...so, total strangers who do weird things to the air around them and have difficulty holding normal conversations with incarnates that take their traits into account show up and announce that they want to uproot some Elves and take them to this place none of the Elves have ever seen and it is definitely nice, and safe, because they totally know how these things work for incarnates right, and are totally trustworthy...

But it was nice and safe! For nearly four hundred Years it was perfectly so!

Look, sometimes people who don't know Elspeth don't believe her when she says wacky things out of nowhere, she has about a sixty percent success rate leading directly with "so! vampires exist!" when she's talking to somebody who's wandered into a Coven site instead of doing a whole "sit down this is complicated" shtick, and the Valar were operating with a handicap where she has an overwhelming advantage.

It's actually pretty impressive that most of the Elves came. They should congratulate the Elves.

At this point that would probably sound condescending.

Can she explain condescending.

Yup!

They might be able to pull off something like congratulating the Elves if it were more in the form of an apology for being so inscrutable and not realizing what a leap of faith coming to Valinor was, but just "millennia later, by the way, congratulations" is gonna have problems.

What kind of problems? If it's a nice thing, why would a couple thousand years make it less nice?

Time kinda matters to incarnates. It matters when things happen before other things, even if the things are "more of whatever is going on already", and this adds up to urgency and scheduling and panics over being late and hurrying through things - and saying things a couple thousand years late implies all kinds of stuff about what can possibly have been on your mind in the intervening couple thousand years and that matters -

Oh.

In hindsight, not saying or doing anything for three Years after the Darkening probably was a bad idea! Incarnates would have cared about that!

Yup!

Maybe the civil war wouldn't have happened!

Possible! Only if they did useful things during that time as opposed to unhelpful things but three Years is a long time.

They could have put everyone inclined to have a civil war in Lorien, at least.

That might not have been taken well. They don't seem like the "ooh, lovely gilded cage" types.

Well, they kind of deserve it for having a civil war! Also can she explain 'lovely gilded cage types'?

Gilded cages are this concept. The one she was in one time was like this! She was not in it for starting a civil war but for other reasons. The problem with them is that however comfy they are you cannot leave them and go do things, and they may have had things in mind besides having civil wars, like going and fighting the Enemy.

Which was silly of them; they couldn't possibly have won. The Valar told them this.

And the Valar were believable because?

The Valar were right!

No, see, they just discussed this, that doesn't necessarily help.

How could they have explained it to the incarnates? Other than 'look, you've seen us, you don't even know how to injure us!'

Well, maybe they could have gone into more detail on how exactly Valar were uninjurable and then the nuke wouldn't have been such a surprise disappointment.

The incarnates didn't even ask, just started having a civil war! Also they did not think it'd be wise to warn them against nuclear bombs since that would involve telling them about nuclear bombs.

They can volunteer information without having to be asked! And, well, now they know about nuclear bombs anyway. Why didn't it work?