currently entertaining the headcanon that gondor looks to melian as a "patron saint" of sorts. like — they canonically pray to the valar, the númenóreans venerated uinien, and when it comes to melian, they're her literal descendants for the most part. and then there's the fact that they're at war so the idea of the girdle is really appealing, symbolically — and in the histories melian's power stood specifically against sauron.

evening dress

c. 1912

Girolamo Giuseffi, Newfields

Fall of Númenor team: Ar-Pharazôn, Tar-Míriel, Elendil, Isildur and Sauron.

Ivriniel and Lothiriel 

2020, digital fanart

Gondor family bonding

Appendix A:

Denethor to Faramir:

Denethor and Faramir:

Imrahil:

Faramir:

lothiriel

I could be working on my paper

alternately I could try and figure out a rough estimate of the populations of Gondor

Keep reading

@elrondweek Day 6: Darkness & Loss

Elrond comforts Isildur during the Siege of Barad-dûr. He knows how it feels to lose a brother.

(The relationship between Elrond and Isildur is overlooked and underrated. It was a strong friendship - a bond of kinship, even; because although an age has passed, Elrond could still see the tenacity of Elros present in this family.

Of course, Elrond held no ill will towards Isildur for making a mistake, especially one born out of grief. Elrond knows all about forgiveness. Fostering his surviving son and later descendants exemplified Elrond’s compassion and the lasting respect he had for this line of Men.)

My first Tumblr post!

Let's start here by talking about a concept I've been kind of in love since like 2019-ish, and it's representing the Gondorians from Lord of the Rings as Byzantines, be it regarding clothing or equipment. In general, I like to combine gear from various periods of byzantine military, but mainly from the Macedonians and Komnenian dynasties. I also like to add some non-byzantine pieces, if it fits, like the mytrhil helmet of the Citadel Guard, which is inspired in a certain type of Hellenistic helmet.

So, to sumarize, what I'm sharing here are:

1- A Citadel Guard of Minas Tirith

2- Two heavy infantrymen from the city or one of the big fiefdoms of Gondor

3- A knight of Minas Tirith, clad like a cataphract

Had to look up the information on the Horn of Gondor.

From The Return of the King, “Minas Tirith”:

And then in Appendix A.I.ii, in a footnote on the steward “Vorondil the Hunter” (father of Mardil; Mardil was the first ruling Steward of Gondor):

lesser-known legendarium ladies ✰ mithrellas

Gondorians seem to me like wimple appreciators. So here's my vaguely wimple inspired take on gondorian women's fashion. I think the Numenorians may have had a more full coverage deal going on, but Gondor was feeling spicy, so they just kept getting less and less practical and protective head wear and more of an aesthetic choice

The Empress

literally my favorite moment in the book. eight-year-old me read and cried. I won’t finish it, but I like this fragment

Gandalf about Denethor:

Frodo with Faramir and Gollum:

:)

#conclusion: denethor/finduilas is monster4monster faramir/éowyn is monster/monsterfucker

@anghraine's tags because they're perfect.

The weirdness of the Dúnedain is definitely downplayed in the fandom, but I really don’t think people get how strange Gondorian Dúnedain must seem to the Rohirrim.

There’s a spooky mountain on their border full of ghosts that are trapped there because a Gondorian king cursed them. In the war of the ring the Gondorians talk of their head of state being prematurely aged because his hair began to grey in his 60s. They put this down to him mind wrestling an evil demigod, and they’re right! Some of them can actually read minds, others can command horses with only thought. They’re very tall and have bright eyes that are sometimes described as glowing.

This is very weird! Their main ally is ruled by giants who age weirdly and look like elves with strange powers from a drowned continent.

I already replied with more serious thoughts but I was taking my last break from the dissertation to think about this again. It's interesting to consider that the Rohirrim's approval of Boromir is framed by them less as "Boromir was unlike a few very peculiar Gondorian Dúnedain" but as "Boromir was unlike his weird people in general, and instead cool and normal, like us."

Personally, I also feel that something is lost in the flattening of Númenóreans' weirdness specifically in the context of Rohan's norms around beauty, masculinity, maturity, prestige, even general demeanor. And that thing is Éowyn's specific tastes in men:

Tolkien may have intended for Elves and Númenóreans to just be objectively super hot in an absolute sense that Éowyn is responding to. But given how extremely peculiar the Dúnedain's physical markers of prestige and maturity and beauty etc are vs Rohan's, I feel like Éowyn could also be seen as a bit of a monsterfucker by Rohirrim standards. A sadly neglected angle of her characterization, alas :(

Physically though, Boromir looked a lot like Aragorn. And Faramir did resemble Boromir. At some point in time, I think people calculated them to be about 7 feet tall.

On the scale of "monster"-loving though, Eomer married Lothiriel, daughter of Imrahil, known for being BOTH Dunedain and with a measure of elf blood. Eomer and Lothiriel's son was called Elwine, which was Elf-friend.

The siblings share the same taste.

The Boromir thing was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Éomer's characterization of Boromir in TTT:

In reality, Boromir's appearance would be very Númenórean, of course. Maybe not quite as much as Denethor's (Tolkien described Denethor as "He was very tall and in appearance looked like an ancient Númenorean") or Aragorn's, since they are explicitly described as resembling each other more than they do Boromir. Nevertheless, Boromir's appearance is always described in distinctly Dúnadan terms. He is very tall and strong, with the Edith standard of dark hair and grey eyes; at 40, he is also strikingly beautiful, a quality mentioned over and over, but perhaps most notably when literal Elf Legolas mourns him as "Boromir the Fair."

That period between Aragorn's marriage and the Elves leaving Middle-earth must have been absolutely wild for the scribes, librarians, historians and archivists of Minas Tirith, because you suddenly have the people of Rivendell, who are packing, graciously sending for you to quickly transcribe the texts they're taking with them so the knowledge is not lost from mortals, but also just gifting you tons of priceless manuscripts because they have more than one edition of the same thing, or because they're sure there are many more in the West, and there's obviously no need to take 20 copies of Rumil's Ainulindalë with them.

And on the other hand, everyone who knew him is certain Finrod has been pestering every single new arrival in Valinor for information about Men, and you're Faramir, and Elrond asks you for a favour and is like, "Galadriel wants to collect as much information about your cultures and history as she can for her brother; do you think you could find anything of interest in Minas Tirith?", and you're like "The Lady of the Golden Wood....???? Fi-nrod Edenn-il???", of course you'll butcher the job, this is too much, but ultimately you just may have prepared a dossier for the greatest hero of the First Age and you have to lie down for a moment.