–My caveat once again is that I owe a long-standing RP partner for permanently influencing my perception of this character and flavoring his personality in my mind.–
Fëanor is an absolutely fascinating character in his own right, but I confess my main concern with writing him lies in understanding the place he holds in the larger narrative. I love speculating interpersonal scenes with him because he influences so many other characters, and he has some of the most hair-raisingly epic dialogue in the whole legendarium– but to do that I feel like it’s important to map out his motivations and the place he holds in the philosophical landscape first.
( I know a lot of ink has been spilled arguing whether or not Fëanor is a Good™ or Bad™ character, and…. look. I stan dark lords. I don’t really have a horse in that race. I care about understanding the motives surrounding him, and what makes him an Interesting character. I just thought I’d put that forward in case anyone was planning on planting a flag in me as part of Team Fëanorian or Team Valar or Team Teleri…. Please don’t ;_; I am but a humble content creator living in the Rhine Valley of the Great Fandom War, I wish to farm my memes in peace.)
ANYWAY: Essay to follow.
Aside from Melkor, Fëanor is THE voice of individualism and exceptionalism in a world whose dominant philosophy is deontological (am I using that right? It’s the Kant one). He’s the very definition of a Renaissance Man; a brilliant polymath and believer of the value and agency of individuals, living in a literal theocracy where the gods themselves are a present and real force in everyone’s lives.
The Valar do not acknowledge advancements made by an individual as being the sole property of the individual, because no advancement is made in a vacuum– everything is made possible because of collective effort, or greater harmony; everything finds its source in something higher, all the way up until you reach the Creator: “All things have their uttermost source in [Eru]” – therefore Eru’s will is the universal rule, the source of moral obligation. “Those who will defend authority against rebellion must not themselves rebel” –because defending the natural authority that stems from Eru is a moral imperative, that must be followed even the outcome is bad.
Melkor defies this rule and is punished for it again and again; Aulë defies this rule but repents and is forgiven (it is Aulë who defends Fëanor’s reluctance to hand over the Silmarils, because he is uniquely able to sympathize with the emotional weight of sacrificing one’s own work out of duty); and Fëanor challenges this rule at the feet of the same gods who enforce it.
The way the narrative frames the issue of ownership of the Silmarils is very telling: Fëanor is said to love the Silmarils with a “greedy” love, forgetting “the light within them was not his own”. The presupposition is that his love is greedy because everything, ultimately, belongs to Eru, and anything made with natural resources is held above individual ownership. It is expected that you should create not for one’s self but for the will of Eru– that is what separates Aulë from Melkor in the beginning. It is an unspoken assumption that it is Fëanor’s duty to share his gifts– but he is not forced to do so. His actions are merely frowned upon, up until the moment where he is asked to break the Silmarils for the sake of restoring the Two Trees. And of course he refuses.
Would the Valar have forced him to break the Silmarils then, if Melkor hadn’t stolen them? I don’t know. I think it would probably have gone to trial in the Mahanaxar, and whatever the outcome, it would probably have led to an ultimatum set in law thereafter.
I think Fëanor has a strong case for his refusal, which would likely find support from many elves and maybe some Ainur. He was not the only one in post-unchained-Melkor Aman to develop a sense of private property, but he was the only one to claim exclusive ownership of his craft. (The Teleri equate their Ships with the Silmarils as treasures that cannot be replaced or bought for any price, yet the Ships belong to their people collectively, and they freely attest learning their shipbuilding from the Oarni, Ulmo’s Maiar– this gives them the benefit of propriety. Because they acknowledge their debt to divine provenance, their refusal to give Fëanor use of the ships is not the same as Fëanor’s refusal to render the Silmarils to the Valar, in terms of the value system in-text.)
A case could certainly be made that the light of the Trees was given freely for the benefit of the Elves– there was no condition set upon its use or enjoyment. If that light was NOT given unconditionally, what then is the condition for the use of ALL things made by the Valar? If the condition is that no one may create for private use, why was this condition not made clear earlier, before the elves agreed to come to Aman? Are they or aren’t they free? Was Melkor lying, or stating a truth for his own benefit?
Regardless of good intentions, it WAS the Valar’s decision to bring Melkor to Aman and free him, and it was they who failed to protect the Elves and the Trees. If all duty and moral law come from the Valar, and the Valar are proved fallible, it is an act of SUPREME faith to continue to trust in their authority, and it’s hard to blame the Noldor having their faith shaken. The Valar failed to provide safety in their own home, had their exclusive source of light destroyed, and then they looked to Fëanor to provide the solution by breaking the thing he most treasured. To Fëanor, of course this looks like proof of his least charitable suspicions.
–And I do want to note: the Valar ending up looking so extremely culpable is part of why they hesitate to pursue the Noldor or take immediate action to stem the conflict; the Valar are ALSO shattered by what has happened, their faith shaken. Manwë can’t help but love the elves, and to love this incredible prodigy who burns so brightly; he’s devastated that there is no winning Fëanor back from his rage and guilt and pride. There is nothing Manwë can do that will not appear to confirm his brother’s lies and half-truths, so he holds back, and the tragedy keeps unfolding.
If Fëanor’s rebellion had not escalated after the Darkening, the Valar would probably have had a long and uncomfortable century of subpoenas ahead of them. And that would also have been interesting! But not nearly as interesting as the bloody clusterfuck that happens instead.
—
…But all of that is just floating around nebulously in Meta Space. That isn’t what motivates Fëanor’s character, it just clarifies the environment he’s in.
What motivates him is a delicious mixture of Pride, Conviction, Dedication, Stubbornness, Curiosity, Passion, Outrageously High Standards, A Reasonably Accurate Sense Of His Own Skill And Importance, Entitlement, and Paranoia.
The pride and sense of importance are genuinely well come by; there’s a tangible metric by which to measure Elven Greatness, because spirit is a real and tangible thing for Elves, and Fëanor has enough spirit in him for like ten whole Da Vincis.
His father is a great leader, but his mother was a woman who was as peerless in skill and dedication to her craft as he became. His mother likewise took a strange and tragic road of her own choosing. You cannot forget Miriel when putting together the pieces of Fëanor. She colors his entire world. She’s the first thing lost to him in a land purportedly free of sorrow and death, the first failure of Paradise. “Surely there is healing in Aman?” No. Not for her. She keeps her mysteries, partly because there is so little written about her, but to my imagination this is also because she does not owe us an explanation. You will hold her blameless in this. She will not force herself to feel what she does not feel. She will not stay for you, not for love nor duty. I feel there is more of Miriel in Fëanor than Finwë. I can’t prove it with citations, but it’s something I’ve always held to be true.
In this way, Fëanor comes by his Paranoia honestly as well. Paradise is full of broken promises; immortality is conditional, fealty can be broken, trust betrayed, love replaced. Comfort is fleeting. Safety is an illusion. Everything will be taken from him unless he nails it down himself. The only thing that matters is true loyalty; the loyalty of blood, of immediate kinship. He demands it of his following, and demands it of himself in return. His loyalty does NOT extend to those outside his inner circle, particularly not his half-brothers or their followers.
Curiosity, passion, dedication are the very blood in his veins. His enthusiasm is infectious, but there are few who are privileged enough to share a part of it. Only those closest to him have seen his warmest and most brilliant side, impossible to stand in the glow of and not feel it kindling your own excitement and love. Even outside the scope of his intimacy, it is impossible not to be affected by his charisma, his conviction, his eloquence. His praise is so sparing it is valued greater than diamonds, his professional regard worth spending a lifetime pursing. His scholarship is legendary, but he keeps his own council, and does not reveal his processes to anyone who has not earned his rare approval. He is the greatest mind in Arda. A crown prince, the heir to a divinely chosen king. A paragon, a wonder of the world. …So why shouldn’t value himself and his lineage above those of lesser princes and their followers? He has proven every day of his life that he is greater and more worthy than they. Even the gods covet what he has made– should he think less of his abilities than they? And what are his half-brothers but the product of his father’s compromise, Finwë’s one act of weakness in his grief, an insult to his mother’s memory? A dilution of the perfect union that created him. (Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on this moor?)
Fëanor does nothing by halves, he runs either hot or cold but never tepid. His intensity is enough to overwhelm all who cannot match it themselves– or those with enough self-assurance and good sense to weather it unfazed. Nerdanel has always seen past the glamor of Fëanor’s conviction to the flesh and blood beneath. She is not intimidated by his moods of roaring fire or crackling ice; she is not swayed passion over reason, not impressed by grandstanding. She respects dedication and skill, but does not put them on a pedestal– she knows that one turns into the other with time. She has her own metrics for measuring success, and her own goals to fulfill– she does not value his over her own. The years that Fëanor lived in harmony with Nerdanel were by far the happiest of his life, the source of much inspiration, and more love.
He loves her. He loves his sons. He loves his father. He loved his mother. He can, at times, bring himself to admit affection for his half-brothers, even respect. He demands much, but he is not by nature cruel. His intensity never gave way to violence before Melkor came to Aman. His pride never led to sedition and mistrust before Melkor came to Aman. God, how infatuated they are with each other. They represent what the other despises most, but the parallels between them are inescapable. Fëanor loathes every false, needy, fawning word that falls from Melkor’s mouth, but those same words echo again and again in his mind, so that in time he forgets their source, finds their message writ clear on the walls around him. Melkor will never forget that he was beaten and dragged from his fortress in chains and imprisoned for four Ages because of these pampered, petted, arrogant, entitled elves– the most arrogant and entitled of which has the GALL to look down on HIM, the Mighty Arising, while his glittering fire sits unassailable in the most beautiful vessels Melkor has ever seen… As soon as they met they were destined for a collision-course with one another, set on mutual destruction no matter what lay between them.
And it’s this stubbornness, the trait he passed down in equal measure to each of his sons, the absolute refusal to admit defeat or back down from impossible odds, the near inability to compromise or turn from a path once begun, that makes Fëanor and his kin impossible to ignore, deadly to underestimate. It is his stubbornness and pride and the very greatness of his conviction that fans his spirit to astonishing heights, burning hotter and brighter than any other flame in Arda, blinding those closest and burning all in its path, until like all flames it consumes its fuel to the last, and goes dark.
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