The tale of how the heart of Thranduil Elvenking is healed by the unexpected love of a half-elven healer searching for her place in Middle-Earth β and how that love saves the elves of Mirkwood during the War of the Ring. (FIC COMPLETED 9/28/19)
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This story is canon convergent! It merges the tales of The Hobbit novel, the Peter Jackson canon, and the Silmarillion into a more cohesive whole, including using characters from the films who were not mentioned in the literary canon (like Tauriel.)
Also: Though the writing style is evocative of Tolkien's, I've had to make some modifications, 1) for ease of comprehension, and 2) because for all his genius, Tolkien was rather rubbish at writing romance. ;)
Chapter Count: 19/19 [COMPLETE]
Word Count: 360,698
Warnings: Violence, Eventual Smut, Medical Procedures, Minor Character Death
Pairings: Thranduil/OFC; Legolas x Gimli; Gay elves, Straight elves, elves for everybody!
Timeline: Post-Battle of the Five Armies (T.A. 2941) through the War of the Ring (T.A. 3018-3019) and beyond, from the perspective of Thranduil and the Mirkwood elves, the Men of Dale, and the Dwarves of Eerebor.
Chapter 1: The White Gems of Lasgalen ReturnedΒ
Chapter 2: A Petitioner at the Gate
Chapter 3: The Word of the King
Chapter 4: Healer of the Greenwood
Chapter 5: Winter in the Greenwood, Part I
Chapter 6: Winter in the Greenwood, Part II
Chapter 7: Winter in the Greenwood, Part III
Chapter 8: Olthol en Sereg ar NaurΒ (A Dream of Blood and Fire)Β
Chapter 9: Echuirin (The Stirring)Β
Chapter 10: Lilt EthuilΒ (The Dance of Spring)Β
Chapter 11: The HunterΒ
Chapter 12: Return to EsgarothΒ
Chapter 13: Mi Eryn IavasΒ (In the Autumn Wood)
Chapter 14: A Swiftly Passing YearΒ
Chapter 15: The War of the Ring, Part IΒ
Chapter 16: The War of the Ring, Part IIΒ
Chapter 17: The War of the Ring, Part IIIΒ
Chapter 18: The Healing of the ElvenkingΒ Β
Chapter 19, Epilogue: The Last Journey of Thranduil Oropherion <--NEW!!
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AO3 should have an Annotation Mode where you can click to view all of the author's commentary and thoughts about certain parts of the work. A little comment that says "I spent five hours researching vintage radio mechanics for this and didn't even end up using it" or "this is an ancient Hebrew literary technique!" would make my day
But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong
Language among the "orc-minded" Return of the King, Appendix F II On Translation.
When joining a new fandom, do you go out of your way to do "required reading"? I.e. do you seek out the most popular and reputable fanfiction/headcanons by highly regarded users and incorporate it as your fanon?
I do that deliberately, as a must-have step
I do that passively (e.g. check it out only if others share it/I like it)
I don't do it because I am not really interested
I don't do it deliberately, out of principle
My fandom does not have fics/headcanons considered "required reading"
I adopt my friends' headcanons, but not popular users' headcanons
Other
Voting ended onDec 21, 2025
This is brought on by me seeing a pretty popular tweet where the OP lamented that they found a fic that does not follow the "accepted fanon" and contradicts another, seminal work of fanfiction by an esteemed fan author (but not the source material, from my understanding). Which both baffled and fascinated me.
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GHGNGBGJKHGNJKFDNGKDGFNJK I saw that Tolkien Gateway was doing a giveaway of art prints if you make an actually helpful edit. so I looked at where the prints are coming from and it's this guy
Official website of science fiction and fantasy painter Donato Giancola
it's 'hot renaissance boy gollum' guy, the thumbnail's right there!!!! i mean his art is beautiful- gorgeous. love the silm dragons.
but that two towers one is just. a very interesting take
anyway, if you want to win a print you can tell the wiki something helpful: https://tolkiengateway.net/ maybe you can take one of the obscure facts on a wiki page and find/cite where tolkien actually said it, that seems to be missing a lot
Thorin talking to Thranduil vs talking to Smaug
"Imrid amrΓ’d ursul" [Die a death of flames] | βΓsh kakhfΓͺ aiβd dur-rugnulβΒ [May my excrement be poured upon the naked-jawed (ones)]
You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.
Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.
But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.
So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.
And it broke him.
It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.
He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.
But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.
And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.
But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.
It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.
But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.
It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.
Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.
The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.
This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.
And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.
I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.
Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.
And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.
And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.
How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?
It's time for another Tolkien Wifeguy Fact. No sorry. This one is a Tolkien Wifeguy Essay.
So first some background. A few years ago I picked up an edition of THE ELDER EDDA, a medieval compendium of Icelandic mythic and heroic poems, from the library. Cool, I thought. I opened it up. The first poem was the Voluspa. It blew my hair off. Tolkien fans know this as the poem where Tolkien found names for many of his HOBBIT dwarves as well as for Gandalf. Turns out it's molten awesome in a bunch of other ways, too.
There are a bunch of other poems in the book, some of which I enjoyed more than others. There are a bunch that are just skiting contests between the gods, with uh. rather a lot of jokes fixating upon the male anatomy. And then there's the Volundarkvida.
This story went through me like a KNIFE. Let me summarise. (CW: mutilation, rape)
Three swan-maidens are flying through Mirkwood when they decide to stop by a lake and do some spinning, as you do. Here they meet and decide to marry three brothers, but after several years they catch wanderlust again and move on. The three brothers are devastated. The two eldest head out into the world in search of their wives, but the third and youngest, a smith named Volund, decides to wait at home for his wife to return. He spends the time forging an arm-ring for her.
One night he's fast asleep when Nidud arrives, a mortal king who has heard of Volund's remarkable smithcraft and wants a bit of it for himself. Volund wakes up thinking his wife has returned, but finds himself in the middle of a home invasion. Nidud's queen advises Nidud to hamstring Volund so that he will be unable to escape. She also takes the arm-ring Volund made for his bride, and gives it to her and Nidud's daughter, Bodvild. Nidud also nicks Volund's sword.
Nidud drags the crippled Volund back to his own palace and installs him in a smithy on an island, where Volund is forced to craft magnificent artefacts for his captor. Volund then lures Nidud's two sons to visit him on the island, where he kills them and forges their eyes and bones into jewels and brooches for Nidud and the queen. A little later Bodvild brings the arm-ring to Volund for mending. He gets her drunk and then, when she's asleep, rapes her. This done, Volund flies away - other versions of the story suggest that he has crafted his own wings, Daedalus style - and leaves the island for Nidud's palace, where he tells the king and queen exactly what he has done to their children: he turned their sons into the fine gems and drinking-cups they've been enjoying, and now their only heir is Bodvild, and she's currently pregnant with Volund's child. Volund threatens Nidud to do no harm to Bodvild and then flies away, leaving the girl to lament, in the final stanzas, that she was unable to resist Volund, whose strength was too great for her.
WHEW.
So first of all, yes - this is a REALLY dark and grisly tale. But it went through me like a knife. The story first grabbed me in a fierce and horrified empathy with Volund, who is so horribly abused - and then ripped that sense of empathy away as Volund's brutal revenge plays out. It's a breathtaking emotional rollercoaster in under 7 pages of terse Icelandic verse. I loved it immediately, and ever since, I've wanted to write a retelling.
Anwyay, so I was rereading THE SILMARILLION last year, and there's a specific story in there that caught my attention, because it struck me as having certain strong parallels with the Volund myth. My interest whetted, I searched online for anyone else who'd noticed the same parallels - and lo and behold, I found this terrific article by Lillian Hammen: "Skilled Smiths and Princes of Elves: The Wayland-legend and the First Age of Middle-earth."
What a read. WHAT a read. Not just because Hammen refuses to follow a certain other academic I also read recently in blaming Bodvild for her own rape (!!!!!!). And not just because Hammen blows my mind by presenting explicit proof from Tolkien himself that the story of Feanor started out originally as as retelling of the Volund myth, complete with a flight from captivity with a female character named Beaduhilde. While the story changed dramatically by the time Christopher Tolkien compiled the SILMARILLION, Feanor clearly retains strong Volund influences. He's a skilled smith, who creates jewels by magic, and who, when those jewels are stolen, reacts with a possessive and irrational rage that leads him to a bloody vengeance.
The tale of Eol and Aredhel is where Tolkien tackles the gender and family dynamics of the Volund myth. In this story, we have another smith who uses magic to lure a princess to his forge, where he takes her as a "not wholly unwilling" (and therefore, not wholly willing either) wife. A son is then conceived, but, like the swan-bride in the original story, Aredhel ultimately abandons Eol. Like Volund, Eol attempts a revenge, pursuing Aredhel to Gondolin and ultimately killing her; like Volund, he exits the story through the air, only instead of a triumphant flight, he is hurled to his death.
IOW, if Feanor is Wayland in his aspect as controlling maker, Eol is Wayland in his aspect as controlling patriarch.
Hammen points out that "EΓΆlβs actions towards his son largely treat Maeglin as a possession β in EΓΆlβs final words, he describes Maeglin as ill-gotten, a term better suited to describing stolen treasure than oneβs own child β but, crucially, this possessiveness is linked to EΓΆlβs smithcraft: EΓΆl regards Maeglin as his own creation."
She further concludes what I had also noticed: that Tolkien's retelling of the Volundarkvida reframes Volund's possessive, vindictive actions as unambiguously bad:
"Tolkienβs handling of his medieval inheritance emphasizes the moral dimension of his sub-creative instincts and the philosophical feelings underpinning his writing. FΓ«anor and EΓΆl may have been suffused with Waylandβs characteristics, but Tolkien, in his tales, firmly classifies these personality traits β FΓ«anorβs extreme possessiveness over his creations and EΓΆlβs egotistic domination of his spouse and son β as destructive, even sinful."
Here I have to emphasise that I have read a bunch of men on the Volundarkvida, and most of them have had takes that range from mid to atrocious. Maybe they recognise Volund's treatment of Bodvild as rape, but fail to give her as much internality and agency as the poem does. Or, they misread Bodvild's agency in the poem as deserving of rape. Tolkien, always a Certified Wifeguy, does none of this with Aredhel and Eol!!! In his version of the story, there's no explicit rape as in the Volundarkvida, because at some point Tolkien decided he was too classy to write flippantly about rape in Middle-Earth, and on behalf of women everywhere, honestly: bless him for that. The ambiguity is a really refreshing thing: we know that Aredhel probably wouldn't have chosen this of her own accord, but there is room left for her own agency and desires in a situation with limited choices. Tolkien is being kind and merciful to his characters, and therefore also to his female readers here.
But here's the thing that makes me flip out a bit. Even though Tolkien transmutes the Volundarkvida's sexual violence to something far more ambiguous and implicitβ¦he doesn't use this ambiguity to let Eol off lightly for his crimes. First off, he uses it to be kind to Aredhel. When my book club/author group read the Sil last year, we spent a bit of time discussing whether we thought that Aredhel's wayward nature was something she needed to be punished for; whether it was there in the story to suggest that she deserved her fate. But Hammen sees Aredhel's wanderlust not as something for which she needed to be punished, but as a legacy from the Volundarkvida: she is an amalgam of both Bodvild and Hervor, the swan-bride. Wanderlust is in her nature. However much desire Aredhel may have initially felt for Eol, his reclusive, controlling, possessive nature meant that they were never going to be a good fit; he was always going to be a bad husband to her. In other words, Aredhel's wanderlust, in the context of a Volund retelling, makes it very clear that she was ENTIRELY legit in wanting to escape her husband.
Second, by removing explicit rape from the story, Tolkien takes the emphasis of the tale off rape as a sexual/social transgression, and focuses it squarely on the root issue: power, control, and domination. Again, this absolutely blows my mind. Today most people understand that rape is not a crime of desire or passion, but a crime of control and domination. And all the way back in the 1930s or whenever, Tolkien looked at the Volundarkvida and identified Volund's sin as possession, domination, and control, not just over the works of his hands, but also over his own family. If you're a Tolkien nerd you understand, obviously, that this was a really strong theme in Tolkien's works. In his Letter to Milton Waldman in which he explained the foundational themes of his work, Tolkien wrote:
"All this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. β¦This [creative] desire has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own'; the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or toegether) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents - or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills."
I knew all this, of course; and I had seen how Tolkien developed the theme in his work: it is a perennial mark of the bad guys in Tolkien's work, that they seek domination over the wills of others. But it's in the tale of Eol and Aredhel, specifically, that Tolkien extended this theme to abusive, patriarchal family structures, with a crystal clear moral insight and impeccable poetic justice.
My own retelling of the Volundarkvida is going to be quite a bit different to Tolkien's - but I absolutely LOVE his take on the story, and I have already learned so much from it.
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The eldest of these, and Bilboβs favourite, was young Frodo Baggins. When Bilbo was ninety-nine he adopted Frodo as his heir, and brought him to live at Bag End; and the hopes of the Sackville-Bagginses were finally dashed. Bilbo and Frodo happened to have the same birthday, September 22nd. βYou had better come and live here, Frodo my lad,β said Bilbo one day; βand then we can celebrate our birthday-parties comfortably together.β At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.
Happy Birthday Frodo & Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring, A Long-Expected Party
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anyway the thing about fanfic is that it's not essentially bad or good; it's essentially amateur. some people are absolutely out there writing award-worthy prose (some fic writers ARE award-winning writers IRL!), but that's not the point. the point is that we're all telling campfire stories. it's a community, and it's a way to spend some more time in the worlds and stories that we love.
Lord of Lasgalen @brannonlasgalen - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook