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]

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.)