And finally, Beldis, again for @laurelsblue
1-3 things I enjoy about them
-For someone who isn’t mentioned once in the Silmarillion, she’s really well connected. Handir’s wife, Haldir’s daughter-in-law, etc. - from the instant she marries Handir she’s intimately connected to the Chieftaincy of the Haladin. She’s a member of the House of Beor - and when I say ‘member’ I mean ‘if the Beorians were a little less sexist she’d be their leader’: her mother is Barahir and Bregolas’s oldest sibling. And Morwen and Rian’s fathers are Beldis’s first cousins - she’s pretty closely connected to the leadership of the House of Hador too.
Oh yeah. And you know who else is Beldis’s first cousin? No removed, no nothing, first cousin? Beren.
Like... there’s a lot you can do with that, but I think that at this point it says something about her that she’s not mentioned in the Silmarillion.
-For someone who exists solely as a name on a family tree in relatively obscure material, there’s a lot of stuff we know about Beldis. There are all her family connections above - and then the fact that she was more than twice her husband’s age when they got married and was fifty-four when her son was born, like... there’s some quality extrapolation-worthy material right there. Plus we know she was a refugee from Ladros, we don’t know what happened to her brother but something clearly did, especially since she named her son after him... You can just go on forever.
-I DON’T EVEN LIKE AGE DIFFERENCES LARGER THAN EIGHT OR TEN YEARS BUT SOMEHOW I AM SO FREAKING SOLD ON BELDIS AND HANDIR AND THEIR THIRTY-FUCKING-YEAR AGE DIFFERENCE. HELP ME THINK OF ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS IT COULD HAVE GONE DOWN. LET’S WRITE SEVENTY DIFFERENT FICS. NO I DON’T HAVE CAPSLOCK ON I’M JUST HOLDING DOWN SHIFT BECAUSE BELDIS/HANDIR EVERYBODY
Something interesting about them based on tenuous circumstantial evidence
-So @houseofhaleth has gone into excellent detail on why Handir and Beldis’s marriage was probably a love match (or at least a considerable-liking-and-attraction match) here, but basically the deal is, for the reasons she outlines (i.e. there’s no conceivable political or convenience-based reason for them to have married, and in fact several reasons why Beldis would not have been considered a good match for Handir, like the severe unlikelihood of her having a child), it’s 99% sure that they got married either because A.) they loved each other, or B.) they had some sort of affair or one night stand and she got pregnant.
I tend to think option A is the best, but you could have a lot of fun with option B. (And of course, you get to explain why the twenty-three-year-old grandson of the Chieftain is casually hooking up with a fifty-three-year-old refugee, so that’s fun too. To say nothing of how SHOCKED they’d both be when she got pregnant.)
Anyway, yes. Her marriage to Handir was decidedly not based on anything ulterior on either side, and you cannot pry that from my cold, dead fingers.
A question I have about them
-It really bugs me sometimes that we don’t know when she died. I mean, it’s convenient for headcanon and fic, but come on now...
A random relevant line I like
-’Soon afterwards Handir Lord of Brethil was slain, for the Orcs invaded his land, and Handir gave them battle.’
I don’t actually like this line, for obvious reasons, but it’s the closest one to relevant, aside from one or two about Emeldir. The reason I chose it is because if you Math (I frequently Math where Tolkien is involved), you discover something. I Mathed about six months ago, discovered the something, and have been trying to forget about it ever since, but it’s not working so you get to share my pain:
Brandir died at 34 (insert sadface here)
He’d been Chieftain for four years, therefore Handir died when Brandir was 30.
Brandir was born when Handir was 24, therefore Handir died at 54.
Hence, when Handir died, Beldis would have been 84.
It’s entirely feasible to headcanon that she outlived him.
It’s also technically possible that she outlived her son (88) but that is Too Much and I Just Will Not. (Also surely if she was still around she would have merited a mention in the Narn.)
My preferred version, if there is more than one version of their story (or part of their story)
-...So not to bag on anyone but this meme might be sliiiightly less Tolkien-proof than we thought.
But hey, why pass up an opportunity to pimp my own fic?
In order: Beldis and Brandir (and Handir as a family dynamic), Beldis/Handir, Beldis and Brandir-her-brother, and probably Beldis + Morwen and Rian too. Also I’m very interested in her (fraught) relationship with Gloredhel and her later odd friendship dynamic with Haldir. (Who is, after all, the same age, despite being her father-in-law.)
How would they react to Tom Bombadil
I feel like she’d just ignore him completely.
Optional: Something about them that I think people forget
There isn’t really much about Beldis to forget, but I’ll take a stab at it. The fact that she’s Beren’s cousin. Like, his first cousin. And she would have been about twenty when he was born, so she probably helped take care of him or babysat all the time and stuff. I dunno, I just feel like there’s something to that.
Also I’ll be angry forever that her Vegetarian Sweetheart cousin never got to meet her Pinnacle Of Forbearance And Ethics son.
