Dior the King

Tumblr ask here.

Anonymous said: Sorry to dump this to you but you seem to be a sindar enjoyer and is very kind when responding to asks so um. I am ashamed to say I believed the kinslaying was Dior and Elwing's fault at first (because I was a hardcore feanorian, still am but that doesn't matter) but the more I think about it, the more I realized how much shit was on Dior's plate when he stepped in to rebuild Doriath that it was no wonder he didn't send any response yet to the feanorians. There was no textual evidence why he didn't but seeing as Doriath was left defenseless, still recovering from the last attack by the dwarves and exposed to Morgoth's forces, I am not surprised that he didn't entertain the feanorians when they harassed him for the silmaril because Morgoth has two so yeah and there were more priorities than speaking with the elves who were never Doriath's allies to begin with and are hostile to his family.

And apparently, like Elwing, he was using the silmaril to protect Doriath so that's a plus and I understand, aside from the fact that his mom won it fair and square, why didn't he just give it up. This also kinda made me think about how pathetic and cowardice my blorbos were because they decided to go the easy way out and attack an elven city instead of aiming to get the one on Morgoth so yeah.

I said:  I definitely agree with what you said here! Doriath was recently devastated by the war with Nogrod and is still dealing with the fall of Melian’s girdle, the death of the king, and the departure of the queen, so Dior for sure steps into something of a shitstorm when he decides to take up the crown.

Someone else, I forget who, also validly pointed out that at this point, Dior doesn’t have a lot of reason to believe in the Feanorian oath? Celegorm and Curufin invoked it against Nargothrond sure, but Dior doesn’t really have any reason to believe the Feanorians are so committed to this thing that they’ll attack other Elves over it, partly because everyone involved with the Kinslaying at Alqualonde (which included the Nolofinweans and Arafinweans as well!) has professed such regret for what happened etc. etc.

Dior is also a mortal king of mixed Elf, Man, and Maia blood leading a kingdom of immortal Elves–if the first thing he does is cave to Feanorian pressure, that’s not going to win him a lot of respect or loyalty from the people he’s leading. This is why it’s important I think that the Feanorians are not really trying to bargain with Dior–they’re just making demands. They give him no way to hand the Silmaril over and save face even if he was willing to give it up.

If you’ve seen me talk about this stuff before you know that I also agree with your final point–the Feanorians were trying to take the easy way out by neither abandoning their oath nor having to make another effort to directly assail Morgoth in simply attacking other Elves to get what they wanted. To me, their descent into villainy is a key arc of the story. A tragic one to be sure (are we not all cringing as they commit worse and worse acts throughout the book?)! But one with terrible consequences for those around them.

However, I don’t think you need to feel ashamed about subscribing or having subscribed to a particular view on the story. At the end of the day, it’s just a tale!

There’s a lot going on in The Silmarillion and I get reminded every time I read it of details I forgot which shift my view on the events or characters–it’s definitely hard to grasp all the nuances of the story the first read-through. And the Feanorians are written sympathetically! I remember the first time I read it, before I’d interacted with the fandom at all, I kept thinking to myself “No, you guys can do better than this!” and then they very much did not do that x_x

Reminds me of this quote I saw on an artist’s Maedhros art recently: God I love him, what a terrible fucking person.

RIP Dior, maybe it will help to know there’s a perfume line named after you nowadays.