The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 38

Gil-Galad: I’m gonna need a human skull and I can't have you ask any questions why. Elrond: Only if you also don't ask why Elrond: *Pulls out 7 pristine human skulls* Take your pick. Gil-Galad: Celebrián: Elrond: Gil-Galad: This one is fine

The last stanza of the Song of Earendil always makes me feral because 1) Earendil's story is very sad imho, and 2) GOD I wonder if Elrond can relate to the sense of longing, of being torn away from that which you love again and again for the mighty doom that is upon you, of being a herald on an errand that never rests and being a light in the darkness for endless years. I wonder.

📓

For this ask game https://www.tumblr.com/camille-lachenille/727744831455150080

I’ll tell you about the story very creatively called ‘Elrond and Elros have a baby sister’

It starts with the third kinslaying and Maedhros finding a feral child who looks A LOT like Elwing and tries to stab him with a kitchen knife. He tosses him in a closet, locks the door and goes to find Maglor to sort the situation. When they come back, there is another child, identical to the first, trying to open the closet. Maglor immediately decides to take them in for reasons I haven’t entirely figured out yet but there’s a lot of guilt in there.

Anyways, M&M take the twins with them. Elros, keeps glaring at them and biting everyone who tries to touch him and Elrond swears like a sailor and hisses at people. They refuses anyone touch their pack even tough it looks heavy. Until the pack starts crying. Because there’s a baby inside. Elrond admits he sung his little sister, Elrodel, to sleep when the Fëanorians first entered Sirion and she slept through the kinslaying and a good chunk of the journey to the Fëanorian camp. Maglor realises this child he just kidnapped not only looks like a tiny Lúthien but he also has a LOT of power. Also, he has to find a wet nurse asap.

The kidap fam finds some sort of routine, the twins grudgingly accepting to obey Maglor for Elrodel’s sakes. They take very seriously the task of telling her about her true parents and teaching her the little songs Elwing taught them. Times goes on, Elrond’s Song becomes more and more powerful and he also starts having visions of the future. Elros too has them in some measure but his thing is reading people’s mind. Elrodel is a hellion of a baby, always making so much noise and biting people once she stars teething and generally making M&M’s lives miserable. It appears that her part-Maia thing is turning into a seagull. Maglor freaks out the first time it happens in his presence and Elros is very blasé and says something along the lines of "yeah, she does that sometimes. Mind her beak, she bites." And gull-chick Elrodel immediately proceeds to bite Maglor.

Moving on to the end of the first age/early second age: the twins and Elrodel live at Gil-Galad’s court and Elrodel starts apprenticing with Círdan. She reminds him a lot of Eärendil, in both looks and temper (the feral part comes from Elwin and being raised by Maglor).

I kind of want to insert something about the Silmarils, with Elrodel using a loophole in the wording of the oath to try prevent M&M steal them and make the Oath void but I still haven’t figured this part out, mostly if she fails and things go as in canon or her risked plan works but M&M still end up badly because they’re too far gone. Either ways it’s be angsty.

But as Elros becomes a leader of Men and Elrond carves his place as the King’s Herald, Elrodel tries desperately to reconnect with the heritage and family she never knew and reject her Feanorian upbringing. She’s sarcastic and angry but also very sad and lost.

She spends a good part of the Second Age building a giant lighthouse on the isle of Hilming and inventing morse code to chat with Eärendil. She also works with Celebrimbor on a flying ship and calls it Nimgwael (white gull). Using both her skin changing ability and her ship, she works as a courrier between Númenor and Lindon and as an unofficial spymaster for the kings of both kingdoms until Elros’ death and only Gil-Galad afterwards. During the various wars of the Second Age, she uses the Nimgwael as an airforce with giant crossbows on her ship. It’s her was to reconcilliate her birth heritage and what she learned growing up with the Fëanorian.

At some point she marries a fellow sailor and they work on more crazy inventions and she’s Elrond’s children Cool Aunt.

And that leads me to the end of the Third Age where Elrodel pops up in Dale to ask the new King Bad if she can buy the corpse of Smaug because she needs dragon scales to repair/upgrade her flying ship as it’s the only material strong and light enough for this. Bard is suitably baffled but hd won’t refuse gold against getting rid of the dead dragon at the bottom of the lake. After that, I see Elrodel making aerial raids against Sauron’s forces during the War of the Ring with her little flying ship and she’s an asset in retaking the ships from the Umbar corsairs.

I don’t really have an ending appart that she sails West only after Arwen’s death. And in Valinor she will work hard to create a relationship with her parents she doesn’t even remember. Maybe she works shifts on Vingilot so Eärendil can spend time ashore with Elwing?

Also, maybe she finds Maglor pathetically wandering the shores and brings him home by the scruff of the neck…

And here’s my very long, very rambling post about this fic that has been living rent free in my brain for months but words seems to evaporate the second I try to write it 🤷🏻‍♀️

I love that you headcanon Gil as being aro and that he and Elrond were in a QPR. That's exactly what I've always pictured for them but I've never come across anyone else who has so I am l i v i n g

YESSSSSS. Besties!!~

I do this for two reasons? One, obviously being because I headcannon Gil as aro, and two...

I just...I can't personally reconcile/feel comfortable with romantically shipping a couple that has that big of an age and power imbalance. I think extremely-devoted QPR works really well in this instance, but there's something about involving romance into it that just really squicks me out. I didn't ship Gilrond for a long time because the fandom at large just seems to ignore how utterly toxic a power imbalance like this is in a romantic relationship. It's literally nigh-impossible to keep that sort of thing healthy and equal. King & Herald ??? Way, way too easy for it to get messy way too fast if there are romantic feelings involved from either side. When there's romance involved I just can't help but view it as borderline predatory (even if it might be unintentional....I just don't think it would turn out well for Elrond).

I'm just one of those people who can't extricate how something would function IRL from how I portray/enjoy it as a ship. I had to go through similar hoops with my Elrondir ship before I really felt comfortable full-on shipping it and portraying it as healthy and mutual. 

I know there are people who can and do just ship things without worrying about this sort of thing, and that's totally fine! Me, personally....I have a hard time fucking around with ships like that. If I can't see it being healthy in an IRL situation, I'm not going to (positively) ship it. Doesn't meant I won't enjoy exploring the dynamic in my writing, though!

But a mutually devoted king and herald who also happen to enjoy each other in bed and know each other on an extremely platonically intimate level? Yeah. I'm feral for that.

Wild. Fey. Feral.

Those were just three words that were used to describe Gil-galad’s herald, that Peredhel who would climb walls one-handed and sit on roofs in dim twilight, walk between shadows and emerge from the darkness by the table to frighten you into dropping your wine cup, all to simply say, “Hello, Tinu. It’s a fair evening we are having tonight, is it not?” before smiling his strange, half-lopsided smile, and wandering away again. He would whistle as he trained, and laugh as he killed, and smile as he bled--and all the while, he would hold his head high and proud, confident in the fact that, while he could die, he would not die. Not because he was invincible, but because he had yet to meet his match in sword and cunning (save for his brother--but his brother would never cross blades with him, save for in the practice fields or for sport).

The only one who could tame him was the King. And the King did his best, setting forth guidelines and rules, spoken and unspoken, written and understood. “You are not to kill unless you have my permission.” And, “You are not to use your shadow-cleaving gifts to spy on my courtiers.” And, “You will use stairs like a normal Elf does, not windows or walls or gargoyles and gables.” And slowly, slowly, slowly, Elrond began to learn to acclimatize himself to Elven culture and Elven society. No longer was he the strange outcast, the lost prince of Sirion, the ward of the Feanorions, the newcomer to court. He was Gil-galad’s herald, present in his council chambers and in his war rooms, in his trade negotiations and in his peace treaties. He was an advisor and counselor, friend and trusted confidant. 

And Elrond yearned to please Gil-galad, in a silent and secret place of himself that I doubt he ever truly acknowledged. And so he conformed, and he learned, and as the years went on he bound his oddness, his strangeness, his feyness and wildness and ferality, and he carved for himself an ill-fitting box that he could at least exist in, appearing almost normal. 

He no longer laughed when he bled. He no longer smiled when he killed. He no longer whistled while he spun kata after kata with his blade into the air and dummy.

But still he retained some of that feyness. Still he would exhibit strange bursts of power, especially when frightened and afraid. Still he would Sing sometimes, and the Song that would come forth would be utterly alien and terrifying, like the kraken in the deep, dark depths of the sea.

And then he met Celebrian.

Gil-galad looked at her one day, after Elrond had left the courtroom, and he said softly to his cousin, “You could tame him, I think.”

And she did.

i think...... given what we know about how elrond and elros were raised, and what we can conjecture of their perceptions of elves and men based off what we know, that its time we let go of this whole ‘elros is the wild, tempest hearted twin because he chose the ADVENTURE of mortality, and kingship! elrond is chill and soft and intellectual bc he chose to just be gil-galad’s herald and be an elf.’ no friends. no. elros chose to be mortal to get away from batshit elves and to not spend any longer on this god foresaken planet than he had to. he got a job with responsibilities, got married and raised a family in 500 years. elros was the mature, mild mannered one who just wanted a quiet life. elrond? elrond saw the apeshit lunatics that are Elves and was like ‘hm, yes, my kin.’ elrond got a job with way less responsibilities, remained semi-feral and developmentally a teenager for 3,000 years. please rewrite the narrative with these two.

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 13

Gil-Galad, when Elrond first becomes his Herald: Oh it's adorable

Gil-Galad: . . .

Gil-Galad, learn Elrond was raised by Maglor and Maedhros: Oh, it's traumatised

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 31

Gil-Galad: Date someone who will drag you outside at 3am to look at the stars. Elrond & Thranduil: If anyone, and I mean anyone, wakes me up at 3am to go look at the damn sky they will be removed indefinitely from my life.

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 27

Elrond: I am feeling the affects of masculinity right now, I'm feeling the testosterone, I wanna got to WAR, I WANT A SWORD, I'M A MAN, WAR, I AM READY TO FIGHT ERU AND BECOME HIM OR DIE TRYING. Gil-Galad: Dad pick me up I'm scared Elrond: What dad, were is your dad, who is your dad Gil-Galad: That was uncalled for Celebrián: He woke up and chose violence today Elrond: I crave Violence Gil-Galad: Oh dear Valar he's a little gremlin boy

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 28

Elrond: You fuckers don’t know about my knife stick. It’s a knife taped to a stick and it’s the ultimate weapon. Gil-Galad, looking Aeglos over: Spear. Elrond: BLOCKED.

The King and his Feral Herald | Episode 43

Gil-Galad: Looks Like he can't mansplain, Manipulate, Malewife our way out of this one, Sindar Princeling

Elrond: MANSLAUGHTER IT IS THEN

Thranduil: I hate Fëanorian's for reasons you know Gil-Galad

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 45

Gil-Galad, putting his hands over Elrond's eyes: Guess who!

Elrond: It's either Gil or the cold, clammy hands of death.

Gil-Galad, pulling his hands away: It's Gil!

Elrond: Dammit.

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 34

Elrond: Oh just so you know, it's very muggy outside Celebrián, who watched Elrond put the mugs outside: . . . Gil-Galad: Elrond, I swear, if I step outside and all of our mugs are on the front lawn... Elrond: *Sips coffee from bowl*

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 30

Elrond: Common is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though. Thranduil: You need to stop. Gil-Galad: He never stops, you'll get used to it eventually

The King and His Feral Herald | Episode 29

Elrond “Raised by Fëanorians” Peredhel: You have to walk around, take in the sights, see something of Middle Earth, Princeling

Prince "I'm older than you, you stupid feral fuck" Thranduil: I'm quite literally older than you and have seen more of Middle Earth than you

Two Hours Later…

Elrond “I’m too stubborn to ask for Directions” Peredhel: We may be lost but we’ll find our way eventually.

Prince “I Have had enough of this feral fuck and lost my will to live” Thranduil: I literally bought Gil-Galad and you tossed him in the trash but okay sure whatever.

The King and his Feral Herald | Episode 42

Elrond: I learned some very valuable lessons from this. Gil-Galad: I’m guessing they are all horrible distortions on the lessons you actually should’ve taken away. Elrond: Death isn’t real, and I’m basically Eru. Celebrián: Elrond no that's Tom Bombadil, your not Eru, he is.