"The King had been killed and his successor wasn't qualified. Everyone wanted my father to rule instead, but they didn't want to have a civil war over it."

"That sounds like a mess best addressed by not being a monarchy in the first place, but given there already was one... yeah. Disputes like that are really common when kings aren't immortal.
Who was the successor?"

"The King's eldest son. My uncle. He - well. He has strengths. Not really strengths of character, none of those that I can think of, but he does have strengths."

"Very diplomatic.

Is this the same branch of the family as the cousins who aren't evil?"

"He's their father."

"What are these non-character strengths? Other than having been born first, that is."

"Brilliant. Absurdly so, knows more about several different disciplines than everyone else on the continent combined and is competent with literally every field of study known to our people. Relentlessly hardworking, has a very careful hand, artistically talented."

"A powerful force to have on your side, but not necessarily leading it?"

"Yeah, exactly. The things he's worst at are moderation, caution, working with people, trust - and his father's death amplified all his paranoia and all his unhelpful tendencies. We sort of thought we'd just have to bring out the best in him, and we were going to try, but our people didn't want that. They wanted my father to lead. And when Fëanáro - my uncle - realized that, he regarded it as treason."

"Understandably. A king finding out people want to try to replace him. You did say there was never a civil war, though, right?"

"No. They just left, when they found out. With the remaining boats. And then set them on fire on the other side, as a sort of parting 'fuck you', I guess."

"What, they're up against an enemy that's having a good try at ruining the world, and they wanted to get rid of allies that badly? I see why you don't want him as king."

"Yup. He'd rather have half the numbers under his personal command than all of us, just because we noticed that he's not actually any good at ruling. And he left us stranded here, which is pretty damn likely to get some of us killed. We're going to have quite the confrontation on the other side, assuming we make it." She shakes her head. 

"You're going across the way you are because of the Valar kicking you out and the Enemy needing to be fought, and he knows both those things. Taking the ships sounds like what someone would do if they wanted you weakened or dead but wanted to dodge responsibility for it."

"So what exactly do you think are our choices here? Repent and go home? Go across, weakened and possibly dead, and hope that his mood has improved by the time we're on the other side? Go across and fight a war on two fronts?"

"It sounds like you're right about having no good options.

I admit to being curious about what exactly the Valar do if you go back and say you'd be happy to leave if it were remotely feasible but this is no better than banishing you to the middle of the ocean, but that definitely counts as antagonizing the vengeful deities."

"I don't think they'd harm us. That's not really how they operate. If I had to guess I'd guess they'd mercifully lift our exile and then shoo us home to Tirion and tell us to sit there and work on repentence for a few centuries. With some of their guards at the city gates."

"That definitely sounds less bad than a forced march across barely passable ice when it's permanently night and winter. But I can imagine people thinking otherwise."

"Some people turned back. I think my uncle assumed that we all would."

"So it's not that you have to leave by any means necessary, you decided staying was worse.
How many people are you expecting to lose?"

"I don't know. Probably thousands; probably not ten thousand. All making their own choice."

She nods. "I can see taking that risk. It's much better than this many humans would do, though."

"What would you do? We've, uh, only heard about humans from the Enemy and it's been confirmed he was not lying but that leaves some latitude to skew the truth."

"I mean that's much more successful than humans would manage. I haven't seen a lot of the ice, but if we were in your position and tried simply walking a population across our frozen continent, a lot more than ten percent would die. We'd probably tell the Valar banishing us isn't going to be very effective if we can't leave.

Feel free to ask about humans. I haven't met any from this world, though; they might be different."

"Kinslaying is so common among humans you distinguish between, like, mass kinslaying and interpersonal kinslaying and random kinslaying and familial kinslaying? You have children while still yourselves children and have children even if there's no one to care for them and as a result your population grows so quickly that you quickly crowd out all other races? You have invented weapons Melkor would abhorr and used them to wipe each others' cities out, you marry people unwillingly sometimes, you force your children of eighteen or twenty to kill other children the same age to settle arguments?"