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I'm always surprised when I come across a fic that amazes me and find that no one else sees fit to express the same.

The thing I love most about this is Curvo. He's my favorite brother because of his complexity. I don't believe he's a blood-thirsty monster, but I don't think he'd win the nice guy of Beleriand award either. You've hit that balance nicely. (And I love, "Marry his daughter?" with a shrug. Foreshadowing...)

The other thing I adore is Curvo's relationship with Nelyo. Since reading one of Dawn's shorter pieces about Nelyo's reaction to Fëanáro naming Curvo after himself (name escapes me), I've been fascinated by their (awkward) dynamic, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the glimpse into their past.

I am doubly intrigued by the end notes. I've always thought Nelyo's response was designed to defuse Noldorin tempers and didn't realize there were people who thought it was meant to annoy Sindar (I am so Noldorin-biased I shouldn't even try to deal with them. Thingol suffers mightily by my pen...). It's an interesting concept.

The other thing needling at me is the concept of 'Maedhros' circlet'. Namely, he had one? And where did I miss it?

Your Tyelpo=win, by the way. He's such a... teenager.

Thanks for sharing this.

What a lovely review! Thank you very much for taking the time to write it! (I liked your "In the Dark" story about Curvo a lot, but I'm afraid I wasn't reviewing when I read it.) This is a very Maedhros-centred (not to say Maedhros-obsessed) series, so I'm very glad that you think the relationship between the two brothers convincing. Yes, I was thinking of Dawn's story Essecarme, too, and also of Dawn's story Paper (although I've done things a bit differently here). Other aspects of Curvo are only just touched on here, I feel, but I'm happy the character as a whole seems to work for you. As for the council scene and Nelyo's comment on Thingol, the only actual treatment of that council scene in fanon that I seem to remember having come across at the moment is a cartoon by 7hot-Feanorians (aka Lady Celebroch of Lindon) on Deviant Art, which has a completely different angle (hilarious, by the way), but I felt sure that anyone of the school who believes that Maedhros is cold and uncaring and that the Feanorians always utterly despised the Sindar anyway would read that council scene as evidence for their case. Good to read that you don't think my interpretation is as AU as I thought it might be considered. As for the copper circlet that Maedhros wore, others would be able to answer this more confidently than I, but as far as I know, it is not mentioned in the published Silmarillion and occurs only once in HoME, in the Shibboleth of Feanor, so it has about as much authority as Fingon's gold-threaded braids. I suspect that, as far as Tolkien is concerned, it's etymological overkill, really; that is, he's called Russandol=Copper-Top not only because he had red/redbrown/brown hair with copper highlights, depending on which source you're looking at, but also because he wore a copper circlet. But I don't remember whether the Shibboleth itself actually says this.