The Right to Rule by feanorusrex

Chapter 1

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Tar-Telperiën is good at embroidery. All kinds of being actually, delicate needle work, making clothes, fixing tears, although she doe snot have to do the last two things for herself, because she is the Ruling Queen of all of Númenor, and has many servants.People are surprised when she says that she enjoys sewing, embroidery most of all. “You enjoy things like that?” Comes the tentative question. Things like that meaning feminine things. Thing that women do. “Because,” says the second part of the question, the part that people keep to themselves, although Tar-Telperiën knows that they are thinking it. “You are so much like a man, thinking, and ruling, that how could you like sewing too?” It is incongruous to the askers that she can like both, and not wholly fit into their idea of a man or a women. In these times, she could suggest that sewing, or ruling, or anything are simply actions, that can and should be undertaken by both sexes, but she usually does not, letting the comments go, nodding and smiling, a womanly thing to do. “Yes, I enjoy it,” she replies.

As she grew up, no one ever told her that she would be the ruler. Yes, she was taught lessons, sewing, mathematics and politics, but she was not told that all this was directed to making her a good future ruler. Though she was the first born, her father never mentioned her birthright, and she discovered it on her own, while perusing a book of Númenorean laws. “I shall be the Ruling Queen,” the young girl had thought, sitting back on her heels on the bench where she had knelt above the heavy tomb. “Just as it says here. I have not other siblings, and I will not renounce my right.” She had looked out the window, seeing the sky, sea, and lands differently now. “I am to be the Ruling Queen. And all this kingdom shall be mine.”

She mentioned it to her father, having held in the wonderful secret as long as she could. Telperiën did not understand why she had not been told about from birth, perhaps not to spoil her, but she was twelve already, and she should have been told. But she was mainly happy as she showed her father the book, pointing to the law with her finger so he could not miss it. Maybe he had only forgotten. “Right?” Telperiën had asked, worried that she had missed something and that he would correct her, like her tutors when she made an obvious mistake.

“Yes- very good, Tel,” he had replied, like an adult did when a child made a true but inconvenient statement. “But many things may change before you come of age. You could marry and the title pass to your husband. You could even renounce your right to rule.” He said this last option as is it were an amusing option for a day trip, possible, pleasant.

“I would never do that!” She had replied, stung that he had not forgotten and would keep such important information from her. “And the law says that a women may rule if she is the first born, which I am. even if I marry the right will still be mine.”

“The law does say that,” her father replied, and Telperiën had hated him in that moment, knowing that to be given anything less than what she had found would be unfair. She detested unfairness.

She had picked up the book, lugging it under her arm and stalked off down the hall, her words echoing in her head, determined, a battle cry. My right. My right. 

And she had gotten it, in the end. If Tar-Telperiën held tighter to her rule than all the men before her, who could blame her?

The main complaint against her, for all her reign, is that she has dared to go forth into the realm of men. That Tar-Telperiën had the audacity to be a woman loudly and in public. This she proudly would admit to. The second is that she refuses to marry and have children, that with her example she is driving women out of their homes, encouraging them to deny their basic roles as mothers and wives, thereby ripping society to shreds.

The papers and speeches that carry such sentiments- which she lets exist because they are part of a free society, although she hates it sometimes and longs to have them shut down, knowing that she holds the power to do- ignore the fact that women have always done such things, albeit in smaller numbers. The queen watches proudly as in her reign more women than ever become artisans, teachers, scholars. Telperiën puts women in her government, to great consternation, and in her navy to greater. Women are not just left to wait on the docks by the sea anymore, they sail forth, west with men, or without them, on their own ships when they are barred entrance on existing ones because of the supposed bad luck that they bring. A pregnant woman even delivers her baby on a months long all female voyage, and Tar-Telperiën thinks that is this is going against traditional society, then that society can burn to the ground and she will gladly scatter its ashes.

This is one of the reasons why she clings to life so forcefully, because she knows that so much of this progress is contingent upon her staying in power. Though she has female ministers, and though her successor will be Minastir, her nephew, a good man who she instructs about creating a fair society for men and women as much as she can, Telperiën still worries because Minastir is still a good man, and so much of her carefully laid plans, the edicts, the funding, the public support, may be dismantled after her death. There are those who would see it done.

As for discouraging woman from marriage and childbearing, it is true that Telperiën has never married, but she has also never degraded those who did.

She likes children well enough, and if she had married and born one, of course she would have loved it to the best of her ability. But she has no husband and does not want one, so she contents herself with watching the children of others, the infants often brought into the place accompanying their mothers as they were still nursing or too small to be left alone. To her marriage holds no interest. It is simply an agreement of loyalty between two parties, with a physical side added to distinguish it from friendship. Friendship she already has, with women and with men, and she had never wanted the second thing, not even as a youth. 
She is purely herself, complete, Tar-Telperiën, not needing another, not wanting. She only lusts for life, the longest quality of it that she can get.

Life. She clutches it with both hands, exceeding the limits set by former kings. She craves life, continued existence, continuing to be, to experience everything, not to miss a single moment, decision, or invention of the future. It is not youth that she wants, fickle, fading. Tar-Telperiën does not care about beauty, as she tells the young women she meets they are so much more than just their looks, but life itself- that she wants and her soul may have to be rent from her body, for she could not see herself giving it up willingly.

When her scant experiences with physical relations proved disappointing, Tar- Telperiën initially told herself that it was because the other was not skilled enough, or because she did not feel strongly enough. With someone else it would be different, better, enjoyable, but eventually she replied that she did not desire anyone, and dropped her searching entirely. Even if she had wanted to marry, would she? Would she have seen her marriage as a diminishment of self, as a ceding of her power? Tar-Ancalimë, the first woman to rule had a husband because she was forced to, and he had not usurped her power. But Tar-Telperiën is not sure that she would want to take that chance. The door of the hen house should not be left open, even if all of the foxes are tame.

Tar- Telperiën embroiders during her council’s meetings, whatever project she is currently working on. Right now it is a series of tapestries depicting the history of Númenor from Elros and on, with extra care to show Tar-Ancalimë. She sits at the head of the room, robed, crowned, working her needle in and out, listening speaking without breaking her work. “Why do you do that?” asks Merlimé, one of her personal guards, the first women to be trained as such, but not the last. “Does it not cause them to lose respect for you, to see you doing such a womanly thing?” For while the ruler may appoint other positions, the council seats remain until death, the members left over from the last king. Her council is all men, and not all are friendly to her, but Telperien takes comfort in the fact that at the end of her rule she can leave X with all women.

“My embroidery is a constant reminder to them that I am a woman, just as my crown tells them that I am the ruler. I will let them forget neither. And I have never put stock in respect only granted to me because I act only as a man.” This is true, and Tar-Telperiën’s public reason, but in truth she had begun to do so because the council meetings were quite incredibly dull. She listens, takes in the necessary information, leaves with her current work closer to completion, and irritates some members to no end. A victory on all fronts.

Had there been a war she would have embroidered during those councils too, her needle moving across the fabric in blood red and armor gray. But there has not been a war, or even a hint of one in all her years as ruler, and if the alliances that she thinks about every night hold, there is no danger of one.

Tar-Telperiën, she always adds her title when thinking of her name because ruling is such an important and dominating part of her life, is a good ruler, she hopes, she tries to be. She is loved by many women in the kingdom, and almost as many men. She will release her spirit the moment when she feels that she can no longer do them good, but that moment eludes her for now. She sits with her elven allies, examining their timeless faces, ageless eyes, and wishes herself like them. Never to fade or to perish naturally. But with long life comes deeper sorrows. She has lost so many friends and Minastir is all the she has left of her brother and his wife. And yet she continues on, for them in a way, determined to taste the years that they could not. And for herself too, of course, because she enjoys the power that she holds; Telperiën cannot lie about that, not even to herself. She looks out over her kingdom, seeing it as hers, the child that she never bore, something carefully cultivated, raised from birth, causing sorry and pain, anger and worry, but at the end of it all something that she would give her life to protect and something that she loves beyond measure.

Her name is close to the Elvish word, Telperion, the silver tree in the West that once gave the light of evening. Even when it has died, the tree’s final act had been to bear the fruit that even now sails in the dark sky, illuminating the night, controlling the tides that are so very important to Númenorean life. I am Telperiën, she thinks, to my people. I am their guardian, their protector, the one who watches over their sleep. She would never voice this to anyone, patriotism in a man is arrogance in a woman. But she looks towards the moon anyway, thinking of that tree, her namesake. “I give light to this kingdom,” she thinks. It is her honor, her privilege, and her right.

 

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Chapter End Notes

Reviews are super great please. Ancalimë, Miriel, and some of the black numenorean ladies to come.