#gríma

[grimalives]

okay i want your genuine opinions here

did gríma eat lotho sackville-baggins

yes

no

unsure/ambiguous answer..

Voting ended onJul 2

obviously tolkien left it ambiguous so it tends to be ambiguous in my mind as well.. but i enjoy entertaining the idea that he did eat him…. it’s fun

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

For the ask game <3 🖤for Eowyn (if you think she has any) 🧸for Mr. Wormtongue

Thanks so much, these were really interesting to think about!!! ♥️ (And what a pairing of prompts!!)

🖤 What villain traits does Éowyn have?

Hmm. Tough! I think Éowyn had lots of traits that you COULD find in a villain (intelligence, resourcefulness, single-minded/determined, rash, a little abrasive, resentful, willing to lie if needed, quick to judge), but not any traits that you’d ONLY find in a villain (cruelty, malice, a will to dominate others, you know the stuff!). She’s much like everyone else in that respect — a fundamentally good person but also human and with flaws.

That being said, if I’m going to pick something in her that I think could be most villainous — like, if she somehow came into possession of the One Ring, what flaw or deep seated desire would it pick up on and amplify in her? — I’m gonna say spitefulness. Like, if you get yourself on Éowyn’s true shit list, it is VERY hard to ever get yourself off again. Decades might go by and a ton of intervening events, but she WILL remember whatever you did to piss her off and she WILL still hold it against you, at least secretly. And if she were operating in ring master form, I think she’d see herself as something like Éowyn the Avenger, going around and distributing some major karmic justice to those who most deserved it. And sure, it’d start out with real assholes like Gríma who would deserve what they got. But over time the standard for who should get obliterated would slide until eventually she’s smiting some random dude that got to ride the pony she liked best when they were both 6 years old.

Allow me to say, for the record, that this is also what would happen to me with the One Ring.

🧸What would Gríma’s younger self think of him now?

I’ll assume we’re talking about young Gríma’s view of himself at the height of his powers since that’s more debatable than wondering how little Gríma would feel to find himself impoverished, exiled and abused by Saruman.

With that assumption, I suspect young Gríma would be both a little surprised and a lot pumped to see himself wielding major power in late Third Age Rohan. Little Gríma had a strong (overdeveloped!) sense of his own value, and he often felt unjustly overlooked by his peers and superiors. He always thought he deserved more respect, but he didn’t necessarily know that he was going to ever get it. So I think he would have been completely besotted with the knowledge that would he eventually become the king’s righthand man (heck, he was essentially functioning AS THE KING for all intents and purposes!!!) because that was a total vindication of what he’d always thought himself capable and worthy of.

And because younger versions of ourselves aren’t always great at nuance or at considering a larger picture, I doubt he would have stopped to consider too deeply what compromises and sins he might have committed to get to that seat of incredible power. He’d see an outcome that he loved — authority, status, a pretty woman in his orbit! — and be immediately on board. Anything that might seem a shade questionable in his younger eyes, he just wouldn’t look at too hard. Surely he had a good reason for manipulating the king; it must have been for the greater good! Surely he wasn’t being a creep with that pretty woman; he was bestowing honor upon her by giving her the attention of such a clearly important man! Etc, etc. It’s classic denial, but, as they say, bad guys don’t generally perceive themselves as being bad. And I think Gríma would have been so excited by the possibilities he saw for himself that he would have overlooked or rationalized basically anything that might have taken even a bit of shine off of the vision of his future self that he wanted to realize so badly.

Thanks again for the ask! I’m always interested to hear others’ thoughts on these same points!!!

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

I’ve been thinking/talking a lot about Gríma lately, and Théoden’s treatment of him after he’s restored to his senses has always really pissed me off, and not just because it feels so lenient.

Théoden never really approaches Gríma with the intent to punish. Even before Gandalf intervenes on Gríma’s behalf, Théoden has already offered him a chance to be restored to good standing in the community simply by coming with them to the Westfold and fighting on behalf of the Mark. Théoden knows full well that Gríma is guilty of abuse of power, manipulation, faithlessness and outright theft, but he will forgive all of that in exchange for an act of service — and one that’s not even especially noteworthy, as all the good men of the Mark are also going to fight! Even when it is made explicit that Gríma’s crimes also include outright treason and predatory intentions for Éowyn, that still doesn’t change Théoden’s offer of absolution. Gríma can come west with them and be judged by how he behaves in the fighting, with the implication that if he performs honorably from that point on, he will be judged positively no matter what his prior actions had been.

A lot of readers want instead to see Gríma punished in a more traditional sense - prison, death, a good thrashing by Éowyn and/or Éomer, etc. That’s certainly my instinctual emotional response, too, though it’s not really consistent with my values. I’ve been around (the American) justice system long enough to intellectually know both that a) purely punitive responses to crime usually don’t serve the ultimate interests of the victim(s), society OR the perpetrator; and b) there are other theories of justice that center not on punishment of the perpetrator but on repairing the harm done as part of the wrongdoing, and those approaches have their own merits.

So my objective mind can intellectually understand a theory of justice that prioritizes finding a path for a perpetrator to change and reintegrate into law-abiding society rather than simply making him pay a price for his sins. Théoden’s goal seems to be to have Gríma make an affirmative choice to turn back toward pro-social behavior and to seal it with service on behalf of the kingdom to demonstrate his good faith. You can want Gríma to reckon more directly and explicitly with the specific harm he did to Éowyn or Théodred (I do!), but if the Rohirrim model of justice focuses on the good of the community (in the form of Gríma recommitting to good citizenship) and not the individual (in terms of giving Éowyn, for example, her preferred punitive outcome) that is at least a coherent governing philosophy, even if you personally see it as too lenient. But the difficulty comes from the fact that this doesn’t actually seem to be the Rohirrim theory of justice, because it doesn’t seem to apply to anyone but Gríma himself.

In virtually every other instance we see of a crime or social breach in the Mark, the Rohirrim have a classic retributive response. Éomer is jailed for disobeying orders, and he suggests to Aragorn that death is also a possible consequence of such a decision. Háma loses his position of honor as doorward for having arguably disobeyed the rules by allowing Gandalf to bring his staff into the hall. Even in much older days, we hear how Helm Hammerhand straight up executed Freca for alleged disloyalty and branded his entire family as traitors who had to flee the kingdom. Demotion, incarceration, exile, death — these are serious consequences. So why should all of these people have faced specific accountability that was never demanded of Gríma?

I think we’re supposed to see Théoden’s provision of mercy as good, especially because Gandalf advocates for it and the value of pity/mercy is a persistent theme in the legendarium. But I can’t. I can comprehend differing social values around the meaning and shape of justice, but I can’t comprehend the blatantly inconsistent application of those values. I can’t accept Gríma being shown more pity and empathy than Éomer or Háma or Freca’s family or anyone else who committed far less serious offenses than Gríma himself. It suggests either a massive underestimation of the seriousness of Gríma’s crimes — though Théoden is explicitly told that Gríma made Éowyn unsafe and even admits that Gríma would have had him “walking on all fours like a beast” if not for intervention— or some sort of bizarre favoritism for Gríma over the interests of Théoden’s own family. Either way, it’s a terrible look for Théoden (and not the greatest for Gandalf either)!

[nightscalestudio]

Gríma, called Wormtongue. Tutorials on Gríma will be added to Patreon later. painting tutorials: https://www.patreon.com/Nightscalestudio

[chechula]

Saruman and Gríma at the end of the trilogy ♥

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

An Answered Ask on Gríma Wormtongue

@robiberon Tumblr kept doing weird things with your Ask, and then I answered it and hit post but it seems to have disappeared entirely (my answer doesn’t show up when I look at my blog, at least). So I’m going to reconstruct it here, just so you get your answer since it seems like the Ask itself vanished into the black hole of Tumblr’s infrastructure. Sorry!!!

SO, you asked 3 questions about Gríma, and here they are!

When did Gríma get to Edoras? There’s no textual answer. A lot of people like to portray him as being all or part Dunlending, coming from Dunland or the border region. But that’s entirely their HC. It’s just as possible that he’s ALWAYS been in Edoras, having been born a native Rohirrim and a lifelong resident of the capital. The only thing we know for sure about his background is that his father is named Gálmód, which is something Gandalf mentions. If Gálmód was known to Gandalf, that suggests to me that the family had a certain prominence and an established presence in Rohan (Good or bad? Unclear! Though Gálmód translates as “licentious” or “wanton,” which is not encouraging!) So I tend to think of him as a native Rohirrim (which I also think makes his heel turn more interesting since he’s an internal source of danger rather than a more typical external enemy) who either always lived in Edoras or found his way to the city at some point. But that’s also just conjecture.

How long did it take for him to become Théoden’s most trusted advisor? This is also something for which there is no firm answer. He’d presumably been in the job for years already by the time we meet him in TA 3019, because Théoden was 71 then and his decline began when he was 66. But Gríma’s path into the advisor role is unclear and the value/merit that was seen in him to earn/sustain that position isn’t really addressed anywhere beyond the fact that he’s noted in UT as being really smart. I would LOVE to have more info about how he got the job, what he did with it early on, how he got ensnared by Saruman, etc., but the text just isn’t there. On the plus side, that’s fertile ground for creativity since you essentially have to invent your own backstory. I had a lot of fun making one up for him!

Did he have some Saruman magic to help or was he just a really good manipulator? This is finally one where there’s some textual evidence! And despite the depiction in the films, with a dramatic quasi-possession of Théoden, the answer is actually much, much closer to “Gríma was just a really good manipulator.” UT has this to say after noting that Théoden was getting old and that his decline may have been a natural result of aging: “But [his malady] may well have been induced or increased by subtle poisons administered by Gríma. In any case, Théoden’s sense of weakness and dependence on Gríma was largely due to the cunning and skill of this evil counsellor’s suggestions.” That is Tolkien raising (though pointedly not confirming) the possibility that poison was involved and then explicitly saying that the primary driver was Gríma’s manipulative behavior. I’ve always read this to mean that some physical poison affected Théoden’s body, but it was instead poisonous words that affected his demeanor and conduct.

That’s ambiguous enough that someone could reach a different conclusion on the relative weight to give to poison v manipulation, but I don’t think there’s any text-based answer that relies instead on magic. And that’s further backed up by the way Gandalf heals Théoden. He doesn’t have to do any magic to undo a spell or enchantment. He just talks some sense to him (“too long have you sat in the shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings”) and takes him out into the sun to see that things aren’t as bad as he thought (Gandalf: “You need to touch grass.”). So Gríma’s tools are mostly just an inherent talent for sowing dissent, isolating the king, giving him bad counsel and distorting Théoden’s view of reality through false facts and interpretations of facts.*

Thank you so much for the questions! And if (as alluded in your Ask) you notice some of my beloved obscure Rohirrim more now when you read LOTR after enduring my incessant rambling about them — well, that makes me very happy!!! I so look forward to whatever art you’ve got in the works — your Rohirrim art is all so full of emotion and beautiful to look at! ♥️

* This is what leads me to one of my crankiest opinions, which is that Book Théoden does not get held sufficiently accountable for the harm that he did during the period of his manipulation. Because he made choices. He had agency. Saruman wasn’t operating him like a Théoden Puppet, Peter Jackson-style. He acted of his own accord — he was abused in the process (being poisoned into physical sickness is not good!) and he was steered into bad actions, yes. But he wasn’t helpless and so he’s also not blameless. He didn’t fall victim to unbeatable, unfathomable magic. He made the very human mistake of putting his faith in the wrong people and he followed them down a horrific path. I’ve been working on the draft of a story (that may someday see the light if I can ever just finish it!) where Théoden has to actually confront the effect that his behavior had on Théodred during this time. (Would Théodred even be dead if Théoden hadn’t accepted Gríma’s counsel over that of his own family???). And of course Théoden owes a big apology to Éowyn as well!!!

[breakintomyhead]

[breakintomyhead]

i tried emulating a very specific artstyle...