"Irissë, you said everyone here chose to cross the Ice. That includes the children? Consenting to something with that kind of chance of being deadly?

And the Valar Doomed them?"

"The Doom is on all of our descendants. Rather like your magic."

"They Doomed the children. Of course they did.
And when my magic takes revenge on people for things they didn't do, the only reason I don't consider it evil is because it isn't a person doing it."

"The Valar aren't exactly people either. And we'd committed a kinslaying, they were really really angry."

"Your cousins committed it. You took your kin's side in an ongoing fight. And the Valar announced a death sentence on not only whoever started the violence, not only whoever escalated it, not only the people who thought they were defending the victims, but people who happened to be standing too close."

"People who followed the wrongdoers across the sea instead of repenting. And - kinslaying. We're not talking about insulting someone or - or copying their work, or disobeying a King - we took other peoples' lives!"

"I have- maybe more sympathy than I can justify, rationally, for people who did that because of coercion or mistake. And less when it's neither. The Valar are not in the first category."

"It's a mess. Oh, now that exact words matter, do you need to hear the Doom's?"

"If exact words didn't matter before, you awakening wouldn't change that. But yes, I should hear them."

"Okay, what they said was, "Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be for ever. 

'Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death's shadow. For though Eru appointed to you to die not in Eä, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you. And those that endure in Middle-earth and come not to Mandos shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret before the younger race that cometh after. The Valar have spoken.' "

"...ouch. Practitioners usually know better than to do things with permanent consequences while angry, and permanent should mean a lot more to them.

"Those that follow" does mean descendants? That's what it would usually mean if someone in my world said it; I had hoped it might mean following across the sea or accepting his authority or something at least a bit less evil."

"We also understood it to mean descendants. Did you wonder why we said so readily, earlier, that we were never having children?"

"Not especially; there are lots of people who don't want to. I was surprised that immortals would say never, but didn't assume there must be this scale of reasons.

Oh, and just to be clear," she looks pointedly at empty space, "that was before you awakened. You're still free to decide otherwise if for some reason you want to, and that wasn't reaffirming a promise to make it binding?"

He laughs. "I was not reaffirming any promises and make none, unable to foresee the world's long Ages as I am. Though only on the principle that one shouldn't; there are so many reasons why it is unlikely that I will have children that for me at least the Doom was not decisive."

"So you see why not wanting children isn't that surprising even absent any Dooms.

That really sounds like it's about Fëanáro's House. And even if they could stretch it into saying your army is following after him, you're definitely not his descendants. If it were just about exact words you might not be Doomed at all."

"That would be encouraging. It means at least that your spirits are unlikely to interpret us as so condemned."

"If you go around saying you're Doomed they're more likely to. But since the actual words sound more like it's just them, you can at least downgrade it to "possibly Doomed."

At the cost of reinforcing the use of hereditary curses. I really wasn't expecting the war effort to trade off against reforming the spirits so soon."

"It could by 'all who follow them' meaning 'all who acknowledge him as King and march under his command', that covers the other host but doesn't reinforce hereditary curses."

"Oh, you're right, it could be.

Now there's an answer to a succession dispute if there ever was one. Maybe you'll get defectors."

"I think that's quite specifically what he burned the ships to prevent.

The ideal outcome would be that we get there, somehow convince Fëanáro to invent things and not try being King of anything, and either make decisions ourselves or be subsumed by some definitely-unaffected faction that can do that. But I don't expect that while Fëanáro's alive he'll agree to that, and now of course we can't even be confident that if he dies things will improve."

"Oh, if he's worried about that interpretation then that's even better. Not as good as if the Valar did, but multiple factions with opposing interests agreeing anyway is a good way to get the spirits to buy something.

Which probably doesn't apply to this kind of Doom, but it'll at least stop it from getting worse if it applies."

"I can tell everyone about the interpretation of the Doom wherein it only applies to the other host, and tell them that discussing or debating its reach is prohibited save for making it known that that interpretation is possible. I don't know how much weight spirits give to public opinion."

"A lot, with the caveat that non-practitioners barely count.
Prohibiting discussion sounds like a pretty counterproductive way of convincing everyone, and you can always just pick future practitioners from people who don't think they're definitely Doomed even if that's the minority."

"We're not convincing everyone, we're convincing spirits, right? Thus don't say certain things aloud?"

"Yes, there is that, but if everyone knows they're only not talking about it because they can't it'll look like you're hiding something. Even though the official line would also be the true one."