I tried to do a detached movie!Eowyn meta just touching on my caretaking experience a lil bit to explain how helpless that feels but failed because it got too intertwined with my [redacted] [redacted] feelings. It's one the better things I've ever written, but it's just too personal to post on fandom PvP kill zone site I think.
So I'm just going to say care taking a loved one in decline is experience of helplessness and despair like nothing else especially when the world itself appears to be getting burnt down around you but at least I didn't have a politically powerful person creeping on me and sending out my other loved ones out to get killed. Anyway those sort of feelings of helplessness make you want to do something that feels effective and riding to war against the thing burning the world down feels so much more effective than running away with the non-combatants to die last while your only remaining family goes off to die first. Put it this way; the Rohirrim are a people of heroic deed tales and hail the glorious dead of battle. After all she had experienced so far why run from battle to die hiding experiencing fear and helplessness again when she could go down fighting instead. The urge to give the effort to write anything at all about the trauma familial caretaking can affect decision making comes from something horrid I read yeaaars ago that insisted Eowyn was being a brat, behaving like a spoiled child going into battle instead of doing the duty her king and uncle commanded of her and should never ever be treated like a hero. Also that she didn't deserve to be rewarded with Faramir as a husband. Pretty sure ever wrote that thing or anybody who agreed with it would look at what I've written and give some "cool motive, still murder" type response. I. DO. NOT. CARE. I'm all about the motive here folks, motive is the enrichment in my enclosure. The motive btw if you weren't paying attention is she's traumatized BEFORE the Black Breath gets her.