwe, and her beauty was high and terrible and of great reverence.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “The Music of the Ainur and the Coming of the Valar”

The hands of Varda/Elbereth were like all her fana of shining white.

—Parma Eldalambaron No. 17

Her hands are thus compared poetically in “Galadriel’s Lament” to clouds — white and shining still above the rising darkness that swiftly engulfed the shores and the mountains, and at last her own majestic figure upon the summit of Oiolassë.

—Parma Eldalambaron No. 17

Fanuilos was thus a title of, or second name for Elebereth, made after the coming of the Exiles, and conveyed in full some such meaning as “bright angelic figure, far away upon Uilos (= Oiolassë),” or “— angelic figure ever-snow-white (shining afar).”

—Parma Eldalambaron No. 17

Though Varda is described as white, pale, and shining, in my mind she has always had skin as dark as the night sky, dotted with gleaming white stars. Perhaps the stars are so thick upon her skin that she appears to shine white. I imagine her hair as long and dark, also speckled with stars.

Visual depictions of I have made of Varda:

Varda (graphic; 2020)

this one is actually of Ilmarë, but shares a lot of the same aesthetics (graphic; 2020)

~

AULË

Now Kôr is lit with this wealth of gems and sparkles most marvellously, and all the kindred of the Eldalië are made rich in their loveliness by the generosity of the Noldoli, and the Gods’ desire of their beauty is sated to the full. Sapphires in great [?wonder] were given to Manwë and his raiment was crusted with them, and Oromë had a belt of emeralds, but Yavanna loved all the gems, and Aulë’s delight was in diamonds and amethysts.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

Aulë A word aulë ‘shaggy’ is given in QL as a derivative from a root owo (whence also oa ‘wool’, uë ‘fleece’), but without any indication that this is to be connected with the name of the Vala.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “Appendix: Names in the Lost Tales — Part I”

We have very little information about Aulë’s appearance. In my mind, he takes the shape of a dwarf! A large dwarf, taller than an elf, but dwarflike in proportions and certainly with a beard, thick and fiery (perhaps made of actual fire!). His eyes are made of glowing orange fire: warm and gentle, most of the time, but fierce when angered.

Visual depictions of I have made of Aulë:

Aulë & Mahtan (graphic; 2026)

Ace Aulë (moodboard with picrew; 2023)

Aulë (graphic; 2020)

~

YAVANNA

In the form of a woman she is tall, and robed in green; but at times she takes other shapes. Some there are who have seen her standing like a tree under heaven, crowned with the Sun; and from all its branches there spilled a golden dew upon the barren earth, and it grew green with corn; but the roots of the tree were in the waters of Ulmo, and the winds of Manwë spoke in its leaves.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

Then sorrowfully Yavanna stood upon the plain and her form trembled and her face was very pale for the greatness of the effort that her being put forth, striving against fate.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Tale of the Sun and Moon”

But think not, Ælfwine, that the shapes wherein the Great Ones array themselves are at all times like unto the shapes of kings and queens of the Children of Iluvatar; for at whiles they may clothe them in their own thought, made visible in forms terrible and wonderful. And I myself, long years agone, in the land of the Valar have seen Yavanna in the likeness of a Tree; and the beauty and majesty of that form could not be told in words, not unless all the things that grow in the earth, from the least unto the greatest, should sing in choir together, making unto their queen an offering of song to be laid before the throne of Iluvatar.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “Ainulindalë C”

So Yavanna is a known shapeshifter. I think she probably has several ‘Eldarin’ forms as well: one more elven, with curly brown hair and warm brown skin with subtle green undertones; and one more eldritch, with skin like bark, hair like willow branches, and slit cat-eyes, complete with claws and fangs.

Visual depictions of I have made of Yavanna:

The Isle of Almaran (graphic; ft. Yavanna; 2026)

Yavanna (graphic; 2023)

Yavanna (graphic; 2019)

~

ULMO

Moreover he does not love to walk upon land, and will seldom clothe himself in a body after the manner of his peers. If the Children of Eru beheld him they were filled with a great dread; for the arising of the King of the Sea was terrible, as a mounting wave that strides to the land, with dark helm foam-crested and raiment of mail shimmering from silver down into shadows of green. The trumpets of Manwë are loud, but Ulmo's voice is deep as the deeps of the ocean which he only has seen.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

And the wave came towards him, and upon it lay a mist of shadow. Then suddenly as it drew near it curled, and broke, and rushed forward in long arms of foam; but where it had broken there stood dark against the rising storm a living shape of great height and majesty. Then Tuor bowed in reverence, for it seemed to him that he beheld a mighty king. A tall crown he wore like silver, from which his long hair fell down as foam glimmering in the dusk and as he cast back the grey mantle that hung about him like a mist, behold! he was clad in a gleaming coat, close-fitted as the mail of mighty fish, and in a kirtle of deep green that flashed and flickered with sea-fire as he strode slowly towards the land. In this manner the Dweller of the Deep, whom the Noldor name Ulmo, Lord of Waters, showed himself to Tuor son of Huor of the House of Hador beneath Vinyamar. He set no foot upon the shore, but standing knee-deep in the shadowy sea he spoke to Tuor, and then for the light of his eyes and for the sound of his deep voice that came as it seemed from the foundations of the world, fear fell upon Tuor and he cast himself down upon the sand.

—Unfinished Tales, “The Fall of Gondolin”

Then it seemed to Tuor that Ulmo parted his grey mantle...

—Unfinished Tales, “The Fall of Gondolin”

And as Ulmo said these things the mutter of the storm rose to a great cry, and the wind mounted, and the sky grew black; and the mantle of the Lord of Waters streamed out like a flying cloud.

—Unfinished Tales, “The Fall of Gondolin”

Then there was a noise of thunder, and lightning flared over the sea; and Tuor beheld Ulmo standing among the waves as a tower of silver flickering with darting flames; and he cried against the wind...

—Unfinished Tales, “The Fall of Gondolin”

...more striking than the portrayal of the god Ulmo as originally seen, sitting among the reeds and making music at twilight by the river Sirion, but many years later the lord of all the waters of the world rises out of the great storm of the sea at Vinyamar. Ulmo does indeed stand at the centre of the great myth. With Valinor largely opposed to him, the great God nonetheless mysteriously achieves his end.

—The Fall of Gondolin, “Preface”

...and his car was drawn by narwhal and sealion and was in fashion like a whale; and amidst the sounding of great conches he sped from Ulmonan. So great was the speed of his going that in days, and not in years without count as might be thought, he reached the mouth of the river. Up this his car might not fare without hurt to its water and its banks; therefore Ulmo, loving all rivers and this one more than most, went thence on foot, robed to the middle in mail like the scales of blue and silver fishes; but his hair was a bluish silver and his beard to his feet was of the same hue, and he bore neither helm nor crown. Beneath his mail fell the skirts of his kirtle of shimmering greens, and of what substance these were woven is not known, but whoso looked into the depths of their subtle colours seemed to behold the faint movements of deep waters shot with the stealthy lights of phosphorescent fish that live in the abyss. Girt was he with a rope of mighty pearls, and he was shod with mighty shoes of stone.

—The Fall of Gondolin, “The Tale of the Fall of Gondolin”

Then Ulmo was wrapped in a mist as it were of sea-air in those inland places...

—The Fall of Gondolin, “The Tale of the Fall of Gondolin”

Perhaps most notable of all the characters of Ulmo was the fathomless depth of his eyes and his voice when he spoke to Tuor, filling him with fear...

—The Fall of Gondolin, “The Evolution of the Story”

Then was there much eagerness alight, and Eriol told them of his first wanderings about the western havens, of the comrades he made, and the ports he knew; of how he was one time wrecked upon far western islands and there upon a lonely eyot found an ancient mariner who dwelt for ever solitary in a cabin on the shore, that he had fashioned of the timbers of his boat.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two, “The Tale of Tinúviel”

I absolutely adore the detail we get about Ulmo and his appearance! But going off of that first quote from Valaquenta, I imagine he most often takes the form of a great wave in the vague shape of a man, or else an aquatic animal.

Visual depictions of I have made of Ulmo:

Aro Ulmo (moodboard with picrew; 2026)

Círdan + Ulmo (graphic; 2026)

Aro Ulmo (moodboard with picrew; 2023)

Ulmo & Nienna (graphic; 2020)

~

NIENNA

And Nienna arose and went up onto Ezellohar, and cast back her grey hood, and with her tears washed away the defilements of Ungoliant; and she sang in mourning for the bitterness of the world and the Marring of Arda.

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”

To Vê Fui came not much, for she laboured rather at the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears, and black clouds she wove and floated up that they were caught in the winds and went about the world, and their lightless webs settled ever and anon upon those that dwelt therein. Now these tissues were despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief. The hall that she loved best was one yet wider and more dark than Vê, and she too named it with her own name, calling it Fui. Therein before her black chair burnt a brazier with a single flickering coal, and the roof was of bats’ wings, and the pillars that upheld it and the walls about were made of basalt.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

Yet mightier than she is Nienna who dwells with Nefantur Mandos. Pity is in her heart, and mourning and weeping come to her, but shadow is her realm and night her throne.

—The Lost Road and Other Writings, “Quenta Silmarillion”

I have two visions of Nienna. The first is of a woman simply covered in eyes: her hands, face, arms, legs, feet, etc...each of them a different shape and color, each of them weeping. Her skin between the eyes is a pale, deathly white, as is her long hair. The second is less disturbing, but still mysterious: a person-shaped figure concealed entirely by a gray robe, a white mask covering where her face might be, marked to show grief and sorrow. But I also think that when she is in the role of actively comforting someone, she changes her visage to appeal best to that person: kindly, familiar, gentle, whatever that might be to them.

Visual depictions of I have made of Nienna:

Aro Nienna (moodboard with picrew; 2026)

Nienna x Elwing (art; 2026)

Nienna (graphic; 2026)

Aro Nienna (moodboard with picrew; 2022)

Fëanturi (art; 2020)

Ulmo & Nienna (graphic; 2020)

Nienna (graphic, 2019)

Fëanturi (graphic; 2019)

~

NÁMO

There they beheld suddenly a dark figure standing high upon a rock that looked down upon the shore. Some say that it was Mandos himself, and no lesser herald of Manwë.

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”

There rode the Fánturi upon a car of black, and there was a black horse upon the side of Mandos and a dappled grey upon the side of Lórien...

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Chaining of Melko”

Námo is barely described, and to me that says he is barely perceived. His visage is nothing but a great black robe, two hands of bone reaching from its sleeves, and nothing but utter darkness beneath his hood, save for two twinkling white stars for eyes.

Visual depictions of I have made of Námo:

Fëanturi (art; 2020)

Námo (art; 2020)

Námo (graphic, 2019)

Fëanturi (graphic; 2019)

~

VAIRË

Vairë is the only Vala for whom we have legitimately zero visual information.

In my mind, Vairë’s eyes are often closed, and when opened, are pure white with no iris or pupils. She takes the form of a woman draped in robes that are ever-shifting in pattern and color, and her hair and face are covered in a sheer veil. She has multiple sets of arms and hands, though they are not all always visible, and each pair is constantly moving: weaving, spinning, telling the tales of the world.

Visual depictions of I have made of Vairë:

Fëanturi (graphic; 2019)

Vairë (graphic; 2019)

~

IRMO

...but Lórien who loveth twilights and flittering shadows, and sweet scents borne upon evening winds, who is the lord of dreams and imaginings, sat nigh and whispered swift noiseless words, while his sprites played half-heard tunes beside him like music stealing out into the dark from distant dwellings; and the Gods poured upon that place rivers of the white radiance and silver light which Silindrin held even to the brim—and after their pouring was Silindrin yet well nigh full.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

SPAN- white. Q fanya, fána cloud. N fein white, faun cloud (*spāna); T spania ; Dan. spenna. Cf. Fanyamar upper air; Span-turo ‘lord of cloud’, Q Fantur surname of Mandos (Nurufantur, N Gurfannor ‘lord of Death-cloud’) and of his brother Lórien (Olofantur, N Olfannor ‘lord of Dream-cloud’); N pl. i-Fennyr or Fennir = Lórien and Mandos [see ÑGUR, OLOS]. (Confused in N with PHAY, q.v.) [The beginning of this entry was first written ‘fanya cloud’; ‘cloud’ was struck through, and fána added, with meanings ‘white’ and ‘cloud’, but it is not clear how they are to be applied. - For Fanyamar see the Ambarkanta, IV. 236 etc. - I do not think that this association of the Fanturi with ‘cloud’ is found anywhere else.]

—The Lost Road and Other Writings, “The Etymologies”

To me, Irmo is a pale white figure, clad in sheer robes if he deigns to wear clothing at all. His hair is silver with flecks of gold, if he decides to have hair. It is hard to really fix an image of him in your mind, for he is always shifting in and out of sight, never quite in focus, just at the edge of comprehension. His eyes are pure, molten gold. Moths and butterflies often flit around him, further obscuring one’s view of him. Pale, shimmering rainbows dance around him, as if he emits light.

Visual depictions of I have made of Irmo:

Fëanturi (art; 2020)

Fëanturi (graphic; 2019)

Irmo (graphic; 2019)

~

ESTË

Grey is her raiment; and rest is her gift.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

The wife of Lorien is Este the pale, but she goes not to the councils of the Valar and is not accounted among the rulers of Arda, but is the chief of the Maiar.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “The Annals of Aman”

Estë the pale is his wife, who walks not by day, but sleeps on an island in the dark lake of Lorien [> Lorion]. Thence her fountains bring refreshment to the folk of Valinor; yet she comes not to the councils of the Valar, and is not reckoned among their queens.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “Of the Valar”

So: Estë is grey and pale. To me, this evokes an image of a pale woman in a grey robe, often hooded, often lying down. When she does walk, it is very slowly. Her eyes are always closed. Her hair is gray, and fades into fog at the ends.

Visual depictions of I have made of Estë:

Fëanturi (graphic; 2019)

Estë (graphic; 2019)

~

OROMË

In the far days of their “Awakening” they had been visited and protected by Oromë in his fana of a great horseman mounted upon Nahar and bearing his mighty horn, the Valaróma.

—Parma Eldalambaron No. 17

But in Valmar his halls are wide and low, and skins and fells of great richness and price are strewn there without end upon the floor or hung upon the walls, and spears and bows and knives thereto. In the midst of each room and hall a living tree grows and holds up the roof, and its bole is hung with trophies and with antlers. Here is all Oromë’s folk in green and brown and there is a noise of boisterous mirth, and the lord of forests makes lusty cheer; but Vána his wife so often as she may steals thence.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

...but Oromë rode alone upon a chestnut horse and had a spear...

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

Now Kôr is lit with this wealth of gems and sparkles most marvellously, and all the kindred of the Eldalië are made rich in their loveliness by the generosity of the Noldoli, and the Gods’ desire of their beauty is sated to the full. Sapphires in great [?wonder] were given to Manwë and his raiment was crusted with them, and Oromë had a belt of emeralds, but Yavanna loved all the gems, and Aulë’s delight was in diamonds and amethysts.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

The name Tavros given to Oromë (891, 904) has occurred long before in the Gnomish dictionary, defined as the ‘chief wood-fay, the Blue Spirit of the Woods' (I. 267, entry Tavari). With his tree-propped halls (892) compare the description of Oromë's dwelling in Valmar in the tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor, I. 75-6. At line 893 is the first mention of the golden hooves of Oromë's horse.

—The Lays of Beleriand, “The Lay of Leithian”

Oromë was the lord divine of all those woods. The potent wine went in his halls and hunting song. The Gnomes anew have named him long Tavros, the God whose horns did blow over the mountains long ago; who alone of Gods had loved the world before the banners were unfurled of Moon and Sun; and shod with gold were his great horses. Hounds untold baying in woods beyond the West grey and limber, black and strong, white with silken coats and long, brown and brindled, swift and true as arrow from a bow of yew; their voices like the deeptoned bells that ring in Valmar's citadels, their eyes like living jewels, their teeth like ruel-bone. As sword from sheath they flashed and fled from leash to scent for Tavros’ joy and merriment.

—The Lays of Beleriand, “The Lay of Leithian,” vv. 2242-2264

In my mind, Oromë looks just like an elf, just a lot more. His hair is silver-white; his eyes are brown; his medium-tan skin is often bare, and he ripples with muscle. But everything about him has just a little more of an edge. He seems realer than real, closer to nature, always bigger than you remember, always thrumming with primal energy and raw power. The most obviously un-elflike things about him are his fangs, claws, and of course the mighty antlers growing from his head.

Visual depictions of I have made of Oromë:

The Hunt of Oromë - he’s not actually depicted, but gets the vibe across (graphic; 2026)

The Hunt of Oromë - likewise (graphic; 2020)

Oromë (graphic; 2019)

~

VÁNA

The spouse of Oromë is Vána, the Ever-young; she is the younger sister of Yavanna. All flowers spring as she passes and open if she glances upon them; and all birds sing at her coming.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

...and she clung to the bole of Laurelin and wept. Now was the time of faintest hope and darkness most profound fallen on Valinor that was ever yet; and still did Vána weep, and she twined her golden hair about the bole of Laurelin and her tears dropped softly at its roots.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Tale of the Sun and Moon”

There follows an account of how Vána, repenting of her past murmurings, cut short her golden hair and gave it to the Gods, and from her hair they wove sails and ropes ‘more strong than any mariner hath seen, yet of the slenderness of gossamer’.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Tale of the Sun and Moon”

‘Such,’ then said Vairë, ‘was and still is the manner of Olórë Mallë, the Path of Dreams; but of far other sort was the work of Oromë, who hearing the words of Manwë went speedily to Vána his wife, and begged of her a tress of her long golden hair. Now the hair of Vána the fair had become more long and radiant still since the days of her offering to Aulë, and she gave to Oromë of its golden threads.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Hiding of Valinor”

Vana the fair, her younger sister, is the wife of Oromë...

—Morgoth’s Ring, “The Annals of Aman”

Vana is his wife, the ever-young, the queen of flowers, who has the beauty both of heaven and of earth upon her face and in all her works; she is the younger sister of Varda and Palurien.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “Of the Valar”

I once saw it conjectured that Vána took the form of a child, thus being “ever-young.” I do think that is one of her forms, but I also imagine her as a youth just on the cusp of adulthood. Her hair is gold, and her eyes are green: the bright green of spring, of new-grown leaves. She is spring made manifest: not quite “ripe,” but almost, bursting with energy and potential.

Visual depictions of I have made of Vána:

Aroflux Vána (moodboard with picrew; 2023)

Vána (graphic; 2020)

~

TULKAS

His hair and beard are golden, and his flesh ruddy; his weapons are his hands.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

But lo, the other was the spouse of Oromë the hunter who is named Aldaron king of forests, who shouts for joy upon mountain-tops and is nigh as lusty as that perpetual youth Tulkas.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

Otherwise was the mind of Tulkas, and he dwelt amidmost of Valmar. Most youthful is he and strong of limb and lusty, and for that is he named Poldórëa who loveth games and twanging of bows and boxing, wrestling, running, and leaping, and songs that go with a swing and a toss of a wellfilled cup. Nonetheless is he no wrangler or striker of blows unprovoked as is Makar, albeit there are none of Valar or Úvanimor (who are monsters, giants, and ogres) that do not fear the sinews of his arm and the buffet of his iron-clad fist, when he has cause for wrath. His was a house of mirth and revelry; and it sprang high into the air with many storeys, and had a tower of bronze and pillars of copper in a wide arcade. In its court men played and rivalled one another in doughty feats, and there at times would that fair maiden Nessa wife of Tulkas bear goblets of the goodliest wine and cooling drinks among the players. But most she loved to retire unto a place of fair lawns whose turf Oromë her brother had culled from the richest of all his forest glades, and Palúrien had planted it with spells that it was always green and smooth. There danced she among her maidens as long as Laurelin was in bloom, for is she not greater in the dance than Vána herself?

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor”

...and Tulkas strode mightily beside his stirrup, having a tunic of hide and a brazen belt and no weapon save a gauntlet upon his right hand, ironbound.

—The Book of Lost Tales: Part One, “The Chaining of Melko”

Tulkas, who is surnamed Poldórëa, the Valiant. He is unclothed in his disport, which is much in wrestling; and he rides no steed, for he can outrun all things that go on feet, and he is tireless. His hair and beard are golden, and his flesh ruddy; his weapons are his hands. He recks little of either past or future, and is of small avail as a counsellor, but a hardy friend. He has great love for Fionwë son of Manwë. His wife is Nessa, sister of Oromë, who is lissom of limb and fleet of foot, and dances in Valinor upon lawns of never-fading green.

—The Lost Road and Other Writings, “The Quenta Silmarillion”

Once upon a time, I saw this art of Tulkas by Konstantin Grigorjev, and that has stuck with me ever since. I see him as basically looking exactly like that: huge, muscled, powerful; golden hair, giant fists; glowing with golden power and skin tattooed with moving, glowing swirls. He basically never wears a shirt (rarely, he might don a vest, but still showing off his chest), only a simple pair of pants over his huge, tree trunk-like legs.

Visual depictions of I have made of Tulkas:

Genderfluid Arien/Tulkas (moodboard with picrew; 2022)

Tulkas (graphic; 2019)

& Not visual, but: I depicted Tulkas & his halls in my short fic “Here is a Place,” in which Fingon comes to Tulkas’ domain.

~

NESSA

His spouse is Nessa, the sister of Oromë, and she also is lithe and fleetfooted. Deer she loves, and they follow her train whenever she goes in the wild; but she can outrun them, swift as an arrow with the wind in her hair. In dancing she delights, and she dances in Valimar on lawns of never-fading green.

—The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”

Other later Loremasters conjectured that Nessa was in fact Elvish in form (though archaic, on Pengolodh's own principle), being < *neresa, a feminine adjectival formation from *NER, meaning ‘she that has manlike valour or strength’.

—The War of the Jewels, “Quendi and Eldar”

And it is sung that in that feast of the Spring of Arda Tulkas espoused Nessa the sister of Orome, and Vana robed [her) in her flowers, and she danced before the Valar upon the green grass of Almaren.

—Morgoth’s Ring, “The Annals of Aman”

In my mind, Nessa is dark-haired and adorned with small antlers. Like her brother, she is at first glance much like an elf in appearance, but the closer you get to her the more deerlike she seems.

Visual depictions of I have made of Nessa:

Nessa (graphic; 2020)

~

I considered also doing Melkor, and maybe even a few of the more notable Maiar, but I ran out of steam. Maybe at a later date.

My overall takeaway from this little project is not only a better appreciation and understanding of the Valar, but also the urge to remake some of those old edits! Perhaps they’ll be coming your way soon... :) (Or perhaps not...you never know with me. Even I don’t know!)

Thanks for reading~!

[lesbiansforboromir]

i’m re-reading lotr with critical eye (or trying to, anyway), and literally in the prologue, “concerning hobbits”, the Fallohide “breed” of hobbits was described as “more friendly with the Elves” with “more skill in language and song”, and “being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were often found as leaders among clans of Harfoots or Stoors.” (emphasis mine) and i had to just sit there a second and think, “wow. like i know tolkien wrote that letter to the nazis, but. But. he definitely seemed to believe in the racial superiority thing, didn’t he? enough to make the friends of the divinely blessed elves into the leaders of their people, because of course since they are closest to the divine, they’re the best and of course they should lead.”

YES!! EXACTLY. I mean, more damningly, 'Fallohide' could be easily interpreted as meaning 'pale skinned', and the fallohides are explicitely paler than the Stoors or the Harfoots, it is really not obfuscated or unspoken at all. There are races of people in Tolkien who are either explicitely or implicitely white (or at least have proximity to 'whiteness') and they are more suited to leadership than their so called 'lessers' who are often either explicitly non-white, or occupy a space of lower proximity to whiteness. Every sentient species in Tolkien has this paradigm. Dunedain > 'lesser men', fallohides > other hobbits, noble dwarves > 'petty dwarves', Sindar/Noldor > Silvan/Avari, it is an unmissable baked in fact of the social norms of the universe Tolkien created that he takes pains to try and convince you is a biological emphatic reality.

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

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.

[myrkvidrs]

Turgon // by 面堂かずき@8/12東ク-37b

[balrogballs]

tolkien fandom version of ‘eat the toast, shit the toast, god life is relentless’ = ‘make a post about race that is very politely worded because every time i say something with any degree of directness people act like i personally came to their house and shot their childhood pet and get really personally hostile and treat it as a case of a contentious/‘unkind’ ‘bullying’ individual setting their ‘fans’ on people and thus use it as an excuse to refuse to listen to or be made uncomfortable by or engage with the point itself’ ———> ‘people openly use the polite wording and lack of ‘fuck you’ sentiment to twist the post in pretzels and interpret it in a way where it agrees with them rather than them agreeing with it because god forbid i encounter discomfort or am told to self-interrogate on tumblr dot com’ ———> ‘me somehow going even more insane than i had been prior to making said post’

like the response to this post has been fine in general but i am seeing the numbers of people pretending it means ‘i’m allowed to like problematic media hooray’ and ‘tolkien was accidentally racist and that’s okay’ and ‘oh he was just a man of his time and we shouldn’t pretend there was no racism in the 1950s’ when in fact the entire point of the post is just me pointing out that this man was an uber conservative even ‘for his time’ and that the bigotry is deliberately inserted at multiple points in the construction of the narrative in order to serve as the narrative’s purpose because it’s less disparate elements and more the entire structure, and that any interpretation/adaptation needs to begin with an understanding of it as a profoundly and foundationally racist text written by an oxford professor in an institutional seat of global cultural hegemony (wherein the ‘i hate apartheid’ quote was, ironically, made in the context of an oxford chair ie the institutional seat of epistemological hegemony) who was only too happy to tell everyone who would listen how much of a raging conservative he is, rather than a ‘product of its time’ written by a deified benevolent grandpa with some problematic opinions.

however, i guess it’s better than the handful of ‘but what’s racist about using norse mythology 🥺 i disagree that it’s racist to use western mythology’ reactions as if i or literally anyone in the tolkien fandom has ever fucking said that at any point or as if that has ever been part of the argument and pretending people are calling those mythologies inherently racist and thus comfortably refusing to engage with how said mythologies have been and continue to be utilised in very specific (read: white nationalist) ways eg. what has always been the case with tolkien conservative fandom. ie at least it’s only pushing away the goalposts and not taking a blowtorch to the goalkeeper by ‘progressively’ reiterating the most retvrn ‘are you saying it’s BAD to be white? 🥺’ self victimisation in a progressive register!

[celebregol]

kind of thinking about brandir and sador’s roles in the narrative. turin listens to sador, doesn’t make fun of his disability (”pities” him, though), and it’s inadvertently through turin’s actions that sador dies. but even in the end, turin listens to him and lives another day. in the end, turin puts down brandir’s words, does mock him for his disability, and turin directly kills brandir. and yet, he is haunted by brandir’s words and they lead to him his death, because if not for his words, he would not have wanted to make sure brandir was lying. which he was not.

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

Swords of the wandering star

(Anguirel and Anglachel for @esotolkienweek day 4: relics)

[balrogballs]

I really don’t want to open this can of worms because Tumblr hath no fury like people called out on their political performativeness but it is literally driving me up the wall to watch people react to Serkis’ ‘keep Tolkien white’ commentary by insisting twice as hard that Tolkien would descend down to earth and dropkick the entire Republican party to hell or whatever, just because they want to ensure that a piece of media they enjoy isn’t seen as being morally impure. Case in point: I have seen at least five instances of Tolkien’s ‘I hate apartheid’ valedictorian address being used as a ‘counter’ to Serkis being racist, including by actual news outlets.

Except it’s only ever the ‘I hate apartheid’ line that’s shared, and not the actual quote in its full context. Because here it is:

If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.

Which is to say. This isn’t exactly the antiracist quote of the century, to say the least. This is a white South Africa born man and a white Australian shaking hands and going ‘omg we relate’ and expressing what is a very, very mild ‘segregation is not great’ opinion in order to convey his thoughts on an academic subject, ie the confluence of language and literature. Using race to make a point about his own subject of interest, in his own interest, which is, amusingly enough, what a lot of ostensibly well meaning progressive seem to be doing.

I also think that some of the general surprise around ‘what do you mean large swathes of the Tolkien fandom are incredibly conservative!?’ in lib/left Tolkien fandom is the result of a tendency in said parts of the fandom to transpose one’s own progressiveness onto Tolkien and turn a blind eye to things like, say, the Shire being a very specifically mid-century British racist construct that is very, very clear in its politics, often going so far as to insist it’s anarchist or an ideal society or whatever the fuck… and then getting really Pikachu-meme ‘but they’re misreading it’ every single time a conservative explains exactly what it is about the legendarium that they really love, and get surprised when someone uses the Shire being a racist construct to do more racism. It is 2026 let us do away with ‘I don’t see colour’ interpretations of media, I beg. Nobody is cancelling you for enjoying a book that is not kind to race. Most of the books I love are not kind to race.

I genuinely don’t have the energy to go deeper into it now because I and others have been beating this drum for ages but like man. Man. I’m not surprised by Serkis’ comment. I don’t really give a shit about what Andy Serkis says and does because if I was the kind of person who gave a fuck about Andy ‘I felt like an ethnic minority on the Black Panther set’ ‘I somehow interpreted Animal Farm in the most ridiculous way possible’ Serkis’ opinions on anything, let alone race, my life would be much sadder. I think the adaptation will be an enshittified money-grab, and I will probably embrace cannibalism when McDonalds inevitably starts giving out little Gollums with every Happy Meal. Again.

What I am surprised and disappointed by is how the liberal-left reaction to this shit is to always and forever just either pretend it doesn’t exist in the text, or is the result of a complete misreading. So seldom is the response ‘fuck me, this book has some real wild thoughts on race, let’s see how we can engage creatively with that in an adaptation’. Which has never happened. In fact, all your thoughts on Amazon and lore faithfulness and other adaption criticism or applause aside, TROP, the only Tolkien interpretation that has directly engaged with race has thus far done so very, very badly, and only on a surface level. Why?

Because the loudest parts of liberal Tolkien fandom is not interested in exploring race as it exists in the text, to explore it progressively, to engage creatively with the structural conservatism present within the very construction of Middle Earth. They’re interested in concessions that change very little: you can have your brown elves, as long as we don’t have to think about the implications of foundational aspects of our beloved world, which we relate to greatly and do not wish to think about why we relate to it beyond our own experience of encountering the text.

No, it’s always either an insistence that the Racists are Wrong because the Text is Pure, or a slight, grudging concession that Tolkien had ‘a few racist elements’ but ‘nothing like the racism of today’. Of course it’s nothing like the racism of today. Tolkien isn’t writing in 2026. It was the racism of yesterday, and it is very clearly written into the text. Tolkien is not your mildly problematic grandpa. Tolkien was an Oxford don with an enormous, wide-ranging cultural impact, and refusing to acknowledge that is the misreading, not the pointing out of or engagement with structural racism within the text.

There's also a version of this where people cite Tolkien's 1938 letter to the German publisher, ie the one where he refuses to confirm he's of "Aryan" descent and basically tells them to fuck off, as the other canonical "proof text" that Tolkien Was Not Racist, and it does the same flattening as the valedictorian quote. It's a great letter, very ‘get thee gone from my gate’ but it is also a letter about refusing a specific, legally coded Nazi racial category, not a statement about the internal racial logic of his own fiction.

Nobody is saying Tolkien was a fascist white supremacist Nazi. Hell, Tolkien’s own thoughts on military atrocity is pretty clear in the depictions of the escalating kinslayings. But people love to conflate "hated actual fascism, said so on the record and is very evident in his fiction" with "therefore the legendarium contains no racialised hierarchy," as though those two things have to rise or fall together, when they don't. You can be sincerely, personally opposed to Nazi race science and apartheid violence and still write a mythology where moral and aesthetic worth consistently map onto a Northern-European somatic ideal. Because the racialisation Tolkien both inherited and passed on wasn't Nazi race science, it was the broader Edwardian/interwar philological raciology he was actually swimming in, hell, drowning in, considering the Oxford environment. And I find it so, so frustrating how fandom keeps failing to make this distinction: structural racialisation and personal bigotry are not the same axis, and refusing to be measured on one doesn't clear you on the other.

The Southrons/Easterlings material is obviously the part most quoted when it comes to Tolkien’s ‘problematic elements’ except it's imo super telling how rarely it actually gets quoted compared to how often it gets vaguely waved at (except Charles E Mills. I love you Charles E Mills). Anyway “Black men like half-trolls," swarthy, slant-eyed, riding out of the south and east to serve Sauron… it’s the same mapping of good-north/evil-south-and-east you get in a dozen other early-twentieth-century adventure texts. And this imo actually undermines the "it's just medievalism, calm down" defense, because medievalism is a selectively retrospective construction of which past you're claiming and which one you're othering, not some sort of static, neutral historical styling.

Tolkien's medievalism is specifically Northern European heroic-elegiac medievalism, the "Northernness" he talks about loving as a kid, and that aesthetic preference is not extractable from the racial hierarchy it produces on the page. You cannot keep the aesthetic and disclaim the politics because as in all art, the aesthetic is the politics, that's what "structural" means as opposed to "incidental”, and I just wish that many extremely clever people who understand this in a contemporary sense would allow themselves to feel uncomfortable and look at it in a beloved text.

Jackson's trilogy didn't invent racialisation in Tolkien, hell I think he even softened some of it because the Scouring is straight up impossible to adapt without it being very clear about its politics, but his adaptation does go quite some way make the existing racism legible… casting, costuming, choreography and cinematography does the same racialised sorting the text does, and does it visually: Uruk-hai as a kind of grunting brutalised, brutalistic mass, Haradrim on oliphaunts as a fairly straightforward Orientalist boogeyman, and the Fellowship itself photographed like a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy lmfao. Serkis isn't introducing a new interpretive layer with his commentary, hell Serkis was in all those Jackson films as well! Serkis is being very clear about what aspects of the legendarium matter to him, and that aspect happens to be the whiteness of it all. And I genuinely cannot understand why the huge ‘scandal’ around his comment is not that someone said the quiet part, but that saying it out loud is what became the scandal, taken as some kind of transgression against Tolkien and all his readers with Good Politics™️, rather than the quarter-century of adaptations, readings, and analysis of the text that wordlessly encoded the racism and got called faithful and dedicated for it.

I didn’t want to go to author is dead territory but. Fandom discourse keeps reaching for authorial intent as the arbiter of textual meaning in exactly the way most of these same people would reject in any other context. Everyone is a massive New Critic the second the author in question is someone they love. But Tolkien doesn’t need to have consciously intended a racial hierarchy or a white nationalist mythology for the text to functionally produce one, for it to be so loved by conservatives and ethnonationalists who come fifty years after his time.

Intent is not even a contested position in literary theory, it's just the very basic understanding that "text has ideology independent of authorial intent". The insistence on relitigating Tolkien's personal feelings as though that settles the structural question is wild to me, and I find it so extremely unproductive how liberal fandom reaches for this constantly, repeatedly chanting Tolkien’s few vaguely liberal statements that read far less liberally in context. But I guess the alternative, ie reading the actual construction of race in the legendarium on its own terms, requires giving up the fantasy that the thing you love is politically inert. And it’s just so sad man. Like I fucking love the legendarium, and I think insisting on its moral purity is the worst thing you can do to it.

I think my entire argument can be summed up in a few questions. Why do conservatives keep saying "I love Tolkien" completely unashamedly, in a way they don’t realy say about most other ‘canonical’ twentieth-century texts, while we on the left have to perform a whole apologetic dance before we say it? What is it that they embrace about the text, that we have to occlude in order to express an unproblematic ‘love’? Why do we have to disavow parts of a text to claim we love it? Who are we performing to? What are we losing in focusing so hard on this performance?

This is why the Serkis-style comment, or the Rings of Power casting discourse, ends up being the deepest engagement we collectively get in fandom terms. Because both "sides" of that fight are actually shallow in the same way, just from opposite ends. The right-wing backlash to diverse casting is, repulsively, responding to something absolutely present in the text: a defensive crouch around a racial aesthetic it identifies as being under threat. The liberal-left response, the "just add brown elves" gesture, claims the problem to be one of representation and casting rather than structure, which is precisely why the racial elements of The Rings of Power satisfies no one and changes nothing.

You can put actors of colour in Númenor and Harfoot villages and yet the underlying moral framework of who is coded as inherently noble and who as inherently monstrous, whose skin colour the textual narrative uses as a standin for corruption, stays completely untouched. Again, see my TROP link above, with the jihadi-coding of the villains. Because that framework isn't located in the casting of an adaptation, it's located in the construction of Arda itself and physiognomy-as-morality at the level of the prose itself, constantly present throughout the text. Casting a Black actor as an elf doesn't do anything to the fact that "evil race coded as racially other" is still sitting right there in the Southrons and the orcs, unadapted, undiscussed, doing exactly the same work it always did, and this work takes on a new look in post-2001 adaptations.

So what you get is two adaptations of the same tiresome insanemaking discourse rather than two different arguments: the right defends the racial aesthetic as the substance of their love, and the liberal mainstream defends the fantasy that representation-level tweaks constitute engagement with race. And so, nobody actually produces the adaptation that takes seriously what nonwhite Tolkien scholars have been saying for decades, which is that you'd have to touch the orc/Southron/Valar/Valinor/blondeness architecture itself to ever productively have this conversation. Not diversify who plays the good guys, but interrogate why "evil" in this legendarium has a face and a hair colour and points compass east.

But if the talk about this goes on as it does, and continues between Tolkien the Pure versus Tolkien the Misread, there will never be anyone willing to make that adaptation, and we’ll go on forever in a sisyphean climb, where both the reactionary embrace and the progressive denial are just two versions of refusing to read the same damn book. Basically, I think we on the left etc need to stop treating "is Tolkien racist" as a yes/no gate you have to clear before you're allowed to enjoy the books, and stop acting like enjoying problematic media makes you a fascist. We need to start treating the racialised architecture within Tolkien’s world as the actual object of study, same way you'd read imperial romance or Forster or Kipling or Haggard, without needing to acquit or convict the author first.

Which means we have to name the conservatism specifically rather than gesturing at "some outdated attitudes," trace where it comes from historically (the philological Northernness Tolkien grew up steeped in, not some special personal failing that reflects badly on you), and then ask what an adaptation would look like which dramatised that rather than smoothing over it or weaponising it. We have to let go of the idea that critical engagement is disloyalty, and let go of the idea that loving something requires defending its honour. We need to get the resilience needed to engage with the idea that a work can be both formative and ideologically compromised at the same time.

We don’t need to resolve that tension into either adoring hagiography or totalising cancellation. If we do, we're going to keep getting “keep the Shire white” Serkis soundbites and “hooray we cast a brown elf in our we-invented-elf-jihadis show!” news cycles standing in for a conversation that hasn't actually started yet, and ngl buddies I have to say I personally will be biting people the next time I see yet another rendition of the same damn response-reaction cycle start again because everyone, both the conservatives and the left, wants the things they love to be a reflection of themselves, and will twist themselves into pretzels to ensure that remains the case.

[anghraine]

So I’ve been thinking about Éowyn’s relationship with Rohan.

She’s strongly aligned with Rohan in the main text of LOTR. For instance, when she faces the Witch-king after identifying herself, we hear:

Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible.

Despite her substantial Númenórean ancestry, this is how she describes her background to Faramir:

“Then must I leave my own people, man of Gondor?” she said. “And would you have your proud folk say of you: ‘There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! Was there no woman of the race of Númenor to choose?”

As far as I can tell, Éowyn identifies wholly as one of the Rohirrim and definitely thinks of herself as non-Númenórean. Fandom brings up her grandmother’s ancestry pretty often, but it doesn’t seem to factor into Éowyn’s identity or presentation in the body of LOTR; it’s not until the Appendices that she’s associated with Morwen in any way at all.

At the same time, a lot of her attraction to Aragorn is wrapped up in her desire to escape Rohan and what it’s come to represent for her—a place where she feels caged and trapped. As Gandalf says,

“But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

Aragorn himself says:

“I say to you that she loves you [Éomer] more truly than me; for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.”

Éowyn didn’t just desire to be a queen, but to be a queen away from Rohan. Of course, that desire ultimately shifts, or she realizes that it wasn’t what she truly wanted, and it was tied to a specific phase of her life in Rohan. But I do wonder what she thinks and feels about Rohan at the end of the day, when her marriage does take her far from the fields of Rohan and make her, let’s be real, the next thing to a queen.

How does Éowyn feel about Rohan as she prepares for her marriage? How does she feel after it, in Ithilien? How does that feeling factor into the way she chooses to go about her life as a Gondorian princess? I feel like it could actually be very complex for her.