In The Interest of Historical Accuracy by Duilwen

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Prologue: In which the author, noting the inadequacy of existing accounts of the motivations, movements, and dispensation of the supporters of the House of Fëanor, sets out to redress such

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For ships and jewels they sold their souls,

And ships and jewels they burned;

The Dark they named their blackest foe,

but 'twas his ends they served.

                        - children's rhyme recorded in Eregion, S.A. 1531

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If I'm truthful with myself (and I do try to be; self-deception, it is said, is at the root of greater evils), it started because I was bored.

I had no right to be; I was young, still, barely out of my first century, and already accounted a notable scholar. I had achieved something approaching notoriety, in truth,  through my work on recording the everyday life of my people.

(It had surprised me, when I first arrived at Ost-in-Edhil, to realize that this was not already done. Epic tales we had aplenty: magnificent tapestries depicting the High Kings of the first age in all their heroic glory, lays beyond count celebrating the splendor of the Host of the West, when at last it arrived, hundreds of leather-bound books recounting, and recounting again, every detail of our military triumphs and even our defeats. All of the latter, of course, were laid squarely at the feet of the Kinslayers.)

 But there was not a single book in the vast libraries of our capital city describing, for instance, our marriage customs. What the commoners ate. What songs the children sang, and how they passed their time. If some stranger encountered the libraries of our people ten thousand years hence, they would know precisely how many troops came forth from hidden Gondolin on the morning of the Nirnaeth, and how they were arrayed, and how their banners were decorated; but they would be left completely ignorant of how a hidden city in a forbidden mountain range managed to grow its own food.

I was (I shall not bother with false humility) brilliant, precocious, and driven, prone to noticing things that other people missed; so when I noted this glaring inadequacy in our historical records, I set about redressing it. I recorded the traditions of our people. I set our children's rhymes to paper, ignoring the mutterings of those who thought it a waste of good parchment. I interviewed the Exiles about the customs of Valinor, the refugees of Gondolin about the agriculture question, the survivors of Doriath about ventilation and waste disposal in Menegroth.

I was, in hindsight, terribly insensitive, but everyone tolerated me, perhaps because I was young and looked even younger, or perhaps because I sincerely had no idea how rude I was.

By the time I had reached my majority, I had written three books and invented an entirely new field of study, and I happily spent the next several decades expanding on it.

And then I got bored.

My first treatise on child-rearing customs across the Elven-Kingdoms of Middle-earth was groundbreaking; my second, though far more thorough and more accurate, was passé. When I published the third, people smiled politely at me and asked behind my back, "Is he still going on about that?"

I came to understand that it was the idea of my work that interested people, not the work in itself. The idea that our daily lives, as much as our battles, were a matter of study and interest, to be recorded - that was fascinating, groundbreaking. It challenged our whole notion of our roles as scholars. It was tremendously interesting to debate over, and everyone had an opinion.

The actual work - well, that was dull, and rather tedious, and unnecessary now that the point had been made, wasn't it?

I suppose that the principled thing to do would have been to stand firmly on the ground I'd staked out for myself, and proudly continue my research. But, see, it's easy to stand undaunted in the face of criticism. What's difficult is to stand undaunted in the face of indifference. And so when the disapproval of my ideas faded to indifference, I got bored. I gave up.

And that meant I needed a new project. Preferably something highly controversial, problematic, and yet intellectually defensible - something that would again set the scholars of Ost-in-Edhil  snapping at each other like wargs. 

I told my tutors that I thought our people needed a version of our histories written from the perspective of the Kinslayers.

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"But the Kinslayers are dead!" you say. Strictly speaking, the bodies of Maedhros and Maglor were never found, and there are more than a few witnesses who insist they have heard Maglor singing on the shoreline (always from a great distance) - but yes, you're right. Trying to find a Fëanorian to ask my questions was obviously a futile endeavor. 

(No, I did not even consider troubling Lord Celebrimbor. I like stirring up trouble, but I am not suicidal.)

But the very fact that you would ask such a question reflects the appalling gap in the knowledge of our people about the Kinslayers. Because, of course, there weren't just the seven of them. Mighty fighters though they were, the sons of Fëanor did not singlehandedly conquer Doriath, or ruin Sirion; they did not raise the Peredhil twins alone in the wilderness. Even at the bitter end, when it is said that they themselves regretted their terrible oath, and begged the One that it be lifted - even then, they had followers. A whole army of followers.

And the followers were bound by no Oath.

Why, then, did they stay? What could possibly have drawn them to murder Elves? Beleriand was flooded with refugees in that time; they could have found shelter anywhere, joined the flood of the displaced and frightened, fought with their people instead of against them.

These were the questions I meant to get answered, to the horror of the scholars of Ost-in-Edhil (though their eyes lit up with delight at the prospect, and they debated it long into the night, and I knew that their horror was for the sake of propriety; their naked curiosity was as strong as my own.)

I had a long list of questions for the Kinslayers.

 

The only problem was finding them.

After the War of Wrath, they had moved east and south; they were not welcome in Mithlond, for obvious reasons, and in Oropher's kingdom (where the remnant of Doriath had settled) they had been outright threatened with another Kinslaying. It was said that some of them had gone farther east still.

 But some of them had returned here, and Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel had reluctantly granted them permission to settle in the hilly lands in the north of Eregion. Their settlements (assuming that they indeed existed) were marked on no maps, and paid no taxes; they had not been seen in Eregion's cities in ten yení. 

I was no adventurer, but to a scholar the call of knowledge is as the call of the Sea to the Teleri, or as the call of the Silmarils to the madmen I was about to seek out, and once the thought was in my head I could not be free of it. So in the spring of my hundred-and-seventh year, against the advice of everyone I knew, I packed an obscene amount of lembas, a bow (with which I was barely competent, but no one needed to know that) for protection and game, and several leather-bound, empty books for my research, and I set off to find the Kinslayers.

 

I found them.

 

This is their story.