#kim if ur reading this i s2g I’ve been thinking about this for hours that joke has destroyed my brain ahsjaja

[morwensteelsheen]

[Quick slightly edited repost of my thread on Twitter.]

I actually think it’s very possible to do a woman-centric story based on Tolkien’s work that is canonically-justifiable, if not canonically-accurate. The essential nonexistence of them in the adapted works is not because of some impossibility, but because of a lack of creative imagination and because of a heinously bad understanding of what feminist art is and should be.

The ruling queens of Númenor are, as a rule, not treated terribly well by the world they live in, but one in particular gets it extremely bad. Tar-Míriel, who was not actually a ruling queen but only because her power was usurped, is one of the best examples of this. By rights, Tar-Míriel ought to have been queen. Instead, her cousin (Ar-) Pharazôn forcibly married her and stole her crown. He is most noted for being the King of Númenor who was seduced by Sauron and triggered the destruction of Westernesse. Míriel likely never lost her faith and never became corrupted in the way her husband/captor did. Yet when Eru Ilúvatar cast Númenor into the sea, there was no mercy for her. She tried to climb to the peak of the holy mountain Meneltarma, but was drowned. Míriel was one of the many slaughtered innocents of Númenor, but her story is especially painful because it poses an important ‘what if?’: what if patriarchal violence was not endemic? She also, perhaps more importantly, raises the question of: what if women behaved exactly like the men they are surrounded by?

Fast forward a couple thousand years, and Éowyn is born in Aldburg to Éomund and Théodwyn, daughter of Morwen of Lossarnach (a descendant of the Númenórean diaspora). Éowyn’s parents die, she and her brother are made wards of her uncle, Théoden, King of the Mark. Éowyn is unrecognised, generally uncared for, and she knows that owing to her gender she is denied the privileges that ought to be afforded to her by her rank. She is isolated, she is miserable, and she is angry. She is also haunted on all sides by the active and latent violence of men. There is the predation of Gríma Wormtongue, but there is the neglect of Théoden. Men either care too much or not enough about her, and in both instances she suffers terribly. Ghosts, spirits, shades, whatever, exist in Middle-Earth. They tend to not be especially morally good figures, and they tend to not be tethered to a single place.

So here’s the take: Tar-Míriel as the Mephistopheles to Éowyn’s Faust. Imagine young, lonely, desolate Éowyn being reached out to by someone who not just understands her pain, but has lived it. Unlike when she meets Faramir, however, Míriel has good reason to be deeply embittered about the moral underpinnings of the world (she was literally smote by god for something she could not change!) and no reason to have an ideological commitment to semi-pacifism. And Míriel, for having her ghostly status, will no doubt be aware that not only is there a coming war, but there is someone singularly dedicated to restoring the kingdom of the Numenorean diaspora. Yes, this kingdom is descended from a semi-discreet line to Ar-Pharazôn’s line, but why did they not try to save Míriel? And surely that is a question that will resonate with Éowyn:

All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned drowned in the house, for the men will need it no more.

Thus, Míriel and Éowyn, Tolkien’s dispossessed women, get to say, uhhh, Goodbye Eorl.

#Éowyn #e writes #-ish #kim if ur reading this i s2g I’ve been thinking about this for hours that joke has destroyed my brain ahsjaja #Tar-Míriel