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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
I said, what was it - She rifles through her notes, pulls out her remark about how none of the factors differing between here and her mental prototype were improving the matter.
At a guess, 'end marriage' is high enough on my uncle's list of priorities that they're being more nonchalant about it than they should.
purposeful_glory
Maybe. I don't think that excuses it; I mean, I object even among non-immortal populations.
purposeful_glory
I'm sufficiently confused about why you asked that question that I don't know how to construct an informative answer.
I don't have a concept of what marriages are 'supposed to be like', and while I understand why Fëanáro wants them destroyed entirely I don't personally have strong feelings in any direction. Wars involve asking people to die for you. My uncle's style of war involves asking people to swear themselves to the everlasting darkness for you. Making two families into one seems like - as good a goal as any other, and the only objection that occurs to me is that the parties make a permanent commitment for an impermanent end, which is why it surprises me that you'd object even were that untrue.
Men here are supposed to get something after they die, I don't know what. Eru doesn't just destroy them when they die.
purposeful_glory
And he did such a great job last time he picked out someone to run an afterlife, so I shouldn't be worried? Has an excellent track record with understanding the concept of marriage in a way that's palatable to me?
Granted. Mind, if I saw it that way I'd be tempted to just forbid marriage, it doesn't seem like choosing someone because you desperately want to sleep with them gets better results a millennium down the road than choosing someone because it'll promote ties between your people.
purposeful_glory
Lúthien says that the mechanism by which marriage works is not so baked into the system, actually, that it's somehow expectation-based. I'm not sure how thoroughly informed she can possibly be considering she had to replace key moments in the process with the phrase "do you think anyone's told me", though.
purposeful_glory
She blamed the Valar for telling the Quendi who went to Valinor that it worked that way because that would make it so. Well, 'blamed'. Implies a more judgmental attitude than she has.
That is very inconvenient. Well, we can tell people here something better, but if people know it's expectation-controlled - he sighs.
purposeful_glory
...then? And, mind, I have this from a girl who has been so sheltered I'm not sure she could identify rain...
Well, for example. I have lived my whole life in the comfortable certainty that my activities, being unacceptable and against Eru's will and so forth, cannot get me accidentally married. Now I know that being against Eru's will doesn't inherently make something not the sort of thing that can get you married - so, now, could I? And if that got out, would everyone in that position end up in the same situation? It's probably wiser to categorically maintain that you can't, because that means it's true and I really don't want lots of people in socially disapproved unintended marriages. Especially since some people pursue that kind of thing specifically so they won't end up married.
I imagine Lúthien is unfamiliar with that sort of thing, yes.
I imagine Lúthien is unfamiliar with that sort of thing, yes.
purposeful_glory
I am fairly confident that at least one of the six reasons is prohibitive and you have more than enough information to guess.
...this is related to Lúthien? It'd be extremely convenient if she fell in love with someone but you disapprove of that style of alliance-building and there aren't really obvious candidates, and you would not be suggesting Ido it. Some grand announcement about the true nature of marriage that disrupts peoples' lives somehow?
purposeful_glory
No, it is not related to Lúthien, and she's reportedly forbidden to get married anyway, and your reasons for caution about an announcement are reasonable.
He sighs and leans back. I really am not at all inconvenienced by this and am the best possible person for you to have talked to, but it still disturbs me slightly. Why would the Valar do that? Why not tell us it was something elaborate and formal that couldn't possibly happen by accident, or tell people that if they didn't do the customary one year engagement period without seeing each other then they couldn't end up married?
purposeful_glory
I don't know! I can figure out why Odin would have kidnapped a baby frost giant but the motives of the Valar are far more bewildering. Lúthien could be wrong, though.
Let's assume that for the time being, but not spread any information that could result in extra marriages, just in case. Did you know, it used to bother me that I couldn't marry?