I'm sure Galadriel could have come up with malicious things to say about any of them. This one volunteered.

My father and Finwë were involved, by Cuivienen, when no one knew any better. It's an oddly charged choice on Maedhros' part. Unless they're all like that, I suppose.

Feel entirely free not to sleep with any girls, Lúthien. I wouldn't dream of thinking less of you for it; it's not any of my business.

I can't anyway, everyone likes me because of the music so it wouldn't really be fair to them. You're willfully misunderstanding me.

I'm not saying 'you have an unpalatable opinion, I cannot be your friend'. I am saying 'this topic puts me in an atrocious mood and that on top of my not caring much for Galadriel and her font of sadistic gossip in the first place mean that I do not want to engage in the originally planned activity today'. I am saying 'I wonder if you would talk about this any differently if you knew more about what it sounds like to me when you say things like that'.

I would, and will, and am trying to. You're acting like - people making a hard personal decision to do what they know is right, now that they do - is some kind of malicious thing, instead of a brave and commendable one. We didn't change so you'd feel judged.

Malicious, not necessarily. Brave, maybe. Commendable, no, I see nothing to commend. The entire thing is tragic.

I'll give you that.

I could have presented myself as a god to the Men if I'd wanted. They didn't know any better, you see. I could have told them anything. And if they hadn't waited for an explanation, a real explanation, before they believed me about whatever fool thing I might have said, that would have been wasteful of their intellects. 'Eru said so' is not a real explanation.

And would you lose respect for them if they did listen to what you told them? If they failed to think critically enough and trusted you?

In the hypothetical where I was inclined to lie to them, perhaps not. If someone impersonated me now and told them something stupid? Yes, I would be very disappointed.

If you think they're that unconvincing, then probably.

I've found them mostly only partially satisfactory. It's not an issue to which I'd given a great deal of thought, beyond being sort of glad we hadn't made it to Valinor. We don't enforce the rules about only one marriage, either, even though the Valar think that one's of even greater importance."

That one's silly too, but if I had to pick one it would be the lesser concern.

Why's that? It hurt a lot more people, by the numbers.

I'm not convinced you're getting accurate numbers, but you could change my mind in the case of Elves in particular if you have reliable statistics on that; the skew would be the other way around on Asgard.

Plural marriages were really common besides Cuivienen. For stability's sake. People who can't wed at all now that the rules are known because they only like the same gender are very rare, maybe one in two hundred?

If I take your word for it on that then my instinct was backwards for the species.

We are different from Asgardians. Maybe what's right for us is different too.

I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean by 'right' when you say that.

It is loosely possible she'll listen to you.