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Stuart Hall, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Necessity of Reading with a Critical Eye
Tolkien being a "The curtains were just blue" and his student, Stuart Hall being like, "Well, actually let's investigate the meaning and history of that" is crazy work tbh.
"Boromir's a traditionalist - defend, defend, cut. He uses a balance of defensive and offensive moves, keeps himself well-covered even in the offense, with a lot of diagonal cuts. He does let the enemy come to him, and lets them close with him, unlike Aragorn. He'll be slower to defeat an opponent, relies on superior stamina, but takes fewer risks and is less likely to take serious injury. Generally I think that sort of fighter will be the last man standing against staggering odds, since he takes care not to be hit. The way he died is the only you could take him down - arrows and overwhelming force." --- Bob Anderson
“[…]After Gandalf’s triumph over Wormtongue (who is not yet given any other name), Theoden is assisted by two women, and he says to them, ‘Go, Idis, and you too Eiwyn sister-daughter!’ […] In this first version of 'The King of the Golden Hall’ the second Master of the Mark, slain at the River Isen, is Eofored, and he is not Theoden’s son.
On the other hand, in addition to Eowyn (Eomer’s sister, addressed as Theoden’s 'sister-daughter’), there is another lady in close association with Theoden, Idis - his daughter. All through the chapter, she is present, yet never once does she speak. When Gandalf asks Theoden who shall rule his people in his place when he departs to the war, he replies that Eowyn 'shall be lady in my stead’; and Gandalf says 'that is a good choice.’
There is no mention of Idis, yet she was still present, and for at the meal before the riding of the host 'there also waiting upon the king were the ladies Idis his daughter, and Eowyn sister of Eomer.’ It was Eowyn who brought wine, and Idis is not again mentioned.
Yet, Hama still says, in response to Theoden’s words that Eomer is the last of House of Eorl: 'I said not Eomer. He is not the last. There are Idis your daughter, and Eowyn his sister. They are wise and high-hearted.’
But it was at this point of brief existence of Idis came to an end, for the next words my father wrote: 'All love her. Let her be as lord to Eorlingas, while we are gone.’ All references to Idis were then removed from the manuscript.
I cannot say what what function in the narrative my father had for Idis (and it is notable that in the original outline, only Eowyn sister of Eomer is waiting on guests at the feast in Winseld after the victory), still less why the daughter of a King (and older than Eowyn) should be so silent and so overshadowed by the niece.”
— Christopher Tolkien, “The King of the Golden Hall” (pg. 445 and pg. 447), The Treason of Isengard (1989)
Finduilas, the Lady of Dol Amroth, and wife of Denethor II, the Steward of Gondor (T.A. 2950 –???) - Finduilas, Boromir and Faramir [3 of 3]
In terms of experiences, none compared to when she met her children. She initially believed, Boromir (born September of 2978 of the Third Age) would be her only child. They were still settling into their marriage, now almost two years removed from the date, when she realized she was pregnant.
Before his birth, Finduilas intended on naming him Beren, at the suggestion of Imrahil and Ivriniel, because the name had been in fashion at the time among mothers with newborns. She had been quite taken with the idea, believing the name would bring him naught but good luck.
Denethor, as he always did whenever her siblings were involved, was strongly against naming their child after the romantic hero. He told of her a dream where she addressed a fair-faced young man standing beside her as “Boromir”, and that he believed that that man was their son. “It must be his name,” He said. “He can bear no other.”
Finduilas was conflicted at first; the meaning of name enraptured her, but was still taken by the suggestion of her siblings. Irviniel thought naming him Boromir would be bad luck, but Finduilas often pointed herself as proof that not all namesakes brought about ill fates. She had a whole six months to think about it, and in the end, the green eyes staring back up at her weren’t Beren’s, but Boromir’s and there was no further argument.
The birth of Boromir seemed to put everyone around her in better spirits. Infants, she realized, inspired many to be on their best behavior, chief among them Denethor and Thorongil. Denethor found little time to be passive-aggressive with the man now that Boromir was around to preoccupy him, and likewise, Thorongil was perhaps in better spirits around both of them when Finduilas eventually permitted strangers to hold her child.
There was certain irony in the fact that, as he grew, though Boromir rarely left his parents side unless absolutely necessary, he was equally drawn to Thorongil and she could not blame anything except the natural charisma that seemed to flow from him. And it was then Finduilas had to admit that even she was drawn to Thorongil, if only for the kindness he showed her son.
The birth of Faramir overlapped with the departure of Thorongil. He had stayed on in Ecthelion’s service, in his own words, “longer than advised”, and felt it was finally time for his leave-taking. Denethor was happy to see him go and had grown uncomfortably suspicious of the man since Boromir began to shadow him and even skipped his studies to loiter in his company.
And though Boromir put on a brave face, he was five, and would cry for the loss of a friend. Finduilas would spend the next several months distracting him with trips to the library and the history Gondor’s best military minds that weren’t his father. Eventually, Thorongil became a memory, and Boromir became thoroughly distracted with the notion of having a little brother.
Naming Faramir, following his birth in April of 2983, was a simpler matter and one she did not leave to dreams and or suggestions. It seemed only right that he be named similarly to his older brother, who looked upon the squalling mass of undeveloped human with a mixture excitement and disappointment, for he was just as precious a jewel to her and nothing in the realm of Gondor could compare to them.
borowyn aesthetic [2/5]
She looked to his coming from the golden hall And he appeared as if from a dream She looked to his coming from the white city But he did not return
Finduilas, the Lady of Dol Amroth, and wife of Denethor II, the Steward of Gondor (T.A. 2950 –???) - Finduilas and Denethor [2 of 3]
She met Denethor when she was twenty four. It was a off-hand visit to Minas Tirith, and her first impression of him was, funny enough, not unlike the impressions of the people who took account of her but would never truly know her. He seemed stand-offish, and a man of little humor, or the good graces to know when to laugh at himself: Self-important, really. Denethor was stern in face, and keen-eyed with lovely dark brown hair that caught the sun in such a way that it hard not to watch the light follow him, rude as it was to stare after a certain period of time. (She did it anyway.)
Denethor was a close friend of her father and mother. But neither she or Denethor had any real interest in each other, not when she was twenty four, and perhaps less so when she was twenty five. Going to and from Dol Amroth and Minas Tirith had become such a frequency that Finduilas outright asked her parents if they were trying to pair her up with their old friend. Both denied the accusation, but hoped she found happiness with Denethor it was her wish to be with him.
The relationship that would ultimately come to be between the two was a slow-going thing. Their shared interest in lore connected them, and his access to the archives of Gondor excited her, but Finduilas couldn’t see a great love forming between them, hypothetically. Still, there was nothing she enjoyed more than expanding her knowledge base and it would seem he enjoyed her happiness among things of the past.
Denethor was not so much remiss to express his feelings to her, so much as it was clear that he had not been raised in an environment where vulnerability was looked kindly upon and was conflated with weakness. By the time of her twenty-sixth birthday, Denethor was practically struggling say how he felt and she was filling in the blanks, waiting for affirmatives. Her encounters with Ecthelion, then the Steward of Gondor, were brief, but were always bookended with Denethor’s frustration that his father’s favor seemed to lay with the Captain Thorongil, someone she barely knew.
And though the man was, it seemed, genuinely oblivious of the discord between father son, and meant only extend his friendship to both herself and Denethor, Finduilas found it hard not retroactively dislike him because Denethor could not – publically, anyway. When Denethor proposed, he offered her the world that he could provide as the Son of the Steward Ecthelion II. Finduilas was reluctant to separate herself from her home. However much she had come to love Denethor, Dol Amroth was where she felt she should remain and tried, at least once, to persuade him to join her there. There they could both be happy and raise their children without Ecthelion or Thorongil to worry about. It was the ideal picture of happiness, at least for her.
Denethor argued his obligations as the only heir of Ecthelion kept him bound to Minas Tirith. Finduilas bitterly suspected he simply wanted to continue the silent competition between himself and Thorongil and the accusation sparked a fight between them. She returned to Dol Amroth to consider his offer of marriage without so much as saying goodbye. Ivriniel and Imrahil thought she was being a bit dramatic about the situation. They urged her to come out of the darkness of the archives she was so dedicated to and spend more time with them, as they feared they would see less her, once she was married, than they did now with the preoccupation of their own lives.
Finduilas mourned the idea of relocating from Dol Amroth to Minas Tirith. “It’s such a dreary place, and the court is full of social climbers. I don’t want to be surrounded by that every waking day for the rest of my life,,” She said. Yet, she felt she was put upon to decide between one and the other aspect of her personal happiness.
To Denethor’s dismay, Finduilas did not return until the end of the year almost. By the time she entered the gates of Minas Tirith, she had long stopped crying and busied herself with relaxing her swollen eyes.
Ivriniel and Imrahil, followed by several handmaidens that would remain with her from thereon out, saw her safely to Denethor and were made comfortable in temporary quarters. Finduilas and Denethor were married in November of 2976 and it was a joyous occasion despite the parting that would soon follow. Leaving home was part of growing up, she told herself, she would get used to Minas Tirith and circumvent its discomforts if she could.
Alyssa Sutherland and Daphne Selfe as Finduilas
Finduilas, the Lady of Dol Amroth, and wife of Denethor II, the Steward of Gondor (T.A. 2950 –???) - Finduilas and her Family [1 of 3]
Finduilas was born June 2950 of the Third Age to Lady Ilmr and Prince Adrahil II of Dol Amroth. Ilmr would recount the day of Finduilas’ birth as stifling and unforgivably hot until the moment of her daughter’s entrance into the world, and they were greeted by the smell of the sea and the cool air of the mountains from the window of her mother’s bedroom.
Finduilas was the second child and daughter born to Ilmr and Adrahil, after her elder sister Ivriniel (T.A 2947-???), and second eldest sister of Imrahil (T.A 2955-???), the youngest and last of Ilmr and Adrahil’s children who was named after both mother and father.
Finduilas shared a close kinship with her siblings. Though she was closer to Ivriniel because they shared only a slight gap in age, neither sister would allow their connection to their little brother to languish, for to blame him for the lateness of his arrival in the House of Dol Amroth would be unfair. When Imrahil was old enough to play with them outside, they spent hours on the beach and ran about the harbor(s) until they were forced to go home.
Ilmr and Adrahil’s children were perhaps closer in likeness to Adrahil’s elven kin, the Silvan Elves, than the Númenoreans. Fair hair that shined like silver in the moonlight and eyes green as jewels and blue as the sea; Ilmr daughters were oft compared to Mithrellas, handmaiden of Nimrodel, and wife of Imrazor. How reliable the comparison was, however, was something Finduilas contemplated every now and again. There were no true portraits of the elf maid, only a rough sketch that was faded and protected too late and she couldn’t see much of a likeness between them.
Ilmr was the daughter of archivists, and often preoccupied herself with the history and lore of Dol Amroth. She was rarely outside of the company of her mother and father until she met Adrahil. Following her marriage to Adrahil, a Prince of Dol Amroth and namesake of Adrahil of Dor-en-Ernil, Ilmr, who’d taken up the task of her parents, who later passed in 2955 the Third Age, brought her children into the tradition.
The years spent under their mother’s tutelage was an essential part of their education in Gondor, and it was not long before their places in the political and education world in Dol Amroth were made clear to them. Imrahil preoccupied himself with matters of military history, knowing he would eventually lead the Swan Knights of Dol Amroth (or so he hoped); Ivriniel saw to the restoration and preservation of artifacts left in the care of Dol Amroth’s dynastic leaders; Finduilas remained enraptured by the dusty halls of the archives, for there was no one subject that its walls were not learned in.
Of the siblings, Finduilas structured her life around that of order and straight lines. She hated messes and was often easily irritated if something was knocked out of order. Her family was undaunted by the way information piled up against walls and curved around the floor from disuse and wandering hands that misplaced books and scrolls, but Finduilas would see the archive restored to some semblance of cleanliness and order. From her early twenties well into her sixties, Finduilas worked tirelessly on the reorganization of Dol Amroth’s libraries.
As a young woman, Finduilas’ long face and sharp features were considered a terrible sort of beauty. She smiled little outside of the company of her family (and would not be hassled to do otherwise), and watched others in such a way that many in Dol Amroth believed became they became bewitched and lost their good sense, and thus could not lie to her even if they wanted to. The idea made the Finduilas and Ivriniel laugh and it was decided that the malign rumors of her bewitching gaze sprung from guilty hearts that were terrible at lying to begin with. Imrahil would argue in the favor of the rumor, claiming his sister did in fact have a way of rattling man and woman to the very core with her eyes. Others simply thought Finduilas unkind, and never broached an attempt to correct their assumption otherwise.
The passing of age made many less preoccupied with her appearance, though the downside of her graying hair and softer features meant that many who were where she was once was in age believed it was a simple thing to manipulate her. Perhaps that was when her temper began to shorten and fray. It was nothing short of frustrating for the Lady of Dol Amroth (and Minas Tirith), to be treated like a fool. Unconsciously, she overcompensated in the demonstration of her knowledge much of the time and was prone to losing her temper far easier than when she was a young woman.
The upside, of course, was that she no longer had to mind her tone as much as she did when she was expected to both put on airs and raise two young men (already short tempered and smart-mouthed) without swearing in front of them.
Alyssa Sutherland and Daphne Selfe as Finduilas
I. Princess Idis of the House of Eorl, the Lady of Rohan and Dol Amroth (T.A. 2977-??? Fo.A.)
Born 2977 of the Third Age, Idis was the eldest sister of Theodred (T.A. 2978-3019), niece of Théodwyn (T.A. 2963-3002), and cousin to Eomer Eadig (T.A. 2991-F.A. 63) and Eowyn (T.A. 2995-Fo.A.???). Idis was the only daughter of Theoden Ednew (T.A. 2948-3019) and Elfhild (T.A. 2950-2980), and the heir presumptive of Rohan. Following the death of her mother, Idis and Theodred were left in the care of Elfhild’s parents (Eadhild and Elfgar) and was little in the company of her father as a maturing child during the earliest period of her passing.
She was seven when she was fostered to Dol Amroth in observance of Rohan’s alliance with Gondor, and would not return to Edoras until she was eighteen. In Dol Amroth, she became entangled with Boromir II, son of Denethor II. And on the shores of her second home was where the secret of their young love would remain. There was thought to arrange a marriage between herself and the eldest son of the Steward, but nothing would come of it. At 25 years, she befriended the orphaned Eowyn, and would become her steadfast companion as she grew up. During the War of the Ring, a bereaved Idis saw to the burial of her little brother, and the care of her ailing father. Before his death, she worked with Theodred to maintain a semblance of order in Rohan despite the machinations of Grima Wormtongue and Saruman. Idis did not crave glory in battle, nor did she love the sword. She tried and failed to dissuade Eowyn from following the Riders of the Mark into battle; she did not reveal her to Theoden, she only asked that Eowyn return to her alive. She remained in Edoras when her father rode out to aid Gondor, and ruled in his stead. Following the death and burial of Theoden, she returned to Dol Amroth seeking solace for there was only pain in Rohan for her. She would live out the rest of her days there without husband or child.
Joely Richardson as Idis | [remake edit]
