The Chief in a Village by Himring

Chapter 2

Fingon Has the Blues.

In Beleriand: Turgon, Aredhel and Idril have left for Gondolin, so Fingon is left to deal with his father's reaction.

Quenya names: Turukano=Turgon, Feanaro=Feanor,  Angarato=Angrod, Aikanaro=Aegnor, Pityo and Telvo=Amrod and Amras, Findarato=Finrod, Nolofinwe=Fingolfin

My father took Turukano’s departure for Gondolin hard. I do not think my brother was conscious of how hard he was taking it. All afire with the vision of his hidden city and blinded by ardent hope to the thoughts and doubts of others, Turukano did not perceive how my father with one glance had taken the measure of his son’s determination and suppressed all possible objections.

Ulmo had spoken, it seemed. My father had withstood the Wrath of the Valar in order to follow Feanaro, but Feanaro was dead and gone. Now, as father and as King, Nolofinwe did not feel he could go against the will of a Vala who offered survival to any of his family and his subjects.

And yet he felt their desertion keenly. Doom or no, it betrayed a lack of faith in his judgement and guidance that hurt his pride. Moreover, the former allegiance of Nevrast was weakened and diminished and that hurt rather more than just his pride. Yet he swallowed his pride and sacrificed all other considerations to the chance of safety for his beloved children and his only granddaughter. He let them go without a single complaint or utterance of self-pity.

They went and with them went Glorfindel and Ecthelion, Duilin and Galdor and Egalmoth and others. I was to miss them all sorely, even Salgant—especially Salgant, who had always been good for a laugh and a joke or two, even if his puns were something terrible.

And so, of his closest relatives, my father was left only with me. He did not unburden himself to me. I would not have been his chosen confidant, even if he had wished to do so, and Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor in Endore, was past wishing to admit the full extent of his hurt to anyone.

But he wanted me by his side—and that he let me know in no uncertain terms. No sooner had I reached Dor-lomin after our last leave-taking than a messenger arrived summoning me to Barad Eithel. I dropped any plans I had formed and quickly made my way northeast to support my father, only to find that this was to be the first of many similar journeys. He summoned me again and again. I found these summons almost impossible to dodge, for what I might have tried to refuse my father, I could not refuse to the High King, and what I might have tried to refuse the High King, I could not refuse to the desolate father.

At first, of course, I did not even wish to dodge his summons. But as time went on and my father tried to keep me permanently in Barad Eithel, impatient of any attempts I made to delay my return there just a little longer, I found myself having to delegate more and more of the actual governance of Dor-lomin to others. Year by year, I felt the reins slipping from my hands. It was not that my representatives were not trustworthy or that Dor-lomin was misgoverned, as far as I could tell—it just no longer felt as if it was truly myself who was handling affairs. And so, when the time came, I handed over Dor-lomin gladly to Hador Lorindol of the Edain—much in the same spirit as a boy might hand over his beloved toys to a younger brother on going off to school, taking comfort in the confidence that at least they will be cherished by another, even if he can no longer do so himself.

As the eldest of my siblings, I had, of course, always been my father’s heir apparent, and the train of events beginning with my grandfather’s death had quickly made that more than the empty word it had seemed in Tirion. But now my father began harping on the matter. I suppose that was logical enough; the loss, for now, of Turukano meant there was no readily available alternative, and the prophecy of Ulmo would have reminded him sharply of the risks he himself was facing. Having been used to running things largely my own way in Dor-lomin, I found the tasks my father now increasingly devised for the heir of Hithlum a somewhat thankless proposition. Status as heir seemed to come with a lot of responsibilities but without the corresponding powers to match them.

On one occasion, I immersed myself, on my father’s orders, in the adjudication of a complex litigation over fishing rights in the upper reaches of Sirion that had been simmering for decades. It took me months to make myself familiar with all the ins and outs of the position of the five parties involved. I finally worked out a compromise that I hoped was fair and acceptable to everyone—only to have one of the parties appeal over my head to my father and to have my judgement overridden by him.

I was sure my father had his reasons. Unfortunately, it did not seem to occur to him that he had not sufficiently explained them to me, that maybe he should have done so and, what is more, that it would have been better if he had warned me in time if he considered I was taking the wrong tack in my investigation rather than undermining the standing of his appointed judge. He only looked baffled and irritated when I ventured to hint that all this would probably have been self-evident to him if I had not happened to be his son. Unfortunately, it was not the first comparable incident.

Being the heir, it turned out, involved other complications as well. My father was now desperate for more grandchildren, it seemed, and started badgering me about the absolute necessity of producing an heir of my own. This, I felt, was both unduly pessimistic and unduly optimistic. How likely was it that both of us would be killed in battle so quickly one after the other, except in the course of a defeat so absolute that there would be nothing worth speaking of left to inherit?

My father reminded me, pointedly, that there were more ways of getting killed in Beleriand than in open battle and started to trot a whole parade of possible brides past me at every opportunity. One of them, Erien, was by way of being a friend of mine and, becoming aware of this, my father began thrusting us together in the most embarrassing way. I was very much disconcerted, both by his stubborn insistence and by the marked reluctance I felt to engage in any of this. I looked around me and noticed something I had only been subliminally been aware of, before.

The birth rates of the Noldor in exile were very low. On the face of it, the Noldor of Hithlum might be staunch optimists who claimed to believe that Morgoth could be successfully contained and, with a bit of additional effort and luck, overthrown. But their patterns of courtship gave the lie to this. Betrothals were prolonged for no obvious reason, there were few weddings, and even fewer of those who did marry had children. Whatever they claimed, my people had not forgotten the Prophecy of the North. Or at least those who lived in the border countries had not—I believed birth rates might be somewhat higher in Nargothrond and perhaps also, now, in Gondolin.

Standing on the walls of Barad Eithel and looking down and across the valley of Sirion, I was surprised to realize how trapped I felt. Was it just being reminded of the Doom that had done this? Surely I had not really been naïve enough to believe it was done with and forgotten? And that the fabled freedom of Middle-earth was riddled with constraints of every kind was hardly news, either. What was so alarming and confining about marrying Erien? We liked each other, after all, even if we were not exactly in love, and would do well enough together. And could I really argue against my father’s reasoning that an heir was needed? It wasn’t as if I had an unconquerable aversion to children!

No, I decided. I was simply overworked. That ugly little tussle over fishing rights had unnerved me. What I needed, clearly, was a break, a holiday. I would go and visit Angarato and Aikanaro and see how they were getting along… I looked toward Dorthonion and, immediately, before my inner eye, there appeared a mental image of a whole string of my father’s messengers pursuing me all the way to Angarato and Aikanaro’s front door, only too keen to haul me back to Barad Eithel to heir’s duties and marriage.

Dorthonion, I decided, was simply not far enough. I needed to go farther away, somewhere my father’s messengers would take a lot longer to find me. Somewhere I could lose myself a bit, somewhere like East Beleriand. Indeed, why not visit Pityo and Telvo? If Findarato and the others could afford to go there for field trips of one kind or another, why not I?