rocky41_7

I know Silm tells us essentially that Nerdanel was a moderating force on Feanor, but I refuse to believe she was the “holder of the brain cell” as the current fandom phrasing goes, or the Only Sane Man in the house. #1 because I don’t think someone like that would have married a person like Feanor in the first place; and #2 because it’s just boring as fuck imo

Silm also tells us that Nerdanel was basically the only one to ever change Feanor’s mind through counsel, and that they were “companions on many journeys” and that it was only his later deeds that “grieved her.” Which idk doesn’t sound to me like a description of someone who spent her whole time in this relationship demanding Feanor behave more responsibly and trying to reign in his passions. Feanor and Nerdanel’s relationship is, in my view, very much posited as a love story of equals. Other details we know are that a) Feanor married young (no comment on Nerdanel’s age iirc); and b) His choice in spouse was surprising to the rest of the Noldor. This has always suggested, to me, that Feanor fell very hard and very fast for Nerdanel, and that he was convinced she was The One, and that their relationship was formed on a deep understanding of each other as people. Feanor didn’t care that Nerdanel was “not the fairest of her people” or that as the crown prince of the Noldor, he could perhaps have cast a much wider net in a search for a spouse. Furthermore, because Elves don’t seem to marry for politics, Nerdanel had no serious motivation to agree unless she also wanted to get married.

Which brings me to my main point: Nerdanel saw Feanor’s slightly unhinged behavior and went “damn that’s pretty hot.” You will never convince me that Feanor’s burning passions aren’t exactly what attracted Nerdanel to him in the first place. Yes they make him hot-tempered and impulsive and occasionally (self-) destructive, but they also make him interesting. Feanor feels so much about everything and his deep need and desire to create and to understand and better the world around him was precisely what made Nerdanel take another look at him. She could get underneath the prickliness to the artist, the scholar, and she loved those things, and maybe she even loved how much he rejected anyone’s efforts to make him quiet down or behave differently, to make himself more likeable. They had seven kids together--which, iirc, is the most kids of any Elven couple in Arda--ever. Is that not supposed to be indicative of the passion these two held for each other?

And frankly, I would also buy she willingly took his side in most family feuds, even when she knew Feanor was being unreasonable, and furthermore, that she found a great deal of his disruptive behavior entertaining. Anaire and Earwen can try to convince her to push Feanor to apologize to Fingolfin for his latest Incident, but is she going to? Not unless Feanor’s done something really outrageous. Otherwise, she probably can’t even get through telling him “that was really unnecessary” without laughing. Nerdanel, apologize for Feanor’s behavior? Not likely!

Nerdanel acted as a moderating force on Feanor in that I think he was just calmer around her. He’s a very volatile person and we know that he never meshed well with his step-family and possibly felt out of place generally owing to Miriel’s fate, but I think with Nerdanel it felt like he had found a place. She understood him and they were partners and they were going to do this Life thing together. With Nerdanel, I think he began from a more relaxed, less reactive place, which had a corresponding impact on his behavior. And of course, because he felt Nerdanel understood him (and liked him), and he respected and loved her, he was willing to listen to her counsel (sometimes) when he would take no one else’s.

Lastly, the idea of Nerdanel spending hundreds or thousands of years as Feanor’s put-upon wife, trying to manage him and their seven children, essentially reduced to a Nagging Wife stereotype as she acts as the only restraint on him is just so boring and what an incredible, appalling waste of her character. Why don’t you just slap her down in a 1960s sitcom? I think Nerdanel deserves more than that. She had no reason to marry Feanor except that she wanted to, because she had spent a lot of time with him and she wanted him, she loved him, and she saw a future for them together, as partners.

* Crossposted from tumblr

Cross-posted from tumblr.

I am so ~fascinated~ with Finwean family dynamics so below is just some of my own thoughts on inter-family politics and particularly on how Feanor’s behavior affected the rest of the family’s relationships with each other, especially for Nerdanel.

These thoughts mostly developed in the context of a pair of fics I wrote (one of which is posted) about the post-Oath fallout experienced by the Noldor who remain in Aman, so they are the focus, and these thoughts are all in terms of what I tried to show in those fics.

Although Nerdanel mostly enjoyed Feanor’s family, her relationships with them were difficult, partly because Nerdanel is a brusque and often insensitive person, but mainly because Feanor’s relationships with them were difficult, and she necessarily took his side on a lot of things, and was seen, of course, as being affiliated with him.

Tolkien notes that Anaire (Fingolfin’s wife) and Earwen (Finarfin’s wife) were close friends, and in fact this friendship was part of why Anaire chose to stay behind. Notably, Nerdanel is not a part of this. I think she struggled with these relationships in particular, because of how Feanor treated his half-brothers.

Anaire had one of the better relationships with Nerdanel, because Anaire is a very practical, logical person and recognized that Nerdanel was not Feanor, and that she was, on some level obliged to take his side in family fights because that’s what you do for your partner. However, I don’t know that she necessarily feels Nerdanel is a friend, and Anaire was extremely critical of the way Feanor treated Fingolfin, and of Fingolfin’s ongoing loyalty and affection for Feanor, which pressured whatever positive relationship she had with Nerdanel.

Earwen doesn’t get on much with Nerdanel in part just due to their personalities. Nerdanel, as noted earlier, is blunt and generally practical, while Earwen is a lot more of a dreamy, whimsical, philosophical type. She also talks a lot. So even though Finarfin doesn’t get it as bad from Feanor as Fingolfin (because Finarfin is less a threat in Feanor’s view), Earwen actually has less of a relationship with Nerdanel than Anaire, and when the Kinslaying at Alqualonde happens, she is entirely unable to divorce Nerdanel from the actions of her family, and their relationship craters and never recovers. In a way, Nerdanel ends up taking the blame Earwen might have cast on Finarfin.

Swapping tracks, Indis reeeeally wanted this whole family thing to work. She knew how unusual it was for Finwe to marry her after Miriel’s death and she really wanted it to work with Feanor. She may have tried too hard in the beginning to step into a maternal role with him, which put Feanor off even more. She wanted to consider him one of her own kids, but that was very definitely not what Feanor wanted, and after centuries of trying to get along with him, she sort of had to accept that civility was the best thing she could get from him. She also grew increasingly upset with the way he treated his half-siblings, especially his brothers, and even more so when she saw him imparting his grudges on his sons, so that his children could carry them on. The Oath was the breaking point of her giving up and deciding he’s actually just a selfish, arrogant bastard who is concerned only with how things affect him.

Now, Indis and Nerdanel are another case of personalities don’t mesh (and this was very intentional in my portrayal of Indis’ personality, and was the case for Indis and Feanor as well). But that aside, Indis nonetheless tried to include Nerdanel in the family, in part thinking she could soften Feanor by treating his wife well. However, as with Anaire and Earwen, Nerdanel’s siding with Feanor strained their ties, and Nerdanel was not excellent at hiding her own general impatience with Indis, and after they learned of the Kinslaying, things were messy enough that Nerdanel and Indis both silently decided there was just nothing left there to save.

Findis takes the most after her mother, but unlike Indis, she is not afraid to speak up when she doesn’t like somebody, and she’s thought Feanor was a vain, arrogant blow-hard since she was a teenager. She was bitter about the way he treated Indis, as well as his behavior towards her and her siblings, and she never understood what Nerdanel saw in him. She and Nerdanel also butted heads very openly on quite a lot of things, to the point that they would often take a contrary opinion to each other purely for antagonism’s sake. Findis was therefore very ready to kick Neradnel to the curb after the Kinslaying.

Lalwende is probably the one who got along best with Nerdanel, and not unrelatedly, went with Feanor and stuck it out to Middle-earth. She was an adventurous type, which complemented Nerdanel’s personality, and escaped much of Feanor’s worse tendencies by virtue of how little a threat she presented to him for Finwe’s favor and throne, so she had fewer reasons to dislike Nerdanel by association. She was, I imagine, the one with the closest relationship with Nerdanel.