#gilraen

While other Fellowship members like Boromir, Legolas, etc. also have experience as warriors, they don't literally live in the wild like all the time. Aragorn does. Plus, he was raised by Elves. The sons of Elrond hung around with the Dunedain a lot. So if you subscribe to the idea that Elves are more particular about keeping clean, you can reasonably assume Aragorn might've had some influence to bathe every now and then, even as a ranger.

And that's not to mention how the mental image of Elrond's Disapproving Eyebrow Face or the sound of his mother's shriek the first time Aragorn came back to Rivendell from the wild looking all filthy dirty, are probably seared into his mind for eternity. It's a mental reminder to at least wash up every now and then, like the respectable Man his mother and Elrond raised him to be!

Of course, that's not to say Aragorn makes use of the knowledge he has. Or that even Elrond's Disapproving Eyebrows are enough motivation for Aragorn to regularly bathe in the wild (after all, what Elrond doesn't see, Elrond doesn't know...err, maybe 🤔)

Even in Rivendell we have indication that she wasn't entirely at ease; she says to Aragorn upon discovering his feelings for Arwen, Therefore I am afraid; for without the good will of Master Elrond the Heirs of Isildur will soon come to an end. But I do not think that you will have the good will of Elrond in this matter. She seems to be very aware that they are entirely at the mercy of Elrond's whim and doesn't want to risk losing his favour.

Before she dies, she says she's aged by care and cannot face the darkness of [their] time, and when Aragorn tries to comfort her and tell her to have hope she replies with one of the saddest lines in the whole legendarium and disappears from the story to die alone.

GILRAEN THE FAIR

"Gilraen watches a delighted grin spread over Aragorn’s face as Elrond finally allows him to lay stitches over the smallest cut, watches him copy exactly what the healer was demonstrating on a larger wound, down to the cadence of his breath. She watches as he follows Elrond around the room, pauses at other bedsides, clasps his hands behind his back every time Elrond does the same.

He looks like a busy little fish, she thinks fondly, scurrying around with his arms full of basins and bandages, an unwinding roll of dressing tucked into his belt like a tail. Like an obliging little minnow. A minnow, who swims beside the whale and takes shelter in the vastness of its shadow, not realising the shadow races towards icy waters no minnow can hope to survive." - A VERY CURIOUS THING

most of my art time this month is taken up by commissions and trsb so i wasn’t going to draw anything detailed, but i found time to paint Gilraen as per recent brainrot. i wanted her to look very not-elven, young and rosy and hearty, because girl gets plenty of fresh air running around in pursuit of the gremlin that was young aragorn. featuring @peasant-player vintage berry pattern making another appearance. also click ‘read more’ if you want to see this mocked up as a pakistani tv serial poster bc i’m still crying over @seaemberthesecond’s post

full set of stamps i designed for SWG's march challenge. yippee!

Denethor and Gilraen are as much descendants of Silmariën as Arathorn, just not in the senior male line. We're not looking at a single line of father-to-son only-child heirs for thousands of years in Middle-earth, we're looking at daughters and younger children getting left out of history unless their existence becomes relevant to a different male heir. It's wild to think that there's almost certainly an unknown, unnamed, unacknowledged lady or princess of the house of Anárion whose existence bound her son/descendant Húrin of Emyn Arnen to his kinsman and king Minardil, and [she] was necessary for Minardil to establish the extreme power of the Stewardship for Húrin and his descendants, which centuries later made the transition to the Ruling Stewardship go down a lot easier for the elitist Dúnedain of Gondor in addition to the Stewards' steady competence. The politics around this are genuinely fascinating to me, not just who is a descendant of whom but who gets remembered by the records and why. There might well be no specific note of Princess Fíriel's existence if not for Arvedui's Herucalmo gambit.

Gilraen for @hallas-laucahrive