That sounds flippant but imagine Denethor sending the right son to do the right job.
Faramir goes to the cool green glade of Elrond, where he speaks of dreams and waves, and the elves whisper that the blood of Numenor runs true in the House of Hurin; Boromir spends his time riding like hell between Ithilien and Osgiliath, speaking with men around smoky fires, embracing his captains and saying to them, take heart, gather your strength, these are the times which test a man’s soul and lift it to glory, but we will see dawn come, we will keep Gondor free.
Though they are cut from different cloth, this is something Boromir and Faramir have always shared–they are men deserving of leadership, they would be followed under the shadow of the East. Boromir aches for every one of his countrymen cut down, screams his defiance to the orc armies and rallies his arms; Faramir listens to the words of wisdom Aragorn offers, is gentle and kindly with the hobbits, greets Legolas in his mother tongue, offers Master Gimli praise.
Wandering with the Fellowship below the empty sky, Faramir looks up at Maethor, the Warrior constellation, and thinks of his brother, prays that he is well, that he is safe, that he is still a little pompous, stilted, honest.
Boromir spends another sleepless night playing with the chain at his neck, the small portraits of his mother and brother. (I cannot lose you too, I cannot–come back hale and whole, come back angry and proud and cunning and defiant of our father–)
Faramir has never known the weight of all Gondor on his shoulders, and so is not tempted by the power the Ring offers.
Boromir has always known the love of his father, and so never bears the scorn of Denethor when Osgiliath must be abandoned as too tenuous a position to hold.
The day that Faramir comes striding into the Citadel, a child and wizard at his heels, Boromir cries out with joy as he has not for more years than counting, and they nearly bruise one another with their embrace.
“You are almost skeletal, little brother,” Boromir laughs, though it is not true–Faramir looks touched with strangeness and greatness, as one whom the Witch-Queen of Lorien found favor in, whose nobility of form and face had ensnared the heart of the White Princess of Rohan.
“And you look at least two-stone heavier, elder brother,” Faramir says, though it is false, Boromir is hollowed out and worn thin, deep shadows beneath his eyes and hunger-starved cheeks; in a glance, Faramir knows he neither eats nor sleeps nor laughs, nor feels–and Faramir, wiser and older than when he left, can see the weight his brother has always carried, and how lightly–all the stone of Minas Tirith on his shoulders, and still–
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a “woman.”
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like “BTW guess what happened, we’re all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concerned”
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all “what a miserable and greedy race”
but really they’re just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth – and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven
Just as an additional thought, we hear that women dwarves generally stay within the mountain and are a protected, guarded subset of the dwarves. There’s not many of them, so there’s an implication that women dwarves are too precious to be allowed out.
But what if this too is a mistranslation? What if the dwarves were talking to the Men and when asked “where are all your women?” they hit a wall. They whisper amongst themselves, and eventually come back with a question, “What’s a woman?” The Men are incredulous.
“Why, the members of your race that bear children, of course!“
More dwarven whispering.
They reach the conclusion that Men mean dwarves who are currently pregnant. Well! Of course those dwarves are currently safe within the mountain, well cared for and generally loathe to travel until the child is born. The Men take this to mean that all dwarven women are discouraged from traveling, and that their primary purpose is childbearing. Dwarves find this a satisfactory outcome, especially with the way Men treat their women, and so even when the misunderstanding becomes clear to them they never correct it.
boromir = either grantaire or combeferre? I think??
can i jump in on this i love character match-ups
and i really like combeferre = boromir, i feel like combeferre comes at things from a very different mental/theoretical perspective that lets him see things differently from how the rest of the leadership does. also I am in favor of any match-up that reminds up to see Boromir’s good side.
who else do you have matched up? joly = merry and bossuet = pippin, right? (or the other way around?)
and i’m going to guess bahorel = gimli and jehan = legolas so we can have that unlikely pairing/friendship preserved.
I guess the obvious Enjolras is Aragorn. But if you want to focus on martrydom, Frodo could be an Enjolras, with Sam as Courfeyrac or Grantaire?? (Not really believing in or understanding what the cause is about, but fiercely devoted to the people of the cause, especially Enjolras? oops i found a way to do e/R after all.)
But WAIT. What about Feuilly as Boromir? in LOTR Boromir comes from a less privileged place than the others, just related to the progress of the war instead of class. For everyone else in the fellowship, Mordor is this faraway country that they’ve heard about and that might become a threat to them someday, and they recognize the danger intellectually but they haven’t actually felt it firsthand, you know? Whereas for Boromir, Mordor is his next-door neighbor; he has directly fought it and he’s seen with his own eyes how desperately the people of Gondor (and by extension, all of Middle-Earth, because it’s all connected, even if the people in Rohan and Rivendell and the Shire don’t realize it) need to be saved. And the other people in the council try to listen to what he has to say but with his different perspective some of what he says just doesn’t make any sense to them.
ahhh MY HERO. (also you know I wouldn’t mind that e/R interpretation at all? it works quite well, actually!)
also bREAK MY HEART
(boromir is one of my favourite characters of the series, so obviously my first thought of pairing him up with combeferre was – if enjolras is aragorn, they complete each other quite well although they come from different places/views? yes)
Okay, okay, you know what works really well in conjunction with Boromir!Feuilly? Aragorn!Courfeyrac. Who has turned away from his destiny, dropped his ‘de’ and now spends his time looking scruffy and disreputable in various bars of Middle Earth.
(I mean for this thing to work there’d have to be a lot of reworking of the ending, like I can’t see Courf suddenly realising that he needs to return to the ‘de’ of his ancestors, but that was always going to have to happen one way or another.)
That leaves Combeferre to be Gandalf, not exactly an imaginative choice perhaps but look, it works.
!!! YES.
honestly anything that gives us a scruffy Courfeyrac is obviously a good thing, but this is excellent.
The past two weeks have been insanely hectic but we’ve dealt with it by little by little watching all of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies in the evenings to relax. We finished Battle of the Five Armies yesterday evening, so today my aesthetic is Gandalf the Grey.
eirenical17 