- Location
- Here
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Arphazêl is such a delightful asshole. It's hilarious how deep in denial she is.
Still, her understanding of Elessar's claims are obviously biased. Arvedui claimed the crown of Gondor for himself, arguing that he should be King of Gondor, not that Fíriel should have been Queen of Gondor. Aragorn claimed to be the heir of Isildur and Anárion. He mostly emphasized Isildur's High Kingship, but he did claim to be the heir of Anárion. I'm not sure though who the line of Elendil is supposed to be usurping. Sauron, I guess, lmao.
I'm a bit surprised though that Gondor has expanded so quickly though. That's quite far to push the borders. The only way I can think of fitting is that he's claimed Enedwaith, Rhovanion, and the Harad annexations. Southern Rhovanion wouldn't be very populated, if at all beyond Dorwinion. Harad though should be deeply populated enough. Enedwaith was also heavily populated on the coasts, by primitive fishfolk. A decade is a very short time to expand it so far, when it was so underpopulated. Makes sense that Faramir was concerned about the cost.
It's obvious she doesn't know anything about Eriador though. Almost nobody lives there. There's Bree and the Shire. There's also those farmers from the Hobbit. There's also the Dúnedain. But that's tiny in size, or Hobbits who stayed in the Shire.Where did the population to rebuild Annúminas, let alone Arnor, come from?There'd have to be... people there for it be said to be conquerd.
Arphazel's bias is fairly obvious and colors everything she says about Aragorn (especially considering she's never even met him). She could see him playing with his son and she'd start grumbling about how he's being idle and neglecting his royal duties and can only enjoy his time with his son by exploiting Gondorian peasants.
A lot of Gondor's newly claimed land is probably underpopulated empty land with at most a couple outposts to hold it down. Rebuilding Arnor and developing all that empty land is probably the kind of project that would consume all of Aragorn's reign (even with his extended Numenorean lifespan). I'd imagine that peace and prosperity combined with all that empty land would result in a population explosion, and there are always policies Aragorn could use to encourage people to settle in the wild lands. The classic "You can own your own land if you settle in untamed wilderness" offer would draw people north.
Admittedly the exact nuance of her views on Sauron is one of the things the current vote can dive into, so I'd hesitate to put her firmly in the camp of "Sauron did nothing wrong." This is the first time someone's really challenged her tilted perspective of The War of the Ring, and an opportunity for her to grow a bit (or double down).
In writing the current update I was aiming more for a bit of moral relativism/whataboutism. Mimicking the sort of arguments you'd get out of a Lost Causer whenever the conversation turns to the bad things the Confederacy did and stood for, where she doesn't outright deny that bad things happened so much as try to shift the conversation away from those uncomfortable and indefensible facts. "What about how the North treated Indians? What about how Yankees were racist too?" and so on. I've tried to avoid anything outright nasty and reality-denying like "Nurn's slaves were happy and treated well" or "Orcs were nice and peace-loving." At the end of the day I want her to be a likable character who just has a few bad perspectives on account of being raised in Mordor by Sauron loyalists.
