Who Wants to be a Shieldmaiden?

This is the first story in what I hope will eventually be a larger collection. Or maybe it will be the only one, considering how long it took to complete. I have a bit of a hangup regarding posting a story that's not finished; far too many of my favorite serials have been abandoned and left as monuments to premature expostulation...and so if you're reading this, the story exists in a finished form.

It's very, very long (he says with dry-eyed and sore-fingered understatement). It's not always particularly nice, and in fact some parts are unpleasant indeed. Some chapters are wall-to-wall sex, others have almost no sex at all, and a fair percentage of the rest feature sex that doesn't always end well. Or begin well. Sometimes both. It profoundly recontexualizes one of Tolkien's best-defined characters: the one and only female to have a well-described narrative entirely within the pages of The Lord of the Rings.

Of course, I'm talking about Éowyn.

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While I more or less like the filmic version of The Lord of the Rings (I have some strong objections, too, but this is neither the time nor the forum), I greatly prefer the book and have grounded these and any future stories in it. Mostly. That said, the genesis of this particular tale is a scene in the movie adaptation, one that visualizes a backstory to which the book clearly refers but only obliquely depicts: Gríma Wormtongue's lust for Éowyn.

That backstory is brought up twice by Tolkien: once in its immediate aftermath (the Gandalf/Wormtongue confrontation at Edoras), and once again later, in Gondor, as Aragorn heals her in body but not in mind. Tolkien does not, despite his frequent narrative inefficiencies involving leaf-by-leaf description of walks and goofy forest-dwellers singing about boots, usually write throwaway character moments. If he mentions it, it likely matters. If a character voices it, it's unquestionably important. If it's mentioned twice....

In the book, there's a consistency to Éowyn's star-struck "love" for the unavailable Aragorn. We see her consumed by desperation and driven to hard deeds and outright rebellion after Aragorn spurns her for the Paths of the Dead. (The movie, as with so much else, manages to make a hash of her motivations.) Yet much later, during the Gandalf/Éomer/Aragorn conversation over her bed in "The Houses of Healing," Tolkien suggests that her troubles were already long-established before we meet her in the narrative. The filmic version makes this suggestion explicit in a scene between Éowyn and Wormtongue, dramatizing a representative interaction that could have, and probably did, happen despite Tolkien not putting it to paper. Interestingly, it borrows the very words that form the core of Gandalf's bedside revelation.

The scene is played perfectly by Miranda Otto and Brad Dourif, with enough complexity and nuance lent to an encounter between obviously evil Gríma and obviously good Éowyn that one could easily believe that Éowyn was, in growing crisis, tormented and vulnerable enough to be corruptible. That she could potentially be tempted, in a moment of hopeless despair, by what Wormtongue was offering. If that wasn't the intent of the movie scene as written — though I think it most certainly was — it was unquestionably the way the actors played it.

In the novel, we see Éowyn deal with many obstacles, and she makes a fair number of choices that are obviously poor. (That they ultimately end well is beside the point.) What reason is there to assume that her decision-making hadn't always been suspect? In the book we see her essentially broken by a series of crises, but what if she was already broken by an earlier crisis? Which character would be the most interested in forcing an Éowyn-in-crisis to make a poor decision, the better to take advantage of that decision? There's only one choice.

On that foundation, the possibilities are obvious and the consequences multiply, well beyond the point where Wormtongue is abandoned by the narrative. (Spoiler alert: mine will abandon him at the same time. Don't worry, they're not going to live unhappily ever after. He's still going to be imprisoned in Orthanc and gnaw on a few Lotho loins before he dies. She's still going to meet, fall in love with, and marry Emo Steward. And yes, it's all much more complicated than that.)

Will everyone like or accept this version of Éowyn? No, most certainly not. I'm not even sure I do at all points. A lack of "purity" can be assumed given that the context is erotica, but I was surprised by how dark the character was capable of being when driven to it by circumstance and a good itch 'tween the nethers. As a result, the Éowyn I end up with in the story is decidedly not the limited character that appears in the book (or movie). She's weaker and she's stronger. Her motivations are more complex. She's a lot hornier. But here's, for me, the key point: the self-motivation she exhibits in all other aspects of her life is carried through to her sexual explorations. Whatever the specifics of individual encounters, at her core Éowyn knows what she wants and isn't afraid to make it happen.

That said, I've tried to write my own ambiguity about this version of the character into the story itself. The character as written by Tolkien I find both interesting and sympathetic especially because, unlike many others, she's allowed to have flaws and make mistakes. The character I've written has even more flaws and makes a lot more mistakes. She does some fairly reprehensible things, and even when she doesn't she sometimes allows herself to be led very, very far astray. (She also does some beautiful and redemptive things.) More often, though, she does understandable things. Is she more interesting? Well...we'll see. By the end of the story, I think she's experienced some intriguing times, but then I admit that I've written myself into quite an attraction for the blonde minx.

My commitment to Tolkien's authorial precedence, however, remains consistent. This is important, because if I ever defy it (and I usually won't, though there are arguable exceptions) I want it to mean something. All those things that Éowyn does in the book...cross-dressing and uncle-disobeying, Nazgûl-poking and Steward-marrying, Hobbit-stealing and horn-gifting; she still does all of them. Not one bit of that story is, to my knowledge, actually changed. I don't consider my version a contradiction, I just think she's acquired a new layer. Or several. Perhaps it would be more correct to say she's stripped off a few layers.

Anyway....

Why does Éowyn "deserve" this story, which is certainly the longest I will ever write in this universe (and which could easily support the sequel implied in the coda some forty-plus chapters hence, most of which was already outlined before I typed the first word of the first chapter)? Consider: in early drafts of the novel, Aragorn was going to fall in love with Éowyn. (Fact!) Tolkien decided against it as he continued to add layers of identity to Aragorn and then chanced upon Arwen as a parallel to the (then unpublished) tale of Beren and Lúthien, but for all his mind-changing he never really replaced her. In some ways, Éowyn's story actually grew in individual importance after her demotion, from doomed love interest to victorious Hero. And while her story was certainly afflicted and bookended by her relationships (imagined and real), she's no Bechdel-ian victim; her crowning moment of triumph had nothing to do with Aragorn or Faramir. It was purely personal, showed her to be a true warrior, and yet unquestionably relied on her being a woman.

In The Lord of the Rings, Éowyn is the only complete and fully-realized female character within the pages of the published narrative, given that most of Galadriel's story exists in different works and Arwen's tale is relegated to an appendix and thus almost entirely "offstage." She's both important to and present in the story in a way no other XX-chromosomed character is. To my mind, that means she probably deserves an orgasm or two. Or twenty. Several hundred. Whatever.

To be sure, Tolkien would angrily roll over in his grave at what I've done to Éowyn. (I hope he doesn't.) His characters wouldn't ever act this way. I can only apologize, with respect for an author whose work I have found deeply moving and meaningful.

Now let's go get Éowyn laid, shall we?