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[Voronwë the Faithful]

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[Voronwë the Faithful]

There is very little question that these are wolf mauling marks, would you not agree?

[Eldy]

That definitely looks like a post Tol-in-Gaurhoth Finrod to me.

Now there's a helpful comment .

I'm still tripping over the Elendil thing.

More specifically, I'd say it looks like an Elvish hammer. Actually, when I noticed Elrond in the background, part of me thought maybe it was of Dwarvish make and he'd brought it Celebrimbor as a gift or something, but the curved lines don't really scream "Dwarf" to me. I'm sure Celebrimbor has no shortage of hammers, though.

Being a Númenor fangirl, I've also been primarily hung up over the Elendil comment. That's one of the most disconcerting changes to me, thus far. The timeline compression is more radical, but at least there's an obvious rationale for that.

[Eldy]

They may simply be creating a dynamic wherein they are treated as a minor house in Númenórean society, despite their lineage. Sort of a family from a past age, that is now seen as a curiosity in the modern Númenor.

I would certainly prefer this to what I took as the plain meaning of Lloyd Owen's comment, but I'm skeptical. Based on the comments from Cynthia Addai-Robinson and Trystan Gravelle about their characters' respective fathers, it sounds like the King's Men vs Faithful divide is in play, but with Míriel running the country and her father ... perhaps still nominally the King? the Faithful are clearly not at their low ebb, even if show!Míriel is, perhaps, not an unambiguous Elf-friend. But there's obviously a lot of different ways they can take that.

The showrunners could plausibly make the House of Valandil a minor noble house with Elrosian heritage: even if Númenor is only a thousand years old or so, most if not all noble families would be able to claim some degree of royal descent (as could many, many commoner families, though documenting it would be harder for them). The bigger question to me is whether Silmariën will feature in the backstory to ROP. She's as important as Lúthien in Tolkien's conception of why Elendil had the right to rule, because her status as the one eldest child of a Númenórean monarch to not inherit the Sceptre establishes her descendants' elevated status over everyone but the main royal house. But that doesn't work if Elendil is descended from a cadet branch of Silmariën's descendants' primary house.

[Stranger Wings]

I listened to it again. He does not say higher up he says high up. Then he adds that he is a sea captain and that what status he has comes solely from that. That certainly implies that he does not have status based on his descent from Elros. Then there are Maxim Baldry's comments in the same clip in which he says that Isildur is a sea cadets in the first season,but doesn't want to be one because he is seeking something else. It is very hard for me to align these comments with the history of the family as written by Tolkien.

As for knowing soon, we may not, since they will be dragging this out over 5 years worth of episodes.

These are interviews for popular consumption. They are speaking in very broad terms. I very much doubt that the showrunners, with the blessing of the Tolkien Estate, significantly changed the nature of one of the most important families/ lineages in Tolkien's most famous work (LOTR).

Further, we have seen Elendil take Galadriel to what is presumably an ancestral tower of sorts, built in an elvish (or elf-like) style (with a room full of, I imagine, elvish texts, etc). As Lloyd Owen has discussed, his family is still of the elf-friend variety at the start of the show. And there's no doubt in my mind that they will connect this back to them being in the Elros line. I imagine this will be partly why Galadriel spends time with them.

I'm about 90% certain that being "not high up" refers to their actual, relative political power during the time of the show. And Elendil having status via his sea captainship likely means that this at least give him SOME political clout.

That definitely looks like a post Tol-in-Gaurhoth Finrod to me.

Now there's a helpful comment .

I'm still tripping over the Elendil thing.

More specifically, I'd say it looks like an Elvish hammer. Actually, when I noticed Elrond in the background, part of me thought maybe it was of Dwarvish make and he'd brought it Celebrimbor as a gift or something, but the curved lines don't really scream "Dwarf" to me. I'm sure Celebrimbor has no shortage of hammers, though.

Being a Númenor fangirl, I've also been primarily hung up over the Elendil comment. That's one of the most disconcerting changes to me, thus far. The timeline compression is more radical, but at least there's an obvious rationale for that.

I would not consider this a change based on some very vague comments Lloyd Owen made about not being "high up." That's very vague language, and could be interpreted a million ways. We're talking about a central element of the Second and Third Age legendarium, and I just don't think Patrick and Payne would have sought or gained approval from the Estate to make such a major change.

ETA: And in the below video at 4:00, Owen discusses how Elendil has decided to move his family away from the West of Númenor/ away from the Faithful, and to the capital city of Armenelos. So this leaves open the very real possibility that they are a powerful family in the West, but a minor force in Armenelos. I believe this is also the first confirmation that they're not squishing Númenórean society into one city. This bodes well for seeing western Númenor, either in this or future seasons.'

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, that was interesting, and mostly encouraging (speaking of the new interview with Baldry and Owen).

That definitely looks like a post Tol-in-Gaurhoth Finrod to me.

That's rather exciting.

More specifically, I'd say it looks like an Elvish hammer. Actually, when I noticed Elrond in the background, part of me thought maybe it was of Dwarvish make and he'd brought it Celebrimbor as a gift or something, but the curved lines don't really scream "Dwarf" to me. I'm sure Celebrimbor has no shortage of hammers, though.

That's pretty much what I thought too, but let me share a new thought that I had. What if it is a gift from the Lord of Gifts?

Being a Númenor fangirl, I've also been primarily hung up over the Elendil comment. That's one of the most disconcerting changes to me, thus far. The timeline compression is more radical, but at least there's an obvious rationale for that.

The new interview that SW posted is encouraging, so maybe it will be okay. And there is another change that I am finding even more disconcerting, as I discuss in my comments in the other thread (which I have written yet, let alone posted yet).

[RoseMorninStar]

What if it is a gift from the Lord of Gifts?

This was my thought.

[Eldy]

Watching that video (which is interesting; thanks for the link, SW!) Owen also says that Elendil "gets slowly drawn into the politics of Númenor," which is not really something you could say of either the head or heir (do we know if show!Elendil has a living father?) of the family whose Lords were "ever among the chief councillors of the Sceptre" (AK). But there are still a lot of unknowns about the politics of show!Númenor. This video informs us the Faithful still live predominately in the western part of Númenor, so the forced resettlement under Ar-Gimilzôr wasn't a thing (nor, perhaps, was Ar-Gimilzôr himself). Lloyd Owen's comments about Elendil's confused position RE: the King's Men/Faithful divide are too vague to speak with certainty, but I don't get the impression that show!Elendil was born to a family that had been keeping their Faithful status secret for centuries. Which is not surprising to me, since the family had stopped doing that by the time the meat of the Akallabêth rolls around, and I'd expect ROP to retain that regardless of timeline modification.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They definitely are going to portray Elendil and Isildur as having a troubled relationship at least to start. I'm not the Númenor expert that you are, Eldy, bit I don't recall any mention of Elendil's wife dying, or for that matter any mention of her at all.

[Eldy]

To the best of my knowledge, Elendil's wife and mother are both completely MIA from the books. Textual ghosts, in the terminology of the Silmarillion fanfic community.

[Stranger Wings]

The very first clip of a scene was released last night. It shows Galadriel and an elven party finding…evidence of Sauron. And I can say without exaggeration that this clip alleviates a lot of my lingering fears. The dialogue is excellent and Tolkien-esque (little bits like “one whose very hand is flame unquenched” and “of old” sell it, and Morfyyd delivers archaic sentence structures with a perfect ease), the cinematography is beautifully naturalistic (lit mostly by the torches that are in-camera, as opposed to the big stadium lighting Lesnie tended to use), the visual storytelling is inventive (I love, love, love the bit of Galadriel being so attuned to nature that she watches a single speck of dust descend towards the anvil/stone), and the general atmosphere is just spot on. Very happy with the feel of this. Not a scene Tolkien wrote or even conceived of, but the tone is straight up Tolkien. And it just feels…old.

[Alatar]

That's really good.

[Stranger Wings]

Right? I didn't expect anything invented to be so spot on in terms of capturing the Tolkien style. I was prepared to accept a more modern take, at least in terms of dialogue, etc. And instead, my expectations were exceeded. That doesn't happen very often!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, your expectations were exceeded with The Desolation of Smaug (did you think that I forgot that?). Though admittedly, those were very low expectations!

I haven't watched the clip yet, but I will!

[Dave_LF]

Agreed. One of my lingering gripes about the PB&J films is the torture they subject the English language to almost every time they attempt a bit of original pseudo-archaic fantasy pastiche. These writers seem to be doing a better job.

[Stranger Wings]

Agreed. One of my lingering gripes about the PB&J films is the torture they subject the English language to almost every time they attempt a bit of original pseudo-archaic fantasy pastiche. These writers seem to be doing a better job.

This. Also, PB&J also often had such an awkward and contrived way of getting their point across through dialogue. For example:

Sam: "I thought I'd lost you."
Frodo: "What are you talking about?"
Sam: "It's just something Gandalf said."
Frodo: "What did he say?"
Sam: "'Don't you lose him, Samwise Gamgee!' And I don't mean to."

They obviously wanted to showcase Sam's protective character, and use that line of Gandalf's from the books. But they get there in a nonsensical way. Why does Frodo say "what are you talking about?" when Sam says "I thought I'd lost you." Obviously, as Sam says, he thought he'd lost Frodo in the cornfield. Why is Frodo not clear on what Sam means, when...he was really straightforward about it? Because they wanted Sam to say what Gandalf said, and wrote an unnatural bit of dialogue to get there. There are examples like that - and much worse ones - throughout the films.

The writing stable on this show is hugely talented, with a very impressive resume of past work, so I think the dialogue will be much better.

Well, your expectations were exceeded with The Desolation of Smaug (did you think that I forgot that?). Though admittedly, those were very low expectations!

I haven't watched the clip yet, but I will!

My expectations for Desolation of Smaug were so low that not even the dwarves of Khazad-dûm could have reached them!

[Dave_LF]

Agreed. One of my lingering gripes about the PB&J films is the torture they subject the English language to almost every time they attempt a bit of original pseudo-archaic fantasy pastiche. These writers seem to be doing a better job.

This. The writing stable on this show is hugely talented, with a very impressive resume of past work, so I think the dialogue will be much better.

I mean, it was almost as tortured as that sentence I wrote!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is her interview with Colbert.

[Stranger Wings]

Agreed. One of my lingering gripes about the PB&J films is the torture they subject the English language to almost every time they attempt a bit of original pseudo-archaic fantasy pastiche. These writers seem to be doing a better job.

This. The writing stable on this show is hugely talented, with a very impressive resume of past work, so I think the dialogue will be much better.

I mean, it was almost as tortured as that sentence I wrote!

You call that torture? Clearly you haven't spent enough time on the internet.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sometimes scornful about Colbert as thr supposed ultimate Tolkien expert, but I thought it was a brilliant move for him to have Clarke recite the Welsh alphabet.