#fíriel

1. After Míriel was embodied and became the handmaid of Vairë:

For now she is named Fíriel,* which to the Eldar signifies ‘She that died’, and also ‘She that sighed’. As fair as the webs of Fíriel is praise that is given seldom even to works of the Eldar.

- Morgoth's Ring: Laws and Customs Among the Eldar

2. Lúthien

Firiel= ‘mortal maid’, later name of Lúthien.

- The Lost Road and Other Writings: Etymologies

3. Fíriel, a maiden of Elendil's household, daughter of Orontor sang a song in the Eressëan tongue in the earlier version of the Fall of Númenor:

The Father made the World for Elves and Mortals, and he gave it into the hands of the Lords. They are in the West. They are holy, blessed, and beloved: save the dark one. He is fallen. Melko has gone from Earth: it is good. For Elves they made the Moon, but for Men the red Sun; which are beautiful. To all they gave in measure the gifts of Ilúvatar. The World is fair, the sky, the seas, the earth, and all that is in them. Lovely is Númenor. But my heart resteth not here for ever; for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading, when all is counted, and all numbered at last, but yet it will not be enough, not enough. What will the Father, O Father, give me in that day beyond the end when my Sun faileth?

- The Lost Road and Other Writings: The Númenórean Chapters

4. The ancestress of Aragorn, daughter of Ondoher, king of Gondor, is named Fíriel. Despite being the only surviving child, she didn't became queen because the Exiled Realms of Gondor and Arnor hadn't followed the law of absolute primogeniture made by Aldarion back in Númenor.

5. In The Last Ship, a poem of the lore of the Shire originating in the Fourth Age, and was probably derived from Gondor, a mortal woman, Fíriel, was offered a place by the Elves to aboard the ship sailing to the West, but then:

Fíriel looked from the river bank, one step daring; then deep in clay her feet sank, and she halted, staring. Slowly the elven-ship went by whispering through the water: ‘I cannot come!’ they heard her cry. ‘I was born Earth’s daughter!’

ooooh the first of the Rangers With The Worst Fates you meet :( really did a good job of setting expectations for how the game will treat rangers 😭I was very attached to him and, being a naive new player who didn't know How Things Work Here I was still hoping I could save him :( yeah :((((

I still have Eth visit his grave (or the place I decided he was buried, as the devs never gave him one) from time to time. y'know just to chat about her adventures thus far. anyway I'm still not over him.

our favorite Everyone Lives AU is nice tho :) nothing irreparably horrible happens to the bree-land rangers in that one! :D

and your girl Fíriel!! I always somehow misread her name as "Feral" so I had to check that box lol. she really saw this guy Doomed by the Narrative and was like "oh cool that's my brother now". Tossdir can relate. also is she ok I love her but is she ok???

I'm looking at how insistent Elendil is in the UT that we should not count Vanimeldë's husband Herucalmo in the line of kings of Númenor. Elendil clearly specifies that Herucalmo WAS of royal blood, as a descendent of Atanamir, and that he effectively ruled Númenor for 20 years, until he died, and he even adopted a royal name -- Tar-Anducal. But he also makes a point of highlighting that none of the circumstances of his claim made it legitimate, and goes on to say that Alcarin, Herucalmo and Vanimeldë's son, "ruled for 80 years until his death in 2737, being rightful King for one hundred years".

The difference between Herucalmo and Pharazôn is that Pharazôn is still married to Míriel and thus he is a legitimate king. Which brings to mind again Elendil's insistence that the marriage was not just a product of coercion, but that it was illegal anyway because cousins that close can't marry under Númenorian law. I've mentioned before that it sounds so weird on page the first time you read it, that a lame ass law about cousin marriage would be put on the same level as rape/forced marriage... and I always come away with the same impression, that it is easy to assume Elendil is just using every single argument he has to say that Pharazôn's kingship is at best dubious...

He makes a separate claim as heir of Isildur (though his father was alive at the time...), which is its own matter. But his additional argument that, under the laws of Númenor, his marriage to Fíriel gives him some claim to the throne of Gondor is frankly either duplicitous or ignorant. The laws of Númenor, after Tar-Aldarion, allowed women to rule in their own right. The only men to rule Númenor via the birth/lineage of their wives were usurpers.

Under Númenórean law, Fíriel’s status as daughter and only living child of the King of Gondor would make her the rightful ruler, not Arvedui. If she’s dead by then, her claim would pass to her eldest child (regardless of gender), not Arvedui.

I think his attempt to bullshit his way into the kingship is somewhat obscured by the fact that, while the Council of Gondor rejects this claim, they do not reject it for being wrong (though it is). Rather, the Council’s argument is that Númenórean law has not been applied in either Gondor or Arnor/Arthedain at any point (this seems to be true) and that they do not consider women to have any place in the succession (i.e., not only can women not claim the throne, but men cannot claim the throne through women because something something war). So they don’t cover themselves in glory, either.

Poem: Fíriel’s Song

Tune: 74b King of Peace

Arranger: F. Price, 1835

My first song in Quenya! Or a version of Quenya, anyway: this song comes from Tolkien’s unfinished novel The Lost Road, and the Quenya he writes in it isn’t exactly the same as the Quenya we see in LotR. 

The character Fíriel in The Lost Road is a maiden of Númenor who serves Elendil: he hears her singing this song - about the creation of the world, its beauty and its eventual end - at sunset. The name means “mortal woman”, and Tolkien used it for a number of characters associated with death and endings. (Although, ironically, Míriel Serindë wasn’t renamed Fíriel, “She that died”, until after she’d come back to life...)

I’ve had to mess with the syllable-count to make this song work, which means I’ve messed with the lineation in places and I’ve elided some syllables between words. I’m very thankful to Helge Fauskanger for his word-by-word analysis of the poem! Emended lyrics and a translation are under the cut.