Chapter Text
But of course, Fate is only a high and grand cipher for the things that lie beyond our control. It wasn’t Fate which changed the course of Cuiviélin, but the cascading nature of events: the last recording arrived late, a stage hand was directed to place it, in the process some recordings were displaced and there was no time to do a full ninety minute run-through to test the sequencing before the performance. The composer is god-king of his composition for as long as he controls all its elements. The greater the number of elements, the weaker his claim to absolute rule over his composition. And thus, also, the shape of composition, which passes through many hands and is fundamentally altered before the listener hears it.
What can be said of the events that followed that memorable performance? If the spirit of the times was embodied in Cuiviélin, then its spirit was of discord and dissonance and therefore, riotousness — at least according to the old guard. Plenty of ink has been spilled concerning the composition’s centrality as a catalyst in the events that followed. But if Cuiviélin embodied the spirit of the times, then it embodied the tension between two worlds. It marked not only the tension between two schools of composition, or between Ennor and Avon, but between a new world and the old. On the one side stood the desire for a return to Cuiviénen. On the other, a desire to learn, discover and build anew. On the one, the desire that had propelled the Godhellim back to Beleriand. On the other, the desire that animated plenty in Avon, from the Glinnelim, to many of the Godhellim Royal Academy of Philosophers, which had propelled the Godhellim to new heights in the noontide of Avon and then, again, at the dawn of the Second Age before these ambitions were corrupted.
Much has been made of Cuiviélin’s lynchpin role in dividing Godhellim society and bringing discord to the peaceful realm of Avon. However, such contradictions had long underpinned this world and had long been tugging at the seams of Godhellim society. The clash was almost certainly inevitable based on an assessment of the historical facts. Once Prince Curufin published his monograph, laying bare some of the cherished suppositions of Godhellim society and poking holes in them — albeit, initially, as philosophical experiment — this toppling of hierarchy would have almost certainly occurred sooner, if not later. Godhellim, Minillim and Glinnelim philosophers had long traditions of writings interrogating the necessities of a hierarchical ordering of the Elves and a scientific grounding to such critiques would only have lent to their already rigorous credibility. If not for Prince Curufin, it would have eventually been some member of the Godhellim Royal Academy of Philosophers, building on the knowledge of previous generations of scientists. And if not for them, certainly Prince Finrod’s inability or unwillingness to marry again would have done so. What was not inevitable, perhaps, was Prince Finrod's impulsive and heretical declaration of love and the (un)happy accident of its revelation. And yet, does Prince Finrod's heretical declaration not find some shared ground in the intellectual traditions of the rites of Leithandîs and its defiance of the restrictive couple forms promoted in the name of Manu and Elbereth? At best, we might describe Cuiviélin's performance as a confluence of many events, many tensions that had been building: a mere spark or flash point, rather than the explosive itself.
Acknowledging these facts, however, is still distressing in these early days of the Fifth Age and it is to be hoped that better historians will write better histories in the days to come. Until then, while this critic would diagnose Cuiviélin with the power of paradox, others have unfortunately been content to paddle in the shallow waters of Discord. Discord certainly was the tradecraft of the Godhellim. There were riots at first: for the law, against it, for heresy, against it and some charming few, because they rather thought Maglor’s symphony heretical to the foundations of music itself. The Upper Chamber fared little better. Split into two factions of those who wanted a king and those who did not, they sat in deadlock for two days until H.M. Mirwë, great-grandson of Finwë’s second oldest brother, was presented as an alternative.
This descendant of Tata failed to inspire. His death in the First Kinslaying rankled: whatever else one might say about Maglor (and plenty was said, most of it by Maglor himself and largely to do with being mad, as he reminds me), the die-hard Fëanorians insisted, had repeatedly acquitted himself with honour on the battlefield and what’s more, had the good sense not to die from an entirely foolish, avoidable and distinctly un-Elvish accident. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was not a line of reasoning that found much favour with anyone else, and the Godhellim found themselves further divided.
The next sequence of events are highly disputed. Some insist there was a planned armed revolt. Others, on treason within the Upper Chamber. Yet others, on the intervention of some poor Minil soldier, somewhere in Tirion. What remains is the incontrovertible fact that five days later, certain members of the Academy tabled what would later be known as the Charter on the Rights & Responsibilities of Government and Free People ; that its provisions sparked an uproar; and that despite this uproar, it proved to be a more popular settlement than appointing H.M. Mirwë heir to the throne. More discord, more dissonance — a theme emerges, perhaps? We need no Morgoth to foment trouble if we set our minds to it. The very next day, Lord Veryohtaro read out a list of grievances against the Crown from a letter signed by thirty great lords and ladies of the Upper Chambers and declared H.M. Mirwë king in Tirion’s Great Square.
Let us pass lightly over the detailed ugliness of revolt, pacification and negotiation. The record shows none severely injured in the ensuing rioting and that the tide was turned by the guild councils’ negotiations and the rapid barricades built by an impromptu guard of builders, masons, artisans of Tirion. In return, they received further concessions in devolution of powers, originally included and initially proscribed at the first tabling of the Charter on the Rights and Responsibilities of Government and Free Peoples . Let that suffice our curiosity. Prince Arafinwë abdicated and retired with Princess Eärwen to build a new sea garden south of Alpalondë. An Interim Council was formed under his Minister for State at the time, Prince Gil-Galad. A counsel was called of all the Godhellim, much as our forefathers had once sat to counsel at Nen Echui. The choices were made clear to them. A third chose to depart with H.M. Mirwë for the north. The rest were introduced to the pleasures of voting.
This was not entirely new to the Godhellim. They did, after all, vote in guild elections — fraught affairs, as they so often are — and appoint themselves councils in various towns and settlements across the countryside. Kings, however, have far more gravitas than councils and guild leaders. At the very least they are symbols; leaders, generals, manifestations of the nebulous, mysterious will of the people. Unfortunately, councils lack such gravitas and their elections are generally seen to be as something of a community sport, endless debate being a somewhat popular past-time amongst the Godhellim. That is to say, there was plenty of consensus and even more confusion about kings and councils and voting. Despite the existing pool of candidates, at least three thousand votes were evenly split between Fëanor and Fingolfin and it had to be explained that no, voting for the deceased, even in protest, could not possibly count for anything. A second round proved rather more fruitful, though none could stop those fervent souls who voted for Finwë. Prince Celebrimbor was duly appointed elector-king, along with his council.
This was rather against Prince Celebrimbor’s will and design. He had only agreed to be a candidate representing a loosely affiliated party of guild leaders and radical councillors, after his cousin, Prince Gil-Galad, pointed out they could hardly be expected to invest in an experiment he refused to endorse with his presence. Far worse decisions have been made under far less pressure. Nevertheless, Prince Celebrimbor accepted his new responsibilities with good grace, though he categorically refused to be called King. Committees mushroomed and all sorts of structures and a great civic educational programme to ensure the promised devolution of powers and that he would be the last Elector-Prince. His misfortune proved to be an immense source of entertainment for his various cousins, aunts and uncles. Princess Findis, on hearing the news, remarked with great piety: that’s what comes of stirring pots that don’t need stirring. And if a certain cousin happened to fall into a pond that summer — well, such accidents have been known to happen from time to time, even in Avon’s perfect bliss.
Maglor’s symphony proved a thorough commercial disaster. This made it a perfect critical success once the Godhellim had soothed their wounded pride. Arguments raged in every fashionable drawing room: it was heresy, it was trite, it was like nothing anyone had ever done before, it was noise, it was genius, it was the raving of a madman. It drew the kind of controversy every artist dreams of and cemented Maglor’s place in history forever. Young composers tried their hand at his technique, with varying success. More found success with his recording machine. At first, musicians treated them with disdain. As every new invention must, its versatility enchanted and soon swept across the land. In a short few months, these machines became all the rage and found their way into every fashionable Balannorim home and Balannor was flooded with a veritable tidal wave of recordings. The wise, said Princess Galadriel, may make their predictions, but reality is so much more stupid than you’d think. Or, as my uncle would have it: foresight, a highly imprecise art.
As for Maglor, he had become incurably addicted to being an Eccentric. His musical experiments grew wilder, absurd, and the wilder and more absurd they got, the more devoted his following. Eventually, he too surrendered to his fame. He resumed teaching, though his style was somewhat eclectic: it veered violently between rigorous theory, invective against theory and Balannorim compositional dogma, encouraging his students to quarrel with him and shouting boring, banal, predictable at anyone who agreed with him. The merits of this method remain to be seen in a few years. There is nothing more tedious, after all, than breaking things for the sake of breaking them. He rebuilt Meryatelluma and every other day, the bright, beautiful and exuberantly young drift in and out its stately pillars and the music plays on all day. And on some rare evenings, Maglor himself would wheel out his machines and play us some strange new abstracted recording he had worked on: distortions of popular songs, birdsong wrapped up in the slow rhythmic drumming popular with the southern Edhel, long zithers mingled heretically with the dances of Alpalondë’s dance halls, whale song and long-necked lutes.
As for our satirist, though Prince Celebrimbor found himself unexpectedly elevated to office, he insisted she complete her studies. Her dissertation was appropriately boring and informative and made great strides in understanding the taxonomy and development of armoured rats. Her research on their social organisation, meanwhile, did much to advance the cause for redefining intelligence, kinship and language in Balannor. Between her and Prince Curufin, their arguments did much to provoke and upset, both within the Academy and without. It is not so very easy, after all, to surrender the elevated status of “blessed” in favour of “not so exalted now, are you?” The question of universal rights and egalitarianism was contentious. It would have even stayed theoretical for the most part, if not for some enterprising young scientists who insisted that if all development was evolution, there was a case to be made for abolishing the rites of the Valar who were only, after all, a vastly more kind — species, some insisted — and not gods at all. As one might imagine, this argument went down rather poorly in some quarters. Some irascible Godhellim lord was heard to remark, I can swallow buggery and incest, but damme, surrender the Prayer Book of 374? One must draw the line at civilisational decline somewhere, dammit! Nevertheless, Prince Celebrimbor found, in it, a useful negotiating tactic for drawing various concessions from the Upper Chamber and nudging them towards their inevitable redundancy.
Elsilindë’s satires, on the other hand, were rather more inappropriately interesting and utterly lacking in virtue of any sort. Her next satire, The Marriage Conspiracy, or, a Tale of Intrigue, Inconvenience and Incaution, turned its hawkish eye on recent happenings in Tirion to the delight of all, high and low. Critics, including this one, observed a greater maturity in style and literary device; though some demanding critics insisted the romance altogether far too sentimental and mawkish to be entirely believable.
In perhaps a tiresome emerging trend amongst the high-spirited of Tirion’s youth, a fight broke out on the opening night in the middle of the third act between warring factions of Radicals and Reformists against H.M. Mirwë’s Revanchists. Still, this was less tiresome than the disruption of Ingohtar’s Seasonal Moods with shrill and discordant whistle and horn-blowing by self-declared students of Maglor’s techniques of dissonance. And this, in turn, was less disruptive than the bread throwing that occurred at the winter performance of the Noldolantë at Tirion’s Grand Theatre that year. No less than twenty performances were similarly unceremoniously disrupted in those exciting early years of the Fifth Age.
The various subjects of The Marriage Conspiracy were rather less congratulatory of Tirion’s latest new literary voice. H.M. Mirwë threatened to sue for libel. This had the unfortunate unintended consequence of accelerating the play’s popularity. Princess Findis, though treated with no less a jaundiced eye, took the matter more philosophically. Only fools entertain fools and their folly, she said. In Alpalondë, there was much amusement over the naive depiction of the Glinnelim as an exotic, liberated people. You must tell them to organise an expedition here occasionally, said my uncle, only do let us know in advance. We wouldn’t want to disappoint with the dressing up. We will never truly know what was said in Valmar’s palaces; only that a number of letters went back and forth and Princess Almárimeldë was heard to remark to Lady Túralissë: the fashion for independence in Tirion grows too tiresome, my dear, you must do something about it. Later at the same ball, Prince Celebrimbor to Prince Gil-Galad, sotto voce: you see how you’d like someone writing about your father being absolutely soppy — not wet, coz, surely — my dear boy, how is one expected to take that awful balcony scene, not becoming in the least — but Tyelpë, how else was the poor girl supposed to show the marriage; you can’t expect us to believe your father entirely se— — Gil if you say one more word, I’ll dunk you in that ugly champagne fountain.
To illustrate, I have reproduced the scene for the public interest —
SETTING: the ruinous, dark and terrible fortress of Formenos. A balcony.
OUR DARK-HAIRED HERO (played by Lord Morilórmo) : Behold, my lover, so moon-wan, pale, dimmed. And yet, the brightness of his hair would shame Elbereth’s very stars — O that I were but a glove on his hand, the jewel on his golden sceptre, the silk covering his deity rising to greet — but soft, he speaks!
OUR GOLDEN-HAIRED HERO (played by Lady Amarië) : Finyatamo, Finyatamo, wherefore art thou, Finyatamo? What dreams keep thee, entrapped, stolen from me?
Our dark-haired hero ascends a vine and climbs into the balcony, while our golden-haired prince gazes wistfully into the night. He places his hands over his lover’s eyes. Our golden-haired hero gasps, turns and cries my love, before swooning into his lover’s arms.
OUR DARK-HAIRED HERO: My darling!
OUR GOLDEN-HAIRED HERO: awakening from his stupor. My love!
[There is more in this vein, that I must excise for the sake of brevity.]
OUR GOLDEN-HAIRED HERO: O my love, thou liv’st! Thou breath’st! And yet, thou art imperiled, for this very moment cunning conspirators seek to seize thee and the Crown along with thee.
OUR DARK-HAIRED HERO: What care I for conspiracy? I love thee! He kneels and presses kisses along our fair-haired prince’s arm. I love thee! I love thee! I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!
OUR GOLDEN-HAIRED PRINCE: O my love! What trials, what terrors await us!
OUR DARK-HAIRED HERO: To Utumno with them all! Let us marry this instant!
They retreat to the bedroom. Silhouetted we see them kiss, before the stage lights dim discreetly.
It must be observed, for the sake of history, that on the first night, after the restless spirits were evicted from the theatre and the performance resumed, the actors, carried away in their enthusiasm, treated spectators to a rather passionate disrobing before the lights were hastily dimmed. Perhaps not unsurprising, then, that Prince Celebrimbor might have an objection or two to the staging.
It is this critic’s personal belief — entirely unfounded, as I am reminded, by Maglor — that in repentance for her previous error, Elsilindë allowed both Prince Finrod and Prince Curufin too much liberty with the text. It certainly accounts for the rather romantic sentimentalism: thoroughly unfashionable, amongst Tirion’s new fashion for indifference. Who can blame them? All newlyweds are doomed to be a little silly in love.
Yes, newlyweds. Happily disgraced and relieved of any offices and obligations, Prince Finrod was finally free to marry Prince Curufin a third time — and to the satisfaction of those of Tirion’s remaining great and good. A royal wedding, even of a disgraced prince, is always an exciting society affair. Everyone believes themselves to have some stake in it: musicians, cooks, entertainers, decorators, carpenters, tailors, jewelsmiths, craftsmen of every kind, young ladies and lords vying for some role of importance, nosy dowagers. There are holidays and feasts, celebrations and entertainment for days and every excuse to abandon work, buy new silks and necklaces, and of course, to drink copious amounts of miruvor and wine. And Prince Finrod was dearly loved, even in disgrace, and therefore, his marriage was cause for all the more excitement, once Tirion had reconciled itself to its scandalous nature. Even if a number of high society mamas and ambitious young ladies were jaded, at least we may rest content that they consoled themselves adequately with diamonds, rubies and all the new finery needed for a royal wedding.
And so Prince Finrod and Prince Curufin married again in spring with all the pomp and circumstance that suited their station, three years after the crisis in Tirion. The affair was satisfyingly extravagant and took place in the Great Hall of Debate, transformed with exotic orchids from the far southern reaches of Avathar, decorated with strings of fat and lustrous pearls. Prince Finrod wore white clocked with gold embroidering and a cape woven of delicate gold thread and gauzy lace, embroidered with diamonds and pearls. It was gifted to him by Lady Thoronië and believed to have been sewn by Míriel Therindë herself, with a train that stretched nearly a quarter of the way down the length of the Great Hall. Prince Curufin was forbidden from wearing black and so, because old habits die poorly, wore scarlet and gold and plenty of gold jewellery to please Godhellim sensibilities.
There was a great deal of excitement and argument in Tirion, over who would be the bride and bridegroom in this wedding. In a break from tradition, both princes made each others’ wedding gifts — a carcanet of white jade and silver for Prince Finrod and gold, ruby and obsidian for Prince Curufin. Gossips were further spited in their sordid speculation by the presence of both parents at the blessing of the marriage. In the absence of Fëanor, Maglor stood alongside Nerdanel as they gave Prince Curufin away — and looked mighty pleased with himself about it. Nerdanel, who is given to laughter rather than tears these fair days, did not cry, but Princess Eärwen more than made up to the satisfaction of all the nosy grand lords and ladies. Prince Turgon arranged for a dramatic display of fireworks and lights, while Princess Ireth and Prince Argon arranged an elaborate sword salute. And for all her protestations about incest and the sanctity of marriage, Princess Findis descended from Taniquetil once more to deliver her blessing in the form of a long and intricate prayer — though perhaps more will remember Princess Lalwen's blessing, delivered in a too bawdy toast that made Prince Curufin's ears turn bright red. I too played my part, for Maglor, in his experimental mood, was forbidden from composing a wedding recessional which was both charmingly cliched and sufficiently modern to satisfy both parties' exacting tastes: a not inconsiderable feat, considering their frequently conflicting tastes and ideas. (As Maglor reminds me, this is variously the price of genius, love, a constitutional inability to desist from meddling and being a disinterested third party — I leave it to discerning readers to determine which played the larger role.)
There was plenty of weeping at the wedding, chiefly from young women, though at least several young men were not entirely immune. For the next ten days, all of Tirion and a significant part of Alpalondë feasted, partied and got, as the high-spirited and youthful amongst us would say, thoroughly blotto. Princess Galadriel organised a second War Games in which it must be said, Prince Celeborn led the Alpalondë contingent to a reasonable, fair and not at all bloody victory. No one threw bread or came to blows or bit each other, or anything that might marr the happy day and everyone smiled, misty-eyed and fond, when the happy pair kissed and departed for a blissful wedding holiday, somewhere in the wilds of southern Avon.
And so, perhaps, the mystery of the Allfather’s Great Pattern. For as surely as day follows night, sun follows rain, spring follows winter; so too must discord yield to the changing, turning of the world and Morgoth’s Marring give way to the Allfather’s Children and their lives, little and big, their sorrows, their joys, their despair and above all, their love. Thus time wends its way on in the Blessed Realm and we sing, no more than single notes in a great and eternal chorus.
PRINCE DAERON ILINNENION & MAGLOR
Alpalondë
Fi.A.32
THE END