The Line of Kings by Michiru

Academic Discussion

Young Artaher sits in as his father and uncle offer conflicting theories about the motivating force behind Thingol’s ban.

First Age Year 70

            “You know you’ve offended Thingol,” Ingoldo-who-is-now-Finrod murmured over the table, not quite looking Father in the eyes. Artaher, sitting low in a high-backed chair meant for adults, sunk so that only his eyes were level with the tabletop, ready to duck if Father got angry. It wasn’t that Father got violent when angry, not the way Tyelperinquar’s father did. When Father was angry he talked, and something about the unending litany of words spilling over words reminded Artaher of that day when the Light died and Great-grandfather was murdered and Fëanáro—newly king and mad with grief—damned himself to the Everlasting Darkness.

            Most of his uncles and their cousins had learned some degree of forge-work from Fëanáro as children. Father had learned speech-craft, the subtleties of the written and spoken word.

            Father scoffed, head bent low over the table as he carefully transcribed a draft account of the stock of Dorthonion’s larder into the storeroom logbook. It was to be the first winter their people spent in Dorthonion, and they would most likely be cut off from any outside aid. Father was almost fanatical in his drive to be prepared, that those few under his and Uncle Aikanáro’s command would not suffer. Artaher would be sent to Dor-lómin before Dorthonion’s early winter set in, since Father had received no reply from Curufinwë Atarinkë.

            Artaher knew the complete disregard of his letter had hurt Father, who had always counted Atarinkë the dearest of his friends; and that having to send him to Dor-lómin had forced Father to repurpose supplies that might have been used by the people during the long winter. Father had postponed sending him away as long as possible in hopes that Atarinkë would ultimately respond, and it was now unlikely Artaher would arrive in Dor-lómin before the first deep frost of the season.

            For himself, Artaher was both glad and regretful of the outcome. While he had no desire to stay in Dorthonion for the winter (it was already too cold, and just breaking autumn to the south,) he was not looking forward to being thrown into a completely new environment; he had never seen Uncle Findecáno’s princedom. He would have enjoyed Tyelperinquar’s company for the season, but Uncle Aikanáro had told him it was probably best that he not interact with the Fëanárioni more than necessary. He could admit that the prospect of being trapped in Atarinkë’s fortress, without the protection Father or Aikanáro’s presence would have given him, was not a comforting thought. Neither was the idea of being sent to Dor-lómin, where he knew from experience that his closest agemate would be Naltariel, the daughter of one of Findecáno’s captains; she had been a baby at the time of the Flight. He took solace in that he would not be trapped in Menegroth as Aunt Artanis had suggested; Father had once bitterly described it as ‘an irredeemable warren-pit of skulking hypocrites’ when he had not known Artaher was listening.

            “Singollo has offended me,” Father said, voice unmuffled despite his posture. “I note you’ve made no attempt to scold him in the meantime.” Ingoldo-who-is-Finrod sighed, casting his gaze around the small dining room, where Father liked to work in the mornings because the sun shone directly through the window and lit the whole space without needing to be augmented by candles.

            “The Ban is a kind enough punishment when the crime was murder,” he lectured in his false patience. Father’s head snapped up, and Artaher flinched lower, saw beneath the table as Father uncrossed his legs and planted his feet.

            “Do not patronize me,” he hissed. “The design of the Ban—as you see it—is to force those who committed murder to constantly remember their victims. It would be a fitting punishment, but not kind. Furthermore, it does not achieve the purpose you suppose it has. Or have you forgotten that the Teleri, too, spoke Quenya?” Ingoldo-who-is-Finrod winced, made as if to speak, but Father overrode him. “By your reasoning, Singollo must have also forgotten this fact, or else he believes that all of the third host in Aman have fallen mute, rejecting the tongue they grew up speaking—which they themselves helped to devise!—because of Fëanáro’s madness. Is this the king—the idiot you pledge yourself to, Ingoldo?” When Ingoldo-who-is-Finrod did not answer, Father did it for him.

            “No. You were never so foolish as to pledge yourself to a lackwit. But you would rather believe this sentimental drivel than see the truth. Singollo is threatened by so many foreign princes, and if he can suborn their authority by forcing them to give up their native tongue, to speak his instead, he retains some measure of power over them, however symbolic.” Father made a particularly vicious stroke of pen against page.

            “It’s a power play, Ingoldo. Nothing but a power play. Let him be insulted to find me unwilling to treat with him, or his people—the Sindar are welcome in Dorthonion if they will learn our tongue and have a desire to work a land made desolate by proximity to the Enemy whom Singollo has ignored all these yéni. But I will not force my people, who committed no evil, to give up their mother-tongue to satisfy some manipulative Avarin king hiding in his caves.” He glanced up from his work.

            “Nor your conscience, Ingoldo,” he added.

Chapter End Notes

1. On Artaher’s age: Why is he still a child when he’s been in Middle-earth for 70 years? Simple: years of the sun are much shorter than Valian years. Artaher was 24 when he arrived in Middle-earth. A Valian year is roughly 10 years of the sun, thus, by FA 70, Artaher is only 31 Valian years old, which by my figuration is around 15. I have actually spent the time working out how Valian years compare to sun years to human age. (Of course there’s all the extra complications of possible variations in age rate for those elves who recentishly left Valinor, and how soon they would start aging at the rate of sun years, and I’ve basically got the system working how I want it, but I can’t lay it out coherently here. Ask me if you’re curious.)

2. My head-canon re: Thingol’s Ban is heavily influenced by an interpretation where Thingol declares that the Noldor will learn to speak the language of those they had slain at Alqualondë and remember their crime with every word they speak. To which I in outraged confusion reply, “But the Teleri who were murdered at Alqualondë spoke (a dialect of) Quenya…”

(So the Teleri considered it a separate language, but it was close enough to Quenya to be understood by everyone else in Aman, and different enough from Sindarin that the Exiles had to learn Sindarin. Proof that Telerin Quenya isn’t the same as Sindarin? Fine: Angaráto and Findaráto are the father-names of Angrod and Finrod. Angaráto and Findaráto were constructed in the Telerin style; their true forms in Noldorin Quenya would have been Artanga and Artafindë (Peoples of Middle-earth 346). So, the fact that we get Angrod and Finrod in The Silmarillion as their Sindarin names shows that, while they might have been similar, Telerin Quenya and Sindarin are sufficiently diverse as to be considered different languages.) 

However, Thingol can be assumed to have been distraught at the news, thus not thinking clearly, and there’s a poetry to the idea of him wanting to make the Noldor remember their victims every time they speak, so.

3. On the possible political motivations of Thingol’s Ban, re: symbolic power over the Noldor: I, personally, believe that that outcome was incidental to Thingol. However, as someone who has dabbled in the study of five languages at this point (English, Spanish, Latin, German and Quenya) as well as political science and the narratives of culture and imagined communities, I am firmly of the opinion that these kinds of decisions do give the decider a measure of power over those affected. The English tried to stamp out the Welsh language when they wanted to consolidate power over Wales (and probably did the same everywhere else in their long colonial history), and one of the strongest ties the various city-states that eventually became Italy had to each other was not culture or history, which varied from region to region, but language. I could write a dissertation, but I’m trying… hang on, could I actually do this for my thesis? Could I seriously, actually—not the point. I’m trying to cut down on author’s notes, so I’ll leave it at that and go ponder whether I could actually manage to work an International Studies paper to focus on Tolkien…