#look ar-pharazon is the worst and tar-miriel deserves better and if that means turning evil so be it.

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

The Witch-King of Numenor

I've been thinking about Tar-Miriel as the Witch-King. I don’t know if the timeline lines up, but. Just. Mmhhhn. Lots of thoughts and female rage. Like, any way you slice it it's just so bitter? Whether it's sad or angry or triumphant depends on your interpretation, but her story never ends well, per say. It's a satisfying ending at best.

It's taking this faithful queen, this good, pure queen of a slowly corrupting people, who does her best but is ultimately powerless, falling under greater shadows, culminating in her martyrdom at the hand of God, and turning her bitter.

Maybe she takes the ring because she's faithful, still good, because she thinks she can do good with it. She doesn't trust this advisor in a too-fair form, but she can do this, break out of her husband's shadow and fix things, make them good again- only to fall under a greater shadow than before, because you can be good and still be tempted and still fall. And it’s a history doomed to repeat itself, when Boromir thinks the same things about the One Ring and falls just the same, but he was never given the ring freely by it’s maker. He still gets a chance, while she gets nothing but ash and sodden ruins.

Maybe she takes it because she’s faithful, she’s been faithful, but she’s so sick of being powerless, because faith doesn’t get you anything but a pretty place in storybooks. Because she’s just too angry to keep up this facade of an obedient wife and pure queen and this token from a monster is a way out. Because she knows that it’s a bad idea, but it’s the only way she has to get some measure of revenge at the gods who have repaid her faith with nothing but eagles in storm-clouds, warnings that she’d already seen coming from miles away. Because her hands bleed where her nails bite into them and she can’t take it anymore- anything is better than this.

Maybe she takes it because she’s faithful, but only when she needs to be, because she lost her faith long ago, and now there’s a demon who hates her husband almost as much as she does, and who has the power to do something about it, and is offering it to her, and that’s the only faith she needs. She wishes she could care about her people, but most of them are the Kings Men and the rest do nothing but pray to gods who won’t listen and tell her to “have patience, stay faithful, stay good, stay pure” and the demon is telling her she doesn’t have to care, and whispering doomed plans in her husband’s ear for no reason but the sake of it, and cackling as the streets run red with blood he says will bring his master back though it is only his own shadow that grows. And it’s horrific, but at this point so is she, and she wants a shadow like that, big enough to cover others in like she was always covered up. So she says “Let’s make a deal...” and he gives her a ring and her freedom and she gives him a bloody kiss and her oath of service and then they play their parts. So they say that Tar-Miriel ran to Meneltarma, faithful to the last, and that it was Sauron who urged Ar-Pharazôn to seek immortality in the holy land, and no one ever knows that it was Tar-Mairon and the Witch-King who sat in a temple built for both their former masters and laughed and laughed and laughed even as the island was taken and their bodies were destroyed and their spirits twisted, because in the end only the rightful ruler of Anadûnê becomes immortal.

And it was Glorfindel who prophesied, but it was the demon who promised that no man would kill her. And millennia later, what little is left of Tar-Miriel the faithful, the good, the pure, can’t help but smile at the woman shining proudly in the sunlight, under no shadow but the Witch-King’s own.

#tolkien #silmarillion #akallabeth #numenor #tar-miriel #witch-king of angmar #witch-king tar-miriel #tar-mairon #sauron #my writing #my headcanons #sauron/tar-miriel #just a little bit #cw: blood mention #look ar-pharazon is the worst and tar-miriel deserves better and if that means turning evil so be it. #its just such a good take #like the parallels that you can draw between her and eowyn? top tier #just let my woman be angry and bitter and tragic for more than just what was done to her