"Gone with the Wind" is the only book I remember my parents debating whether i should read when I was 11 or so. I think the ultimate decision was that I wouldn't understand it anyway so it wouldn't do me any harm. I also hid a lot of books though, especially the ones I thought weren't "serious" enough.
This was so beautiful. My mother committed suicide when I was 13, which increased the anger, the difficulty of explaining, the guilt, and the suddenness. This essay has left me in a puddle of tears, but thank you it helped to express a lot of my own feelings. The bit about the replacement or surrogate mothers was particularly reflective of my own experience. My father is abusive, so throughout my teen years I latched on to anyone who was slightly motherly. I still face the awkwardness of explaining my circumstances, particularly since my relationship with my father is a mess. It has gotten easier with time, but it's a pain that never fully goes away. I am not sure I would want it to go away, as now that I am no longer angry, it feels like a more pure pain than day-to-day negative emotions.
It works both ways I think. You win the war and the crown, then you get some added legitimacy with a good marriage. The fact that you don't have a very strong claim besides military victory becomes moot once you marry the elven princess.
When I think about it, I am fairly certain that my weird linking of them as a couple is purely the result of the Blind Guardian song "Into the Storm" as opposed to anything from the Silmarillion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bDVPLDppvE
I think marrying Arwen is what strengthened his claim to the throne, kind of like Henry VII marrying Elizabeth of York. Have a questionable claim to the throne? Find a useful princess, preferably one that is the niece of the undisputed first King of Numenor. The age gap of almost 3000 years is a bit much in this case though.
I always assumed that she mated with Morgoth cause my brain wants to make me sad
I just realized I can remember more random things about LOTR than I can about my dissertation that I am currently writing.
So no one will ever live as long as Aragorn did again, but his son Eldarion lives to at least 175. Aragorn decides to die at the age of 210. (Quite literally he decides that he has lived long enough and gets to choose when he dies).
There is definitely weirdness there, but from the point of view that leaders like Victoria or Louis XIV got a lot of legitimacy from the fact that very few people could remember when they weren't the monarch, it makes some political sense.
I agree with your argument about the political efficacy of a marriage to Eowyn, but I always viewed Arwen as a legitimacy thing too. Like all of Aragorn's legitimacy comes from descent from the Numenorian kings, so what better way to cement that then marrying the niece of the first king of Numenor? Also having children with extra long life spans cause of an elf mother can't hurt, especially since the Numenorians are super bad at having children.
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