Yes, a difficult life with much loss and a difficult legacy! But Firiel's heirs manage to fulfil that claim, in the end.

I really like your take on Firiel! And I particularly like the last couplet--a great summing up of the Rangers of the North. 

I love this!

So much grief in her life! This is very poignant. Lovely!

A lovely poem. It can't have been easy to move to the Northern Kingdom, where she likely married a stranger. And after the throne of Gondor was denied to her, the tragedies start to hit. 

T-T <333

What a difficult fate to have to watch tragedy  befall your family so thoroughly and feel yourself unable to help. I love how clear eyed she is about it all. She can acknowledge her family’s folly alongside their legitimate losses, and she can see that Arvedui tried to do well by her even if their life together turned out to be hard and full of sadness. (And despite the kind of opportunism in Arvedui trying to use her inherited claim to the throne of Gondor as a means to get himself onto that throne — I’ve always wondered what to make of his motives there, I can see it going several ways!) Of course, being clear eyed about her own situation and challenges doesn’t make any of them easier to live through, even if she has things that she clings to for comfort and optimism. The pain of her circumstances is very palpable here. 

You know I love a woman who is out of place in a royal family far from home and entangled in troubles, and Firiel has some interesting things in common with Vidumavi, especially a sense that her children have the right to their kingship and a sense of determination that they should have it someday. But unlike Vidumavi, Firiel can’t find comfort in current hard times by looking back to her birthplace as a place of safety where she can retreat if needed because everything went so wrong there after her departure. That has to be an extra special level of emotionally unmooring — nowhere is safe and easy. How truly sad. Still, I loved that you chose to end on an invocation of her heirs and the chieftains they would become, eventually ending so many years later with one on the throne of both Arnor and Gondor again. What a win for her, though obviously far too late for her to get to enjoy it. 

As always, I greatly enjoyed your imagery. Arvedui entombed on the icy throne with his lost palantir was especially good as a poetic representation of his fate — kind of creepy in a way, and also very sad, and also a little infuriating because why did it have to be so. The whole poem is super thought provoking and especially because she’s a character who is relatively little discussed. Engaging seriously with her story through the poem raised so many new questions for me that I hadn’t considered at length before (like, did she know he had been prophesied to be the last king when she married him? What did she think when she found out?). I’d always be interested to hear more of your thoughts about her, and it’s always very fun to be inspired to think more deeply so thank you!!!♥️