#eomund

A Rohan Secret Santa gift for @celeluwhenfics! Happy holidays! ❄️

Summary: For all her life, Éowyn has worn winter as a second skin. (Or, a study of Éowyn, amid various winters.)

Rating: G

Word Count: 2.7k

Dead. It is a hollow word, Éowyn thinks, as hollow and heavy and brief as the thud of the door as her mother slams it in the face of the messenger.

Dead. It holds no meaning for her; meaning slips like water over stones, trickling, vanishing. What is death to her father’s laugh, as bright and living as the dance of flames? What is death to the rumble of his voice in his chest, like the tumbling of stones, as she leans her head against him?

She has been permitted to hear little of the news, but she gleans what she can from standing in the shadows, sifting words. And there are many of those—flurries of them, falling as fast as the late snow that falls white through the open door, left ajar and forgotten in the bustle of aunts that surround her mother. The snow will melt, come morning; it has never stuck in any of Éowyn’s years. Winters in the Mark are a thing of winds and frost, with only a dusting of snow on the coldest days that turns to water beneath the cold brilliance of the rising sun.

The orcs bore torches, she hears, and rose silent and sudden from the rocks of the Emyn Muil like a wall of flames in the night and then set fire to the corpses. 

Corpses. It is the first time she has heard the word and known it to be used in place of a name, a beating heart, the warm hands that first lifted her into a saddle and took the reins and led her gently around the paddock.

It's hard to say without really knowing much of their personalities, other than Theodwyn was fair and really in love with Eomund, and Eomund was a hot head.

I think letting Grima near Eowyn would set Eomund off, even aside from any affection Eomund feels for Eowyn, that's something that would flag up as a "failure to guard her honour", so it would infuriating to Eomund for cultural and honour related reasons as well as personal, and once Theoden is restored and his honour is restored, then that's all fine and dandy.

Apart from that, the sad truth is that Theoden's neglect of Eowyn is very gendered. The expectation that she tend to all his domestic/personal/emotional needs without receiving barely any true gratitude, that she live her life for his comfort and not expect any reward or honour, that Theoden doesn't even recognise her as a true member of their house because she's a woman and only half counts, is standard stuff. That's just what's expected of women. So while Eomund and Theodwyn themselves might be more attentive of Eowyn (we hope) apart from coming under Grima's influence, which as family they might just choose to blame on Grima, Theoden's attitude of benign neglect wouldn't necessary guarantee any censure from Theodwyn and Eomund.

Tolkien's women dying of grief because their husbands have died and their husbands are their only cause for living is his version of "dying in childbirth".

Tolkien might write a variety of excellent, strong and fascinating women (not as many as male characters, of course, let's not be crazy here) but the opinions reflected in his personal writing that most women are defined by men, and usually one man, that their abilities almost hinge on how much a man can inspire and interest them, that on falling in love she loses grip of everything else, does show up in his fictional writing too, which just how prevalent the "husband dies because of combination of the plot and his own personality" and "woman dies because husband dies" trope is in his writing.

And it's like, Eowyn has a speech about this. She rages to the heavens that women are told "you're place is in the home, and after the men are dead you can be burned in the home, because the men don't need it anymore". He has Eowyn literally call out this phenomena that a woman becomes dispensable after her husband dies, that it the husband, loving the husband, tending the husband, responding to the husband, that gives her life meaning, and with him gone there's nothing left for her to do but die. But then his writing of women is filled with that very same principle, with even Eowyn's mother "dying of grief" after Eomund's death.

And that's particularly irritating because Theodwyn wasn't even an elf, for whom grief was genuinely fatal. She was a mortal woman who just "died of grief".

Like, how? Did she kill herself? Starve herself? Was she already unwell and the loss of Eomund caused her to give up receiving treatment? It doesn't matter, the specifics don't matter because the specifics would mean Theodwyn made actual choices, it would mean showing how Theodwyn took steps to bring about her death, it would mean that maybe Theodwyn could have lived after Eomund's death, that Eomund's loss did not inevitable mean her own demise, it would mean she could have chosen otherwise, but didn't.

by sallysavestheday (@sallysavestheday)

Éomer and Faramir build a connection around their people's stories.

General, No Archive Warnings

Eomund is an Anglo-Saxon masculine name composed of eoh (horse) and mund (protection), cognate with Icelandic Jómundur.

Variants:

EOMVND [John Lindsay 1842 A View of the Coinage of the Heptarchy, page 11].

Eomund [Charles Keary 1887 A Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum, Anglo-Saxon Series 1: 143].

Fomund [Georg Galster 1964 Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles 4: 112].

Prototheme:

Eoh = a horse [Joseph Bosworth 1838 A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, 1st edition, page 684].

Deuterotheme:

mund = protection [Edward Freeman 1869 Old English History for Children, 1st edition, page xv].

Usage:

Grief. For Théodwyn, it was a familiar face. From her father and the grandmother she loved above all, to the childhood friend she'd lost to sickness - grief had taken many forms. But for all its familiarity, when it knocked on her door now, there was no strength left in Théodwyn to weather it. How could she? For this time, grief had not sent a letter of its impending visit beforehand. There was no old age or sickness to herald its arrival. It had come unannounced and unwelcome, and Théodwyn had been unprepared for the upheaval it would cause in her life.

Death had been swift for Éomund, they said. He did not suffer, by Bema's grace. But Théodwyn selfishly thought that at least then she would have known to ready herself for his departure from the living world. Had he lain on his deathbed for days, she could have survived somehow. But just as Éomund had taken an arrow and fallen off his horse, so had Théodwyn's heart. And no matter if the people around rushed to help, it had been too late. Éomund was dead and Théodwyn's will to live had died with him.

It wasn't easy to witness, she knew. For her children and all her household, and even her brother in his Golden Hall, it must have been agony to see her wither away in front of their eyes. To see the light in her eyes dimming, as if the stars which decorated them had faded away to make way for the dawn. A dawn which will never come. To hear her laughter be silenced, leaving behind only the deep grooves it'd carved on her face. Grooves which are flooded with her tears now.

"I'm sorry," Théodwyn whispered, as she sat gazing into the distance on the terrace in Aldburg. The shirt she had been mending was long forgotten in her lap. It had been Éomund's. And he might have taken it with him on that fateful orc raid. Might have even died in it, had it not been for her forgetting to mend it on time. Éomund never did like anyone else touching his things except her. And when her stitches came out crooked on occasion, he would laugh and say it was a reminder for him - that he could falter in his footing but always had to get the job done. Just like his beloved's sewing.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, but to whom she apologized, Théodwyn knew not. Was it to him? Or to her loved ones still left alive? Or was it to the sparrow that sat on the balustrade, waiting for the birdseed which Théodwyn would have brought out any other time, as usual. But not today. Not anymore.

A sudden gust of wind threw her mantle off her shoulders, but strangely Théodwyn did not feel the cold. Not really. Perhaps it was the heaviness that had settled in her soul, but all she could feel was a bone-deep weariness. And Even that weariness was overwhelming for her frail body.

She was just so tired.

It was afternoon now, and maybe, it wasn't so late to take the rest her handmaiden had suggested, before Théodwyn had insisted on sitting out in the light to finish the mending she should have done long ago. Maybe she could rest her eyes for a bit. Do the mending later, pick up where she had left off. Just for an hour or two. She would see better then. Her hands would shake less after. And perhaps, she might even feel a bit more. It'll be alright.

Oh! I’ll do all four if you don’t mind :)

Theodwyn and Eomund: Theodwyn was a wild filly when she was young, but matured as she got older (she never was rid of that wild spirit of hers tho). She wears the pants in the family re: her relationship with Eomund 😆 

She was pregnant when Eomund died, and due to stress/grief/subsequent complications with the pregnancy died along with her unborn child. (which is why i also headcanon Éomer as very nervous whenever Lothíriel is pregnant bc he’s remembers losing his mother dying while pregnant).

I don’t have a picture of her doodled out and read to post rn but I headcanon Theodwyn as half middle eastern on her mother (Morwen)’s side. Or the Middle Earth equivalent of half Middle Eastern.

Éowyn: This is so difficult to answer bc i have so many for both her and Faramir! Like her mother, she was a wild filly as a child. She always went barefoot as a child. She also learned to ride a horse before she learned to run. When she was a very little toddler she was convinced she was going to marry Theodred when she grew up (in that way little kids think they’re obviously going to marry their parents or big siblings cause they don’t understand romance/etc yet haha). She’s bisexual. She quickly in her teen years became withdrawn due to the unwelcome and predatory advances of Wormtongue. She suffered from depression for most of her teenage years and all of her adulthood until after the war of the ring. She also suffers from seasonal affective disorder afterwards, so she periodically has bouts of lowered mood and energy, but not necessarily depression. She’s very fond of Lothíriel and (disclaimer: this is my OWN bisexuality influencing this headcanon probably haha) but in another setting she might have fallen in love with Lothíriel. Her first child was a stillborn. I imagine her and Faramir having a daughter before Elboron by a few years. Gosh there’s too many headcanons to list out right now haha. Due to her mother being half Middle Eastern, I imagine that Éowyn and Éomer are a 1/4 Middle Eastern, though they look stereotypically Rohirrim (blonde hair, light eyes and while they can tan easily they are naturally pale skinned). She breastfed her children which was frowned upon in upper class Gondorian society but she was firm in upholding many aspects of Rohirrim culture.

Faramir: Faramir i have a lot of headcanons for as well. I picture him as part Middle Eastern/Central Asian and predominantly South Asian (in fact, the ideal casting for him would probably be a Pakistani/Indian actor). He’s very devoted to Éowyn in every way (wait...that’s canon haha). Like pretty much everyone after the war of the ring he has pretty bad PTSD. But not from his father, save only the way his father died (as a book fan I’m rather against PJ’s Bad!Father Denethor). He likes his women to be fierce and not upholding to expectations of “what is appropriate for a lady to act like” due to his mother (Finduilas) being of Dol Amroth, and the ladies of Dol Amroth were/are notoriously gender nonconforming. So Éowyn is a perfect fit for him :)

Okay, that’s a lot of text so I’ll stop here for now!