Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.

illustration from forever months ago that never escaped the rough sketch stage, probably because it is too depressing to paint. words from my elwing fic, she that was young and fair

(Finally motivated to make this because someone said the Silmarillion elves committed 'all the war crimes', and while I know, I know they were just exaggerating for comic effect it still drives me up the wall.)

First piece of housekeeping: Technically speaking war crimes are war crimes because they were defined as such in various treaties. You aren't technically violating the Geneva Conventions if you aren't signatory to them. But, they do often get talked about more like universally applicable rules.

Second piece of housekeeping: I think no one is actually accusing the Fëanorians of, like, cutting undersea communications cables or impersonating the Red Cross. There are some war crimes which are obviously not applicable and I'm not going to discuss them.

Third piece of housekeeping: There are a lot of provisions in the Geneva Conventions. Someone else can go through all of them if they like. So, I'm going to go with this list gleaned from the section of the Wikipedia page on war crimes about the international criminal court:

Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health

Torture or inhumane treatment

Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property

Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power

Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial

Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer

Taking hostages

Directing attacks against civilians

Killing a surrendered combatant

Misusing a flag of truce, a flag or uniform of the enemy

Settlement of occupied territory

Deportation of inhabitants of occupied territory

Using poison weapons

Using civilians as shields

Using child soldiers

Firing upon a Combat Medic with clear insignia.

Summary execution

Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution or forced pregnancy

Fourth piece of housekeeping: I'm not just going to look at the Fëanorians. That's not fair. There's elves vs. other elves, elves vs. dwarves, dwarves vs. elves, Angband vs. everyone, everyone vs. Angband, etc. I should probably define some of these groups starting out but I'm not going to.

So. This will be long.

Nah, the property destruction rule is explicitly about ruining stuff you don't need to: fortresses, military airfields and arms factories are all considered legitimate targets.

no one is actually accusing the Fëanorians of, like, cutting undersea communications cables or impersonating the Red Cross. There are some war crimes which are obviously not applicable and I'm not going to discuss them.

Not the Fëanorians, no, but if you interpret the undersea cables rule as a general ban on destroying vitally important, hard-to-replace communications infrastructure, I think there's an argument to be made for Sauron's corruption of the palantirs.

Sure, Menegroth and Sirion were abandoned, but it wasn't because the Fëanorians stuck around chasing people away.

I don't know enough to say exactly which paragraph would apply, but "fucked up your city so badly that no one can live there anymore" certainly feels like the kind of thing that should fall under these rules, even if that wasn't the actual goal of the attack. The Fëanorians might have been able to claim ignorance at Menegroth, but not after that.

---------------------------------------------

I love (in a very dark way) that Angband has committed pretty much every single war crime on the list.

...Tbh, Eönwe did offer a fair trial to a lot of people; it's not his fault that those people didn't actually want a fair trial, but for him to waive all consequences just like that.

And in general, I don't think we know enough about the actions of the Host of the West to pass judgement on them, although I'm inclined to think they went about everything as righteously as possible... *bites down impassioned defence* but I suppose you may regard it differently if it fits with your interpretations and not necessarily be wrong.

The Silmaril Quest is probably closer to spying than war, though even more than that a secret third thing...

Key points:

Beren got in but Beren wasn't supposed to be able to get in; dire need is not an automatic pass.

Celegorm and Curufin fled Himlad and ended up in Nargothrond, so they were either allowed through Doriath or forced to follow a dangerous path around it. In either of those cases someone should have brought it up during Lúthien's interactions with Celegorm and Curufin during the Silmaril Quest. No one does.

Sindar after the Dagor Bragollach: "The most part of the Grey-elves fled south and forsook the northern war; many were received into Doriath, and the kingdom and strength of Thingol grew greater in that time, for the power of Melian the queen was woven about his borders and evil could not yet enter that hidden realm." (Chapter 18)

Survivors of Nargothrond: "Now new tidings came to Doriath concerning Nargothrond, for some that had escaped from the defeat and the sack and had survived the Fell Winter in the wild, came at last to Thingol seeking refuge; and the march-wardens brought them to the King." (Chapter 21) (Has anyone written a fic where Celebrimbor is one of those refugees yet)

however, when this passage is narrativised later, at the start of the final chapter on earendil & the war of wrath, this is how it is told: "...which Beren had won and Lúthien had worn...".

in other words, luthien is reduced to a passive actor. someone who bears the jewel, but is erased from having played a substantial part in actually, actively winning it from morgoth. we actively do see a sexist bias playing out, in reaffirming the men transform the world, women give birth ("for the nissi the making of things new is for the most part shown in the forming of their children, so that invention and change is otherwise mostly brought about by the neri", LaCE).

1) i am not entirely certain about where the line lies between an unreliable narrator and a biased one when we talk about the silmarillion - and i am not sure that we are all operating on the same definitions of "bias" and "unreliability". i'm not suggesting that we put a disclaimed before each and every post that defines this line, but i think the lack of common ground makes interpretation and conversation difficult and moreover, results in a lot of slippage in the casual conversation of fandom.

2) talking about this from the pov of purely literary technique, which is how i would frame tolkien's alleged framing of the silmarillion as a historical document produced by the collective efforts of rumil & pengolodh - the quenta being produced specifically by pengolodh - i also struggle to differentiate between the viewpoint that pengolodh presents to us and tolkien-as-author's preoccupations in writing the silmarillion.

3) to be clear, i am decently versed (tho by no means an expert at all) in literary theories that position the primacy of reader response & interpretation of the text such as death of the author, reader response, deconstruction & other critical forms that also interpret the text as object within a social/cultural/political/constructed context, so i am not trying to suggest that author intention is the only lens by which we might interpret a text.

4) the reason i am suggesting this is because tolkien notoriously, elsewhere, is resistant to any interpretation of the text that deviates from his own - all authors are controlling to an extent, but tolkien sometimes approaches outright hostility in, say, even the question of interpreting character appearances. i am very much team, "the author must and can be jettisoned when doing a reading of the text", however, in suggesting that pengolodh is a biased narrator, we are also suggesting that there is a differentiation between pengolodh and tolkien - and this to me is not intuitively obvious or even revealed in the analysis that people have done, especially when it comes to the interpretation of various events in the silmarillion.

5) (please note i really do respect the author of that essay, think they've done wonderful work for fandom and otherwise really enjoy their fanworks for the depths and ideas they reveal to me & their interrogation of tolkien's constructed world, so i'm not saying this because i have a grudge or a bone to pick or a particular standpoint, but because i am seriously considering this question in an academic sense)

6) bc i think for nearly every argument raised, i can find a counter-argument from tolkien's other writings about the legendarium and the silmarillion. why are gondolin, doriath and nargothrond so central to the narrative? well, an interesting in-universe reading is to position it as pengolodh's bias. but if i was to consider tolkien's preoccupations, his earliest work on the silmarillion was the tale of earendil, followed by the lay of leithian, and therefore the much simpler contextual explanation is that those three realms are of importance because... that was what tolkien was interested in writing about and those locations were where events on which the story turned took place! why does thingol get so much time to speak? because he plays a central action-generating role in the lay of leithian and turin's tale, both of which are huge chunks of the silm text. why is feanor's death presented differently from fingolfin's? because feanor in the silmarillion symbolises the tragic "fall" story that tolkien was building in the narrative. (i am not going to get into the question of the reading in regards to caranthir, bc i will somewhat get into it later.)

7) given all of this and given the fact that if you take a step back and do an overall structural reading of the silmarillion as a narrative, specifically in reference to the works of medieval literature and mythological texts that tolkien was working from/against, there are many strong reasons to support the lack of differentiation between pengolodh and tolkien which is to do with the specific mythology that tolkien is constructing, the tropes and ideas that he's building on viz. a fall from grace, the defeat of evil, redemption etc. tolkien identifies pengolodh as a narrator, but tolkien also gifts pengolodh omniscience as a narrator.

8) the reason i brought up the luthien example above is because it is an example of an internal narratorial contradiction that you would classically use to identify a biased narrator being deployed as a deliberate literary technique! and as several people have pointed out in the notes, this is...also...unfortunately how tolkien interprets the leithian tale himself. which then does raise the question: if pengolodh is a biased narrator, how much does pengolodh's viewpoint differ from tolkien's, if at all? how do you distinguish between the author's bias and the narrator's bias, if the two are frequently conflated per this particular instance? if the two are conflated, can the tools of historiography actually be employed to identify pengolodh's alleged bias?

9) because again, if i was to take the question of a biased historian seriously, then i would have to interrogate the framing of events such as

manwe responding to fingon's prayer - heavily implied to be cause & consequence, but would otherwise have to be repositioned as nolofinwean propaganda, given, again, pengolodh is a vassal of turgon's

similarly, fingolfin's arrival in middle earth being framed in the context of the rising of the sun & moon and "flowers sprang beneath his marching feet" - another moment, if we take pengolodh seriously as a biased narrator, that would point to nolofinwean hagiography

"not wholly unwilling" - how and where does pengolodh get this information from re. aredhel's marriage? who does this come from?

"the oath of the sons of Fëanor was waked again from sleep" - plus constant mentions of the oath "awaking" raises the question re. how pengolodh knows this? who has told him this? if its a feanorian, isn't it in their interest to present themselves as compelled (as this suggests) and therefore unable to control the violence they committed? if its a non-feanorian elf, then where have they received this information from? is it in the interests of the noldor to position the violence of the feanorians as coming from a source outside themselves, rather than a conscious and consistent choice? because if it is the latter, then how does that morally implicate the rest of the noldor in their violence? these are questions that i would be asking of a historical framing!

why is eol's narrative framed as essentially unreliable? what does what he says about noldor colonialism in middle earth say about the noldor if this is re-framed as the product of a biased and hateful mind? (btw in the essay quendi and eldar which is actually named as composed by pengolodh v. the published silm text where he is not identified, eol is re-framed in some truly ugly and racially laden ways that pengolodh accepts as essentially revelatory of a "biological" "truth")

how does pengolodh know that idril appeared as the sun to maeglin? - again, if i was a historian, this would appear to me as a hagiographic detail that glorifies the noldor, framed against the racial connotations that are borne in maeglin

flowers of niphredil blooming with luthien's birth - again, another hagiographic detail that serves to establish luthien as a divinely chosen figure by the valar and which resists any agency that luthien might have on her part in choosing her own fate

the whole multiple iterations of doom and fate & the suggestion that everything to do with luthien is the result of an already pre-planned doom - again, how does a historian know this? how can he infer this? is he reporting on folktales? in which case, why do we accept the fate & doom reading as the only true one? on the other hand, if it is a matter of his bias as a noldo - why is it important to the noldor to establish luthien, a half-sindarin princess, as merely a vehicle of fate? why is it important to later re-frame her as a mere maiden, who passively wears the silmaril and plays no part in freeing it?

similarly, how does pengolodh know that namo is moved to pity? - if pengolodh is a historian based in middle earth, how does he have access to this information? is this information that the valar present to the elves? is this information that is conveyed by luthien herself? if so when and how? how does this serve his bias as a noldo if he is a biased narrator?

the framing of the founding of nargothrond & the expulsion of the petty dwarves - both framed as very much narratively justified or else reduced to minutiae/lacunae in the text. reading with a critical eye, a historian/scholar might interrogate why this framing is either diminished or presented as essentially justified (and therefore mim as unreasonably bitter against the noldor & therefore unjustified in the resentment with which he approaches turin et al) and suggest a real case of colonial bias on the part of the noldor. a group that pengolodh is a member of.

the difference in framing of "the oath...was waked again from sleep" v. "it seemed to them that in the Silmaril lay the healing and the blessing that had come upon their houses and their ships" - i.e. positioning what would seem to be the SoF's metaphysical belief re. their Oath as essentially truthful and real versus both the Sindarin and Gondolindrim refugees' metaphysical belief in the power of the silmaril as essentially unprovable/false. if pengolodh has a bias, it is not oriented against the feanorians here.

and again, i can go on and on, interrogating basically every piece of action if i wanted to, using this "biased narrator" framing!

10) which sort of brings me to the point i was trying to work through which is that - i think this is perfectly fine to explore as a reading. i think its a very interesting reading of the canon! however i think it raises a couple of problems when it is presented as analysis i.e. as an essential truth about the canon. which is what a lot of people do. which is where a really huge slippage occurs between "what if this canon is narrated by a biased narrator" and "this canon is narrated by a biased narrator - therefore everything in the narrative is automatically suspect" (this is the textbook effect of an unreliable narrator and again, nobody has been able to identify for me why this is not happening in pengolodh's case)

first is, if we take this premise for truth, then we essentially have no grounds on which to treat the silmarillion as a shared canon that we are fans of. everything is up for interpretive grabs, anyone can suggest events happened in ways other than narrated. i know people want to stress the difference between a biased narrator and an unreliable one, but this work has not been done! everyday, people are using these terms & modes of analysis interchangeably - and this is evident even within the original essay - to interrogate whether or not events in canon happened the way they did, or if they are to be interpreted the way they are. to narrow it down further: if the narrator is biased and therefore we can suggest "maybe caranthir is framed as racist because of anti-feanorian bias", then its basically impossible to actually ask what the relationship is between feanor's speech, his oath, what his sons believe and their political project in middle earth. because anyone can suggest that a) feanor's speech is being framed as such retrospectively, b) any evidence of caranthir's racially loaded comments is highlighted because of bias and may not be reflective of the total reality and therefore c) nothing can be inferred about any racial themes in the canon.

and like, i see this happening everyday in the curufin tag which i follow and this is not my idea of fandom "fun". i'm in the fandom because i like the canon, its themes and narrative. if i wanted to reimagine the narrative differently, i would write fanfiction or make up headcanons, but i, critically, could not pass this off as possible canon. like at the baseline level we have to agree that events happened the way they did in the narrative or we're at the stage where we're abandoning a state of fannish relationship with the canon - and we have to be honest about what we're doing in that case.

second is, if we take this premise for true, we have basically taken the endless watsonian v. doylist debate from other fandoms and then made it "real" within the bounds of the silmarillion i.e. there is no means to actually take a step back from the universe and do a critical reading of the text, because the text itself cannot be assumed to be true or read as true, because we do not know if events took place the way the author has written them. to illustrate, if i do a reading of colonial themes or biases present in the canon, it is entirely possible for someone to say "well that's not true because the story is framed negatively because of a political purpose within the text, so this is not a fair interpretation". to take the example above, if i take charles w. mills' critical reading of race in middle earth and then use it to analyse caranthir's relationship with other races and suggest that some of the framing represents tolkien's own bias esp. viz. the dwarves, i can basically not do so, because the textual framing is unreliable and therefore any analysis i do can be explained away with "that's not what tolkien intended" or "we don't know because there's a biased narrator who is not tolkien writing here".

which brings me to my third and final point - then when and how, if at all, can anyone do a critical reading of tolkien? at what point does this argument become a means of dodging any engagement with questions of race, misogyny, gender, colonialism? these are all deeply uncomfortable questions for any fandom to confront and is also, in my experience, the source of the most vicious doylist v. watsonian analytical fights in fandom at large. just the very act of suggesting the narrative is governed by anti-feanorian bias means that we then have to do twice the work of proving, therefore (for example), that there is a raced and gendered framework to their narrative, in proving that feanor's political vision is both masculinist and colonialist and that this is passed down to his sons - already not an easy position to prove without some very carefully sourced and contextualised proof in the text, because i promise you, any attempted reading in this vein will invite literally endless quibbles unless your reading work is ironclad and 100% sourced.

so, you know. wyd!

This is finally finished, which means I can go write my paper in peace.

So: Beren. I’ve been thinking about him recently. What’s his deal? What is he besides a human who’s out of his depth in a world of Valar, Maiar, and elven royalty, constantly needing to be rescued by his demigoddess girlfriend? Here’s what I think.

(Warning: contains rambling and ~personal character revelations~ and lots of quotes)

In leaden silence, Eärendil rolls his wife onto her back. The Silmaril washes his vision white, blinds him to her face. He yanks it from her neck and her head snaps forward with the force of it; lolls back lifeless. Eärendil screams: regret and rage and grief so grand it might swallow him. 

When he stands at last, it is with a star upon his brow and vengeance burning in his breast. He sets a westward course.  

Eärendil’s demand for recompense never reaches the ears of the Valar. For he dies alone in the empty streets of Tirion, feet scored and bloody from the diamond dusted streets no mortal was meant to tread. 

The Silmaril has returned to the land of its creation. Eönwë bears it to the King and Queen of Arda.

Varda sets it to sail the skies; calls it a sign of hope.

In Endor, the armies of the West with their golden banners allow the lie to take root; myth spreads like wildflowers in a scorched land, and the hearts of Exiles are lifted up. 

“Simply reaching Menegroth was a struggle. Doriath had become a twisting nightmare of overgrowth and rot and mists, as Morgoth’s power warred with the remains of the Girdle and our old songs. Ai, our home, our haven! I know the name of every holly in Region, before the exile. We found deadfalls surrounded by dozens of animals who’d lain down beside the trees and rotted before they died. Blind moose more antler than flesh staggered towards us even after a dozen arrows. Vines covered in dripping thorns reached for our eyes. The cherry trees were overladen with fruits that smelled like gangrene. Deildhod stumbled into a nest of maddened vipers, and only escaped because their tails were all tangled together into a festering mass and could hardly move. We never saw or heard a single bird. I’m amazed we lost no one in that whole push through Region. No, I speak a lie. I know how we passed through with nothing worse than scrapes. Elrond was with us, and the ghost of Melian’s love still recognized her kin.

“Esgalduin had nearly been dammed by one of Hírilorn’s fallen boles, but the bridge still held. We crossed and reached the ruined gates, wrought twice and broken twice. Within there was only darkness to be seen; we knew not what manner of horrors Morgoth had sent to infest the city, but Ingwion was unwilling to leave them at the rear of his forces as he moved north, if it could be helped. Celeborn stood at Elrond’s right and myself at his left. Far less an honor guard than the heir of Elu Thingol and Melian Besain deserved. Yet in those dark days it was all the honor we could muster. King Dior Eluchíl had known thirty-six summers when he was unrighteously slain. Queen Elwing Nimaew thirty-five when despair took her to the sea. Lord Elrond Peredhel beheld the city of Elu for the first and only time in his twenty-ninth summer.

“Elrond stood before his inheritance and Sang. He sang a lament, for the lost endless years of joy and peace, for deep halls lit by birdsong and echoing with wisdom, for the Forsaken People who awoke the forest and earth with many voices, for the works of beauty never to be seen again on this side of the sea. He sang a promise, that the glory of Menegroth will be remembered in the songs of Middle-Earth for as long as its children endure. He sang thanks, for the protection the halls granted us until it could shelter us no more. As his song at last ceased, I thought I heard nightingales answering him.

“Stars shone on his brow, and his hair glistened as the vault of night, and the memories of our once-eternal bliss in the woods of Thingol’s realm under Elbereth’s gifts arose in my mind. Let Oropher dream of a deep hall for his own; let Celeborn reign where he will at his wife’s side! I knew in my heart, as the echo of nightingale songs faded, that there was no lord or king I would ever stand beside save Elrond Elwingion.

Whoa! Whoa! steady there! Now, my little fellows, where be you a going to, puffing like a bellows? What's the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I'm Tom Bombadil. Tell me what's your trouble! Tom's in a hurry now. Don't you crush my lilies!

He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about evil things and good things, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.

Frodo:

“Goldberry! My fair lady, clad all in silver green! We have never said farewell to her, nor seen her since the evening!”

And the one that really hit me, Gandalf at the Council of Elrond:

“And now he is withdrawn into a little land, within bounds that he has set, though none can see them, waiting perhaps for a change of days, and he will not step beyond them.”

ONE TWO THREE four five, ONE two THREE four FIVE six

"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow"

but he can add unstressed syllables pretty much wherever he wants.

"This is Goldberry's washing-day, and her autumn-cleaning"