Fic - The King's Jewel - 1/1

[evandar]

Title: The King's Jewel
Author: Evandar
Fandom: The Hobbit/The Silmarillion
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, AU?
Warnings: Spoilers for The Silmarillion?
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit or The Silmarillion and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Thranduil recognises the Arkenstone, and that is why he does not help.
AN: This was written for zedille who is a terribly good influence on me, apparently, and inspired this fic with this comment. Also, this is movie!verse for The Hobbit but I somehow avoided mentioning the goddamn moose.



It is fortunate, he thinks, that the eyes of Elves are sharper than the other races know, as he is able to regain his composure by the time he stands before Thror’s throne and gazes upon what he came to see: the King’s Jewel.

It shines perfectly in its setting, and within it Thranduil sees the light of the world across the see. He sees galaxies born and wonders immeasurable, but most of all he sees death and darkness and a world in ruin. He has seen a jewel like this before, long ago, when he was still young and Doriath still stood. His father had bid him to look upon the arrogance of the Noldor – and their downfall – and he had obeyed. He had never expected to look upon it again.

Apparently, Maedhros had not succeeded after all.

There is pride in Thror’s eyes. Pride and growing gold-lust – that Dwarvish weakness – and Thranduil knows that the curse has already set in. Darkness will grow in Erebor and doom shall fall upon it, and he will keep his distance. So he swears to himself as he nods his head to the Dwarven King, knowing well it is unlikely he will see Thror alive once more.

Even so, he follows the sounds of the screams and the plumes of smoke and fire with his army on his heels. He stares down from the cliff-top, watches the young prince as he waves and calls to him – and he grieves in his heart for the fear and desperation in the young Dwarf’s voice – and he turns away, unable to watch for any longer than a moment. He imagines Legolas crying out with such fear, and what pain it would cause him to hear it, and he steels his resolve: his people will do what they can for the Men of Dale, but they will not interfere with the dragon. They will not fight.

Thranduil has seen what happens to those who fight over the Silmarils, and he will not bring that ruin upon his own.

Comments

[zedille.livejournal.com]

BUT EVERYTHING'S BETTER WITH THE MOOSE I'M JUST SAYING

And yes, I love the angle you took with this, that Thranduil had seen the Arkenstone even before Bilbo brought it out. It fits so nicely with Thranduil's first appearance in the movie, and it makes so much sense to give another reason why Thranduil would have turned away from the dwarves. Though the way you phrase it, "those who fight over the Silmarils" -- that makes it sound almost like Smaug flew into Erebor partly because the Silmaril was there? At any rate, good for Thranduil, who had the strength of will to not pursue the stone for himself.

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

THE MOOSE IS AMAZING. IT JUST DIDN'T FIT.

To me, Thranduil looked a little sad when he turned away at the start of the film, and that influenced this a lot.

Eh, I think dragons appearing kind of fits with the Silmaril's habit of bringing bad luck/doom/destruction/massive amounts of horrible death to anyone who so much as tries to possess one. The Appendices (and the film) seem to imply that it was Thror's ring that helped the gold attract the dragon, but there's no reason why one of the Silmarils wouldn't do the same. Certainly, since it was at the top of the hoard-pile in the book, Smaug seemed to like it.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

That moose really grew on me, at first I was like O.O but now I think it really, ah, adds something to Thranduil that none of the other Elf-realms had. (And Lee Pace felt like an elf! I must admit I was not too impressed with Celeborn and Haldir who were also supposed to have the blond coloring.)

I wonder if Smaug recognized that the pretty rock in his hoard was actually the Silmaril? (Getting one up on Eärendil who killed Ancalagon, I suppose).

Was Thrór's ring mentioned in the film? Or maybe it'll come up later, though I'd think that explaining about the rings would be jumping the gun. Unless they don't mention Sauron's One Ring at all, in which case I could see it happening...

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on that. At first I was bizarrely distracted by it - I mean, come on. It's a freaking moose - but then it grew on me, and now I'm actually really glad that they put it in. Because it does make Thranduil stand out a bit more from the rest of the Elven realms, which is exactly how it should be - the glimpses we get of Mirkwood in The Hobbit make it look totally different from Loth Lorien and Imladris - not just through setting but through the people as well.

I like to think that he would, and that he would privately be seriously smug about the whole thing. A hoard that huge and a Silmaril on top?

They didn't mention it outright. It was a very sideways reference (that I could be making up entirely because this is totally my head-canon) when they mentioned Thror becoming obsessed with gold and sickness spreading, because that was what the Dwarven Rings did (if they had an affect at all).

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the moose and then Thranduil's pokey crown -- once you get used to it, it really adds to Mirkwood's unique "personality" and aesthetic.

Smaug did pretty well for himself ... and now I'm wondering if he was related to Ancalagon at all. I suppose he was the last of the dragons, though?

And ah, that does make sense to explain the apparently sudden and inexplicable movie portrayal of Thror's decline ("and one day, Thror woke up on the wrong side of the bed and it all went wrong from there"). Now I think about it of course it couldn't have been quite as abrupt as that, and having it be attributed to a ring instead of something intrinsic in Thor Thror also makes more sense. We're never really shown what the effects of the dwarf-rings were -- presumably somewhere between the Three and the Nine -- I always assumed that the dwarves wouldn't be affected that much, so I didn't make the connection myself, but I am not sure where I got that idea from?

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm really looking forward to seeing Thranduil's kingdom explored a bit more. It's definitely looking promising so far.

I have just got our comment conversations spectacularly confused. Please insert ramblings about dragons here.

The movie doesn't go into much, really, when it comes to that, though I suppose it would have felt like pointless exposition to a lot of people. I have to forcibly remind myself that not everyone gets as enthusiatic about things as me. But it is in the LotR appendices that the Dwarven rings only ever managed to exaggerate their bearers' gold-lust if they managed to get a hold on them at all, and it says in LotR that four of the seven were melted destroyed by dragon-fire while Sauron only got to reclaim three of them. So maybe they did draw dragons in part? Or, at least, made the dragons more likely to come by spreading sickness and obsession and all those other lovely things that the creatures of Morgoth liked to feed off.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Hopefully Tauriel, their new elf OC, is done well and doesn't spoil things!

So, dragons...I suppose the question comes down to how much breeding stock Morgoth was working with for the dragons? Was there ever only one line of descent, or were there multiple? It's kind of funny, you can tell Tolkien wrote Hobbit first because dragons aren't really a threat in the rest of LotR at all (so what was Smaug doing all of the Ages of the world before showing up at Erebor?)

I don't think the dwarf-rings were brought up in this film, nope, but there's certainly time enough in the next two, as long as it's brought up logically and not shoehorned in. Though what they can say about rings in general is kind of limited (how much before Bilbo starts thinking about the ring in his pocket?) or they'd restate the point of the LotR trilogy. At any rate, Thror's ring certainly did not help affairs with the dragon...

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yeah. There's quite a bit of doubt about her that I've heard, but I'm trying to reserve judgement.

I don't think we ever hear about it. I suppose since The Silmarillion is supposed to be the Elvish histories and they were more concerned with "Ai Valar! How do we kill it?" than breeding or where exactly Morgoth got them from. And by LotR they're all supposed to be extinct, anyway, so that might excuse some of the brushing aside he did.

Although, I think Balrogs were supposed to be too and look how that turned out...

I'm not entirely sure that they ever will be brought up, or if they are, then it won't be more than a couple of lines I should think. Unless they flasshback to Thrain, since he was supposed to have been wearing the ring when he went missing, but that would be...yeah. Slightly horrifying.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

There are certainly a lot of ways that they could do Tauriel wrong, but yes, it's probably best to stay optimistic -- I'm sure PJ will find a way to do Tauriel well, too...

That makes me wonder if lying around Middle-Earth somewhere is a copy of Morgoth's notes on dragon-breeding ("How to Train Your Dragon", even...) but Smaug was the last of the dragons? Unless there were some hanging around the other side of the world or something, but who knew.

If they do bring up the ring then I hope they don't do it when Bilbo's around, because we wouldn't want him to think twice about the Ring he carries... I don't know that the Dwarves themselves realized what affects their rings might have.

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that Sauron went pretty full-out in LotR and there were no dragons involved in that. BUT. It says in The Hobbit that Smaug came from the North, which is - as far as canon goes post-Silmarillion - pretty much a desolate wasteland of nothingness, trolls and wights. There may be dragons there that were too far away for even Sauron to reach. Who knows?

Though now I have an image of Morgoth drawing in the dirt with a stick, being watched by Ancalagon.

Yeah, I don't really want them to bring up the One around Bilbo at all - it would make him think too much. But a flashback to Thrain, while disturbing, would be amazing. I think the dwarves do know. Perhaps not the bearers, but the people who witness them slowly going off the deep-end might have connected the two.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

Re Morgoth drawing in the dirt with a stick -- well, you know, I'm not sure what there was to do in Angband all day, so who knows what else he got up to?

Given all the effort they're going to to make Thorin a ~sympathetic character~ with a story arc and all that, I wouldn't be surprised if they did give us more of Thorin's history, so we might very well see more of Thrain and that time period! And it would be cool if the movie did make the "this is one of the dwarf rings that the prologue to FotR mentioned" connection... I don't think we'll be seeing any of the others, though? That would be too much of a digression, even in the books it's only really the same bunch of dwarves we see, and no other kingdoms.

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

"So! I have made this wicked creature! Er...what does it eat?"

The Thorin in the book wasn't an overly sympathetic character at all IMHO, and I hated him as a kid - especially after how he treated Bilbo over the Arkenstone. But his backstory was mostly skipped over, and I think I prefer the exposition in the films since it's made me like him a bit more.

I am also fully supportive of further exploration of the Necromancer/Sauron. So far we've basically got "he's eeeeeeeeeeevil, lookit his ugly eeeeeeeeevil servants, and the eeeeeeeeeeeevil fortresses: we must smiiiiiiiiiiiite the eeeeeeeeeeeevil" without any, actual visual representation of the evil in question.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

You'd have monsters developing tastes for the most obscure or ridiculous things, too. Like, elf hair! Orcs! (that would be bad for morale).

Honestly I didn't think any of the dwarves in the book (though of course I haven't read it in years) were really sympathetic? Or I mean, not that necessarily (they were clearly good characters) as none of them really felt like actual living breathing people with hopes and wants and needs to me, they were all kind of just there. Thorin wasn't unsympathetic as much as just very grumpy, I remember him, but he was also kind of just there, too... I suppose my younger self interpreted Bilbo as rather self-absorbed. And I agree that that wouldn't have worked in a movie, so it is for the best that Thorin gets more development! I should probably have expected the shipping though, even before the movie, ahah/

Same with the Necromancer/Sauron -- iirc in the book he was more a plot device to draw Gandalf away from the Thorin-and-co (b/c Gandalf is too powerful most of the time) than anything else directly affecting the plot. We've seen him doing some actual necromancy with the whole Angmar thing, but do we see any more of him/Benedict Cumberbatch acting, I wonder?? Or fight scenes with the White Council?? I am massively excited :D

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

It makes you wonder if any of them were defective. Doesn't like the taste of Elf? Back to the drawing board! Morgoth was a busy, busy Valar.

Everyone in the book was fairly one-dimensional. The story went at such a fast pace - and wasn't that a surprise? After all those people complained about making The Hobbit a trilogy, the first film - all three hours of it - goes only just past the first third of the book! The characters were so busy being thrown around by various nasties that there wasn't much space for characterisation beyond 'Thorin is a dick, Balin is the lookout, Gloin likes fire, Fili&Kili are young'.

The Bilbo in the book annoyed me a little because - while his horror and discomfort and complaining were pretty accurate - he never suckegot on with it. It was still his choice to go on the quest, though for a long time I don't think it was a choice he'd made peace with.

I like that they're being more developed in the movies. It makes them more enjoyable.

A fight scene with the White Council would be amazing. Actually, any further scenes with Sauron would be brilliant, because all we see of him in LotR is the snippet with him in armor at the beginning and then he's an ominous whispering eyeball for the rest. And he's supposed to be the Dark Lord, and all, but frankly the Balrog and the Wargs and the Uruk-Hai and, hell, Denethor were more frightening.

[zedille.livejournal.com]

"That time Morgoth accidentally created a peaceful, helpful monster that, if you were to psychoanalyze him, would reveal his secret inner urging to be good". Or something like that...

Part of the movies' expansion of Hobbit comes from the change in tone, I think. If they'd kept the "children's story" tone, then they could probably have squeezed everything in into one movie, if they didn't really devote much time to "Why Is This Important?" and setting up character arcs. Like in a children's movie, you can have 13 dwarves that are all kind of the same running around. But since they're trying to have it on comparable stakes with Lord of the Rings, then it needs to become more serious, the stakes go up, and character development also happens. So now we have longer battle scenes, and Thorin flashbacks, and so on.

Bilbo... I don't know that I'll ever be able to read the book without associating John Watson with the character to some extent. That was really genius casting, the two characters are so fundamentally similar ("quiet, respectable man gets dragged entirely out of his death, reacts in an amusing fashion, and puts up with it/rises to the occasion").

Hm, I don't know that we're necessarily going to get Sauron incarnate at Dol Goldur with a traditional fight scene/duel, since at that point he didn't have the Ring either, and that would affect his strength? (I remember after Númenor's destruction he couldn't take "fair" forms any more, and he was clearly incarnate during the Last Alliance so he could kill Gil-galad and get his finger cut off, but presumably that was a very awful and frightening form). But well, that doesn't prevent him from having a "misty body shape that Cumberbatch can model" magical-type duel with Galadriel (too much to hope for that Elrond shows up again...) I suppose Sauron is supposed to be scary by association with the Balrogs and Orcs? You do have a point, though I'm not sure how you can draw an eyeball to be frightening. It's not like how they changed wolves -> Wargs, there really isn't much to work with on an eyeball, you need the rest of the face around it to really convey emotion.

(though also agreed about Denethor, that one bit when he's eating and Pippin is singing -- so, so disturbing.)