[Formendacil]

A scenario occurs to me in all this that is interesting, and only moderately tangential. What if Thorin had not managed to retake Erebor? Let us suppose, perhaps, that Thorin & Co. failed, that Bilbo was not able to tell the thrush about Smaug's weakspot, and the son of Thráin died with all his company on the slopes of the Lonely Mountain. Or what if Thorin had never run into Gandalf and been able to put together a plan and company--a situation where he would die lonely and embittered in his Blue Mountain home--what then?

Well, we know that Thorin was childless, and that Dáin Ironfoot was his direct heir (Fíli and Kíli, of course, were his sister-sons my read on Dwarven succession is that it was more Salic than the French). What then? I can't see Dáin travelling to the Blue Mountains to "inherit" Thorin's smithy there--not when he had a much more impressive lordship in the Iron Hills. Nor can I see him refusing any title save that of King Under the Mountain--and I agree with Squatter's assessment that this was the ONLY title Thorin was interested in pursuing. It seems more than likely to me, therefore, that had Smaug not been taken out and the mountain reclaimed when it was, that Dáin would have been the first "King of the Iron Hills."

It also strikes me that the biggest difference between Thorin and Dáin in this respect is not Thorin's intractability vs. Dáin's pragmatism (though this *is* an element); rather, I think it has to do with their ages. Thorin remembered Erebor. What is more, he remembered Erebor specifically as the son of the son of the King Under the Mountain, as the dwarf who, barring Smaug and/or premature death, was raised to expect that he would someday be King Under the Mountain himself. Dáin, on the other hand, was younger--if my memory serves, he was young enough that he would not remember Erebor. In any case, he probably didn't live there, since his grandfather, Grór, moved to the Iron Hills, where Dáin and his father would both eventually rule.

Consequently, Dáin's memory of the House of Durin was not the same as Thorin's--that is to say, it was not bound up with the Kingship of Erebor. Certainly, we know that once he became king, his memory of the kingship did not hinged on the possession of Khazad-dûm. Looking back historically, it makes one wonder what the Lords of the Longbeards called themselves after Durin VI and Náin I died at the hands of the Balrog. Did Thráin I and his son, Thorin I, call themselves Kings of Moria?

Although Thráin I settled in Erebor and found the Arkenstone there, I doubt he called himself "King Under the Mountain"--and if he did, it doesn't seem to have stuck, since his son Thorin I decided that the Grey Mountains were just as good a place to live as Erebor. My analysis of this situation is the Heirs of Durin after the loss of Moria were just as "lost" as Thrór, Thráin II, and Thorin II after the loss of Erebor.

Indeed, after Glóin, Óin, Náin II, and Dáin I ruled in the Grey Mountains, it seems to me to have been a very fortunate thing for Thrór that he was able to "return" to Erebor after the dragons drove his people out of the Grey Mountains, else the Kingdom Under the Mountain might not have ever been really established at all. Instead, he might have gone with his brother, Grór, to the Iron Hills and pined about the loss of the Grey Mountains.

On that note, I think it's also worth noting that the loss of the Grey Mountains before Erebor was probably on Thrór's mind a lot after the loss of Erebor as well, and might have engendered a thirst for vengeance in his line to fall back again, but to toe the line against evil things and retake Erebor or die trying.