The paper throne by Dilly

The paper throne

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From Lives of the Noble Edain and Noldor by the controversial historian Amilcar of Númenor (all copies were lost in the late Second Age) :

 

[...]

But it turned out that Fingon, the heir of Fingolfin, had little authority outside his own kingdom of Hithlum, while Maedhros, since Dagor Bragollach, constantly extended his influence in Beleriand. Fingon was unaffected by this, for he sighed neither for power nor for glory, but the crown was then a bitter grief to him, for his advisers repeated to him the slanderous words uttered by certain nobles of Mithrim and Barad-Eithel – and of which Curufin's spies had certainly been the driving force.

They said that Fingon's kingship was only a false crown, and that the crown had eventually returned to the one who had given it up in the first place. That the title of King of the Noldor was in fact first that of Maedhros, who controlled the whole of the East, and then of Finrod, king of Nargothrond. That Fingon, finally, was himself under the sway of Fëanor's eldest son, whose every idea he followed, and to whom he had secretly pledged allegiance, in the infamous confines of an alcove – according to them, King Fingon stood on his knees/all fours before Maedhros (who did not like women), in every way that it was possible to be.

Once again, Fingon was wrongly accused of felony. For such must be the fate of those whose souls are pure : such souls attract the jealousy of corrupt minds, who seek to convince themselves that they lie in their own baseness. And he lamented these rumours, both those concerning him and those concerning Maedhros. Their friendship was very old, and so exclusive in its depth that in the happy days before Formenos they had given each other a secret name. Later, after Fingon had led an expedition alone, by the force of his anger and passion, to save a friend who had betrayed him twice from torture and death, reconciliation had led the two cousins to give each other a second secret name, different from the first. No one knew what that name was, not even Maglor, Turgon, or Elrond the Wise. But it is said that the love that united them was so great that they could stay together for hours, simply gazing into each other's eyes.

[The following passage has been scratched from the scrolls to be deleted.]

But it is also said that Maedhros' successes episodically brought to the surface, from certain deep pits of the ocean that was his hard-to-define mind, waves of a sudden and morbid obstinacy, which he inherited from his grandmother Miriel. And as a result, some of the shameful rumours about Fingon came true in the last years of his life.