Random Tolkenian Ramblings
May. 2nd, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaSo, here I am, waiting patiently for Peter Jackson's Return of the King to come out, with the promise of the trailer (which I saw twice in the theaters) soon to come out on DVD, and reading a few musings about kingship and nobility on Green Books, and something which bothered me at the time has hit me again:
At the end of the theatrical RotK, King Theoden has died without naming an heir. Okay, it's possible that at some point he did in fact name his nephew Eomer as the heir to the throne of Rohan, but if so we never saw it. In fact, we saw something that implies otherwise: he names Eowyn as his steward, to occupy the throne until he returns - with the strong implication that she is to stay there, albeit without a crown, if he does not return at all.
Indeed, this king will will not return, and when we see Eomer later he is clearly the commander-in-chief of Rohan's army, but - and this is important - he is still wearing his own armor and carrying his own sword. He has not taken up kingly raiment. This strongly implies that he is not the next in line for the throne of Rohan.
This leaves us, at the end of the short version of the film, with two stewards standing next to each other - and given that they've cut the Eowyn/Faramir love story out of the film almost entirely, that is, in fact, what the camera frames. Not a pair of lovers (although those of us who've read the book know that this is, now, what they are), but the representatives of Gondor and Rohan standing as equals, both fallen nobly on the field of battle and both revived by the medicine of Gondor (and in the book, by the healer's hands of the King). And they stand at the coronation of the King, not just of Gondor, but - it seems - of all the world of Men. Eomer, Eowyn, and Faramir all bow to him. And since I don't have a copy of the theatrical version to look at, I can't check to see whether either Eomer or Eowyn is wearing a crown in that sequence.
"Last I knew, Theoden, not Aragorn, was King of Rohan." Does the movie Aragorn claim that throne, too? At the very least, it seems deliberately ambiguous.
Then again, they never make it clear in the movie that Pippin and Merry are the eldest sons of two of the three most important hobbits in the Shire, either.
(And we're leaving out the "meaningful manly glance" between the Elvish prince of Mirkwood and the Returned King, too, but we'll slash later, ne?)
At the end of the theatrical RotK, King Theoden has died without naming an heir. Okay, it's possible that at some point he did in fact name his nephew Eomer as the heir to the throne of Rohan, but if so we never saw it. In fact, we saw something that implies otherwise: he names Eowyn as his steward, to occupy the throne until he returns - with the strong implication that she is to stay there, albeit without a crown, if he does not return at all.
Indeed, this king will will not return, and when we see Eomer later he is clearly the commander-in-chief of Rohan's army, but - and this is important - he is still wearing his own armor and carrying his own sword. He has not taken up kingly raiment. This strongly implies that he is not the next in line for the throne of Rohan.
This leaves us, at the end of the short version of the film, with two stewards standing next to each other - and given that they've cut the Eowyn/Faramir love story out of the film almost entirely, that is, in fact, what the camera frames. Not a pair of lovers (although those of us who've read the book know that this is, now, what they are), but the representatives of Gondor and Rohan standing as equals, both fallen nobly on the field of battle and both revived by the medicine of Gondor (and in the book, by the healer's hands of the King). And they stand at the coronation of the King, not just of Gondor, but - it seems - of all the world of Men. Eomer, Eowyn, and Faramir all bow to him. And since I don't have a copy of the theatrical version to look at, I can't check to see whether either Eomer or Eowyn is wearing a crown in that sequence.
"Last I knew, Theoden, not Aragorn, was King of Rohan." Does the movie Aragorn claim that throne, too? At the very least, it seems deliberately ambiguous.
Then again, they never make it clear in the movie that Pippin and Merry are the eldest sons of two of the three most important hobbits in the Shire, either.
(And we're leaving out the "meaningful manly glance" between the Elvish prince of Mirkwood and the Returned King, too, but we'll slash later, ne?)
