Call Me Ruler by feanorusrex

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Mámandil sings to Emerwen, the shepherdess, who is Ancalimë the princess, although he does not know it.

He takes songs of epic lovers: Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, Earendil and Elwing, Thingol and Melian, and changes the names so that the ballads speak of Mámandil and Emerwen, stealing a Silmaril, sailing to Valor, piloting a ship in the stars, ruling Doriath. Ancalimë listens to his songs, but pretends not to understand their meanings, and turns away when he tries to kiss her. She is feigning this ignorance, of course. He is tolerable company, and his singing is pleasant enough, but he does not understand that she likes to hear her name in the old songs because of the level they elevate her to, not because she likes the idea of marrying him.

She wants to hear about Emerwen seducing Morgoth, walking away from the ruined Gondolin, surviving, jumping over a cliff to spite the sons of Fëanor, or turning a man's mind so completely that he forgot his name and his people all together, and wishes that the parts of the songs talking only of the women were longer. But the ballads are love songs and their whole point is that each of the pair is incomplete without the other.

Which is wrong; her own parents marriage has fallen apart so completely that she has only seen her father a few times, and lives with her mother in the countryside. Both her parents seem fine on their own. Ancalimë would not like to be finished by someone else, for it implies that she herself alone was imperfect, and she is not.

As loathe as she is to marry, Ancalimë knows that she may have to, if she wants to claim what is hers. Her family is tangled, and some say that she should not rule. Barely after her birth, her parents had begun to live apart, her father ruling, and her mother with her. Some beg Erendis, her mother, to reconcile with her father and bear an heir, a boy they mean, for the good of the kingdom.

When Ancalimë was little she feared that her mother would agree, and prayed to Uinen that it would not be so, throwing her jewelry and coins as an offering into a river at Emerië, the closest she could get to the Vala's ocean domain. Her mother hated Uinen, and Ancalimë had learned of her through others, but she would take any intercession that she could get. She wanted the scepter undisputedly as hers, with no interference from a younger brother, or sister either, though that would not be as troubling. Uinen had granted her prayers, and she remained an only child.

But now that she is older, she knew that she had nothing to fear. Erendis would never go back to Aldarion. She always calls him that to Ancalimë, not 'your father.' Erendis said that if his only child was a girl it was his own fault, for in times of trouble, the Númenoreans did not beget children so they would not be born into suffering. Her mother was from Brethil, and she had found this foreign custom idiotic. Ancalimë thinks so too because turmoil is not a valid reason to deprive oneself of pleasure, but she was glad that her father had, thereby leaving a clearer path to ascend to the throne.

She did not want to be queen right away, for now she was content to stay as Emerië, the haven her mother had built around herself, sheltering her from men and from the sea, to be Emerwen Aranel, hiding her royal identity to be free of men seeking her hand in advantageous marriage.

But someday, someday, she will leave, with a great retinue behind her, taking all the women who would go as handmaids and advisors. Her coronation will be great and glorious and while she knew that her mother had renounced the Númenorean court forever, Erendis will be very proud of her daughter, the queen.

Not the ruling queen, just the queen, for to add the adjective implies that the ordinary queen has no power, and that a special exception must be made to the queen so that she may hold office. "What if we said ruling king?" Ancalimë asks the women that she has grown up with. "How silly that would be, because the king holds power, inherently not with an added conference. In the same way, to accept the usage of the term 'ruling queen' is to…" Ancalimë's mind cuts through language, separating and rearranging it into new terms, and she thinks that maybe when she ascends to the throne, she will simply call herself a ruler, and remove the need for separate titles altogether.

"You must wed," Soronto, her cousin tells her, as her father begins to go more and more out to sea, voyaging and leaving behind the concerns of those on land. "If you are to assume your birthright."

"My birthright you say and yet you would presume to take it from me if I do not follow your commands." Ancalimë is coldly furious, her voice flat.

"But I am married, and we do have the succession of the line to think of. Your father saw this same difficulty and agreed to do so when he married your mother. And your situation is the first of its kind." A woman, he means, and Ancalimë hates him, knowing that his desire for the throne is equal with hers. She privately spits in his wine before serving it to him, and smiles sharply as he rides away, having told Soronto that she will think on the matter.

And think on it she does, for hours on end. It keeps her up at night and in the day distracts her from the idyllic life as a shepherd. Ancalimë tells no one else. Her trial is hers to bear, and her mother would be horrified to know that her daughter is even considering marrying. But Erendis wants her daughter on the throne as well, and this seems to be the only way that she can ascend to it. There is no choice that she could make that will not bring Ancalimë sorrow.

But she chooses power and marriage over happiness and staying unwed, and that afternoon she lets Mámandil kiss her for the first time, trying to feel something as he does so, telling herself that her parents began in love and fell out of it, and that she can do the opposite with him.

She briefly fears that their match would be impeded, because he is a shepherd, and it is the new law, after her father's marriage that all heirs must wed in the line of Elros. Then she will have to turn to some other man who wants her for the title, but after revealing who she really is, Ancalimë not Emerwen, he answers that he too is a noble with a false name, his real one being Hallacar, He says that he knew who she really was along, and she is infuriated, for Ancalimë hates trickery in anyone but herself, and he has gotten the upper hand in this situation. "Fine. Let us wed then," she answers, a brusk proposal, and stalks away, feeling lost at Emerië for the first time in her life.

He will not be a bad husband. He does love, at least he says, both Ancalimë and Emerwen, and his willingness to live so long as a shepherd seems to point to humility and willingness to let her rule. Not that she needs either quality, for when they wed she will have complete power, so says the law, but it is nice nonetheless. And she needs him to have the necessary heir, and she will not mind that part at least, she tells herself. He is handsome, she cannot deny that. Perhaps she will bear children in times of war, in defiance of the set custom.

Both she and Soronto know that she did not need to wed to produce a heir. The line could be passed on to another noble of her choosing- she has other cousins apart from him- but that would not do. He forces the condition upon her, and Ancalimë accepts, understanding that these things must be done in steps: she will be accepted only if she marries, but the next women will be free of this, and the women after her may be able to pick which one of her children she wants to rule, regardless of birth order and sex, who can say? Ancalimë will advance slowly, but it will because of her that Númenorian women will begin to advance at all.

When she prepares to leave Emerië, to go to and wed, she is overcome with melancholy, knowing that though she may return, things will never be the same. She pulls some of the flowers from her hair and throws them into the river, as one last offering to Uinen: let me be happy, let my reign be filled with glory. Please, she adds, not too proud to beg silently. She rides from her beloved pastures, indeed followed by women as she imagined once, and does not look back.

At her coronation, the long awaited day which she enjoys more than her wedding, Ancalimë looks directly at Soronto, flooded with sweet triumph. I won! she cries joyfully to herself, not minding that the man officiating the ceremony, some relative that she does not know, calls her a ruling queen. Ruler, she changes it in her mind every time.

"You look so powerful," says Hallacar to her, as he stands slightly behind her on the platform. "You will do your kingdom well." Ancalimë is so happy on this, the most important day of her life, that she feels kindness towards anyone, and she gives her husband the briefest of smiles.

Theirs is not a bad marriage, not wholly. Ancalimë has a baby, Anárion. During the delivery she is in more pain than her mind could have previously imagined existed, and her body twists in motions out of her control. She longs to scream, at her body for the immense torment it inflicts upon itself. But she remembers Erendis' telling her young daughter to never show weakness to any one. She is a ruler, this is her battle wound, and she bites the inside of her cheek, and she is silent. Show me a man who braved another's sword like that, she thinks, spitting out blood from where her teeth punctured the part of her mouth that she had held between them. The child that she worked so hard to produced is a boy.

She is not sure if she is disappointed or relieved about this. She wants a daughter, a girl to raise as Erendis raised her, strong and proud, confident and free despite the imposed rules of men, but none comes, and in a small part of her mind she feels herself a failure, that she could only give the kingdom what Soronto and his ilk so desperately feared, not what she herself wanted. She does not think about that. Her happiness relies on putting many things out of her mind.

At least she forgets the pain of his birth easily. It clouds over in her mind, blurring, disappearing, and she feels only protectiveness for this tiny person. It makes no sense, that people say women cannot go into battle because they lack tenacity, or courage, she thinks. She would kill anyone who touched Anárion, and she loves her country just as she loved her son, fiercely, but only as a possession, only as long as it bends only to her will and praises her in return.

Erendis, the first person that Ancalimë ever loved, dies, of drowning. Privately Ancalimë thinks that it was deliberate, as a final act of spite against her father. Her mother was not Númenorean, and could not choose when to surrender her life in their way, so she did it in her own. As for the man himself, Aldarion is on voyages more often than not, or away from court. This is fine by her, as their relationship was always cold. Her court is all women, all her age or younger, for the older would not leave their lives at Emerië, or her mother to join her. They are her friends, her companions, and the daughters she never had. If Ancalimë forbids them to wed it is because she loves them so dearly herself, and does not want them to suffer grief at the hands of men, like so many of the women she hears at her public audiences. While she will not give aid to Gil-Galad at Lindon, but she will always have mercy on these battered women, giving them shelter, aid, and death to their husbands.

And she jealous of her women's love being given to others. She cries bitterly when some run off and marry. Am I not enough for you? Did I not give you twice the riches and love that these men can offer you? Some stay with her, through the long years, and she gives them everything she and her power can offer.

As her reign progresses, Ancalimë fears that her life will be shorter than other rulers, because of her mixed heritage- Númenorean and ordinary from her mother- but she continues to live, seeing the troublesome cousin, Soronto buried, and her husband too. For all their fights, the unspoken contests between them, the tricks, and deceptions, part of her will miss him. "He was the finest spouse that a wife could have asked for," she said composedly at his funeral, not adding that she had not asked for one.

Two hundred and five years she holds the scepter, vowing to outlast her enemies, and solidify her place in the history books with this, if nothing else, so that she cannot be written out, only a name on a genealogy.

The royal portrait she commissions, soon before she renounces life- the only fight that she will ever surrender- is unusual. In it she is shown in all her royal finery, her signet ring clearly visible, that hand over the other, covering the finger that her wedding ring rests on. Her gaze is determined, hostile even, some would say, and beside her, on the ground and almost obscured, is a sword. She holds a lamb in her arms, a reminder of her life at Emerië and a tribute to Erendis, who loved that region. She is shown at middle age, not as she the young women who became the ruling queen.

Why the sword? Many asked. And why was she unsmiling? Had she not had a reign full of peace?

But Ancalimë knows that someday there will be another young girl, one who by luck of birth has come into the right of the throne, and has clings to it, not like her son's two idiot daughters who have given it up already. This future girl will have to face the same opposition and pressures that Ancalimë did, hopefully lessened by what she has done with the laws, and perhaps she will walk through the hall of the palace filled with portraits of former rulers, stopping in front of the one female face. And she will see the resting sword, not as standing for war, but standing for cutting down your enemies, and the hard face of a ruling women, challenging her audience, challenging the girl and she will leave, remembering the words of Erendis that Ancalimë took care to write over and over in her letters so that they will not be erased: Sink your roots into rock, and face the wind thought it blow away all your leaves.

It is presumptuous to consider herself as an empowering symbol for generations to come, but Tar-Ancalimë has never been above pride, and she wants nothing less than this as her legacy.

 

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Chapter End Notes

Yes, I know that I changed some tiny things about Ancalimë's life, but shhhhhh, she's such a stone cold feminist bitch, queen of my life etc, etc and I want her to be happy, and it's my story so Tolkien can physically fight me, thanks, bye.