And After A Time The Elf-Kings by Aerlinn

Blaming The Noldor For Everything: an introduction

In the year __, certain lords of the Noldor, feeling great pity for their newfound humans, decided it was not, in fact, a good thing to as they put it "dwell together without order". Now this was somewhat ironic as the great lords themselves had fled Valinor to escape any sort of order placed on them by others: but they were Noldorin and the Noldor in general just loved to order things, just as long as it were them doing the ordering.

The Atani, or secondborn, or aftercomers, or sickly, etc. - these were all names given in perfectly respectful friendship, of course - seemed to thrive on disorder, the poor things. The lords attributed this to their short lifespan, and possible frailty of the mind: there seemed to be no rational explanation for it. To worsen matters, they seemed to have a bad influence on their own increasingly disorderly retinue. Marriages were sealed with direct intercourse! Court ceremonies occasionally disrupted by sneezing Atani! Wild dancing parties that lasted until late into the night without involving any ceremony at all! Gratuitous butchering of the beautiful language of Quenya! But worst of all, they seemed to have no leaders.

The Atani had been friendly with the Moriquendi before they ever met the Noldor, and this unfortunate influence was still quite obvious to the great lords. They had respect for them, the Caliquendi, because they were tall, emitted light and seemed to them near divine. This seemed among the Atani to be enough reason to obey a person, most of the time. They did not, however, always distinguish between one Noldo or another. This led to servants with much inflated egos and lords of great importance treated with less importance than they very well deserved.

It had also come to their attention that their leaders - if one could call them such - changed even more frequently than they ended up dying ( which was often enough already). At first they suspected a power struggle of sorts. But after a while it became clear that though there was a power struggle, it seemed oddly friendly and involved no brothers pointing swords at each others throats as far as they could see. The Atani, it seemed, willingly relinquished their positions of power. This to the lords was very unnatural: as far as they were concerned, one only relinquished a position of power when killed, and expected someone to at least keep a seat warm in case one was reborn. Not only did the Atani die all over the place in the most random of fashions, their entire society seemed equally unstructured. All this was greatly upsetting, and it came as a surprise to no one, safe probably the Atani themselves, when the lords released their official Statement For The Good Of Everyone, which contained much flowery language and diplomatically condescending ideas but in the end came down to:

We are going to help you because obviously you are a mess and cannot do anything well by yourselves. And if your people would please remove themselves from our direct presence, you are encouraging the disrespectful streak in our Sindarin and silvan subjects. Thank you most cordially,

A Concerned Group of Elven Kings, advisors and Lords

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The Sindarin messenger squirmed most uncomfortably at being told to deliver this particularly respectful piece of politics, but relied on the thought that his mortal friends would, at least, probably recognise him as neither Noldo or Lord and redirect their inevitable resulting hostility. He packed some extra miruvor just in case though, and hoped for the best.

It surprised probably no one, except the Sindarin and silvan subjects, when the messenger returned not only unscathed but also covered in flower wreaths and smelling quite strongly of the Atani's most excellent wine. The latter was not quite that much a surprise as he was, after all, Sindarin, but the flower wreaths were definitely an unsuspected addition. The fragmented story that reached the ears of the very pleased Lords Of The Noldor between hiccups smelled not only of wine but also of a most pleasant combination hero worship and idealisation. To this odd variant of mortal attraction to people prettier than they we owe an infinitude of things: early Númenórean preference for Elvish dress styles; the success archieved in Gondor by re-installing a King after generations of semi-democracy; the conviction that everything sounds better in Quenya; the resulting extinction of several original human languages; a distrust for the Avarin culture; the inclusion of the word "star" in just about everything as often as possible by any respectable person; the long-held belief that pale, luminous skin and light, possibly light-emitting eyes are indicators of a good character; the resulting genocide of the Drúedain and various other peoples who did not meet these particular conditions; several bad imitations of elvish musical composition that nevertheless became immensely popular: the existence of a betrothal period: the gracefulness of certain ladies; the conviction that this is their natural state that keeps them so; the mythological statue of Finrod Felagund; the general mystique surrounding his person, chiefly connecting him to various Sun deities; the resulting violent cult of Finrod-The-Saviour in the Fourth Age; its much later pacification and absorption into Apollonian worship and the fact that Apollo has a harp at all. And yet another thing: the evil and magnificent structures of much of early human society including, but not limited to: feudal lords, official beheadings, inflated egos, hereditary leadership, thralls, extremely poor people and professional knights.

The few Noldor who remained in later ages saw the various disastrous results of their well-intended teachings and for the remainder of their time in Endórë replied to any question by mortals ever with “Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no" with the very straightest face they could manage and hoped the collective memory of the Atani was just as pathetically short as they had always told them it to be.