#kinstrife

I am deeeep in the weeds of the lead-up to the kinstrife in Gondor because I had an idea for LOTR Week’s ancestors and history prompt (lol on the timing, maybe I’ll have it done before the *next* LOTR Week rolls around!) and in the process, I think I might have found a (personally) satisfying answer to the question of why Rohan has a tradition of “Elf-” names (Elfhelm, Elfhild, Elfwine, etc.) when they are not a culture that has substantive ties to the elves and, in fact, were even kind of hostile to them at times.

The kinstrife happened because Valacar, son and heir of the king of Gondor, went to live as an ambassador of sorts with the Northmen (the proto-Rohirrim), fell in love with and married a Northman princess, and had a half-Northman son who became Valacar’s own heir. A substantial number of Gondorians wouldn’t accept this half-Northman son as their king after Valacar’s death, and so there was a coup and a civil war before the son eventually retook and held the throne. That son was named Vinitharya, which means “victor of the east” in the language of the Northmen, but Valacar had also given him a Gondorian name to help ensure the Gondorians would accept him and see him as one of them (a good thought, even if it didn’t entirely work!). The name he chose was Eldacar, which is Quenya for “elf helm”!*

So MAYBE the Northmen honored and esteemed Eldacar, who is a son of their royal house just as much as a son of Gondor’s. They were proud of him and what he accomplished as one of them. He came from THEIR community, ascended to the highest levels of power in the biggest empire in all of Middle Earth, withstood a coup and a civil war against him to hold onto that power, greatly expanded rights and opportunities for other Northmen living in Gondor, and had his own son (Aldamir) who eventually succeeded him and kept those Northmen genes in the Gondorian royal family. OF COURSE they’d be proud, and maybe they were so proud that they started naming their kids after him. Maybe they took the name Eldacar, translated it back into their language, and kept using it consistently over the years. The name followed along with the changes in the language as the Northmen became first the Éothéod and then the Rohirrim, and eventually we see it being used as “Elfhelm” in late Third Age Rohan, where it has also spun off a whole bunch of other, related “Elf-” prefix names in the process. Maybe? I don’t know, but I like it!

Context, you have to recognize who Cortez and Malinche aka Dona Mariana were in Mexican history. So yeah, now adding the Conquering and Colonization of Mexico and Central America to my Japanese Civil War. But finally here’s the story of Castamir’s son when they flee to Umbar. Or conversely going back to Earnil and Gondor’s conquest of Umbar (which would then also have to tie into Earnil’s aunt by marriage, Berúthiel).