Wow... great writing!

Loved it! Every word of it! :D

You know, I'm sure I've read the Silmarillion before, but it must have been at least seven years ago because I don't remember a thing from it. :D

An interesting beginning, though with the italics is that a thought or a quote? Or both?

Your descriptions are gorgeous in this; a little more fulfilling than your other LoTR fics, but then this one has somewhat darker undertones as well. I read that paragraph at least three times before reading the next one and not because I was confused. :D The rest of your tale didn't disappoint either, and the concept of desire was very strongly portrayed throughout. The want for resistance was an interesting image; rather sexual, but in an elegant manner and the cat and mouse image is portrayed gorgeously.

The bitter and emotions in the second half are very palpitable too [The javelin, yes. No! No!] - I love this part in particular; it sets up what you tell in the next sentence very nicely. And an interesting image upon which to end as well.

In some places your writing becomes a little more colloquial, eg. [Eol had not loved his eyes or his stature]. And the "or" should be "nor" as well.

[I have been poisoned by madness...] - I would suggest breaking this thought up a little; it does get rather long and the third person narrative gets a little lost.

So it's been about ten years since I last read the Sil... please forgive any stupid remarks on my part because of it x

If Eol needs more love, he should maybe work on not being a creepy weirdo ;) I can't hate Eol but I can't exactly side against Aredhel for existing, so there's that... the guy ain't right, I'm sure we can all agree.

The first line is an absolute killer, and immediately I was shocked and felt almost threatened on Aredhel's behalf... it sounds so very much like she-was-asking-for-it-dressed-like-that. Jeez, mate. It's a wonderfully clever way of characterising Eol as someone who maaaaaaay just think the world revolves around him and people stumble around in or out of his sight serving no other purpose. I later got similar chills about his hoping to torture her. I love, abosolutely LOVE that you don't try to soften Eol into a nice guy or twist his ancient women-are-my-property attitudes into something more sympathetic to a modern reader, especially given you've expressed how sympathetically you feel toward him. It's a good writer who can dissemble in that way.

That said, he's got a good reason to hate the Noldo, and his confusion about but-I-need-to-hate-her is very well done.

Eol's desire to dominate is so elf-like and perfect and completely creepy. It's a serious wonder that hubris didn't kill every Elf in Middle-Earth... I can't say the ending was a shock, but it felt so satisfying. Great work! xx

Okay, this was twisted, though I guess it was also very suitable for Dark Elf. His idea of love, and desire, and possession were all mixed too, again very normal given his heritage. I really liked how he wanted to possess her, not like her, just because she was a Noldor, then started to despise her for that very reason too.
Frankly I have never thought much about Eöl, in Silmillarion there were far more interesting characters in my opinion but liked what you did here, showing us the cruel face of the love, passionate but close to a curse. And he was cursed, wasn't he?
It was very sad how demented he had became at the end, even cursing and intending to kill his own child, just because he couldn't have him either as his wife. And if his wife was going to have the child too, he wouldn't have let her, as well. Very very twisted, made me almost happy that he was dead. Lol.

The writing as usually was superb, nothing to nitpick as far as I can see, there were a couple of places I rather likef but the most beautiful of them was repetition of Aredhel's name as Eöl thought about them.
Thanks for sharing with us.

I'm on Aredhel's side. Eol is clearly the destructive language sounds like that of an abusive spouse, blaming her for his feelings and is a great analysis of someone who falls in love with a person despite the prejudice he harbors for her people and is unable to allow himself to be happy about it.
His loathing for the "kinslayers has devolved into self-loathing and self-pity.
Still, there's always the memory that one can't deny-that nearly perfect moment with which he tortures himself. It's very effective for him to keep remembering her face in the moonlight, the image that alternately taunts and comforts him.
brooding glumly in the darkness. No, he had never asked for her presence. He had never wanted her presence, that was what he believed.
Some favorite phrases are "into his lands and into his sight," using the same wording for first the long range and impersonal arrival, graduating to the intimate presence.
"unfathomably fair and lovely" is great for its subtle alliteration and the evocation of Eol's favorite image.

I believe you already know my reasons for choosing this story, so I won’t explain further :P

This is likely to be a repetition of something I said in a previous review, but I do love your writing. After this short one-shot, I became enthralled with Eöl and Aredhel story. The complexity of Eöl’s character (which I had forgotten; it’s been a long while since I last read The Silmarillion) and the way you write him is superb. While Elves are not my favorite race, this elf in particular is very interesting and tragic.

A curious thing I noticed throughout the story is the fact that Eöl never mentions his wife’s name until the end. My guess is that he is so angered and blind by rage that referring to Aredhel as “she” is his way to metaphorically spit on her and her Noldor ancestry. In this moment he hates her and his son for taking refuge with his enemy. They didn’t side with Eöl, so, in his mind, his hatred is justified.

Eöl’s love for Aredhel is so very twisted. However, as said before, he is a complex character. It doesn’t seem very farfetched to assume Eöl would love and yet blame Aredhel for this, as he is mentally accusing her of sorcery. Hate and prejudice can be a terrible thing. It’s still rather dubious if canon-wise their union was forced, but I do believe that Aredhel may have loved Eöl at some point, or at least seen some good in him.

I was sad and apprehensive at the end of the story, mainly due to the fact that Eöl’s mental rant is making me mad too. It’s so horrible that he didn’t see where he might’ve made a mistake in the past or that this hatred would lead him nowhere good. I’ll just hope that, wherever he is, Eöl finally got some peace of mind. This guy deserves some love too.

That ending threat makes me feel sorry for him..

Happy writings*
Rita

Interesting and uncomfortable to be in Eol's point-of-view. His issues are so complex with his overwhelming loyalty to his kin that fills him with overwhelming hatred toward the Noldor, so much hatred that he can't accept his passion for his Noldo wife as the possibility of love. The progression in action is good from his thinking about his past with her and how he never wanted to her, to his present situation of standing before the Gondolin king, then finally killing her and being killed himself. It's not clear whether she betrayed him and that's why he's in Gondolin, whether he gave her good reason to betray him (he's quite the unstable husband, isn't he?), or whether she was actually trying to obtain mercy for her non-Noldor husband.

Very tragic piece!

Some comments:
Paragraph 2, end: including [that was what he believed.] comes off as less immediate, more authorial; it's not neccessary.
Paragraph 4: [He wished to claim this {{as}} Noldo his.] or [he wished to {{make}} this Noldo his.}
Paragraph 5: "kin" is already plural.
Paragraph 6: [She had escaped his {{bonds}} even as he so fervently held on.]
Paragraph 7: [...every time he {{looked}} upon the face...] [And if Maeglin did not want {{to}} return to... ] The phrase "just like that" not needed at the end.
Paragraph 8: remove "upon" [...he first glimpsed her lovely, moon-lit face... ]

This was a wonderful story! Well done!

This fic was recommended to me by another writer and I am so glad I checked it out! Let me explain: I am reading The Silmarillion for the first time, and I happened to just finish reading the chapter about Eöl, Aredhel, and Maeglin. I commented this to the aforementioned writer, and was directed to this story. Congrats! This is quite brilliant. I'll admit to also being on Eöl's side and disliking Aredhel and Maeglin. I won't discuss how I feel about the son since I am pretty much disgusted by his character, but I love the thoughts you have placed in the head of the father. I particularly like the opening paragraphs of this fic in which you describe how Eöl wants to hate Aredhel, for representing the Kinslayers, but he can't because he is consumed with desire for her. Then he comes to love and hate her simultaneously. That is very interesting and I think entirely appropriate to his mysterious character. Such behavior seems contradictory and perhaps rationally impossible, but I find it so fascinating that it isn't impossible, perhaps rather more frequent than we wish to believe. I think it so appropriate that I am always going to associate your idea with Eöl's character. Great story!

This was simply brilliant! It was truly wonderful to red a fic which actually defends Eol instead of labelling him as a disturbed, wicked individual. The way I see it, he was a complex person who was driven to certain actions by certain circumstances. This miles-deep delving into his psyche and the laying bare of his motives was unbelievably comprehensive. His views on the Noldor, his feelings for Aredhel and Maeglin.. your take on those was just amazing. Seeing how Eol's mind works was like unravelling an impossibly twisted strand of yarn; and it felt so right and so wrong at the same time. Eol was truly demystified in this, made more endearing and easy to relate to.
Wonderfully written!

EC

This piece so caught me off guard. First I was in your bio again, looking at your comments for the movie and then I scrolled down to the stories, as I always do when on a profile, and I see this fic I have never seen before. It's like, how did I miss this?

But then I'm *so* happy I found it! And not only that, but that it was for the benefit of Eol. I can't express my relief and delight that you did one in "defense" of him. It makes me sad how many people always portray him as a villain or a monster, never mind how Tolkien said that Elves can't succumb to evil, only be influenced to perform evil deeds. Eol was not evil. Sure, he was twisted and so complex that even the most patient person would get a headache trying to figure him out. :) But he wasn't evil, and it makes me sick how all these authors continue to kiss up to the Noldor by labeling the two Kindreds, Noldor and Sindar as "right and wrong", "good and evil" respectively.

So, when I came to the descriptions of Eol's ruminitions of the Noldor, you can't imagine how much I wanted to cheer! Finally, someone who doesn't hold the Noldor blameless, who doesn't ingore the fact that the Noldor arrogated themselves a right that wasn't theirs, believing themselves to be above the Sindar in their arrogance that they had in droves. Finally, someone who writes a piece concerning the perspectives of the Noldor and Sindar in the grey spectrum instead of black and white. THANK YOU.

And Eol's whole rationale of his thoughts was so twistingly fascinating that I wish it could have just kept going on and on. It seems so backwards, how he rationalizes and explains things, yet it really does make sense. I was chuckling towards the beginning how he was inwardy grousing how this wasn't *supposed* to happen and that wasn't *supposed* to happen...Eol certainly did like to play a dangerous game, and his thoughts towards Maeglin, how he grew to stop loving him, were as much horrifying as they were saddening. But so fitting and accurate. Bringing up the Kinslaying was a brilliant method for motivation, and truly, it makes so much sense. Eol being the kinsman of Thingol makes him more close to the Teleri than many. Of course he would be beyond ticked with the Kinslayers. Funny how reality can turn on you.

Maybe living in the darkness twisted his mind. :) But there's no doubt that Eol is a shrewd Elf. I was never one of those people who hated or degraded Eol, nor am I saying he's a good guy (how can anyone say that?). But he was always so fascinating simply in how he could not be figured out. And I absolutely loved this piece dedicated to him. Of course, I'm a huge sucker for a psychological thriller and this fic provided much meat in that department. :) By by gosh, I wish this were extended. And I don't think Aredhel was blameless either, and I never did feel sorry for when she died. The only person I truly felt pity for, despite his traitorous actions, was Maeglin. Gosh, you make me want to write a long-story about the events surrounding Maeglin's birth and childhood purely based on the rationale you've given Eol. I loved it.

In all, though the fic was short, I think you did an incredible and praise-worthy job getting inside Eol's head. Everything's still so confusing with him, but it all makes sense, and this twisted sense of logic fits both his character and common sense. It's just plain messed up. lol. But the way you delved into the psych here was brilliant, though I'm a little biased since this is my favorite form of writing. :) More people need to do fics honoring those Elves who usually get bashed by writers simply because of them by default being a Sinda who gave a Noldo some grief. And of course, the Noldor are always right and the Sindar are always wrong. *rolls eyes*

So thank you for spending the time honoring Eol. No, it didn't paint him in the best light, but it wasn't supposed to. It was meant to help us understand him, which goes a long way towards diffusing the immediate hate many have for his character. So this fic was sorely needed. But it was so well done and so accurate to what Tolkien provided for his character (namely little) that I just have to add this to my favorites. Oh, and after reading it, I immediately remembered this picture I once saw. :/ /browse . deviantart ?qmaeglin#/d2ghdb5 Parody though it is, this pic is funny and your story immediately reminded me of it.

Very well done. I'm hoping we get to see similiar fics to this for other characters in the future. Thanks for writing this!

Gwed

This was excellent! Eol's one of my favourite characters, too, and I really enjoyed your take on his personality and motives here. I'd never thought about his ensnaring of Aredhel as a form of revenge against the Noldor for him, but the idea makes perfect sense, and I like it!

His emotions and story were eloquently told; you captured him very well as a character. I especially enjoyed the bits of his direct thoughts scattered throughout the story, like this one:
"I hoped to torture her. Nay, she poisons me. She poisons me instead."

Great work!
-Crackers