This is maximally self-indulgent so I didn't add it to the other reblog, but the Denethor--Aragorn connection is honestly one of the funnest things about writing my Aranor fics. The basic premise is that the Númenórean throwbacks in LOTR are genderbent (usually to women, though Ivriniel and Finduilas of Dol Amroth become Túrin and Gwindor!). The most narratively central figure is Aranor (Aragorn), though, so I mostly think of the interconnected fics as "the Aranorverse."
Anyway, the Denethor--Aragorn connection is particularly fun in that verse because the first woman to rule Gondor is not Aranor, but the Ruling Steward Andreth (Denethor). For Aranor, getting the people of Gondor to accept her as not only heir of Elendil but as ruling queen is still a steep task—but not as steep as it would have been if the foundation had not been laid by Andreth's rise to the Ruling Stewardship and popular, largely successful rule over the decades since.
Andreth would never in a million years have wanted her actions to smooth Aranor's path, incidentally. They knew each other as younger women and she was one of the only people to realize that Aranor was a woman, much less heir of Isildur, and Andreth resented the hell out of "Thorongil" back in the day. Andreth knows her way around a sword and in some ways, would have very much preferred to live a Thorongil sort of life, but as one of the Steward's daughters and mother to the (then very young) heir to the Stewardship, her circumstances were quite different from Aranor's.
In any case, Andreth wanted Boromir to succeed her as had always been planned, and was devastated by his death. Still, she remained set on her remaining heir, her daughter Míriel, inheriting the Stewardship upon her death. Fortunately in some ways, she died before Aranor's return and never saw the parallels between her struggle to rule in her own right and not only as regent for Boromir during his minority, and Aranor's fight for the chieftainship of the Northern Dúnedain given the N. Dúnedain's pride in the father-to-son line of male chieftains, or how both struggles would culminate in Aranor's ascension as first ruling queen of Gondor.
It's not really surprising, considering that I'm a lesbian, but it's still kind of incredible to me how much many characters I dislike or feel meh about become far more appealing when I mentally cast them with women or imagine their stories as women.
I'm also into this for my faves (this is obvious if you're familiar with my AO3 account, lol), but a beloved blorbo becoming an even more beloved blorbo isn't nearly as much of a change as ... idk, my profound frustration with canon Maedhros vs "whoa, that'd be awesome" when I think of Maedhros As Played By Katharine Hepburn. Or there's my ambivalence about canon Aragorn vs my affection for female Aragorn, who breaks the father to son chain of heirs of Isildur, but manages to hang onto the heirship anyway, and who is, additionally, 6'6" with shaggy, greying hair and an appearance that ranges from foul to beautiful depending on how regal she feels at that moment.
(I once wrote a fic about female Aragorn having a nightmare about taking the Ring and morphing into the dreadful Tar-Elessarnë. And Tar-Elessarnë would be dreadful. But 100x hotter than canon, also.)
While I'm being self-indulgent (is Self-Indulgent Sunday a thing?) wrt the Aranor (f!Aragorn/f!Faramir) fics/verse, some of my favorite details that have yet to appear in the fics:
—Andreth (f!Denethor) had a much more complicated path to the Stewardship than in canon and was the first woman to ever rule Gondor in her own right. In a case of extreme dramatic irony, Andreth's successful fight for the Stewardship helped pave the way for Aranor to become the first Ruling Queen.
—Andreth married relatively late in life for a first marriage. Although her marriage to the much-younger Gwindor of Dol Amroth was forwarded by both their families, they were passionately devoted to each other. But Gwindor longed for the sea of his home and wasted away in Minas Tirith, under the shadow of Mordor. (I particularly enjoy the reversal here, ngl.)
—Andreth refuses to leave Minas Tirith when she sensibly evacuates most of the other women and children, including her daughter and last surviving heir, Míriel (f!Faramir). Before Míriel's departure, Andreth places her in charge of the evacuees and instructs her to take up the Stewardship and lead their people to Gondor's refuges should Minas Tirith fall.
—The Northern Dúnedain have long prided themselves on the unbroken father-to-son line of the heirs of Isildur. But Arathorn dies leaving only a daughter, Aranor, far too young to forward her claim as heir of Isildur. The N. Dúnedain are inclined to pass the heirship to the nearest patrilineal male relation, ideally one already grown—until Elrond intercedes on toddler Aranor's behalf and takes on her care.
—When Aranor, a lean, greying, middle-aged woman, arrives in Gondor at the head of the army of the Dead and leads the defeat of the Corsairs, the southern Gondorians are grateful but also a bit "bzuh?" That was definitely not on their fantasy bingo cards.
—Even without an Aragorn/Arwen situation (Aranor's love is real but unrequited), Elrond comes to Gondor to see Aranor—as beloved as his natural daughters—become Queen Elessarnë. He ends up having a very kind talk with Míriel, who faces an uncertain future even as she still dreams of Númenor.
—Speaking of the unrequited Aranor/Arwen, Aranor is so used to loving Arwen in a very fairy-tale kind of way that she herself doesn't realize her feelings have shifted until well after the fact, and later, when she realizes she's in love with Míriel, it seems natural to assume this will also be unrequited. (Pining. This is a verse for pining.)
I wrote a thing! There might be errors, since I wrote it very quickly, but it was fun (in its way). It’s part of the Aranorverse, where the explicit throwbacks in LOTR (Aragorn, Denethor, Imrahil, and Faramir) are genderbent (as Aranor, Andreth, Imraphel, and Míriel).
In particular, it’s a very belated sequel to “cloven shield and broken sword,” in which Aranor found a dying Boromir:
She remembered him tugging at her leggings, demanding to know but what next? And she remembered him in Lothlórien, haughty and suspicious until he began to speak of Míriel, the sister he had loved and protected through all the days of their lives. Boromir the tall, the fair, the bold, had died, and his treasured sister lived on; what was Aranor’s grief to that?
May the news of his loss come to you swiftly and kindly, jewel-maiden!
The dream always began the same way.
Míriel stood in a city of white and gold, grander than Minas Tirith, grander even than Osgiliath of old, though its domes and towers were similar enough in form that she knew she looked upon the work of Dúnedain. Most of the people around her, however, belied the impression, with their bright hair and soft features—or so it had once seemed. They were handsome, but in a way that unsettled her, like overripe fruit covered in sweet cream. Some particularly disturbed her: tall men in long red tunics, leading lines of bound prisoners towards a building beneath a particularly large and glittering dome.
The prisoners would not have looked out of place in Minas Tirith. Míriel’s stomach turned as smoke trailed up from the dome.
The first time, she still knew not what she saw at this point. It was strange and disagreeable, but little worse, until the winds began to blow. Míriel’s black hair whipped around her face, rain splattering on her head and cheeks and the ground, where it pooled into large puddles. Nobody seemed to notice her. Men came running from what looked like a harbour, shouting things in a language she couldn’t quite understand; her impression of their thoughts was dark and clouded, enough that she shrank back.
But she was not a shrinking sort of girl, not really. The prisoners had drawn her attention again; the red-robed men seemed to be distracted by the newcomers and the prisoners had seized the chance to struggle with their bonds. She ran over to them.
“Who are you? Do you come from Gondor?” she asked.
No one answered. No one so much as acknowledged her existence. But as the water splashed over her sandalled feet, the prisoners broke free and fled, chased futilely by only a few of the robed men. She caught a single familiar word amidst all the clamour: storm.
Yes, of course. It must have come on very unexpectedly; everyone appeared to be dressed very lightly for this kind of weather. Míriel was herself; her thin tunic soon soaked through, and her skin went numb. The sky grew darker; she almost thought she saw the shadow of some enormous creature flicker across it. And the steady fall of the rain turned into torrential sheets of water that blasted through the streets, scattering the people on them.
Míriel ran as quickly as she could, like the rest, but instead of retreating into houses or flying to the ships, she turned and scrambled towards the clearest sign of refuge: a mountain near the city, rising clear and pure above its buildings. Smoke puffed from its summit, which struck her as wrong in some way.
She was a child at the time, her steps short, but somehow or other, her feet brought her out of the city and to the side of the mountain before the driving wind and rain could wholly flood the city and its environs. Ahead of her, a small woman in an embroidered white tunic, with sparkling bracelets about her wrist and a golden collar at her throat, clambered up the sides of the mountain. The air was hot, hotter than it should be, but Míriel could think of nowhere else to go. She struggled up the mountain after the woman.
“Can you hear me?” she called out. “Let us help one another!”
To her surprise, the woman looked back—but her fair face, though not unsettling in the way of the others’, was filled with utter terror. She didn’t seem to see Míriel at all, her pale grey eyes wide and staring.
Míriel followed her gaze, and gasped. Water was rushing out of the city and drowning the green valley below, rising with impossible swiftness. Míriel was not craven, but at that, she turned back to the mountainside and struggled to scramble up its ledges, ignoring the pebbles that pressed into her feet beneath her thin, drenched sandals. Now, she could not look back, and she ignored the horror that filled her mind.
They never did make it to the top of the mountain. But they reached a high enough point that Míriel could see past it. Water was flooding beyond it, too, pouring through forests and rising over hills from every direction.
Even as Míriel gazed upon it, the storming water splashed up into foamy waves that roared beneath them. This did not, however, prepare her for what happened next.
To the west, all the waves seemed to join together into one, towering and impossibly enormous. But it grew still larger, cascading up and up and up and up, above Míriel and the woman, above the mountain itself, above everything. The hills and valleys, forests and cities, all fell under its heavy shadow. Míriel’s very blood felt cold, her her breath coming in small, frightened pants as the wave’s inescapable darkness deepened.
The woman, clinging to rocks, screamed something that Míriel half-understood. Then the wave began to crash down on them.
In Míriel’s bedchamber, her eyes flew open. That time, the first time, she promptly burst into tears and cried until Boromir came running, thinking she was ill. He managed to console her, but within a few nights, the dream came again, and then again within a few nights of that. So it continued, on and on, through the years that followed.
The horror of it never really abated. Yet she grew accustomed to it, in a way: to the sight of Númenor in its most terrible hour, only made worse by the understanding of what came next and why, to the glimpses of her namesake, the rightful queen. Indeed, nothing but the wave itself left so strong a mark on her mind as Tar-Míriel’s face, so beautiful and so terrified.
She, Míriel of Gondor, would never forget her, or Númenor, or where the folly and evils of their people had led. She could never forget. Perhaps that was the purpose of the dream. Perhaps it was a warning of what victory could mean in the end, however improbable victory might seem in her waking hours. Perhaps it was something else yet. But it never stopped haunting her.
Nearly thirty years after the first dream, though, it changed. Míriel dreamed again of Armenelos and the Meneltarma and the shadow of death rising inexorably above all. But there was no waking. The wave slowly began to collapse over them, foam and droplets spattering her face before it reached her. Míriel stood tall and straight, refusing to cower, allowing herself no further weakness than blinking the water out of her face. She opened her eyes to more water, feeling it slosh about her bare ankles.
But it was now deep into night beneath a pale moon, just bright enough for her to see that the water in which she stood flowed smoothly past the familiar shores of the Anduin. The terror of the Downfall had shifted to an overwhelming sense of peace.
As she watched, she saw a small boat come floating up the river. In colour, it was a peculiar, shining grey; in design, she could not recognize it. Nor did she expect to, for it cast a dim light all around it. Though nobody appeared to be rowing or steering it, it continued on its serene course without interruption.
Míriel felt a distinct desire to draw nearer the boat, to understand what could possibly explain all this. She thought of resisting the desire; she might have—but it did not strike her as foul in the way of the Enemy’s arts, so she dared approach.
The boat slowed as she came near, within hand’s reach of the prow. Her instincts warned her against touching it, but she saw illuminated water filling the boat, and a warrior who first appeared to be sleeping in it.
Míriel gasped.
“Boromir!”
She knew at a second glance that he was dead. Anyone might have, without need of fallen Númenor or any other powers of this world. His chest had been pierced with many wounds. His sword lay broken on his knee, and others at his feet. His black hair had been carefully laid over his shoulders. She recognized everything he wore except a lovely belt of linked golden leaves, and his face was not only restful, but beautiful, even more than in life.
She and her mother had already feared the worst, when they heard the echo of his horn coming from the north, unaccompanied by any news of him. But it was one thing to fear, and another to see.
“Where is your horn?” she asked, as if he might somehow answer.
The boat kept floating under her gaze, drifting past where she stood in the water.
“Where are you going?” she cried. “Oh, Boromir!”
It passed on, down the stream and fading into the night, towards the sea. Míriel stood alone in the water. No priest of Sauron, no Faithful prisoner, no doomed queen or frightened citizen intruded upon her notice. No brother, either.
She tilted her head down to stare into the clear river-water, her reflection a dark blur at this hour. With her hair hanging loose around her face, obscuring the sight of the shore, it reminded her of peering into the waters near Dol Amroth on a calm night. Perhaps it had reminded her father of the sea he missed, too. Oh, the sea, the sea! Must it always be the sea?
She felt tears slide down her cheeks—as if the occasion required more water, when Boromir was gone and forever consigned to the fate of Men. They would never see him return. She would never feel his great embrace once more, nor listen to him with their mother, nor ride out to the Pelennor with him, nor ever again see him laugh among the knights of Dol Amroth. Míriel squeezed her eyes shut.
She pressed her fingers to her face, rubbing away tears, and opened her eyes again. She felt no surprise at the sight of her bedchamber in Minas Tirith. Yet she was not lying in bed but sitting upon it, her hands still pressed to her cheeks, as if she had actually woken some time before, or never slept at all. Míriel rose, shaking out her dry shift, and walked over to her window, which looked westwards.
Boromir had risked death constantly; it was his duty and right as Captain-General and heir to the Stewardship. She had always known this. She had certainly known it when he set out on his errand, driven by a dream of his own. Yet, in some way, she had not known—not understood—and now—
I know Aragorn/Faramir is a pretty niche pairing and f!Aragorn/f!Faramir is even more niche, but I’ve been thinking of the Aranorverse again and having feelings about ... Elrond?
I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the Northern Dúnedain’s main points of pride is that they’ve managed to preserve the direct line of the heirs of Isildur from father to son. With help from Elrond, this has continued for an incredibly long period of time: from Arvedui’s disappearance to, in this verse, the death of Arathorn.
He leaves a child, of course—a girl. Arathorn dying before having a son after all those years and generations would be a monumentally big deal. Aranor is far too young to have a husband to claim leadership through her, as her ancestor Arvedui did, so IMO the probability is that the chieftainship would pass to the nearest man in the male line from Isildur.
...if not for Elrond. The background story behind Aranor the eventual queen is that Elrond acknowledged little toddler Aranor as heir of Isildur. He took her into his household as Estel alongside Gilraen, giving Aranor a proper Elvish-Númenórean education and working to prepare her for the trials to come. The line about how Elrond loves Aragorn as much as he does Elladan and Elrohir is equally true of Aranor. He does love her dearly, and he gives her the tokens of her house and directs her to a great destiny, and ultimately comes to Minas Tirith to see Aranor enthroned as Queen of Gondor before finally leaving Middle-earth.
At the end of the day, honestly, a lot of people are going to owe an awful lot to the moment when Elrond considered thousands of years of patriarchy vs one two-year-old girl, and chose the girl.
Although I use ‘Aranorverse’ for the f!Aragorn/f!Faramir fic, since Aranor (f!Aragorn) is the main point of it ... it definitionally also extends beyond her. The original premise is that the Númenórean throwbacks in LOTR are genderbent: Denethor, Aragorn, Imrahil, and Faramir.
To make it work, though, I had to consider Imrahil’s siblings, and Finduilas definitely reads as a Númenórean/Elvish type, so she became a man and f!Denethor’s husband. For simplicity’s sake, I assumed that Ivriniel is also a throwback, making m!Ivriniel the prince and leaving f!Imrahil free to be a full-time lady knight.
(Canon Imrahil’s shock at finding a woman among the Rohirrim makes this funnier to me, ngl.)
OTOH, f!Denethor really needed to be the Steward for multiple reasons, and I was thinking of how it would happen, since Denethor canonically has older sisters and is maybe-implied to have a younger brother. I ultimately decided that Denethor’s older sisters went off and made suitable marriages, but the brother (here the only son) was unable to ascend / completely opposed to ascending to the Ruling Stewardship.
Denethor says in LOTR that he and Faramir are the last of the House of the Stewards, so it doesn’t seem like there would be undisputed contenders to succeed Ecthelion apart from his children. I imagined that Denethor’s brother, along with f!Denethor herself, was able and willing to fight tooth and nail for one of his sisters to take on the mantle rather than opening the gates to a new Kinstrife, and while the two eldest were “lol no,” lady Denethor agreed. She might even have canon Denethor’s feeling (according to UT) of having been appointed by destiny to lead Gondor through this bleak hour.
Anyway: for names, I was thinking mainly of the Stewards’ propensity for naming children after major First Age figures and/or previous members of their family. I provisionally went with Andreth for Denethor and Belecthor for the younger brother. (I always headcanon the older sisters as Emeldir and Rían.)
Oh, and another idea is that Andreth’s unprecedented ascension to the Stewardship didn’t immediately overhaul the lot and expectations of women in Gondor, but it did blaze a path that some women are able to follow, most notably f!Imrahil (leader of the knights of Dol Amroth) and, ironically enough, f!Aragorn. Aranor might have been able to become queen anyway, but it would have been much more of an uphill battle without the precedent that Andreth set.
(Andreth would hate this if she knew about it.)
Back to Dol Amroth, I’d originally tried to come up with approximations of the canon names (Ivrinion? Fingon?). But it entertained me more to do something different. Since canon Ivriniel and Finduilas seem to have both been named for Finduilas of Nargothrond, I decided to name m!Ivriniel and m!Finduilas after her love interests—Túrin (already attested as a Gondorian name) and Gwindor. I did go for a direct conversion for Imrahil, who becomes Imraphel (mostly bc I like it).
Last of all, there’s f!Faramir, who here is Míriel. That’s partly because I wanted to distinguish her from my other f!Faramir fic (/whistles), and partly because it’s a royal name (like Faramir) that retains the -mir- connection with Boromir.
In the other fic, Faramir was the only genderbent character, and male Denethor had no expectation of a daughter being a warrior. This actually smoothed their relationship in a lot of ways. But while female Denethor doesn’t expect it, either, it’s at least a possibility in their timeline. So Míriel turning out as a gentle, gracious lady is more of a disappointment than in the other ’verse, esp after Boromir’s death, though it’s still far short of the strain between canon Denethor and Faramir.
Míriel, I think, is (reluctantly) evacuated with the other women and children before Gandalf and Pippin ever show up; her argument with Andreth about it is the last time they ever speak to each other. Andreth dies in the retreat across the Pelennor, Imraphel takes command, and Aranor arrives to turn the tide of battle while Míriel is basically stuck doing what Éowyn rejected—leading the civilians while others fight in the battle.
It’s an important task, and Míriel is a charismatic, strong-willed leader who is loved and respected by her people, but it’s still a difficult position to be in. By the time she receives news of Andreth’s death and Aranor’s existence, events have already rushed on. By the time Míriel returns to Minas Tirith, Sauron is defeated (wonderful!) and Aranor, whom Míriel has never met, is Queen of Gondor in all but name (maybe good, maybe bad). Míriel’s own place in the new world is extremely unclear. And then she actually meets Aranor and is, while not quite as swept away as canon without the mystical healing, still very powerfully struck by her and willing to step aside.
