@grundyscribbling / grundyscribbling.tumblr.com
I think Dior deserves a beard and almost completely round ears. Just some real human vibes coming off this guy if you ask me. Iconic how he told the Feanorians to fuck off (king shit) and forgot that the girdle was gone (less king shit).
Side bar, I think it would be very much the vibe if he wore golden ear caps sometimes for appearing more elven purposes. also I am so unwell about the Nauglamir getting the silmaril glued into it.
Higher
"Higher, ada, higher!" Elwing giggled as Dior carefully threw her into the air.
The King of Doriath chuckled in response as he fulfilled his princess' wish. "Even higher? Won't you turn into a bird and fly away then, my sweet?" he asked, his violet eyes crinkling with laughter.
I've been thinking about Nimloth and Dior today
fairest of them all
what are your thoughts about Dior?
Oh, dear, anon, this may be one where I’m off on my own… (Just to be clear, this is primarily headcanon, because canon does not resolve the issue of how Dior was counted or whether he was offered the choice of the half-elven.)
Dior was mortal. He was born after his mother had opted for mortality, so as a child of two mortals, elven immortality was never on the cards for him. It may have come as a surprise to him to learn that the Halls were not for him, given how young he was when he died, but he followed Beren and Luthien beyond the circles of the world.
This is not to say he was a normal mortal - he still had maiarin heritage, and probably was capable of things no normal mortal could have done (holding a Silmaril, for instance.) I suspect that had he lived beyond his 30s, he would also have aged extremely slowly or not at all - that gift the line of Elros enjoyed, of being able to decide when it was their time to go, would have been his as well.
But he died quite young, surviving his mother by only a few years. He apparently inherited his grandfather Thingol’s decision-making skills, since when faced with a demand from the Fëanorions for the return of the Silmaril, he decided the sensible thing was not ‘do whatever you have to do to keep the Oath and Doom bound Exiles as far away from your people as possible’ but to ignore them - sending no reply may not have been the worst possible decision, but if you’re ranking ways to respond from best to worst, it’s pretty far down the list.
I’ve seen people argue that Dior’s decision was made out of arrogance, or because he thought that the Fëanorions had no right to the Silmaril his parents retrieved, but if you want a less flip explanation than ‘he’s Thingol’s grandson’, I think his (in)action was that of someone not yet ready for the position he found himself in. I think Dior developed at a pace somewhere between elves and men, so that while he was in his early 30s, which would be adult age for the purely mannish, he was really more the equivalent of a human in their late teens. He may have been physically mature- he had kids, after all - but I think that fooled both the elves around him and probably even Dior himself into believing he was more of a grownup than he actually was. There’s a point at which human teenagers may look like adults, and generally like to believe they are adults, but in terms of emotional/mental maturity, they’re not quite there yet - what’s inside doesn’t match what you see on the outside. (The human brain is still developing until our early to mid 20s.) It’s important that the adults around teenagers recognize that and act accordingly. But the elves around Dior had no way to recognize that, because the growth/maturity pattern of elves is very different. So the elves around him left him to make decisions as an adult, when really he was a kid out of his depth. He tried ‘ignore it and hope it goes away’ for a major problem and it blew up in his face.
Trying to figure out elven/half-elven genetics here... more or less thinking out loud.
It makes little sense to me that Elwing reaches physical maturity as quickly as Eärendil does.
Let’s look at their family trees:
Eärendil = Idril (female elf) x Tuor (male Man)
Elwing = Nimloth (female elf) x Dior (male ?)
Dior = Luthien (female maia/elf) x Beren (male Man)
Luthien = Melian (female maia) x Thingol (male elf)
It may be accurate to call Elwing half-elven, but her other half is both Man and maia. So while it’s not impossible that she inherited a growth pattern more like that of Men, it should be less likely - particularly since genes suspected or implicated in growth/puberty/etc are found on multiple chromosomes. Yet Elwing is physically mature enough to bear children in her late twenties, while elves don’t normally hit puberty until around fifty. (On a related note, how long was her pregnancy? The elven year, the Mannish nine months, or somewhere in between? So many questions!)
With Eärendil it's somewhat more logical that he matures faster than elves - the Man in his family tree is a father, not a grandfather, so he inherits more mannish genes. It makes sense to me that he ends up with a growth pattern that may not be as quick as men, but is significantly faster than elves. Incidentally, this also applies to Dior, who canonically matured at a faster rate than elves as evidenced by him married and having children in his thirties.
Also, please note I’m talking strictly about growth/maturity patterns, not mortality. The only one of these half-elves I think would be mortal is Dior, since his parents were both mortal* when he was begotten. But Eärendil and Elwing were both born to elven mothers, making the matter of their mortality a lot more questionable. (And canonically, this is an open question, as Ulmo pointed out- “say unto me: whether is he Eärendil Tuor’s son of the line of Hador, or the son of Idril, Turgon’s daughter, of the Elven-house of Finwë?” The same question can be asked, albeit with different names, for Elwing. And faced with that question, the Valar punted - they had the half-elven themselves decide!)
*Luthien chose Beren’s fate, not his kindred. She was still an elf/maia, just with the singular gift of being able to die a mortal death. I also wonder if she is the only elf who could have been granted such a fate, due to her maiarin heritage - the ainur who entered Arda stay within it, but they are not bound to it in the same sense that the elves are.
