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UPDATE: The final book in the trilogy is now out! It’s available on Amazon in print and ebook format. Happy reading!
I’ve always found Cardan’s copy of Alice in Wonderland fascinating. It’s the only book from the mortal world Jude sees in Cardan’s collection. And when combined with the note inside (JudeJudeJude…), it suggests early in The Cruel Prince that Cardan has some kind of understanding of what Jude is going through as a human in Faerieland. It’s the first sense we have that Cardan might have empathy or at least sympathy for Jude.
But how did Cardan get the same copy of Alice and Wonderland that Jude had a kid in the mortal world? And how would he even have knowledge of the book Alice in Wonderland? A strange coincidence… unless it’s not a coincidence.Who else would have had the same copy of Alice and Wonderland as Jude and is a friend of Cardan? Vivi.
When I first read The Cruel Prince, I found the mention of Vivi and Cardan’s friendship a little odd. Why would Vivi be friends with someone who clearly despised her sisters? But what if their friendship is based on their mutual interest in the mortal world? We know Cardan is knowledgeable about human wedding traditions (the exchanging of the rings). I wouldn’t be surprised if he had more knowledge of the human world than he lets on.
I don’t know if Vivi gave Cardan the book. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she mentioned off hand that she and her sisters used to read Alice and Wonderland back in the human world. Either way, I think Vivi is involved in Cardan acquiring his copy.
I wouldn’t be surprised his Cardan and Vivi’s friendship played a larger role in Queen of Nothing. Also, I still want to know what Vivi gave Cardan as a coronation present! I bet it’s something from the mortal world. Maybe another book?
I see Cardan’s furious, arrogant handwriting scrawled over the page, taking up all available space. In some places he pressed the nib so angrily that the paper tore. Jude, it reads, each hateful rendering of my name like a punch to the gut.
One thing I find weird in the Unfinished Tales description of the War of the Elves and Sauron is this snippet from the conclusion: “Sauron was routed utterly and he himself only narrowly escaped. His small remaining force was assailed in the east of Calenardhon, and he with no more than a bodyguard fled…”
So Sauron, utterly routed in the battle, fled with a bodyguard (what would actually constitute a helpful bodyguard for a Maia) and only narrowly escaped the field.
And I just think that’s such an odd thing to emphasize because, like, what if they'd caught him?
Because as far as I can understand it, Sauron can take a physical form if and when he feels like it. My initial instinct was that capturing him wouldn’t be possible at all, but Tolkien probably wouldn’t have written that he narrowly escaped capture if it was metaphysically impossible.
(Lúthien captured him. But she’s a Maia herself, so I’m not sure this tells us anything about how plausibly Elves could have done it.)
(The Numenoreans captured him but only because he let them.) But I really seriously don’t think Gil-Galad’s that stupid. For that matter, if they capture him, decide not to do the stupid thing, and execute him on the spot, does that make any difference? As long as the Ring exists, he can’t be destroyed (and they don’t even know this, so destroying the Ring wouldn’t occur to them) and he can reconstitute his body at will, right?
So now I’m thinking that maybe the process of shedding/changing a fána is really slow. It’s referenced casually in Valinor, as something that the Ainur do for festivals, but time passes differently in Valinor - if it took five years to take physical form by the Middle-earth count of time, you could still do it for festivals in Valinor without particular difficulty. (It could also just be easier in Valinor because Valinor is better suited to the Ainur way of processing the world.)
And if your old fána were destroyed violently, that would make one averse to creating a new one, and with the Valar aversion-is-inability-is-experience. So perhaps getting violently killed makes it take even longer.
All of this would combine to suggest that, if you kill a Maia in Middle-earth, that’s plausibly a real and damaging setback to them. They can assume physical forms at will, but they aren't shapeshifters and this really isn’t either a combat ability or a form of effective invulnerability.
After I’d thought through all that I realized I was an idiot and there was a much simpler explanation.
Sauron had the Rings on him. And, sure, if they’d caught him they could kill his physical form and put him out of commission for a while, but significantly more important is that they’d have gotten all the Rings back (and even if they didn’t know what the One Ring did, they’d have had a lot of time to figure it out.) And that’s almost certainly why Tolkien bothered to mention that he barely escaped capture - whether or not capturing/killing Sauron would have mattered to Sauron much at all, losing the Rings would have been devastating.
To be honest I kind of dislike how cartoonishly tall Tolkien imagined the Elves and Men of old. The one reference everyone uses is the Numenorean metric conversion system in Unfinished Tales, which if taken literally would put Elendil at nearly 8’ (240cm) and the tallest Elves, presumably, even taller than him. Ethereal and dangerous and weird are great, but I just don’t actually like the gap between Elves and Men being as big as the gap between Men and Hobbits. Elves that are in appearance almost, but not quitehuman feels more interesting to me than Elves so tall we’d never even get to see the Light of Valinor shining eerily in their eyes.
So I don’t take it literally. The average height in the tallest country in the world today (the Netherlands) is 6'0"(183cm) for men. So if the average height for men of Númenor before their decline was the same as that of Elves, 6'4"(193cm), and then it got steadily worse as they turned from the Valar, then I can arbitrarily declare that the average height of men of Númenor in Elendil’s time was 6'0"(183). If Elendil was ten inches taller than average (6'10", 208), he’d be intensely imposing without being at a height that in the real world is associated with devastating bone density and health issues.
I tend to assume Elves had, on average, an inch or two on Numenoreans, for a population average of 6'5"(195cm) for men and 6’(183) for women. Unfinished Tales claims Galadriel is the tallest Elven woman at 6'4"(193), but Lúthien, not technically being an Elven woman, could have been a little taller (and probably was, Thingol being noted for his height).
By contrast the Edain would be shorter than we’re accustomed to. Because of malnutrition and disease, the average woman in the Roman Empire was 155cm(5'1") and the average man was 168cm(5'6"). The House of Beor is noted to be shorter than the Hadorians but taller than the Halethrim, so let’s say their average is the same as ancient Rome’s (which is remarkable close to pre-1850 Britain’s, interestingly).
So personally I like Beren at like 168cm(5'6") and Lúthien at 198 cm(6'6") much better than Lúthien at 8’(245cm). Though I do understand the appeal of Maiar who are inhuman and visibly terrifying and so forth, and if your Lúthien is eight feet tall that’s awesome.
This is probably a bit of a silly question, but why do you think Arafinwë and Ëarwen split up after the Kinslaying at Alqualondë? Because of the fact Arafinwë's family just murdered a lot of Ëarwen's people or for other reasons? (Sorry for the blunt phrasing.) (re: your Arafinwë post, which is rad, btw)
I actually don’t think the Kinslaying was the unforgivable bit in their relationship. Arafinwë had no part in it. He tried to prevent the Noldor from rushing off to leave. His children fought for the Teleri, and I assume they forgave their own people for taking part in the Kinslaying.
The unforgivable bit is that after the Kinslaying, everyone, including Arafinwë’s host, continued on intending to use the boats to reach Middle-earth.
We do not get many details about Finwë and Indis’ youngest son but the ones we do get paint a very interesting picture and I’ve wanted to write for a while about why.
There are two details that set me off on that quest. The first one is this line, from the Silmarillion:
High princes were Fëanor and Fingolfin, the elder sons of Finwë, honoured by all in Aman.
The phrasing there strongly seems to suggest to me that Finarfin wasn’t a high prince. Why not? Because Fëanor and Nolofinwë are elder, the text offers, but seriously? If you have three sons, and you arbitrarily announce that your oldest two sons will have a position ‘honored by all in Aman’, that seriously begs the question of why only the two of them.
The second detail is from the Shibboleth:
[Findis] did not go into exile, but went with her mother after the slaying of Finwë and they abode among the Vanyar in grief until such time as it seemed good to Manwë to restore Finwë to life.
So after Finwë’s murder Fëanor and Fingolfin and Lalwen go off into exile. Finarfin goes with them but then returns after the Kinslaying, eventually taking up the crown in Tirion. And Findis and Indis…leave Tirion to live in Valimar until Finwë comes back? There’s another version of this in LACE, and in that one they go to the Halls of Ingwë.
I’m sure they are grieving. I’m sure it is terrible. But do you know who just suffered a grief significanly more terrible than yours? Arafinwë just watched all of his children leave for an exile they were doomed to mostly die in, immediately after his brother’s army committed a kinslaying in his wife’s city (also the city far dearer to his own heart than Tirion). What started me thinking about Arafinwë’s relationship with his family was increasingly realizing I could not imagine there was any meaningful relationship between Indis or Findis and Arafinwë, because if there were they wouldn’t have left him alone under those circumstances.
Tolkien wrote several different etymologies of the names “Elrond” and “Elros”. But in all of them, Elrond and Elros were the mother-names - they had no father names, because Earendil wasn’t around to give them one.
Also, my favorite of the explanations is that “Elrond” is from the Menelrond, the ceiling of Menegroth, made in the shape of a great dome and dotted with jewels to resemble the stars. Because then I can imagine Elwing going outside to look up at the real stars, and pretending she can’t hear the sea, and pretending she is back in the place that is just a vague blur in her memories… and then, eventually, taking her little baby sons outside with her to look at the stars, and telling them the story.
