it’s hard being related to fëanor and then not having some issues. i feel like she’s probably the most similar to fëanor in a way. at least, out of all the children of finwë.
other elves would whisper that she seemed like an angry child. that she must not be happy in some way. she didn’t cry or throw tantrums though. and she wasn’t sullen and quiet. but there were aspects of her that would make older elves furrow their brows and take a step back from the young lalwen.
she didn’t stomp around the polished floors of the palace. after all, a lady was taught to float and to seem entirely unbound from the earth on which they stepped. but her footsteps were just disturbing enough to make finwë wince as her paces resounded past his study.
the scrape of her cutlery on fine plates is jarring to those who sit with her. she opens her a mouth a bit too much when she smiles and laughs a bit too loud. she presents herself as an entirely normal child but there are so many small eerie things that shake those around her.
she loves her family of course. even if her father is always preoccupied with his duties or he’s always checking in on fëanor and not taking many glances back at findis, nolofinwë or arafinwë.
nolofinwë is always kind to her. he always helps her up onto her horse. he lets her sit in his room and browse through his books. he takes her into the city’s markets and lets her choose fine fabrics to her heart’s desire.
at first, she doesn’t know what to think of arafinwë. he’s younger than her. and he’s born with the same golden hair of findis and their mother. he’s always tripping over and letting out small babbling sounds that babies usually do.
later, she grows to quite like arafinwë. he’s reasonable and well-mannered. but it always irks her at how little space he seems to take up. her younger brother is perfectly content with following the will of others. he’s placated. the perfect grace and manner for a diplomatic prince. not a hair out of place, a pleasing smile and hands folded over his lap. he doesn’t scream. he doesn’t cry. he doesn’t shout.
even nolofinwë has had his frustrated moments and lalwen can hear the bang of books being thrown from his room, probably due to frustration from fëanor’s harsh words.
even findis isn’t a perfect picture. but she’s perfectly poised and a doll in the eyes of their mother and her people, the golden vanyar. she’s all coiffed sunlit hair and thick skirts that brush the floor. lalwen knows that findis can hold her temper. she has never heard findis raise her voice but what findis lacks in volume, she makes up for in her sharp, acidic tongue. lalwen likes how her older sister can quell even the sternest of arguments with a harsh bite and barely concealed frustration that can make elves take a step back.
but arafinwë just keeps that calm smile on his face and some days it makes lalwen so irrationally angry that she wants to push her perfect, happy little brother down the stairs just so she can see some real emotion from him. but she doesn’t. he’s the baby of the family and it would do no good.
lalwen hates the strict rules of society. a princess should not yell. she should not venture out beyond the borders of tirion in search of maiar. she should not come home after dark, her skirts snagged on stone and littered with small holes and loose threads. but she can tolerate that.
what she truly despises is how insignificant she feels in the grand scheme of things. well, she’s a princess. she knows the privilege she has. but what is she? what is she allowed to be, compared to mighty gods who sit in their court on taniquetil? what is she able to be and achieve?
she likes fëanor because he agrees with her. he allows her into his forges occasionally. her older brother cares little for the thoughts of others. he lets her sit at a murky looking table while he twists some contraption of wire and she talks about how she feels so confined and so angry for some reason. at everything.
fëanor looks up at her. he asks if its truly anger she’s feeling. what is she angry at? it makes lalwen pause. she doesn’t truly know if its anger. she just feels red-hot and bursting and she burns to move, to conquer, to spit out. it makes her want to put her hands in her silky black hair and tear it out and to wrench her hands into velvet skirts and rip them apart. she wants to ride a horse far away and lay on the earth and feel the heartbeat of the ground beneath her.
fëanor tells her that she’s fierce and she’s not angry. she shouldn’t punish herself for feeling that way. she’s passionate. and she knows her brother understands her. he has that knowing look in his silver-hot eyes that seem to contain a fire of their own. and lalwen knows her brother understands. they carry a similar flame and it is only after the tragedies that unfold many years later, after the death of their father, that lalwen realises that fëanor’s flame is something else entirely.
I have this idea of Oromë, Lord of Forests, the Huntsman of the Valar, that he’s the leader of the hunt - but that doesn’t always mean he does the killing. Sometimes he’s the huntsman, sometimes he’s the prey. That means, of course, that he must work closely with Mandos, Lord of Death, as well as Yavanna, the Lady of Life. His role is to stand between them.
This is his most legendary form: at the other end of his personal spectrum, you will find him in the form of a small chap with an old green coat, worn at the edges, with brown, capable hands and a small net and a ferret in his pocket.
so this exploration of Saruman annoys me, which is probably totally unreasonable. Its premise is that Tolkien lends his characters more moral complexity than people generally realize, which is true. Its premise is that Saruman isn’t a scheming servant of Sauron but merely someone arrogant and despairing enough to conclude that the war can’t be won by the old rules. Which is also true.
but then it argues there may be even more moral ambiguity in Tolkien than Tolkien himself intended, because in The Last Ringbearer "what Tolkien names orcs are really just men who have been demonized by their enemies”. And so I can’t help but feeling that this super long essay about the moral complexity of Tolkien ends up doing the actual moral complexity of the story a serious disservice.
Tolkien admits openly in the appendices that Aragorn’s Kingship marks the return of an expansionist, militaristic Gondor which spends most of the next century at war. That’s not moral ambiguity you have to import by subverting Tolkien’s intent about the orcs; it’s right there.
There’s ambiguity in Aragorn’s claim to the Kingship without arguing Saruman is really rejecting “the designs of an authoritarian, aristocratic, and preternaturally conservative regime — that of Elrond, Galadriel, and Aragorn, who are also related to each other by blood and marriage — in favor of a more progressive, modern society.” Gondor ruled that Aragorn’s ancestors didn’t have a claim, and so Aragorn really doesn’t either, and in practice claimed the throne by right of conquest. That’s in the text! It’s interesting! You don’t have to invent a subversive reading to have ethical and political complexity to Aragorn’s Kingship!
Galadriel’s takeover in Lothlórien happened because she decided the native Silvan Elves were incompetent to handle a world at war. It’s not at all clear that the Silvan were happy about this. It probably heightened Oropher’s distrust of the Noldor and it might have contributed to their awful losses in the Dagorlad. Yes, she was a monarch and nowadays all of those are considered a pretty terrible idea, but I feel weird about saying “Galadriel was a monarch, so perhaps she’s not as Good as she seems, because democracy is better than monarchies anyway” when we’re given so many more reasons to be uneasy with or outright opposed to Galadriel’s rule.
I don’t object to subversive readings of the text. I have a bunch of them, mostly related to Númenor. I think it can be really cool to go “Tolkien thought that this was right. I don’t think so.” And Tolkien set up this complicated chain of unreliable narrators - books written by Pengolodh, copied by Bilbo, commissioned by Elrond - to practically invite that kind of thing. But a subversive reading should go deeper than “high fantasy has monarchs. in the real world monarchs are bad”, I think. Monarchs are bad for reasons - they abuse their power, they entrench societal prejudices, they are xenophobic or arrogant or mistrustful or myopic.
And Tolkien wrote monarchs being all of those things! You can read the story of Fëanor’s departure from Tirion as an five-hundred-year protracted object lesson in why “the King is the eldest son of the old King” is a bad idea, if you like. Thingol’s stance on refugees of Morgoth (none were permitted into his kingdom) has painfully resonant implications for us today. Aldarion treated other people like they owed it to him to put their lives on hold for his whims. Eärnur was a bloody idiot. Aragorn was expansionist. The tools to tell Middle-earth’s story in a way that powerfully critiques a hereditary aristocracy are right there. It’s not subversive to leave them on the ground and then say “but, you know, hereditary aristocracies. Bad.”
And (okay, this one is probably 99% of my objection) how can you write an essay about how Tolkien is capable of morally complex characters without mentioning the First Age at all? Tolkien wrote Túrin. Tolkien wrote Fëanor. Tolkien wrote Maeglin. Tolkien wrote the heroes of four hundred years of battles for Beleriand becoming the villains of its wretching collapse, Tolkien wrote a confused and betrayed and angry Húrin as he wandered Beleriand alternating between impassioned pleas and casual murder, Tolkien wrote Turgon, Tolkien wrote an entire people - good, heroic, bright-eyed, courageous people - a terrible doom and gave them five hundred years to slowly crumble as they lost their faith there was a way out of it.
Of all the criticisms of Tolkien, “no moral complexity” is the worst. And of all the answers to that criticism, “some of Tolkien’s villains were once good” is the most maddening, the most limiting. Some of Tolkien’s heroes were capable of terrible cruelty. The architects of some of the greatest tragedies in Tolkien’s world are hard to call villains. Gandalf speaks reverently of Fëanor. The Silmarillion - which Tolkien claims was copied from Elrond’s libraries - gives its last spoken lines to Maedhros and Maglor. Yes, Tolkien writes of the fall of the good. But he also writes of the good of the fallen, of the evils done casually by the great, of the painful choices that are hard to judge even in retrospect, of how quickly history and its judgments are reforged or forgotten entirely. When Gandalf speaks of Fëanor to the Fellowship, no one recognizes the name.
Everyone should feel free to add depth, of course. But while you’re digging the foundations of your reinterpretation don’t be surprised if you hit something, because there is a hell of a lot of depth already there.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about elven craft, Songs of Power, and the lump of nebulous elven abilities that seem magical. Tolkien never gives much theoretical backing for these abilities, so this is my own attempt! I’ll probably add more to this later, especially as I pick out more canon examples and fit them into this three-axis system. I also have thoughts about how this plays out on a sociological stage!
Craft is an elf’s chosen expression of power and persuasion. There are countless possible crafts with many points of overlap. There’s physical arts like smithing, sculpting, healing, and manipulation of the elements. There’s also artistic pursuits: song and music and dance. Finally, there’s esoteric arts: storytelling, leadership, mind-healing and battle-songs. Physical arts produce a tangible end product, artistic pursuits produce intangible beauty, and esoteric arts produce a tangible alteration to the mind or spirit. Elves can specialize in multiple crafts, and sometimes the line is thin. Maglor, as a bard, merges artistic and esoteric pursuits in a musical saga like the Noldolantë.
Power is a measure of how well an elf can sense the Song of Arda and its complexities. It is innate, not taught. An older elf, especially a Calaquendi, has a natural edge in this area because Arda was more Unmarred and literally in tune earlier in time, especially in Aman. The Shadow in all its forms jars against the Song’s harmonies. Bloodlines also matter; power tends to be passed down through families. Finwë was crowned during the Great Journey for his extraordinary powers and its uses for leadership, and he passed along this unusual strength to all his descendants. Fëanor’s power, in particular, has been unparalleled before or since.
Persuasion is a measure of an elf’s vision and creativity in their chosen craft. Unlike power, this can be taught and honed. Persuasion is a matter of developing sensitivity towards the Song of Arda and practicing how to shape it. The Song is mostly fixed but also fluid; skilled craftsmen can persuade the essence of Arda to rearrange itself. Especially in Songs of Power, persuasion is usually most effective through metaphor and imagery (like Finrod’s duel against Sauron). It gives elves an easy template to articulate what they want from the Song’s shape. The Song likes to be convinced, for it arose out of the Ainur’s great vision for all creation.
