But today, yea, today I'll indulge in a bit of fan fiction. Just because there were a few loose ends, and loose ends just beg you to tie them off....
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| As the Hobbits would see her |
The Hobbits came to know of her, she appeared several times to Sam Gamgee. Lord Aragorn perceived her and greeted her by name although none would ever recall the word he pronounced as he bowed his head to her, she a younger daughter of an older world.
Some said she was Tom Bombadil's woman Goldberry, but she was not, although Goldberry's will was laid deep upon her fate.
She was the daughter of a powerful king. In time the power consumed her father, destroyed the man she loved. Her mortal life passed away, for two ages of the sun her soul lingered bound to the spells of malice her father had cast against the north kingdom of men. With her father's final demise before the walls of Minas Tirith the spells that bound her to the world were released, she awoke in Goldberry's arms to see a different age of the sun. Her grief for the evil worked by her father was beyond consoling, her spirit now bound to the circles of the world not by his spells but rather by grief and shame.
With the wisdom of compassion Goldberry set her spirit to dwell in the northern waters of the Shire, set her to a work of protection and redemption that in time she might know peace and pass beyond the circles of the world to rejoin the fate of her people. For many centuries her spirit inhabited those waters, no wraith of her father's creation would pass where she dwelt. Behind her protection the Shire thrived. Only when the last of the wraiths had surrendered the circles of the world did she at long last allow herself to be greeted as a true Queen of the Northmen in the halls of waiting.
Ooooooh, this is lovely! I had never considered how the once-human Nazgûl might have had children, or how the ones who loved them might have been caught in the power of the Nine Rings. And yes, King Elessar and Queen Arwen would certainly have known of her and, when they met at last, honored her.
ReplyDeleteOne of Tolkien's few weaknesses as a writer is the lack of strong, well-developed women. In LOTR, there are Arwen and Galadriel, but the only woman who is not only complex but develops through the story is Éowyn. (The movies greatly erred in not developing her romance with Faramir. For once, Tolkien gave romance a chance there, in one of my favorite passages.) And actually, there are a number of strong women in The Silmarillion, chiefly Lúthien and Nienor/Níniel.