People Who Hate Frodo Baggins Are My Enemy. "He Didn't Do Anything And Was Useless"--yeah, Okay, So What

I was thinking of Beren and Lúthien and how their story is so much more interesting than they get credit for. I mean, on the surface it reads like a fairy tale but it also elevates the rest of the story, it uses common fairy tale tropes but turns them upside down, and the way we see the heroine asserting her agency in this story is so fascinating. I think the story of Beren and Lúthien provides much needed contrast for the rest of the Silm, and both become more poignant because of this contrast. 

The familiar fairy tale goes like this: there's a a poor but resourceful peasant, set with a difficult task (which is in fact designed to be impossible to complete), but thanks to some magical help he is successful, retrieves treasure, and as a reward he wins the king's daughter and lives happily ever after as a prince, gaining all the earthly glory one can have in this life. But in the Tale of Beren and Lúthien, the hero is a traumatised outlaw, the king's daughter IS the magical help, she is an active and equal participant in the quest for her own hand in marriage, the treasure may actually be cursed, the hero and heroine die, and the ultimate reward is not a social rise from rags to riches. Beren does not become a member of the power-wielding elite of Doriath and he and Lúthien are not promised that their second life will be happy or long. But just that chance is worth it, and by choosing it they actually change the course of history. Lúthien is offered all the bliss that is possible to have in Arda, if she will give up Beren, but she decides that the love she has for him is still more valuable. And that idea, of loving someone so much that your love shifts the world, is so compelling to me. 

And I love that the story of Beren and Lúthien is also a rendition of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that just as the world was created in the Music of the Ainur, so is Lúthien's song powerful enough to change what those original notes dictated. She changes it with hope and a song. That is so simple and yet so beautiful, in the way some of the best myths are. (Insane that this is essentially a love-letter to Edith Tolkien.)

There is this fascinating contrast between Beren and Lúthien: at the time of their first meeting, Beren has lost literally everything and his family is either dead or lost beyond retrieval. Stumbling across Lúthien, he is fresh from terrible ordeals and suffering. But Lúthien's life has been full of happiness and without care, and she has lived in a literal fairy kingdom as the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. She could have her pick of any prince of Eldar. But here she comes across this mortal, who has nothing to give except for his love and even that only for a brief time, and she is willing to risk all she has for it. The gall and courage it takes to take such a chance! She chooses this man and her choice changes everything. 

And that is brilliant! Because Lúthien starts with so little power and agency, and she is constantly belittled or even abused by those with more power around her. She is treated as a pawn, her will is undermined and she is coerced and imprisoned to make her compliant. But Lúthien shows her determination and courage in holding fast to her choice even when it's just her and Beren against the world. In the end, she wins agency and freedom to determine her own tale. In her beginning Lúthien is a maid dancing in the woods; by the end she will have faced Satan and death itself, and changed the world forever. Truly, to call her story "Release from Bondage" is more than appropriate. How insane is this all from Beren's point of view? He has lost everything, he is an outlaw, and has nowhere to go. What is left of his family is scattered who knows where. He has nothing but the clothes on his back and nothing to give. But here is this immortal princess, and she will go to hell and back with him! She will cross the Sundering Sea to bid him farewell! She pleads with inexorable death and for her, an exception is made!  It's so on brand for Tolkien that these two achieve with their love, and precisely because they act out of love, something that others with armies behind their backs can't even imagine doing.

Yeah. It's such a good, hopeful, bittersweet tale.

🍎🍓🫐

Fëanáro

I know Manwe's pardon was a stupid idea and he should have think more about it, as King of Arda, but I can't help but feeling so much for him. He's a younger brother, he doesn't understand evil and even if he did, he would have forgiven Melkor anyway. That's his older brother, of course he's gonna give him another chance, of course he believes he can change, of course he forgives him.

That's what younger siblings always do.

one thing about them is that they will simply insult morgoth to his face <3 full brothers in heart indeed

"And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea"

Anyone else: the hands that cradled your face and tilted it upwards to kiss your forehead are soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood.

Elros and Elrond: But they cradled me, yes?

(Credits to @queen-of-hobgobblers )

Nerdanel, strong Nerdanel, young and curious. She travels alone throughout Valinor, to the edges of the light of the Trees. She sleeps on the fields under the stars, she eats what the land offers. She follows streams and wild beasts, she collects rocks and takes notes of the different types of mineral and stone, her drawings filling the pages of the little notebook she carries with her. She goes on foot, and her legs get strong and quick. She ascends the peaks, where the snow crunches under her boots, and running water carves shapes into the rock. She is on the summit of the Pelori, where the air is thinner and cold, and she can see the plains of Valinor stretch underneath her. She wonders if this is what Manwe feels like, if he feels the same exhilaration that she expereiences in her bones. She reaches the sea, she swims with the dolphins and imagines to fly with the seagulls, and her eyes are drawn to the dark sky far in the east. She wonders what had the Elves in Cuivenen seen, how they had lived in the dark, the stars their only guide. She feels observed, a kind presence that watches over her, and the stars look a little brighter as her voice raises in song to Varda. She stays there, at the fringes of the territories of the Eldar, mourning in her heart the day that she has to return home, under the bright light of the Trees - beautiful, but the stars are not as bright as they are here. She would like to take their light with her, to preserve that gentle and distant beauty. But she has to return at some point, she cannot wander forever.

One day, as she is making her way back home under the light of the Trees, she meets an ellon. He is tall and dark, but when he looks at her, his eyes shine brighter than Varda's creations. And Nerdanel knows that she will keep starlight with her forever.

Nelyo scribble.