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riding-with-the-wild-hunt · 2 years

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Oh yeh, I was reading through ur Curufin headcanons and I saw something about money laundering Himlad and how much his soldiers hated him- could you elaborate? This sounds so interesting. Did Celegorm know?

eeee thank you for asking me to talk more about these weirdos <33

okay, so i imagine the monetary system during the himlad era was primarily independent based on locale (so individual rulers of different areas were handling things like taxation and revenues), but every noldor-oriented kingdom was obligated to tithe to fingolfin (though he kept the amounts pretty low though), as well as giving him access to their records and accounts. maedhros took it as very much his responsibility to keep tabs on his brothers and make sure that they were rendering unto fingolfin and all. (fraud in noldorin society is highly stigmatized to the point of being nearly unheard of; it would be incredibly disgraceful for any leader to be seen as shirking their monetary duties to the community or being greedy, so maedhros's concerns about the ramifications of dishonesty aren't entirely unfounded.)

out of all the fëanorian realms, i absolutely think himlad was doing the worst. they had very little luck with farming--partially because of the land but mostly because neither celegorm nor curufin had really considered that they needed to, you know, actually build production structures to fund their war efforts--had almost nothing to trade with other kingdoms, and were constantly on the brink of economic collapse. what resources they had from valinor c&c mismanaged so badly in the early days that once they'd figured out the "gee, it'd be nice to have money" thing, it was too late to salvage them.

for curufin specifically, i think the better part of the himlad years were really personally challenging. it was his first time trying to lead without fëanor, and of course most of the people in his service had been passed along from dear old dad, so he had these absolutely massive shoes to fill. and additionally, he was locked in a perpetual who-can-micromanage-the-most battle with maedhros, who wanted desperately to step in and fix everything that celegorm and curufin had messed up and was constantly telling them so, very gently and kindly and condescendingly.

so obviously it became a matter of prestige. curufin, as a policy, would've rather been roasted slowly on a spit than ask maedhros or caranthir or, most dreaded of all, fingolfin to bail them out, and celegorm didn't get to have an opinion on money.

that was one source of support ruled out, and himlad was facing total government bankruptcy. what was left was either merging with another principality (absolutely not, given that that would amount to going crying back to maedhros and admitting that he was right all along), or criminality.

the choice was obvious, and curufin was never particularly scrupulous anyway, so it was mercifully easy too.

so first of all, fingolfin and maedhros were getting different account books. they were both equally falsified; eight out of ten transactions were completely fabricated and the ones that weren’t were so heavily doctored and modified that they bore little resemblance to reality. so right off the bat, all the tithes and taxes were wrong. the books shown to fingolfin presented a view of a struggling, un-prosperous realm, so naturally, their taxes were lighter. sometimes he let them off completely (fingolfin’s hope was always that eventually he’d be able to have a better relationship with c&c and tithing them into oblivion would be a rather rocky start).

the accounts presented to maedhros were normal, so that he wouldn’t suspect anything (he did suspect, but he was busy and stressed and look, sometimes you’ve got to pick your battles).

and curufin would find a million reasons to wiggle out of debts and deals or turn things around so that the other party was in the wrong legally and he could blackmail them (i don’t think he ever actually had an interest in law, but he got quite good by the end). he conducted a lot of trade and business through unsanctioned channels so that he wouldn’t have to record it and pay the proper taxes. celegorm, in his role as smugglers’ liaison and contact, handled most of the actual person-to-person interaction, since he was both more charismatic and more visually intimidating, and also because curufin Just Didn’t Want To (read: he was a paranoid lil stinky and was scared of being kidnapped).

as for curufin’s relationship with his soldiers, yep, most of them absolutely abhorred him to the point where talking about all the humiliating, horrible things they would do to him given the chance was a favorite himlad barracks activity. it became clear really from the get-go that he had all of fëanor’s worst qualities coupled with some of his own: where fëanor’s weaknesses had been seen as the eccentricities of a genius, curufin came off as just a haughty, harsh, perennially angry, immature coward with a spending problem and a whole forest of chips on his shoulder.

ironically, if he’d just been honest that he didn’t know what to do and was scared they’d reject him, they probably would’ve been totally on-board to help and support him but noooo it’s all asserting authority in the most damaging, violent ways possible. any perceived dissent was seen as a betrayal of fëanor’s mission, and was treated with a real zero-tolerance policy, along with any criticism of how curufin chose to run things, any positive feeling towards fingolfin or hints that they’d be better off with someone else in charge, any kind of insinuation at all, you get the picture.

inevitably, charismatic, jocular, handsome, understanding celegorm--who on his own would’ve been put through the wringer too, but compared to curufin seemed like a dreamboy--was sent in after to pick up the pieces and pull everyone back from the brink of revolt. he thought curufin was being too extreme, but he didn’t really speak up about it, partly because curufin would’ve lost it, and mostly because he liked having curufin in his debt and getting to play around with a reversed dynamic for a little bit (i’m sure you can imagine how much curufin loved that one).

so yeah, nobody escaped the himlad fuckery except maybe tyelpë, who lived in a private little cocoon of dubious familial bliss.

anyhow, thank you for reading all the way through this behemoth fshjfhsk

#brought to you by me #the professor’s world #frens #curufin #the silmarillion #celegorm #sad disaster boys #call and response

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