Fic - A Kingly Gift - 1/1

[evandar]

Title: A Kingly Gift
Author: Evandar
Fandom: The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Pairing: Implied Thorin/Bilbo
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: No one in the Fellowship knows the true meaning of the mithril shirt, save for Gimli.



When Frodo staggers to his feet, carefully supported by Sam, and opens his shirt, gasping that he isn’t hurt, Gimli cannot help but let his lips part and his eyes widen in shock and awe. He labels the mithril shirt that glitters brilliantly in the gloom “a kingly gift” before he can stop himself – and tries not to wince as generations-old secrets weigh upon his shoulders and stick in his throat.

Not that anyone bar the elf pays attention to his comment, and all the pointy-eared princeling does is roll his eyes. He thinks, no doubt, that Gimli is merely a dwarf sighing over precious metal – and perhaps he is right, though he has no idea of how precious the metal is.

Or what it means.

Mithril, the rarest of metals, is only worked on by the line of Durin. Only those of direct lineage – the kings, the lesser lords, their children – may shape the metal as they please. It is part of why the cost of mithril is so high – and why it was only ever sold to those who were kings or princes in their own right.

He has known almost his entire life that Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, presented Bilbo Baggins with a mithril shirt, and he has known for almost the same amount of time what exactly that presentation meant. It is another thing to actually see it, see its lustre and its quality peeking out from under stained cotton and Aragorn’s splayed palm. It is the greatest treasure forged within Erebor, and it was intended – though Gandalf’s claim that Bilbo had not known its worth rings horribly true in more than one way – as a betrothal gift.

The line of Durin only gift mithril to those who will be joining it.

Comments

[elletromil.livejournal.com]

This is really really really beautiful.

But you killed me with the last sentence.

So, yeah I'll just be on the floor, rolled up in a ball, crying. Don't mind me.

(I really liked it though)

[dt_maxwell.livejournal.com]

I'm with elletromil. I am currently rocking back and forth and trying not to weep, because as beautifully written as this is, it is also a ginormous punch to the gut.

...*rereads again*

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Thank you! <3 Glad you like it

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Thank you! <3

I was writing it thinking 'Thoriiiiiiin D:'

[zedille.livejournal.com]

This is really excellent work -- I love how understated it is, but you manage to convey so much in the few words there are. And you include all this extra character narration and worldbuilding in -- we really get a sense of how much there was going on behind the scenes, that we're not privy to since it's only dwarf culture. So effective, and you take us to this inevitable conclusion that is so heartbreaking in how much it leaves unsaid (since we all know how the earlier events went, too). Really liked the LOTR-era callback to The Hobbit!

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you <3

Tolkien never says much about dwarf-culture in the books, really, and I've always felt a little sad about that since Gimli's my favourite LotR character hands-down and what we are told implies that they've got a whole lot of culture going on there in the mountains. So. World-building. Because that's totally not a hobby of mine, right?

And yeah, the Thorin/Bilbo-shipping reeeeeeally breaks my heart all over the place. Watch this space. There will be more. And more from Gimli, because yeah, I fangirl.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Worldbuilding is the best, especially in fic! And especially with Tolkien's world there's just so much going on all the time and so much to explore. Tolkien himself focused mostly on the elves (and he didn't finish with them, at that) so that leaves us with all the realms of Men and Dwarves and so on. There was absolutely stuff going on there even if we don't really see it that much!

(Ooh seeing Thorin/Bilbo from Gimli's POV sounds lovely, it's not something I've seen too much of previously :D)

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Not that the elves weren't awesome as well *cough*Glorfindel*cough*, but they did take up most of Tolkien's writing and leave little room for anything else. Even with the men, he mostly talks about the ones of elvish descent or the people of Numenor.

(There might not be more of this one since I don't want to spoil it, but I have plans *cackles*)

[zedille.livejournal.com]

I have to admit Elrond is my favorite xD but yeah, it's so easy to get caught up in the scope of Tolkien's writing (especially in the Silmarillion) and the quantity of cultures and places he writes about, that you end up forgetting that there were people and things going on besides what Tolkien writes about, too. Even among the Elves, the story doesn't really focus much on the Avari who didn't go to Valinor, or the Vanyar or Teleri beyond their interactions with the Noldor. It's like Wicked's tagline, "so much happened before Dorothy dropped in" -- we don't see any of it in canon but it is there for us in fic!

Sorry, I have Tolkien feels :D and all fic will be happily contributed to those!

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Nnn, I really want to read The Silmarillion again, (haven't read it for almost a decase) but I'm not entirely sure I could justify buying a new copy. (The copy I have is in a box on the other side of the world, and asking my family to ship it over would get a resounding 'wtf no'.)

But you're right. Tolkien wrote so much - an absolutely unbelievable amount - but there's still so much that he didn't write, which makes it the ideal playground, really.

Soooooo many Tolkien feels. :D

[hobbitdragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes YES YES. Oh my god yes. Headcanon approved!!!!
Thank you for writing this. I love it. <3

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, we're headcanon twins, then.

I'm glad you like it! <3

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Hm, there are probably copies of the Silmarillion (of dubious legality) floating around online? Or I think I have an ebook version of it I could upload for you, if you like :)

(On that note, I'm on vacation now I could certainly do a spot of re-reading myself! Time to hit up the library :D)

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Oh, I gave in to the temptation and bought the Kindle version shortly after I posted that. XD Not that it's managed to download yet...crappy New Zealand internet *grumbles*

I just know that I'll end up with Celebrimbor-feels again. And Glorfindel-feels. And then I'll be a mess all over the place. XD

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Let's have feels together! There are feels to be had about pretty much everyone in the Silmarillion even if right now I'm mostly focusing/flailing over Elrond and his family line. (And Eärendil. And all the descendants of Finwë. And everyone.)

Good luck with your internet!

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

It's all just so tragic, isn't it. I'm pretty sure there's even Sauron feels tucked in there somewhere...but like I said, it's been a while. I'm really looking forward to reading it now!

And yeah, thank you. I need it. XD

[zedille.livejournal.com]

I think the Valar probably have Sauron feels! But really if you think about it, he could probably have been this terrifically productive force for good if not for Morgoth's influence. Like Fëanor and the Silmarils, really. The entire Silmarillion is just like feels-in-a-bottle, or essence of condensed tragedy. I swear it's the one fandom that actually gives me angst overdoses, and considering how much I like that genre, that's saying something :D

Oh and to bring the conversation back to your fic, its origins, I was poking around the Internet and stumbled upon this guide to Fellowship of the Ring (they have similar guides for the rest of the trilogy and The Hobbit.) It had this to say about Frodo's mithril coat:

Mithril is an incredibly strong, light, and beautiful metal...
So, that’s what mithril is. But what does it symbolize? Well, if we look closely, it appears to represent hidden (Hobbit) potential. When Bilbo passes his mithril coat on to Frodo, he tells him to keep the armor under his clothes. In other words, Bilbo encourages Frodo to let himself be underestimated: it's always easier to defeat people who don't take you seriously. When Frodo first wears his mithril-coat (again, in secret), Gandalf looks at him penetratingly and comments, "You take after Bilbo [...] There is more about you than meets the eye, as I said of him long ago" (2.5.61). The mithril-coat reminds us not to judge a book – or a Hobbit – by its cover. Underneath a lowly Hobbit's ordinary exterior, you may find a mithril-coat waiting to surprise you.

And I read that and remembered the original fic and almost burst out laughing ;) Sadly the site doesn't have a guide for the Silmarillion, I'd absolutely love to see them try and reduce that to a "high school English class" level of analysis...

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Condensed tragedy is definitely a good way of describing it.

And lol. "High school English class" level analysis never lets you down. XD

What I was thinking while writing (if you don't mind the blather) was along the lines of 'What do we know about mithril? Okay, it's really light, really shiny, really strong and very rare. Very very rare, and valuable. And valuable metals often turn out as status symbols (e.g. bronze and iron (back in the day) and gold)so if mithril as as epic as Tolkien says it is, then it would be right up there as royal property. BUT. We know that dwarves traded it, even with elves - *insert Celebrimbor feels here* - but Celebrimbor was (kind of) a prince, and definitely a lord of a city (ruler in his own right) so maybe they would have let him have it for a huge price. And dwarves are a race of extremely skilled craftsmen, so...what if mithril is so important that they only let the most important dwarves work it. Royal dwarves, maybe some people who've been lucky enough to earn the honour somehow... Back to the coat. It's valuable (have you seen the maps of the shire? It's actually a fair-sized, fertile bit of land, and that coat could buy it? Right...) but it's also protective. Bilbo isn't all about the fighting, true, but Thorin is giving him something that valuable to protect himself? When one of the (few) things we do actually know about dwarves is that they are jealously possessive of their treasure? *insert expression of stunned disbelief here* And fair enough, it's not the Arkenstone, but chainmail is fiddly as all fuck to make and would take a lot of skill, which would up the value yet again, and if we look at forging mithril as a status symbol...'

And a new headcanon was spawned, lots of feels were felt, and a very short fic was written. According to that guide, I'm too anthropological to be an ex-literature student. *cries

[the-summoning-d.livejournal.com]

Oh god. Right in the feels.

Beautifully written.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

If we're going for "valid and internally coherent logic that Tolkien nonetheless did not think of when writing," I rather prefer your logic! It fits so much better with Tolkien's universe, after all, and the chain of logic is very solid, which is why the fic itself was so brutally effective! I think the biggest leap you made was the one about how only kings/royalty would be able to work the metal (and I found that a bit of a leap only because I think I've read somewhere that there was mithril in Valinor, or other places besides Moria? And I'm pretty sure elves -- like Celebrimbor -- would have been working with it too. Of course they would restrict the metal to people of high rank but is it necessarily as codified as that, to be so very directly linked to status?) but even that was pretty solid logic. And Thorin giving it to him -- yeah, he was in a ~fit of generosity~ when he gave it to Bilbo, life seemed pretty good with all the treasure in Smaug's lair -- though I guess I always assumed that Thorin was only so generous because that coat wasn't really worth that much in relation to some of the other treasure there. The Hobbit sustains that interpretation but then comes LOTR to enlighten us on the true value of the coat (and then come feels after....) There's more stuff like that, I think, where reexamining Hobbit in light of LotR turns up some pretty interesting stuff.

[adrieunor.livejournal.com]

Such a great story told in such a small space. That last line is just icing on the cake, really. This story is gorgeous. And quite painful, actually.

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

I should probably point out that that train of thought was solely for dwravish culture. Men and elves would probably only let their most skilled smiths work mithril (again, value) and only the most wealthy would be able to afford it. So it would mostly end up with royalty anyway - particularly with Men, I think - but only the dwarves would make sure that it stayed that way.

At least, that's how it worked in my head. XD

Yeah, I didn't really get the whole coat-thing either when I first read it (ooooh, so long ago XD) but ended up with insta-feels as soon as I read LotR and realised how important/valuable it must have been. That's one thing I love about the scope of Tolkien's universe: sometimes things like that pop up to whack you with a bat mid-story.

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Thank you! <3

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. <3 I got a whole boat-load of feels over that coat last time I read the books, and then the film and the hug and gaaaaaaaaaaah.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see, and I withdraw my objection :) I should have figured, really, since the fic is from Gimli's POV so logically it would be discussing the culture he's familiar with.

Yeah, the first time I read LotR I didn't get half the references (Eärendil, who is he) but I definitely loved the feeling that there existed enough of a world to have those sorts of references. Even in the Hobbit those references are there! :D

Speaking of which, have you heard the "Arkenstone = Silmaril" theory before? What do you think of that? (Tolkien probably did not intend the two to be the same, but imo there are enough similarities between the two that it's a plausible thought experiment/fic fodder if you want it to be)