Aaaaand here’s part five of The Women Who Shaped Middle Earth (here’s where you can read parts one through four.) A five-part series, I’m looking at all the women who had a significant impact on Tolkien’s world. If you feel I left something out let me know, as I’ll be editing all of this before offering the complete version for download as a .pdf.

This guide, as well as one other guide (to be released later this month) is part of my contribution to Legendarium Ladies April. If you don’t already know about the event, definitely check it out! And if you have any lady-centric questions or issues you’d like to see me make a post for, now’s the time to let me know!

And if you think this is interesting, check out my already completed Atanamili: The Women of the First Age series, which covers all the (mortal) women of the First Age.

Anonymous asked: “hi! i am rereading the silmarillion after many years and i’m having some trouble with the noldorin royal family’s relationships. do you know a chart that shows who was on especially good terms with who and who disliked who? or if it interests you can you talk a bit about it? i love your blog!”

Oh boy, Anon, you said the magic words: Noldor and chart. So have four! First a family tree to help keep the relations straight. Then a chart showing members of the family described by Tolkien as being on especially friendly or unfriendly terms. Then a chart showing everyone’s reaction to the Oath of Feanor, and finally one showing the lineup for the departure of the Noldor from Valinor.

If you’d like to read more about the Noldorin royal family and their complicated relationships, I’ve got plenty more posts for you:

• Finwean Infographic
  
• Elvish Cross-Cultural Relations: The Noldor
• Feanor’s Lisp
• Using “Finwe” as a Prefix
• On Feanor’s Abandonment of Fingolfin
• Maedhros and Fingon’s Gift Exchange
• Galadriel’s Hair
• Aredhel: White Lady of the Noldor
• Earwen and Anaire
• Galadriel’s Part in the Exile of the Noldor

Multicultural Elvish Marriages

An interesting question! Difficult to answer, because our examples are few and often affected by strange circumstances. Below is a chart of cross-cultural marriages among the elves (let me know if I forgot one) (They’re color-coded by culture: red=Noldor, purple=Vanyar, blue=Teleri/Sindar, grey=Avari, green=multicultural) As you can see, in most of these relationships the wife goes…

tolkienreadalong:

Okay, I know that several of you re-readers mentioned that the influx of names in this week’s chapters have stumped you in the past, so in the interest of helping with that I’ve made the above infographics (I even wrote a limerick – suck it, poetry!)

I couldn’t think of anything for Finarfin’s kids, but I’ll keep working on it – and let me know if there’s another group of names you find especially confusing, and I’ll see if I can come up with anything.

((EDIT: Forgot to mention that this is all based solely on the information included in The Silmarillion, since it’s meant to help first-time readers of that book. So if you’ve read Tolkien’s other works and notice some details that are kind of… off (*cough*Orodreth*cough*), that’s why.))

It suddenly occurred to me that, even though I made these for the Silmarillion Read-Along, they’re technically educational enough for this blog (certainly more education than Azog Jesus, at least.) Part 2 will be up in a few hours.

Middle Earth Without the Children of Indis

It would have been way worse! Okay, first of all I’ve got say that I don’t think a lot of the major events leading up to the exile of the Noldor would have been all that different – Feanor still probably would have made the silamrils, ‘cause making awesome things was basically what he did.…

When Did Nerdanel Leave Feanor?

You didn’t dream it, although Tolkien’s exactly words are a little different. But let’s rewind a bit first: Tolkien tells us that Feanor and Nerdanel’s marriage became strained as Feanor became more “rebellious”, and that in the end Nerdanel chose to stay in Valinor instead of joining him in exile. But the specifics of this…

My Opinion on Finwe’s Second Marriage

There are a couple different directions I could go with this question, so I’m going to very briefly address several of them, lol. What is my opinion on Finwe wanting to remarry? I think his reasoning was pretty fair. His situation after Miriel’s death was pretty depressing – not only was his wife dead, who’d…