Chapter Text
Here is one thing the poets won’t tell you: in times of war and living legends, when fortunes ebb and flow as swiftly as the tides, the world is shaped most surely by women deciding their own destiny.
PROLOGUE
Faramir’s cousin, Éowyn of Rohan reflected, was not at all what she had expected.
It was no great secret that the Gondorians were very different from their northern kin. When Morwen Steelsheen became Queen of the Mark three-score and six ago she had found her new subjects coarse, uncouth, and infuriatingly blunt; in turn they had thought their Gondorian lady aloof, superior, and altogether too proud. Little wonder, then, that the Queen had travelled - fled, some said - back to her homeland as soon as the King was dead. With Thengel gone, there hadn’t been much common ground left between Morwen and the people she’d never fully managed to embrace as her own – though those same people still resented her absence even now, decades down the road.
Éowyn, who had inherited her grandmother’s height and much of her stubborn pride, knew this better than most. Too Rohirric for her Gondorian relations and their endless, elaborate rules, yet too tall and fine-featured not to stand out amongst her peers back home, she remembered all too well the sting of old taunts - think you’re too good for us, efenlǣcestre? - and the uneasy visits to Lossarnach before the war began. The prejudices between the two nations ran deep, ancient allies though they were, and not all of them were necessarily unfounded to her mind.
Indeed, her time in Minas Tirith wasn’t doing much to persuade Éowyn otherwise. Aye, the Gondorians had been kind to her. They were not unfeeling, nor quite as vain and conceited as she might once have believed, but from the moment she had first ventured out of her sickroom she had been aware of the undercurrent of intrigue that ran through even the supposedly harmonious Houses of Healing. They were sly, these Gondorians; cunning and calculating and experts at saying things without truly saying them. She admired their resilience and strength, right enough, but she would not go so far as to say she trusted them – not truly. Not entirely.
There was something unsettling about those who bore the blood of old Númenór in particular, an uncanny stillness that made Éowyn feel like they could look straight into her very soul. Faramir, Béma love him, had it in spades, and she had thought his cousin would be much the same. More than that, as Gondor’s only born Princess, she had expected Lothíriel of Dol Amroth to take after Grandmother Morwen: unfailingly grand in shining silks with shrewd, sea-grey eyes that saw everything and generally found it wanting; out of touch, affected, possibly even a tad spoiled.
Yet the whirlwind that had flung herself from an unusually fine mare and thrown herself at Éowyn’s intended was no uptight, aloof maiden, nor a delicate flower wilting as soon as she found herself outside Palace walls. The Princess might have her family’s stature and Númenórean looks, but that was where any similarities to the ladies of Gondor seemed to end. Her riding habit had been simple, made for travelling, and she had ridden into the courtyard astride and at pace. There had been a bow at her back and a knife at her hip; both curved, outlandish, not without wear. Here was a woman who knew how to take care of herself, Éowyn had thought, and yet she was young too, skin smooth and long, braided hair not yet tarnished by any grey.
When Faramir - at length and with obvious reluctance - had withdrawn from their embrace to introduce her, the Princess had swiped self-consciously at the dark stains across her cheeks. Charcoal or something like it, Éowyn had realised, used to highlight her eyes in the southern fashion but now smudged by her tears. “Forgive me,” the Princess had laughed, sounding watery but smiling all the same, “My Lady Wraithsbane, you must think me terribly feeble.” She’d leaned in to kiss Éowyn on both cheeks before turning to beam at Faramir over her shoulder. “To find my cousin alive and at peace is a joy unlooked for.”
Feeble was certainly not how Éowyn would think to describe Lothíriel now, watching her with a tankard of ale in hand (“Don’t tell the Warden,” she’d winked) and a ready smile for the string of Swan Knights, soldiers and healers that approached her from every wing of the Houses of Healing. She greeted them all with the ease of those born into high station, remembering names, asking after families, yet her charm and interest seemed genuine – and her sense of humour refreshingly irreverent.
“The trouble with growing up around sailors is that one inevitably picks up some of their habits,” came a well-loved voice from behind Éowyn, and she allowed herself a smile.
“Your cousin is not what I imagined,” she observed mildly, leaning into the warmth of Faramir’s hand on her back. He looked weary still, she thought, though something in him had eased since the arrival of his cousin; some lonely, burdened part even she hadn’t been able to soothe. It made her miss her brother with a sudden, aching fierceness.
“You’re not the first to say so,” Faramir chuckled, looking down at her fondly. “What did you imagine?”
Éowyn pondered it for a moment. “Someone meeker, perhaps,” she said at length, reminded of the grey-clad, severe maidens she’d met around the Citadel. “More serious.” She’d heard that Lothíriel took after her aunt - Faramir’s mother - and had always assumed the unhappy lady whose cloak she’d inherited was the source of his solemnity.
Something in his smile flickered. “Don’t let the jolly facade fool you, sweeting. Lothíriel has always been wise beyond her years.”
“A song?” the Princess in question was saying, eyebrows arched at the Captain who had begged one of her. She turned to the men sitting nearest to her. “What do we think, lads? Shall I indulge him?” The warriors roared their approval: not just the Amrothians, Éowyn noticed, but the Gondorians too, and even some of her own Rohirrim. With a laugh, Lothíriel gestured for quiet while her Haradrim handmaid - and wasn’t that a shock in itself, to find a woman of Southron descent among the Princess’s trusted retainers! - produced a violin with practised ease. A hush fell over the room as two of the royal guard beat a jaunty rhythm on their table. Lothíriel stood, eyes glittering with mischief, and began:
“ Well my father often told me when I was just a lad, a sailor’s life is very hard, the food is always bad…”
It was odd, trying to reconcile the merry girl leading the men in song with what Faramir described. Wisdom came hand-in-hand with hardship in Éowyn’s experience. For all that Lothíriel wasn’t the sheltered princess she might have been, she seemed carefree in a way Éowyn hadn’t felt for over a decade. She frowned. “Where was she, during the war?”
“She held Dol Amroth for my uncle while he and his sons rode to our aid.”
Éowyn’s head snapped up at that. Another riddle. It had been her understanding that the lands by the sea were affluent and bountiful; not something that would commonly be left in the care of a younger child, never mind a girl. Why, her uncle had only left her at Edoras because there was no one else left to manage it, but Lothíriel had brothers, at least one older sister-in-law. It made little sense for her to have acted as regent.
“Is the south truly as rich as they say?”
Faramir drank deeply and nodded. “The ports are vital to Gondor’s defences and supply lines. They’ve been under siege for as long as any of us can remember, but Lothíriel…” He met her eyes. “Lothíriel kept them safe these last months.”
Slowly, thoughtfully, Éowyn turned to look at the Princess anew. With her head thrown back in laughter and cheeks made rosy by the fire, she looked relaxed and strikingly alive in a way that still felt alien after the long years of war. Yet the traces of conflict were there when one considered her more closely: her cheekbones just a little too sharp, her eyes joyful but guarded, her choice of words lighthearted but never once out of line. There was a touch of the Gondorian dissembling to her after all, a carefully crafted mask that most might not even recognise as one, it was that skillfully crafted.
“A sailor ain’t a sailor ain’t a sailor anymore!”
No, Lothíriel of Dol Amroth was no untarnished ingenu, Éowyn decided. But still – “There is honour in that,” she said at length. There were worse women to call family and, in due course, perhaps even an ally.
“I’m glad you should think so,” Faramir said, softly. “She is very dear to me.”
Éowyn took his hand without hesitation. “Then she will be dear to me, too.”