"Sons of the King"
This series of short tales was inspired by the “Three Colours Trilogy” Challenge on the Henneth Annûn Story Archive. It looks at the three sons of Finwë following his murder and how each perceived his future and his duty to his family and his people. The colors and banners of each are based off the heraldry that Tolkien himself envisioned. Reproductions of each may be found in Tolkien's Heraldry and Emblems.
Sons of the King
Fëanaro
The son of the King stands on the dark shores of a foreign land. His banners-Silmarils on a red field-slap the cold wind off the sea.
Dark waves, people’s faces-twisted, horrified, still seeing the blood on the sand at Eldamar-pinpoints of stars made hazy-red by the rage that fogged his vision, even when he wipes his eyes, falling, clicking and clacking, into senseless place like tiles inside a kaleidoscope, never stopping or ceasing, although he wishes that they would, he wishes he could escape the underlying mantra, the rhythm to his madness, a big, pulsing beating heart: My father is dead. My father is dead.
And his son before him-his eldest son, tall and beautiful, his red hair playing in the wind, pulled free of his braids. There is tenuous hope in his eyes, the hope of a child who stares into the darkness, hoping the nightmare will not be true. “Atar,” says the son, and a flare of warmth lights on his arm: a hand, warm fingers pressed to flesh gone cold. “Atar.” A soft voice full of hope, red hair-like his mother’s-twisting on the wind. “Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Fingon the valiant?”
But the words cannot disrupt the rhythm of his madness; like a slip of parchment tossed into whirling cogs, they are only destroyed: They cannot bring back his father, and so they cannot stop that squeezing rhythm. My father is dead. He sees darkness, and his father’s beautiful city, red in the torchlight, and the thousands of flickering points spread at his feet-dangerous if dropped or held carelessly, but not as dangerous as his words.
And his half-brother and his sons, in the periphery of his vision, listening but not entirely convinced, possibly wishing to possess the torch-lit city for their own.
The white ships of the Teleri-which could not be washed clean of the horror of Eldamar no matter how many buckets were drawn aboard from the sea-creak as though in private, conspiratorial conversation. He is a King without a crown-the crown remains in Valinor and even his prince’s adornments were stolen from Formenos-and his right to the throne is the reflection of fire in his eyes.
A torch now he sees, and he beckons to it. “Curufinwë!” he calls and brings black hair and obedient gray eyes to his side. The elder son is mouthing words, and he supposes that there is sound behind them-his mouth twists; he is protesting-but he does not hear it: He stares into the torch, the flame-red entwined with gold-and feels its heat on his face and does not think of the consequences of an arm that used to wield a hammer and make beautiful things that bends back now and uses all of its strength to hurl the fire at the white ships.
The red-haired son turns and strides away.
It does not take long for the tender wood to be consumed, and he is cold no longer; his face is bathed in flame, the smoke reddening his eyes and serving as a worthy excuse for the dampness upon his face.
Nolofinwë
The son of the King stands beneath weary banners-blue and silver-at the top of the world, with one foot upon the ice. The horizon glows, and the realization seeps into his awareness: He has left us. We have been betrayed.
Betrayed. A cold word, like the glistening ice-bluish in the starlight-that beckons them, their only choice now. It is that or turn back-but turn back to what? A city once white and now only blue shadows of darkness, the city that his father reigned and deserted to follow the misguided ideals of his traitorous son?
He looks at his people: Their faces are tired and haggard, with bruises beneath their eyes. His daughter and second-born son stare at the light on the horizon, their faces cold and hard and betrayed. His eldest son has not yet seen it; his back is to the cobalt sea-its waves tipped in starlight-and he warms the hands of his brother-daughter in his own, gently massaging life into the alarmingly bluish, frozen fingertips. He makes his face into a merry mask for her benefit but his blue eyes are as hard and frozen as the ice beneath his father’s left foot.
Betrayed!
Indignant, disbelieving, he puts his full weight on the ice and points to the silvery-blue stretch before them. “We shall not forsake the journey!”
And his eldest son turns then, his blue eyes wide with alarm, and whirls in the direction of the sea and sees the light on the horizon, leaping to paint the bellies of the clouds with morbid light, and he bites his fist in pain and anger, biting frozen flesh that will not bleed no matter how he wishes it would, and screams his agony into the wind.
His circlet-only that of a prince, silver, for he left his father’s behind on the throne-denotes his authority, and he wrenches his son away from the sight of the light on the clouds. “He would not forsake us!” screams the foolish, trusting boy who once followed his cousin with the devotion some paid the Valar. He twists beneath his father’s hand and falls on the ice, onto his knees, bruises staining foolish, trusting flesh blue-black. His son’s moist eyes are raised to him, and he slaps away the hand proffered him. “Finwë Nolofinwë,” he spits and lurches onto the ice, his footprints leaving blue-gray shadows in the snow.
He watches his son take the first steps onto the ice and watches his people straggle after; he forces his eyes open, unblinking, until the cold burns them, and he feels his heart beating with a ponderous weight in his chest, and he wants to cry for all of his losses but cannot: The cold wind bites his face but there is no longer any pain; the muscles, the nerves have long been frozen.
Arafinwë
The son of the King did not realize the scarcity of his banners in the city until one of the lords went to find one and could not. They wanted to raise it over the throne, in honor of their new King; they wanted the colors of gold and silver to usurp those that had always stood there, as his half-brother-genius in his madness-had foretold.
He was pushed into the throne and the crown arranged on his hair-a golden crown on golden hair. It was his father’s crown; it did not belong on his head. He wanted to hurl it across the room. This is not my place! He had sat here before, long ago, in his childhood, but always on his father’s lap. Now, there was nothing beneath his body and the hard seat of the throne that punished his flesh. This is not my place!
The room is filled with noise-lords conversing, arguing about the days to come, about what to do about the darkened city left in the care of the King’s useless, golden-haired son, who had two ambitious older brothers and never expected to inherit. The noise is bright and painful, like the darts of light Laurelin used to throw off the water his silver-haired wife so loved, hard to look upon but beautiful, distracting. The noise tumbles about the room; it invades even the deepest corners and chases away the quiet, the peace that once reigned here, which he-a usurper-has no right to reclaim.
He should not be here; he should be on the road still, sailing for the lands that so enthralled the others and made him feel aberrant and lazy in his disdain for such dark shores. He should not be here because his sons, his daughter are not here: They had kept to the road, longing for golden crowns and kingdoms of their own. He had seen their eyes when he told them-coward!-and it had been Finderato who had gently admonished them: “This is not his place.”
They took their road to the north and he to the south, to the pearly lands of his wife’s birth, and only his eldest, his Finrod had looked back, his brow furrowed and his golden hair teased by the wind.
He sits upon the throne and holds the golden crown in his hand-his father’s crown-never meant for another head and overlarge and awkward now on his. A banner is being dragged erect over his head. It was hastily made by a seamstress who stayed behind, made from the gold and silver scraps of her daughter’s dresses. When he looks up, he is not fully certain of what he will see. Is that mine? It was meaningless colors, once, designed more to satisfy the whims of Noldorin loremasters who sought a way to represent everything in shapes and colors. Now it is the crest of the King.
At the front of the room, at the stairs, there is a quick breath of silence, and it draws his eyes to the woman suddenly standing there, her gown falling loose about her body, her hair silvery in the partial darkness. The noise of the room surges again and embraces her too-it appears to have force enough to stir her gown into ripples like the starlight on the sea-but she banishes it and lets her eyes find him.
My husband. The King.
Now it is your place.
Golden crown in hand, he rises and the room falls silent.
An understanding of The Silmarilion, of course, is helpful before reading this story. Please direct to me any inquiries not covered by these notes.
Fëanaro
“Fëanaro” is the Quenya name of Fëanor. After stealing the ships of the Teleri, he deserted his half-brother’s people at Araman and set fire to the precious swan ships so that there was no way (he thought) that they could follow.
His eldest son Maedhros had red hair. It is also speculated-although unproven in canon-that his wife Nerdanel did also. This information is available in the essay “The Shibboleth of Fëanor,” which may be found in The History of Middle-earth, Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth.
Curufinwë (Curufin) was most like his father in mood and appearance. In “The Shibboleth,” he is cited as being the most loyal to his father and-in one version of the burning of the ships-the only of the sons to participate in the act of treachery.
Maedhros was the only of Fëanor’s sons to stand against his father. His quote about his cousin Fingon-whom he held dear as a friend-was lifted verbatim and may be found at the end of the chapter “Of the Flight of the Noldor.”
Nolofinwë
“Nolofinwë” is the Quenya name of Fingolfin. Fingolfin and his people were betrayed by Fëanor at Araman. Perhaps most poignant in this tale is the desertion of Fingon, who was a close friend of Maedhros despite the animosity between their fathers and later united with his cousin to restore the peace between their Houses.
When the people of Fingolfin were left at Araman, their only choices were to return to Valinor and face the wrath of the Valar or attempt to cross the ice at Helcaraxë.
Fingon’s disdain of his father’s name “Finwë Nolofinwë” refers to mention made in “The Shibboleth of Fëanor” to the fact that-upon Fëanor’s banishment to Formenos-Fingolfin assumed the kingship and amended his name to be Finwë Nolofinwë. It is believed that the name “Finwë,” which formed the suffices for many characters’ Quenya names, may have taken on a meaning close to that of “King” to the Noldorin people. Fëanor, no doubt, did not appreciate his half-brother’s use of the title while Finwë remained alive, and Fingolfin’s insistence on its use heightened the animosity between the brothers.
Arafinwë
“Arafinwë” is the Quenya name of Finarfin. When his brothers and children went forth to Middle-earth, Finarfin alone turned back and assumed the kingship of the Noldor in Valinor.
Finarfin’s wife Eärwen was of the Teleri, who were known for their silvery hair and their love of the sea.
“Finderato” is the Quenya name of Finrod, the eldest son of Finarfin. He is golden-haired, like his father, and went to Middle-earth in hopes of reigning over his own kingdom.
Comments and correspondence are always welcome!