The Blue Boar Inn by oshun

At an extortionate cost, Maedhros and Maglor had secured a small room at a clean inn, one street over from the Blue Boar Inn where the king was staying. The room was hardly bigger than a garderobe, but it contained a large bed and a straight-backed chair. After eating a light supper of meat pies washed down with their own wine, Maedhros had stretched out upon the bed, while Maglor, occupying the chair, fiddled absently on his handheld harp, humming to himself.

“Tomorrow, ah, tomorrow,” Maedhros drawled. “Or, at the latest, the day after, he will win himself a lasting peace, or it will all be over and we will have to flee and start again. I badly want to see a victory. He’s a decent man, if a harried one. Change is inevitable. No matter what happens, I think, it is the end of an era. But I also believe he might have the intelligence and persistence to overcome the old ways of doing things and his lack of courtly wiles. Given the chance, of course.”

“Harrumph,” Maglor grunted with impatience. “The chance is good. Better than good!” Maedhros loved his lack of interest in the intricacies of politics. Maglor might worry too little, but he worried far too much.

“Alas, we’ve heard that before,” Maedhros sighed. They both returned to their own thoughts, the silence broken only by Maglor’s random fiddling with his harp, seeking elusive tones that only he could imagine.

A sharp rap on the door and the cheeky voice of the owner’s son interrupted their reverie. “My lords! It’s King Richard’s Lord Chamberlain to see you!”

Maedhros jumped up and opened the door, “Sir Francis! Please come in.”

“Please forgive me. I hate to bother you so late, but I was wondering if the two of you might accompany me to king’s rooms, very close by here. Your company and a few songs from your brother would be most welcome.”

The king’s suite was spacious, but not much more elegant than the brothers’ room. The finest things on display by far consisted of Richard’s exquisite armor propped in one corner. The king himself sat on the edge of his bed. A reserved smile and faint blush when they entered his bedchamber, gave him an apologetic air.

Although Richard could look careworn at times, there was still a boyish aspect to him at thirty-two. It might have been due to his size, diminutive despite being of near average height, or his complexion, skin as flawless as one of the Quendi. In too few years, Maedhros thought, if he does not find a little respite, he will have deep creases between his eyes. But that night those pale grey eyes flamed with energy and optimism.

“Ah, Francis found you! I am blessed tonight. I presume he told you that I could not rest?”

“It’s not from any lack of confidence,” Francis Lovell hastened to add, conscious of trying to keep everyone’s spirits high. “It’s only his back.”

Richard laughed and grinned at his dearest friend. “Easy for him--back straight as a rule and shoulders broad as beam--to say, ‘only his back’. When he told me you had joined our company, along with your brother . . .” The king nodded in recognition of Maedhros. “I said that I wished I’d have known you were here, then I’d have kept you close at hand. He apparently took that remark as an order to track you down.”

“We are delighted to have been found, your Grace,” said Maglor. “How may we be of service, Sire?”

“Do you have any songs of victory in battle?” Richard asked with a teasing smile.

“Two or three maybe. But they are far from my best work.” Everyone laughed. They were all familiar with the vanity of musicians and bards.

Maedhros was certain that he need not stand on courtly formality, alone with only Richard and Francis. “Forgive me, Your Grace, I cannot resist pointing out that like all great minstrels my brother loves to rip the listener’s heart out and stomp it into the ground.”

“Indeed.” Richard laughed. “They traffic in the hearts of men. The spotless hero winning victory after victory arouses skepticism or envy. But heads held high in defeat, courage facing insurmountable odds, the noble hero with the tragic flaw, all of those incite sympathy and love.”

“Exactly,” said Francis. “They lift our hearts, by making us weep.”

“Well, I have a veritable treasure trove of the very finest of those, Sire. If I must say so myself.”

“Let us all make ourselves comfortable,” said Richard, sloughing off a velvet tunic, revealing a fine cream-colored linen shirt. Then, please, I would very much like to hear what you consider one of your best. Francis? Will you please ask for another chair and some wine for these gentlemen?”

After a bit of shuffling about, Maglor was settled on the most comfortable chair. Richard had propped himself against the head of the bed, with a light shawl draped around his shoulders, and Maedhros, having refused the other chair, lounged against a bolster on the floor in front of the windows, with plenty of room for his long legs. Francis Lovell removed his boots and settled into a cross-legged sitting position next to Richard on the bed.

“So, Master Nightingale,” asked Richard, “what song will you play and sing for us?”

“I know precisely the one. It’s the song of a king, valiant and true, who never gave less than all of his heart to any endeavor. Part of a much longer saga of the history of an ancient race, lost in the mists of time, of course. I call it, ‘Unnumbered Tears.’”

The War of the Roses and the War of the Jewels

Everybody knows that George R.R. Martin admits his choices of plot and characters owe a lot to the real life game of thrones of the War of the Roses. I have never seen anyone compare Tolkien’s Wars of Beleriand to the War of the Roses. But lately I have noticed some echoes here and there.

Notes, only peripherally related to this above ficlet

I received a prompt the other night from my friend Jenni asking for a crossover of The Silmarillion with the War of the Roses (she knows I am a moderate, not fanatical, Ricardian—someone who knows there is more to the story Richard III than Shakespeare’s recycled Tudor slanders). Anyway, she asked for a Feanorians-in-history fic, which included sons of Feanor and Richard III.

It took me a couple of days to come up with any kind of idea. I started thinking about the possible parallels between the Battle of Bosworth and the Nírnaeth Arnoediad. Bosworth Field, although much smaller, reminds me of the battle, which determines history within in that fictional world, where victory once looked possible, or even likely, but which ended in crushing defeat and the death of a valiant, if somewhat reckless, king.

Richard waiting for the arrival of the traitorous Stanley’s promised forces, held back and then turned upon him at the critical moment, is reminiscent of Fingon's waiting for Maedhros, held back by treachery and traitors within his ranks. When Richard spots Henry Tudor on the field, he charges percipitously, taking advantage of an opening and the chance of ending a battle which suddenly and unexpectedly had turned from almost certain victory to the likliehood of defeat, before it even started. Fingon, of course, similarly, is forced to engage long before he had intended by Gwindor’s untimely charge.

One could continue to stretch the comparisons, but I will wrap it up before I degenerate into pure babble. Indulge me, please, in one last contrast of the two kings deaths in those battles.

Fingon's death: "At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him . . . . Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces, and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood." (The Silmarillion.)

Richard III's death on Bosworth Field shares elements with that description (if you leave out the Balrogs!). Like Fingon, Richard died fighting surrounded by the enemy after all of his personal guard had been slain; ". . . and king Richerd alone was killyd fyghting manfully in the thickkest presse of his enemyes." (Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia.)