Unprecedented by Lyra

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Fanwork Notes

Fanwork Information

Summary:

At Finarfin's wedding feast, young Fingon surprises his family by announcing that he intends to marry Maedhros.

For the SWG 5th Birthday Celebration, Do Something That's Never Been Done theme.

Major Characters: Anairë, Fëanor, Finarfin, Fingolfin, Fingon, Finwë, Indis, Maedhros

Major Relationships:

Genre: General

Challenges: Fifth Birthday Celebration

Rating: General

Warnings:

This fanwork belongs to the series

Laws and Customs Revisited
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 678
Posted on 17 August 2010 Updated on 17 August 2010

This fanwork is complete.

Unprecedented

Read Unprecedented

An uncomfortable hush fell on the High Table. The bridegroom looked around at the mortified faces and very nearly cursed. He bit the words back at the last moment, telling himself that the only thing worse than this embarrassed silence at his wedding feast would be curses at his wedding feast.

It was his own fault, though in all honesty he could not have expected it. It was a perfectly innocent question after all! He had only meant to tease his brother's eldest son. There had been feasting, and there had been dancing; and then the musicians had taken a break, and the dancers had returned to their chairs. And Arafinwë had turned to Findekáno, who had with the awkwardly perfect manners of the young delivered the girl he had been dancing with back to her parents. "Well, Findo?" Arafinwë had said, smiling. "Who is your little friend? Will the next wedding be between you and her?"
And with the unabashedly loud voice of the young, Findekáno had declared, "Oh, I won't marry her. If I marry, it'll be cousin Russandol."

The table had fallen silent, and 'cousin Russandol' had almost choked on the sip of wine in his mouth, although Arafinwë found that he looked rather too amused and not nearly shocked enough.
"But my dear," Anairë said sternly, "you know you cannot marry Russandol."
"Why not?" said Findekáno. "I love him far better than Tantiliel or Elwendë or any other of the girls."
Nolofinwë tried to make light of the situation. "Surely you will meet a maiden that you love better than any of them, when you grow up."
Findekáno pouted. "But I don't need to. I already know that I want to marry Russandol."

Maitimo really looked far too amused, Arafinwë thought. Aloud he said, "But Findo, Russandol is a boy like you. You can't marry a boy."
Findekáno frowned. "But I thought we should marry who we love!"
"Whom," Fëanáro pointed out. "Whom we love."
"Oh honestly, Fëanáro, that's a bit beside the point," Nolofinwë snapped.
"Is it, Half-brother?"
"Oh come now! You should rather help us to explain the situation to Findo. He's obviously rather confused."
"Is he? My impression is that he is not at all confused. Seems to me that he knows perfectly well what he wants."
Nolofinwë almost growled in frustration. "But that is not the way it works! This is not funny, Fëanáro! My son is not going to marry Russandol!"
Fëanáro leaned back in his chair – even in the straight-backed stairs at their father's palace, he managed to make himself comfortable, Arafinwë thought enviously – and gave a rather wry smile, eyes glinting dangerously. "Ah, you wound me. Is my son not good enough to marry into your house?"

Nolofinwë exploded, making Findekáno's lips quiver threateningly. "That – is not – the point! He is a man, for Eru's sake! Men do not marry men; it's..."
Fëanáro tilted his head. "Yes?"
"Against all our laws and customs!" Nolofinwë finished his sentence.
"Unprecedented," their father supplied.
"Unnatural," Indis added.
Fëanáro snorted. "There can be union only of one with one," he quoted. "Not one man with one woman, incidentally, but one with one. And yet my dear father has known two wives. Where was the public outcry then? Where the thoughts of 'nature'?" He shot a glance at Indis and her children, whose faces promptly took on an unbecoming hue of red.
Finwë frowned. "Now, now, Fëanáro, you know very well how—"
"I do indeed," Fëanáro said stiffly. "It was so decreed, and so you are all happy to believe that it is right and natural. Well, if Manwë's judgement can change your laws, then let him judge again, so you can all sit back and relax and stop pestering poor Findo over his choice of partner."

He stood up and put one hand on Findekáno's shoulder.
"Ignore these fools, Findo," he said. "My blessing you have."

Comments

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Heh, glad you liked it! I'm afraid Fëanor's reaction here is pure luck, though: If Fingolfin and Finarfin had said something along the lines of "Good choice, Fingon, whatever makes you happy", Fëanor would have defended the opposite opinion! His pro gay rights position here is thus purely owned to... my own bias. I like Fëanor better than his half-brothers, so he's got to be the good guy ;)

What a delightful story! All the characters so true to themselves: transparent Findekano, shocked Nolofinwe,  not shocked enough Maitimo, clueless Finwe, embarrassed Arafinwe who finds himself in the middle of an escalating mess  and of course:

"But I thought we should marry who we love!"
"Whom," Fëanáro pointed out. "Whom we love."

Priceless. Who else could have said that?

I agree with Angelica that Feanor's correction of Fingon's speech provided a very in-character touch of levity to this ficlet! In considering the Maedhros/Fingon pairing, Feanor's reaction is one that I have always wondered about. Of course, I'm a fan of the guy, so I like to hope that he would respond just as he did here! :D But it still provides for interesting speculation in both directions.

Of course, the heretic in me can't help but notice that Feanor's remarks also relate quite nicely to the ever-present debate about "slash" in this fandom, where texts like L&C are duly trotted out to defend intolerant inclinations (I'm being nice) claiming that homosexuality could not exist in M-e. Feanor's remark on how his own father's marriage breaks those supposedly treasured "laws and customs" is a reminder of how few of those laws the Eldar themselves seemed to follow.

This is an issue very near to my heart, and I really enjoyed your work--as always!--for its insight and light touches of humor.

Heh! While Fëanor's original linguistic pet peeve would be hard to render into English without either making it look ath though he were lithping or else making him sound Shakespearean ("HATH! not has! dammit"), Modern English fortunately offers sufficient other occasions for some Fëanorian nit-picking ;) Glad it works for you!

Actually this snippet was written with exactly that debate in mind, and in fact your observation about the possibility of breaking the L&C was originally intended to be the 'punchline' - I was convinced that the line Fëanor quotes in the ficlet was actually "between one ner and one nis". Imagine my surprise and glee when - once I was done with the first draft and actually went to check my copy of Morgoth's Ring - I found that the sentence in question isn't at all directed against homosexuality, but rather against polygamy. So the anti-slashers have even less of a point! ;D (While I'll admit that there's probably just no mention of homosexuality in the L&C because Tolkien never entertained the notion that anyone might think of it in connection with marriage laws, in the end that's just speculation! ARRR.)

And because I've started to ramble anyway, I shall now bore you with the real life backstory of this lil' piece, namely, an episode that happened 20 years ago at a neighbourhood barbecue in my parents' garden: I have no idea how the topic came up (it was, after all, 20 years ago), but for some reason my then BFF and I declared that we were going to marry each other. Cue variations of "But you're both girls!" and "But you can't!" from our parents, except for my father, who just said "Well, if you still want to marry when you're grown up, you could go to Holland, it's allowed there." (By the time we actually were grown up, it would've been allowed in Germany as well, of course - but by that time we'd somehow fallen appart. And in love with guys, too. But it's nonetheless nice to know that it would've worked out if we'd turned out to swing that way!)
So in a way, my dad has unsuspectingly inspired Fëanor's reaction here. Go figure (go dad!) ;) Anyway, that was random - my apologies! I'll shut up now. Thank you for your comment, and I'm glad that you enjoyed the story!

Heh! As I told poor Dawn in my endless comment, this is vaguely based on something that happened when I was still small, cute and innocent. So yes, I quite agree that these things happen...

Fëanor has to serve once again to express something I can't believe some canatics seem to keep missing: That the LaCE are not set in stone, that they can be broken or overruled, and that an example of just that happening is provided right then and there in the very same book... and yet people will keep saying things like "But it isn't canon!!!1!eleventyone!!" ? (Let alone that, once the HoME comes into play, "canon" is a rather fuzzy term anyway...

All these serious considerations aside, I'm also glad you found it funny. :)

Loved your Feanor here, both his linguist/loremaster background coming to the fore in the nitpicking and reference checking and his personal background that pointed a huge spotlight on the hypocrisy of that particular group of people going “oh no, how could you possibly contemplate doing something not 100% approved by the L&C!” And maybe just enjoying being contrary, and irritating his brothers :D