A birthday drabble

[altariel]

As the country of my birth quietly enjoys a constitutional crisis, a (slightly early) birthday drabble for Dwimordene, who asked for "the turning point that never (quite) was".

The Age of Men

Then Faramir spoke, and in a clear voice said, “Behold! one has come to claim the kingship again at last! Shall he be king and enter into the city and dwell there?” And all the people with one voice cried, Nay. And Aragorn returned the crown to its casket, for it was no longer needed.

Thus began the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, freed of gods and masters. And the high towers and wide halls of the White City filled again, but not with lords, and the Tree blossomed, and Gondor and Arnor were reunited – not kingdom, but commonwealth.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I can't see Tolkien having written this, somehow; but I can see lots of his admirers sometimes wishing that he had.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

No, I can't see him having written it either.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I've heard it convincingly argued that Tolkien wove a lot of the historical fact and the mythology surrounding the Jacobite claim to the British succession and the loyalty of Jacobite nobles and soldiers to their kings into the saga of the exiled kings of Gondor and into other tales of exiled royalty in The Silmarillion, to which it's highly likely he was sensitive as an English Catholic growing up in the early twentieth century.