#i think 'what if tar-silmariën' is a genuinely fascinating au

[anghraine]

I honestly find it irritating that Tolkien/Tolkien's narrators are repeatedly like ... well if Tar-Aldarion's rule about equal inheritance regardless of gender had come earlier, Silmariën would have been Ruling Queen! The Lords of Andúnië would have been the royal house all along!

It's especially annoying when it's coming from the Third Age, but really just an overall irritation. These narratives and narrators do not give a single fuck about Silmariën except as a transmitter of blood, birthright, and heirlooms to men. The "but Silmariën!" is not some stab at inheritance rights for women, it's just a pretext for the dynastic claims of men.

Besides, if royal women inherited on an equal basis beginning with Silmariën rather than with Tar-Ancalimë, it would prevent the line of the Lords of Andúnië from exclusively following male-line descent anyway—the ultimate heir wouldn't be Elendil, it'd be some random cousin (possibly a female cousin!) descended through other firstborn daughters along the line, even provided that the family tree would be at all recognizable after a historical change that drastic.

It's like Arvedui invoking Aldarion's law of gender-neutral primogeniture to justify claiming the throne of Gondor in place of his wife, the Gondorian princess Fíriel. Under Aldarion's law, either Fíriel herself or (if she were unwilling) her son would have succeeded King Ondoher, not Arvedui. Nobody in the dispute seems concerned with any right she might have; they only bring her up as a point of transmission between the rights of men. Ultimately she matters to the narrative because of the bloodline she passes on to the male-line male chieftains of the Northern Dúnedain culminating in Aragorn. Who knows what she was like or what she wanted?

Did Silmariën want to be Ruling Queen? Within the narrative we have, nobody cares.

#i think 'what if tar-silmariën' is a genuinely fascinating au #(guess who owns the tar-silmarien username) #but i kind of hate how it's used in canon #as this casual prop bolstering up her male-line male descendants—in a way which doesn't even make sense!! #ANYWAY #anghraine rants #legendarium blogging #legendarium fanwank #anghraine babbles #númenórë #silmariën #fíriel daughter of ondoher #arvedui depreciation blog #arvedui critical #everyone critical really but especially him #team dúnedain