To the High King of the Noldor in Beleriand and in Valinor, Curufinwë Fëanáro, son of Finwë:

Marriage doesn't work the way the Valar told us it does, and I can prove it. Also there are some diplomatic concerns which are a consequence of this discovery but I think we can get them cleaned up pretty quickly. 

Some important background: I am attracted to men. I was going to tell you once we'd established a Noldorin kingdom independent of the Valar and their opinions but the past few years have been eventful enough I hadn't gotten around to it. I did take up a relationship with Leareth, in secret. It was not my first relationship. I wanted him and once he had recovered from Angband he noticed. I am not attracted to children and I have never forced any of our servants to sleep with me and I don't think that I would expect either of those tendencies to be particularly correlated with mine and suspect that the Valar provided us with bad categories here, though I have done less research than I planned to do before I told you this. 

When Leareth and I saw each other again we resumed our relationship. This was ill-advised, I think mostly for him because I am evil now and because if it became known (which it now has) it would seriously undermine his credibility and peoples' willingness to work with him on the war effort. I think it probably shouldn't but you will have to ascertain that yourself. He did not abuse his position and I think needed me much more than I needed him, though I'd also missed him very badly during the six months I spent with Sauron trying to kill him. 

The reason it became known is that two days ago when we were intimate a marriage bond occurred. It's one-sided, I assume because humans can't get it. It seems to come with the usual complement of marriage blessings and be otherwise indistinguishable from an ordinary Quendi marriage. I was not expecting it and neither was he. I'm upset, obviously, but not particularly with him. I have a theory about how it happened. I believe that Eru has not designed the world for Quendi flourishing, and that in fact many features of its design are specifically aimed at creating a certain sort of heartbreak or tragedy. (Other elements of our design that strike me as evidence for this: the way that foresight works, the fact that the way marriage bonds work does not match the way the Valar tell us that marriage itself ought to work, the necessity of going through Mandos for resurrection, oaths). I think that Eru prohibited some categories of relationship (while not curbing the tendencies which led people towards them) not because they were wrong but because he felt that his aims were better served by their being forbidden. I think that we ought to have our own cultural understanding of marriage which bears perhaps little resemblance to the one the gods gave us. And as soon as I reached this conclusion, I got my marriage bond. There are a few possibilities: one is that Eru was annoyed with me and decided to inconvenience me personally, but presuming Him to act more through general laws than highly specific acts of spite in another universe, I think it is likely that once you realize that marriage is ours and not a gift from the gods, it ceases to be limited in the way the gods told us it was. I want to test this. 

Now the politics, which I'll keep short. I should probably not remain here a prisoner of my husband; it gives off a concerning impression to anyone who finds out about it. If it is acceptable to you I would like to return to Arda. I can stay out of public view if we want to avoid explaining any of this until we've tested it more. Please come to Velgarth immediately; Vanyel should be available to take you. I'd like to talk with you and I think Telumë would as well. 

- Nelyafinwë Maitimo

He reads his letter very quickly, making steadily more expressive faces.

"- is there one for Nerdanel," he says to Vanyel, "I know it's harder to reach her with communications because she's so far from the nearest place we can Gate but I could sort of use her counsel, here, I think."

"I wasn't given a letter for her. Seems pretty reasonable for you to want to talk to her, though. Can you reach her with osanwë from Tol Eréssea?" 

"Yes. Do you mind if we head over there now? Did you get a letter -"

"Yes. I assume so it would not come as a complete surprise if you read yours and immediately told me everything in it." He was very good and did not even try to peek. 

He starts walking towards Tol Eressëa. Do you have any, uh, human cultural context to add? - not about humans having a broader conception of marriage, I knew that part.

:About what the political ramifications would be in Velgarth? About what in all hells Telumë was thinking? I'm not sure what genre of context would be most helpful here: 

Either of those! Also whether anyone's going to think we're being unreasonable if we demand Maitimo back right now. I'm going to do it anyway but it's good to know how many objections to expect.

:Hmm. I don't know if general human cultural context is helpful there. Telumë - Leareth - is sufficiently differently shaped from most humans. My letter said that Telumë thinks he should return to Arda, and implies that he's very upset about this and thinks it was a terrible mistake and does not really trust his judgement in this area, which is extremely reasonable given, well, THIS. Also it implies to me that he'll find it pretty reasonable if you want to collect Maitimo right away:

He shakes his head. :I would honestly just be baffled if Leareth had done this! But Telumë...isn't quite the Leareth we knew, I think. Not yet. He has to do a lot of rebuilding himself each time, when he comes back, and - this must have been such awful timing for it. So I'm very angry with him, but once I actually calmed down enough to think about it, I'm not as confused as I was at first. Anyway, if Valdemar still existed meaningfully as a state this would have some fascinating political repercussions, but given that it doesn't and Telumë is in charge of what's basically the only remaining resistance to Sauron and Vkandis: helpless shrug, :I'm worried about other aspects more: 

What repercussions would it have if Valdemar existed? What are you worried about?

:To be clear I think it would blow over. And the same-sex part wouldn't be that big a component. There's a thing where - it's unethical, right, having sex with your prisoner, because even if you both think you want to and were in a relationship before and are in love, which I think they somehow still are, it's hard for that to be un-coerced? That would bother the Heralds. But, well, nobody in Valdemar actually expected Leareth to be ethical, given how our starting point with him was his planning to invade our country in order to murder millions of people so he could fight the gods, and this doesn't even tip the scale compared to that. The part I'm mad about is that it was really stupid. And I think it's probably a flavour of stupid that's less likely to affect his god-related decisions, especially the ones that were laid down carefully over centuries by a version of him who wasn't six months into being in a fifteen-year-old's body and rebuilding his entire self mostly from scratch in the middle of a war. If there were still more than a handful of Heralds around to argue that, there'd be dispute over that point and that'd probably end up being the biggest factor: 

Ah. 

I think either the math is right or it's not. None of the math is pointers to Leareth. I do want to talk to Maitimo once he's out and make sure that he had freedom about what sort of letter he sent. And about - your Mindhealers blocked his ability to remember things.

Nod. :I agree with you! I think we can check for ourselves at this point, and that sort of screens off the fact that it was Leareth who came up with it originally. I just had a lot of very annoying fights with other Heralds on things related to that, this is an area where a lot of humans wouldn't see it that way - honestly, it helps that you're brilliant and can look at some of the math yourself, I think humans end up crazy on this topic when they can't check for themselves and have to - go off Leareth's character, I guess: Shrug. :I agree with you on the second thing too: 

He's quiet for a couple of minutes, walking. 

And then, he thought I would need a lot of persuading that there's nothing wrong with him.

:My letter mentioned he was afraid you might disown him: Vanyel does not currently have his letter, as a precaution against Fëanáro asking to read it, even though it seems like it'd be very rude of him to. 

He does not say anything else until they reach the Gate. He goes through and stands still right at the threshold. 

Reads the letter to Nerdanel. 

- get him out of there. 

Yes! I'm doing that! It sounds like Leareth- Telumë- whatever - doesn't even disagree and if he does I doubt he'll fight Vanyel about it and if he will then the deal's off and we won't help them with the god until he gives Maitimo back.

I think probably if he disagrees we should ask Vanyel to try to talk to him just to make sure there aren't any misunderstandings. Then we can fight him. If we need to.

I should've insisted on Quendi observers. For what they were - doing to Maitimo -

I think that would have been a good idea. 

And we should have left Valinor sooner. Hundreds of Years sooner. I didn't know - but I should've known when he was ten years old, that I wouldn't know.

Well, then Leareth would have landed on a boring lonely Tirion that didn't have us or any of the children in it, and who knows where we'd be now.

I mean in expectation.

I think you should say this to Maitimo and it will probably mean a lot to him but I don't actually think you have a failing as a person that's shaped like 'should've fought the gods sooner with less resources'.