heartofoshun:Aredhel - a legendarium ladies april post.First, some of my favorite Aredhel illustrati
heartofoshun:Aredhel - a legendarium ladies april post.First, some of my favorite Aredhel illustrations and some personal reflections on the character.This is My Son Maeglin - Kasiopea ArtAredhel by Liga-MartaAredhel by Jenny DolfenStay Safe JuMclia at Deviantart (Aredhel and Celegorm).Aredhel by QitianAredhel Ar-Feiniel by shyangellI cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the mass of wonderful Aredhel fan art. I wonder if it might include the largest number of pieces of art done of any single Silmarillion woman character. (Not stopping to count this morning, but there are certainly a wealth of riches on Deviantart alone.)I am currently writing a short story about her, which I hope to have finished before the end of the month. Meanwhile, she features heavily in a novella I am working on which I am also under a lot of specific time pressure to finish. The hug above—I ship Aredhel/Celegorm as a youthful affair which blossomed into a lifelong friendship. I can on a very personal level relate well to Aredhel, because she has a lot of conflicts in her life and relationships with others which as a women, the product of a particular period in history, I know firsthand. I suspect she was tomboyish and athletic in her youth, happier to hang out with the boys than to sit around looking pretty and fulfilling gender expectations.However, against what would have seemed like her natural inclination, she dedicates a lot of years to being supportive of others—Turgon, for example. This never feels like a wonderful match for her to me. But he is her brother, he needs her, is grieving and has a young daughter. So she ends up in the gilded cage of Gondolin, until she simply cannot bear it any longer.The Silmarillion, in the section on the “Flight of the Noldor,” could lead one to believe that she needs him to look after her. If she does, it does not appear that she accedes to that assessment. In the Christopher Tolkien Silmarillion version of her story, she ends up in another relationship which is bound to make her unhappy (this is assuming one is rejecting the discarded rape scenario). Even so, her marriage to Eol can be seen as encompassing the sleeping-with-the-enemy trope. Although I have read other effective slightly or wildly AU versions of the tale in fiction as well. (Remember this history is framed by many different writers and perspectives.)And then there is Maeglin. Oh, lordy, that rings familiar for a lot of mothers also. (A great number of us can look back and feel like there was a Maeglin in our life during the adolescence of one or another of our children.) In any case, Aredhel’s story seems to fit very nicely into the Doomed Noldor theme. I personally like her. And I choose not to interpret her as a victim but to focus when I write her on the positive and attractive side—the iconoclastic, rule-breaking, self-assertive aspects of her character. -- source link
#aredhel#silmarillion#tolkien