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The way you have made these two parallel each other is amazing! Some beautiful description, too.

This last line was really moving: With him, she would dwell until his death, and bear the last King of his people.

Oh boy.. lol 

So I knew about Ilwen but I didn't realize just how *terribly minor* she was until I ran across this challenge.  So I *love* rare characters, and I was browsing through the provided list to see if any jumped out at me and I noticed she wasn't on that list so I thought oh wow, she must have more content on here?? So I got curious and went to the list of characters in the database and she wasn't there either so I started wondering if I'd made some terrible mistake somewhere, but no, she is a named character, just - apparently - one that is so hidden that she didn't even make the Hidden Figures list!

And then Gwidhil is one of my beloveds, I wrote her once and was absolutely hooked - I mean really the entire Arafin family tree - Bëorians honorarily included - are my beloveds.

How I wrote this in particular however was I was waffling on who I wanted to write and thinking okay well I guess I'll write whichever I can think of a story for first, and I started at Mithrim then though oh I could do a Cuivienen fic, I do love those but I still kind of wanted to write Gwidhil, but I realized very quickly as my brain shuffled them both that they had (or I could imagine them having) almost eerily parallel lives.  And... off I went :D

I'm so glad you enjoyed it and thank you for asking me about it!

Thank you for talking to me about them! 

You've put Ilwen on my radar, actually. I can't remember exactly now whether or not it had registered with me that NoME gave us her name, but I guess I had already forgotten again! There was such a lot of new stuff to absorb in NoME. I think at the time of the original Hidden Figures Challenge we probably didn't know her name yet. (It is possible that somebody did write about her, before, but there would have been no way to tag for her on the old site, except possibly "Vanyar". Even the tagging for unnamed canon characters is relatively recent.) 

I had written Ilwen once before in a fic that never got finished and sort of shuffled aside while I was writing a series of those who remained in Valinor after the Exile of the Noldor, but this is the first piece I've actually posted with her.  Might be why she was on my mind in terms of rarer characters.

If she was only first named in NoME that would narrow the window for any fics she might appear in, but any number of approaches to her as an OC wife of Ingwë prior could still be out there!  Maybe a scavenger hunt is in my future :)