#anghraines headcanons

I just remembered the other thing I was going to say on my Arvedui and Pelendur post earlier today.

It’s sometimes presumed that Aragorn’s claim to the throne of Gondor is interchangeable with Arvedui’s, but this isn’t true. Arvedui pretended or believed that Númenor allowing women and their children to inherit somehow gave him a claim to the throne of Gondor as Princess Fíriel’s husband. He was wrong. Under Númenórean law, he would be a usurper had he succeeded, either of Fíriel or of their son Aranarth. But Aragorn is Aranarth’s heir, so had he chosen to claim the throne through Fíriel, the claim on that side would not be nearly so groundless.

However, Aragorn doesn’t actually try to make that claim. He firmly identifies himself as the heir of Isildur and claims the throne of Gondor as heir of Valandil -> Isildur -> Elendil, evading the entire prickly issue of royal inheritance through the female line (something that neither Arnor/Arthedain nor Gondor ever permitted, though the Stewards managed it by not claiming royalty).

On top of that, though, the rejection by Pelendur and the Council of Gondor is so sweeping that I suspect they would have rejected any argument that Arvedui made. This is veering into headcanon, but I think their overriding concern—above misogyny, above whatever Isildur may or may not have intended—was the subordination of Gondor’s interests to Arthedain’s. And Pelendur was a descendant of Anárion (according to POME and NOME) through some line that couldn’t claim the throne—likely through a female line. He excluded himself and his own descendants from the succession forever to keep the house of Isildur out of Gondor.

Something that’s interesting about Aragorn in the book, though, is that he’s … pretty damn enthusiastic about becoming King of Gondor for its own sake. Like, yes, he restores Arnor and reunites the kingdoms and all, but I think it’s clear that Gondor is not subordinated to Arnor in his rule or mind. If anything, the end of “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” indicates that Aragorn’s rule was centered on Minas Anor to the end of his very long life.

So while the heirs of Isildur were eventually able to take power in Gondor, it makes sense that Aragorn—the victorious captain who was willing to jeopardize himself for Gondor and who clearly loves and values it for its own sake, and who is much more straightforward and honest about his claim—was a lot more palatable to Gondorians than Arvedui would have ever been. And it certainly didn’t turn out in the way that I think Pelendur and the Council might have feared.

Arvedui’s claim to the throne through his marriage to Princess Fíriel is interesting for a couple of reasons.

He makes a separate claim as heir of Isildur (though his father was alive at the time…), which is its own matter. But his additional argument that, under the laws of Númenor, his marriage to Fíriel gives him some claim to the throne of Gondor is frankly either duplicitous or ignorant. The laws of Númenor, after Tar-Aldarion, allowed women to rule in their own right. The only men to rule Númenor via the birth/lineage of their wives were usurpers.

Under Númenórean law, Fíriel’s status as daughter and only living child of the King of Gondor would make herthe rightful ruler, not Arvedui. If she’s dead by then, her claim would pass to her eldest child (regardless of gender), not Arvedui.

I think his attempt to bullshit his way into the kingship is somewhat obscured by the fact that, while the Council of Gondor rejects this claim, they do not reject it for being wrong (though it is). Rather, the Council’s argument is that Númenórean law has not been applied in either Gondor or Arnor/Arthedain at any point (this seems to be true) and that they do not consider women to have any place in the succession (i.e., not only can women not claim the throne, but men cannot claim the throne throughwomen because something something war). So they don’t cover themselves in glory, either.

I suspect the real issue is that the Council (and, it’s implied, the Dúnedain of Gondor in general) didn’t want Gondor to be ruled by Arthedain. Arthedain was an ally, yes, and one with which they had kinship, but also by that point had been a separate country with its own interests and priorities for a long time, and was also considerably weaker than Gondor. The Council could have made a narrower and fairer ruling dismissing Arvedui’s particular claim because of its misrepresentations, but that would open the door for Aranarth to claim the throne, which as far as they were likely concerned, would lead to exactly the same thing.

Tolkien suggests that one figure had an outsized role in all this: Pelendur, Steward of Gondor. As Steward, he would have been the chief of the Council, and acting ruler of Gondor between Ondoher’s death and the succession of the new king. But an interesting twist is that both Peoples of Middle-earth andNature of Middle-earth suggest/state that Húrin of Emyn Arnen, the direct forefather of the Stewards, was a descendant of Anárion without being of the “line” of Anárion—which, in all likelihood, means that Pelendurhimselfwas also descended from Anárion through a woman, and that the call he made wrt Fíriel applied to his own family as well and ensured that they could never claim the throne of Gondor.

I’m unsure what my takeaway from this is—just that I think it’s really interesting and more complicated than it’s sometimes treated.

Oh, one of the other things about NOME and part-Elvish beardlessness: Tolkien says something to the effect that the beardlessness is one of the most enduring part-Elvish traits. You’ll get people who aren’t really very Elvish, but if there’s any amount of Elvish blood left, they’ll still be naturally beardless. And he particularly associates this with the House of Elendil’s descent from Elros, with a whole explanation of why that applies to the House of the Stewards also.

The short version is that Húrin of Emyn Arnen, while not a direct-line member of the royal house, wasdescended from Anárion and a recognized kinsman of King Minardil, which was part of the reason he was appointed to the Stewardship. We’ve known this was rattling around Tolkien’s head since POME, but it’s very clearly laid out in NOME in order to explain that Boromir and Faramir are Elrosians through Denethor and therefore beardless (+part-Elvish through Finduilas as well).

The thing I’m thinking is … it’d be interesting if there was some kind of, hmm, cultural cachet around beardlessness? I know a lot of people are really into bearded Dúnedain, but if natural beardlessness is one of the most lingering marks of royal ancestry, it seems like it’d be kind of loaded, esp in Gondor. Has it affected the Gondorian aesthetic? Is it some Gondorian value of punk for a young man to grow a beard, or pretend to? Are there ever any misunderstandings with, say, the Rohirrim re: age/status/etc?

I do suspect that, although beardlessness ultimately derives from Elvish ancestry, the fact that in most cases it comes through the royal line would lead to it being more associated with Númenórean royalty than Elves per se. Gondorians care a lot more about Elendil than Turgon.

Yeah, so I’m sticking with more P&P stuff today.

One of the things I find interesting, and really compelling, about the ending chapters of P&P is that they basically seem to say: the characters’ arcs and story aren’t over, this is just the end of this particular segment of their lives. For instance, after Darcy’s second proposal, we get:

She [Elizabeth] remembered that he [Darcy] had yet to learn to be laughed at, and it was rather too early to begin.

So this raises the possibility of a more open and easy dynamic than we’re going to see in this exact moment. We get hints of that dynamic during the engagement, but where it’s really affirmed is in this overview of the future:

Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth, though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive manner of talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry.

But there’s also another transition that’s subtler, to the point that you could probably argue that it’s not reallyan evolution—but which I personally think is one and a very intriguing one.

Elizabeth is (very understandably) indignant during her confrontation with a more than usually rude and snobbish Lady Catherine, and proclaims:

“No principle of either [duty, honour, or gratitude] would be violated by my marriage with Mr Darcy. And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former wereexcited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment’s concern”

As we know, Lady Catherine proceeds to insult Elizabeth so badly in her letter to Darcy that he cuts her off. However:

But at length, by Elizabeth’s persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait on them at Pemberley

So it seems like Lady Catherine’s resentment did, in the end, give Elizabeth some concern. And, I mean, I think it’s entirely possible that Darcy and Lady Catherine are similar enough to have stayed stubbornly estranged for an indefinite length of time if Elizabeth hadn’t taken it upon herself to interfere and (effectively) bring Lady Catherine to Pemberley. So our last vision of Elizabeth is not of Elizabeth in isolation from the world, but of the Elizabeth at Pemberley who gets over her own rightful sense of offense and successfully works to create a family circle that pulls together their sisters, Mr Bennet, the Gardiners, and yes, Lady Catherine.

My tag for Darcy stanning is #lady anne blogging because I could not love him more were I his actual mother, Lady Anne, but also, because I’ve always been super invested in Lady Anne despite how little we know about her.

In particular, I’m super invested in Lady Anne having had significant character flaws. When I was in forum Austen fandom, it seemed to me that people wanted to make her either this generically idealized maternal figure or a proto-Elizabeth (w/ the assumption that Darcy’s universally beloved father was a proto-Darcy), when virtually the only things we know about her are that Darcy remembers her as a good person, yet less amiable than his father, and that she probably tried to arrange his betrothal to her niece with Lady Catherine.

There are a lot of potential ways in which Lady Anne might have been less amiable—maybe shewas the more introverted and severe one, or a sort of softened aristocratic analogue to Mrs Bennet, or a lightly snobbish socialite, or any number of other things. It’s clear that Darcy is trying to thread the needle of criticizing his dead parents without disrespecting them, in a very happy moment of his life; there’s only so much he’s going to say at that point, even though it’s almost all we have to go on.

One of the things that really intrigues me about her, though, is that there’s this sort of … silence around her, even considering that Darcy’s parents are dead for the whole story. Wickham praises Darcy’s father, Mrs Gardiner does, Mrs Reynolds does, Darcy does. But there’s nothing like that for Lady Anne. The only person who really talks about her is Lady Catherine. And it’s interesting to think of why, in-story, that might be.