Tag: valar

For all of her dislike and animosity towards dwarves, does Yavanna try and comfort Mahal whenever something terrible (like Smaug, the Battle of Five Armies, the battles and siege during the War of the Ring, etc.) happens to them? She knows how much he loves them, and how he feels when they’re hurt, so would she try?

Well, she doesn’t HATE hate them. It’s more like how a gardener feels about greenfly or cabbage moths. You don’t HATE them for doing as their nature dictates – but holy heck you wish to FUCK they would stop. Lots of growling and grumbling. Little hairy pests. 

But Yavanna does love her husband, and what hurts him makes her sad for him. She will comfort and care for him, no matter what – and she will even find a seed of pity in her wild thorny heart for those little bearded infestations. They do suffer so.

Well, I hope I’m not annoying people by answering these – I think I should just mention that these are my opinions, and they’re neither right or wrong. They’re opinions, and TOTALLY subjective. Other people take different things away from the text, and that’s awesome, that’s why we engage with it. 

So, I think I should also say that I don’t think Gandalf is a dick at all. I actually love him a whole lot. I have a major problem with the fact that people suffer and die as a result of his decisions – but it’s also true that he has to make those decisions for the sake of ALL lives. In the Appendices he mentions the consequences of leaving Smaug in Erebor – and they are CATASTROPHIC. Smaug is a creature designed by Sauron’s master, they are similarly aligned. If Smaug had decided to join with Sauron, ‘Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador, night in Rivendell. There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash.’

Gandalf cares about all these people. He really really does. We learn in the Silmarillion that he was a pupil of Nienna, the weeping Valier, and from her he learned pity and compassion. He’s basically an angelic being, and he has no obligation to go to Middle-Earth. We find out also that he didn’t want to be an Istari – he wanted to stay in the Gardens of Valinor. Manwe told him he must, though – and so he obeyed. He is Faramir’s friend, he is Belladonna’s friend, he is Bilbo’s friend, he is Aragorn’s friend, he is friend to many. Won’t stop him from using them, though. 

I have no answers to the moral quandary of lives-of-a-few vs lives-of-many. I don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s meant to be an easy thing to accept. I think it’s probably meant to be hard. It is undeniable that Gandalf sacrificed himself as well as others, that he debased himself and worked tirelessly and even passed through death, and that he was ultimately victorious. But people were hurt who might not have been, and people died who might never have ventured near danger at all in their lifetimes. Who’s to say? We don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t meddled.

if yavanna ever met thorin would she laugh or roll her eyes at his consistent brooding over bilbo? or just plain ignore it and him?

Hmmm. Welp, I think she would at first try to ignore him. Mopey little stoneling, glowering away. Does he ever even consider where the wood for his forge or his hearth comes from, how many of her beautiful creations must be destroyed so that he might have his amusements? I think not. Hmmph. 

Then she would notice that he never stops in his self-appointed tasks. He is relentless; indomitable. He is as unstoppable as a landslide in his determination to see the lives of his people and his loved ones come to happiness and fulfilment, with no thought to his own contentment. She would see that Mahal has pity and love for him, and that Nienna sheds tears for him and for his fire and his thwarted hope. She would see that Irmo bent the stream of the path of dreams for him. She would see that he carves flowers and ivy into his cold metal ‘amusements’ – little tributes to her creations that never wilt nor fade. All for the love of this little child of the Shire. 

And finally, she would begin to feel a small sprout of compassion uncurl, somewhere in her fierce heart.