"Elves. I haven't met the Lord Maedhros, is he as grim and ruthless and scary as everyone says?"

"He's...I don't think that description is technically inaccurate? He's willing to do whatever it takes to see the Enemy dead, he's very very good at killing orcs and has a lot of scars, and he, um, I'm not going to comment on the grim part except to say that he certainly doesn't act like it all the time. I like him, he's not an inherently unlikeable person or anything..."

"I'm not digging to get unkind things about your friends. Just trying to match the impressions with what we hear..."

"Yeah, no, this isn't me suspecting you of that, this is me trying to figure out what I can say about him without being...gossipy about things I suspect he wouldn't want me to be, about him."

"I don't need to know. Just curious."

"I more than understand that."

"We're trusting our lives to them and that does not entitle us to know them but it's nonetheless a difficult position, living off rumors and guesswork. And particularly if they have a reputation for ruthlessness and it's not entirely clear that you can't accidentally make a mistake that'd hurt your people - m'lord King at least wanted us around -"

"...If you're giving us political advice I should probably tell you more than I would tell someone just idly...he was captured by the Enemy for a while, he is highly competent but I have seen little to no evidence that he gives what he wants any particular weight when it does not involve fighting Morgoth."

"Okay. So the policy of benign neglect towards Estolad almost certainly doesn't reflect any strongly founded positions on the matter and furthermore if we present him with a solution that doesn't distract from the war he's likely to go 'lovely'?"

"The benign neglect thing was according to Celegorm because they didn't consider themselves qualified to sufficiently account for the differences between Elves and Men while governing them. If you have an alternate solution that's probably a good thing at this point."

"The problem is that Estolad doesn't - they can't grow enough food to survive, they're dependent on the Elves, and so ignoring them doesn't work very cleanly. I think we should convince most of the population to emigrate but if they don't, yes, the Elves need to govern."

"I brought it up when I was there. They seemed interested but not convinced. I told them that regardless I could make sure that they had enough food and they were happy to accept that, at least."

"Well, that should help. And if the Elves are easy to work with we can add improvements as we think of them."

"I've found them to be so but I don't know how much of that is the fact that I wield awesome power."

"I mean, you're going to continue to wield awesome power so for planning purposes doesn't really matter. I guess if I were giving a character reference I'd be curious how they act towards us when you're not likely to hear about it, but that's not going to affect this."

"True enough. They seem to have fairly high opinions of you, through hearsay."

"Do they. That surprises me a little. I suppose m'lord King is very complimentary."

"I think it was from a variety of sources. Including me, but I only added my name to the list after it was mentioned."

"I'm looking forward to the chance to meet them. It should be interesting."

"I think you'll like them but I could well be biased because I like them."

"It seems like you have good criteria for liking people."

"I like to think so but I'm not sure how well some of the reasons generalize."

"I probably won't like your Elves that much, true."

"It's not just that I have a crush on one of them although I will grant that some of the reasons I'm thinking of are among the reasons why I have a crush on one of them."

"You relate well to their particular failings?"