#we have one grandchild of finwë who survives to the second age out of fifteen and that’s a very very bad rate)

[erynalasse]

I wonder when the Noldor looked around at their dwindling numbers and realized that they were dying faster than they could ever keep up with.

#tolkien #silmarillion #I actually have a lot of feelings about this #because the noldor that come over from Valinor are pretty much all you get for the first age’s long war #birth rates are also in the basement if they exist at all #elves don’t have children during war #even if the siege of Angband is peaceful enough to relax that custom #I still don’t think you would have many children #elves have known war before - we know they did before the great journey #but it’s also got to be sobering to realize that your casualty rates are literally unsustainable #(like so #the house of finwë probably isn’t a representative sample of casualty rates #but damn the big picture still can’t be good #we have one grandchild of finwë who survives to the second age out of fifteen and that’s a very very bad rate) #what does that DO to a people group #to go from immortal and undying #to accepting that your whole clan is getting whittled down chunk by chunk #when did they start realizing that even if they beat Morgoth #they wouldn’t recognize the survivors