#lebennin

[a-little-hobbit-hole]

I beat my first Nazgul today! I'm only 73 and it was horribly laggy so I mostly stood back and buffed, but it's nice to have one down and get an account wide title. I did get the buggy stuck sky tho, so I had this view while I gathered some new stables

[amarthiels]

Silver flow the streams from Colos to Erui In the green fields of Lebennin! Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea The white lilies sway, And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin In the green fields of Lebennin, In the wind from the Sea!

[tolkien-obsessed]

[calaear]

LOTRO - Pelargir

[amarthiels]

The Dawnless Day

[anghraine]

“There [in Lebennin] dwelt a hardy folk between the mountains and the sea. They were reckoned men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them whose sires came more from the forgotten men who [once] housed in the shadow of the hills.”

(ROTK, “Minas Tirith”)

“To his amazement, as he listened Frodo became aware that it was the Elven-tongue that they [the Rangers of Ithilien] spoke, or one but little different; and he looked at them with wonder, for he knew then that they must be Dúnedain of the South.”

(TTT, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

Of all the peoples of Middle-earth ... these are my peak faves.

[anghraine]

...okay, still thinking about the Dúnedain adaptation:

- I really want to see Lebennin. The Elves still sing songs about how beautiful it is and it’s sadly underappreciated. Also, Pelargir could be awesome. Also, there’s a substantial population of heroic, short, dark, mainly non-Númenórean,  resilient Gondorians in Lebennin who are completely ignored outside the text and it’d be good to bring them forward IMO. The book just says they’re the descendants of the ‘forgotten’ people who lived there before the Númenóreans came, which itself could be interesting, esp combined with the importance placed on rescuing the coast.

- We’d get some establishing moments for Minas Tirith itself as a sort of character: it’s before the evacuation, so while there’s guarded tension with Mordor looming beyond it and vacant and/or decaying buildings, there’s also a considerable amount of city bustle in marketplaces and the like, and a glamour of size and ancientry. And we get to see how fertile and prosperous the general location is.

- Re: size—Tolkien said that the Dúnedain of Gondor were notable for their love of constructing enormous things, so I’d like a sense of just ... bigness, with the bonus contrast between the actual living people and the looming shadows of these absolutely gigantic statues, mosaics, buildings, etc of the past. The contrast with the young Rohan is stark.

- Re: the city bustle—we see glimpses of people with different occupations, different classes, different backgrounds, different languages, living their daily lives. Despite the weight of legacy and the pressures of war, it should be clear that Gondor’s culture is diverse and vibrant. There might be a contrast with the Northern Dúnedain here as well, as they’re a much smaller and more homogeneous population.

- The Northern Dúnedain would need ... like, a plot or something to bring them in before they’re summoned to help Aragorn. We need a sense of what their deal is, both where it’s connected to Gondor’s on the Dúnadan level and where it’s separate. Maybe this doubles as our introduction to hobbits—we first see them from the perspective of the Dúnedain protecting them. 

- I mentioned this in a reply, but I would (regretfully) lower the register of the Dúnedain characters’ dialogue to a somewhat more accessible level for central characters—not modern casual by any means, but not quite so high-diction as the book.

- It’s dreamland, so I’d get linguists who could not only handle neo-Sindarin, but neo-Sindarin with dialectical differences. Even in “English,” there’d be different accents between, say, the Northern and Southern Dúnedain, even if it’s not very pronounced (and definitely between e.g. Rivendell Elves and Boromir).

- (I am very set on Boromir using Sindarin at least once. I’m pretty sure that I lose a year off my life every time I see people assuming he can’t.)

- I’m really looking forward to the ‘the Sword that was Broken’ dream. I mean. I would be, if this was actually, you know, a thing.

- I have a headcanon that Ivriniel accompanied Finduilas to Minas Tirith way back in the day, studied with the healers, and just ... never left again, until Denethor evacuated her before the battle. My more tentative headcanon is that Lothíriel has been with her for some time, mostly due to escalating Corsair raids, so if I went with that, we could get three whole canon female characters in MT and have some sense of Lothíriel beyond her familial/marital connections.

(Bonus: the expanded headcanon is that Denethor and Ivriniel got on super well, but she was enraged when he sent her off in the evacuation, and they had a bitter fight about it before she left. Of course, she never sees him again.)

- Tolkien remarks in UT that Denethor was not only driven by personal pride but by his love for Gondor and the burden of being selected to lead his people through a desperate time. This should be really clear, esp when it comes to his use of the palantír. (I don’t think that would be a secret to the audience. Probably. If anything, we might even experience some episodes of his use of it with him, culminating in his sanity finally snapping.)

- Gandalf is a major recurring character in both ‘halves’ of the story. Maybe we get his line to Faramir about who he truly is and are eventually given enough information to understand what it means? Not sure how deep into Middle-earth cosmology we want to get, but it’s ... kind of important. At any rate, we would see his affinity with both Aragorn and Faramir, and Denethor’s resentment of Faramir’s affection for Gandalf would have some context.

- In my most perfect world, Gandalf and Denethor would actually be framed in similar ways at points, obviously enough to see them as related, parallel figures per Pippin’s observation. 

- We’d get some glimpses of the Elves, if not more, via the Northern Dúnedain, though the “northern” focus would probably narrow in on Aragorn as the plot closes in on FOTR. At the very least we’d meet Elladan and Elrohir and get an idea of their quasi-eternal bromance with the Northern Dúnedain and undying hatred of orcs.

- It’s a lot, but I’m imagining some of these things as quite brief in terms of actual screen time spent on them (not all, of course). Definitely TV rather than film material, though.

[tolkienillustrations]

Ethir Anduin by tigaer