"We know that different lands have different customs, and commenting on someone's hair is also extremely impolite!"

"Fair enough, I guess. Um, are there any particular customs about how to wear one's hair up, while we're already on the topic? I would rather not send out inaccurate signals."

"They're used to communicate social roles. Uh, mostly to who if anyone you've sworn fealty, whether if orcs come streaming over the hillside you'll be shooting at them, whether you can heal anyone and if so there's a separate healer-noncombatant one that Eru willing will never be relevant because there hasn't been fighting between Elves or Men in Elf-run kingdoms since everyone agreed that even if there were we wouldn't fire on those, whether married, whether a parent of young children."

"How do I do my hair for 'healer, will fire on orcs'?"

"Two partial braids starting here, knotted in the back like hers over there -" and he gestures.

She has to use magic to get it right on the first try but she does. "What does a single three-stranded braid starting at the base of the skull mean? That's how my sister was wearing hers when last I saw her."

"That the wearer is usually armored and doesn't care to communicate more than that about herself. No one's going to expect a random Man they encounter to be using archaic Noldorin hair customs, though."

"Fair enough. I'd just as soon do so, if I'm going to be wearing my hair up anyway, but she probably won't be interested in changing it."

"Luckily her hairstyle does not signal any awkward positions like disagreement about the rightful King or so forth."

"That would be awkward."

"She could just wear a hat all the time. It's been done."

She snorts. "I think she'd rather change her hair. Wearing a hat all the time seems very un-Odetteish on an aesthetic level."

"She could also just leave it and raise some eyebrows. Gettng everyone to agree on an offensive is a fraught process but not so much so that anyone can derail it with a hairstyle."

"Enh, she'd probably change it. She doesn't like misrepresenting herself."

"...I also wouldn't expect her to have a strong opinion that my father is the righteous King."

"Well, no, but since he is on the throne, specifically claiming he's not would normally require a lot more commitment of opinion than going along with it."

"Depends very much on where she landed."

"Are you having a low-key civil war with someone?"

"If so, it'd be the only one ever to actually merit the title of 'civil'. There's no fighting, just a lot of hairstyles, and we have the same goal so in practical terms my father can expect his orders to be taken seriously."

"Is that why there's ambiguity between 'ally' and 'vassal' for your friend? ...Is being friends with someone for whom the ambiguity exists the reason why people think you're already too Sympathetically inclined?"

"Yes and yes, to vastly oversimplify."

"If my sister may have landed over there I think I do want an overview of the relevant politics."

"I am now hoping that she did, because she hasn't landed anywhere nearer and if she's in Doriath she will have to personally duel Doriath's queen to get out and that will really complicate my life. A long time ago my grandfather died. There was a succession dispute. My father and his half-brother had intractable differences and would probably have ended up warring over it, or else trying to mount a war effort with an impossibly fractured people and no real diplomatic authority on either of their parts to work with the locals, and everyone would already be dead. Luckily my uncle got himself killed, and his eldest son noticed that this was the inevitable outcome of the succession dispute, declared my father the rightful King, swore fealty to him, and made the whole problem vanish.

His vassals mostly did not agree with that decision, and he spends most of his time keeping them in line, and there are other complications - " such as the fact he doesn't think any of this is real - "and he himself seems to have mostly viewed it as a necessary expedience under extreme circumstances, and certainly does not actually do what the King tells him. To be fair he also didn't do what the King told him when the King was his father, he more or less does what he thinks is wise and then convinces Kings of whatever persuasion that he was, after all, right and should be indulged in continuing to do it. 

This has come up recently because we tried to organize an offensive against Angband and my cousins at first dragged their feet and then outright declined to participate. Very civilly, and with good reasons, and they'll work with us on such an offensive when the timing is better, etcetera etcetera, but there are cities where she could have landed where my father has the crown only in name. Once we win the war we'll wish them best of luck with it but at the moment we're all trusting in my cousin's gambling and he's really not supposed to just decline to mustered troops when ordered and so things are tense."

"My sister can fly. And for that matter teleport, although she doesn't like to because it's Conquest and may be leery on top of that considering how we got here. Why under the Sun would she have to duel anyone to get out?"

"Melian can probably make her realm not amenable to anyone in it doing either of those things, particularly flying."