Chance's Strange Arithmetic by Ithilwen

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Fanwork Notes

This story is an alternate history, written for the "Maglor throughout History" Silmfics challenge.  Thanks go to my beta-reader Maia, whose help with this story was invaluable.

Maglor is the creation of J. R. R. Tolkien, but the other major characters in this tale belong to themselves, and now to God; no disrespect to them or to their families is intended.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

In the trenches of a French battlefield, two young British officers and a forgotten figure from the dim past have a fateful encounter.  Violence, character death.

Major Characters: Maglor, Original Character(s)

Major Relationships:

Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Drama

Challenges:

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Character Death, Violence (Moderate)
Chapters: 4 Word Count: 7, 221
Posted on 28 June 2009 Updated on 28 June 2009

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

The Scholar
The Private
The Lieutenant
The Sum of the Equation

Comments

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I adored this story when I first read it on your website, and still do, despite the unhappy ending. I love the idea that Maglor went on through the ages (doubtlessly meeting lots of important people and witnessing lots of important events for the sake of fanfic writers ;)), and this kind of-almost-encounter with Tolkien is both heartbreaking and strangely satisfying in that line. Thank you for reminding me of this story!

 

I'm glad you liked this story; it's one of my personal favorites as well.  To me, it's Tolkien who has the sad ending here, coming so close to meeting one of the sons of Feanor only to miss the chance because of a fluke of fate.  Maglor at least gets to go home and rest (even if the actual going process is painful).

Wow, Ithilwen...I loved this.  It's the first story I've read on this site, so it was a fabulous welcoming present!  I love to read of WW1 and the courage of those men in the face of such futile carnage, and I've always admired Owen's poetry.  Putting Maglor and Tolkien in there as well, and having the three of them sort-of meet, was touching and slightly frustrating (part of me wishes we could have seen a conversation between Tolkien and Maglor, but I know that the way you handled it was best for the story).  Thank you so much - gorgeous work!

Thanks for the lovely comments, Narya.  I'm glad you liked the story so much!  This one's always been a personal favorite; WWl was such an influence on Tolkien's later works.  If you'd like to sample another, very different "Maglor and Tolkien in WWl" story, check out Lipstick's fic "Captain Tinkerbelle" (which you can find at HASA and ff.net, but unfortunately not here); it was written for the same challenge.

This is a wonderfully heartrending story. I love that Tolkien found the Red Book first, before "meeting" Maglor. It made the latter's death all the more sorrowful, because of the "what if they had actually met and talked" factor.

A would-be vocalist, Owen speculated when he first heard the man singing, whose youthful dreams were crushed when someone finally told him the truth: that he simply does not have enough talent to sing professionally.

This line, more than any others in the story, shows exactly how far Maglor has faded. And I love its power.

I'm glad I managed to break your heart with this fic; I nearly broke mine while writing it.  To me, all of WWl is about "what might have been" because it was such a foolish waste of so many young lives.  That was the feeling I was trying to capture in this story.

(And I too find the thought of Maglor, of all people, being regarded as "not talented enough to sing professionally" almost inexpressibly sad.)

I'm not sure if I'd read this before; but this is a gorgeous story, though terribly sad.  It also explains some of the wistfulness and sorrow of the late Third Age Elves, who are leaving Middle-earth just when the great and long struggle against Sauron ends; victory is bittersweet, because their beauty and wisdom will leave the world of Men. 

Interesting inclusion of Wilfred Owen in the story - he is a compelling foil to Tolkien, in real life, history, and philosophy/literature. 

Thanks you for the kind comments, Raksha; I'm glad you liked the story.  That tone of wistful sorrow which is present in both The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion was exactly what I was hoping to achieve here, because to me it has echos in WWl; we're left wondering what all those young men who died in that war would have accomplished had they lived.  And of course that war also marks the end of the Edwardian period, and the death of a particular form of society which we'll never see again.  

Owen struck me as the perfect foil for both Maglor and Tolkien in this tale for precisely those reasons.  Like Maglor, he's a poet of prodigious talent; unlike Tolkien, he didn't live long enough to fulfill his obvious promise.  I'm glad you thought his inclusion worked.