LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 03 - The Muster of Rohan

[davem]

AAARRGH!!!!

The whole argument of my last post falls apart!! I just found this, from The King of the Golden Hall:

"Behold! I go forth, and it seems like to be my last riding," said Theoden. "I have no child. Theodred my son is slain. I name Eomer my sister-son to be my heir. If neither of us return, then choose a new lord as you will.

Public declaration, days since! Another embarrassing fox paw

I hereby promise to actually read LotR one of these days.

Anyway, hiding embarrassment & pretending none of that happened, let's move on...

Civil War

Of course, we don't know what position Grima actually held in the court. Certainly, Eomer was imprisoned for threatening death to him, so we may assume that, in his 'broken' state Theoden had held Grima in higher regard than Eomer. I say 'may' because its quite likely that, given the laws of the Hall, anyone threatening another with death there would have been locked up to 'cool his heels'.

What it does show, though, is that Eomer was not, at that point, held to be the automatic heir of Theoden, assuming the place of Theodred on his death - if he had been in that position his authority would have been too high for him to be treated in such a humiliating fashion.

Could Grima have been declared 'Heir Apparent' by Theoden in his broken state? The Civil war scenario Lalwende mentioned could have been Saruman's intention - a 'second best' after Grima forcing Eowyn into marriage after Theoden's death. Break Theoden, kill Theodred, & the whole realm is likely to implode. We can assume that part of Saruman's intent was also to break Eowyn's will - he probably thought that as a woman she was easily breakable in that way!

Whatever, it seems that Saruman saw Eomer as his major problem once Theodred was out of the way, & probably his next move would have been to get him out of the way permanently. And if Eowyn wasn't 'compliant' she could go the same way. Grima would be left, as the ruler, Erkenbrand then opposes him - civil war again.

Whether this was Saruman's plan alone, or whether Sauron was behind it, we'll never know, but what we can say is that if Gandalf hadn't intervened when he did there would have been no Ride of the Rohirrim, Gondor would have fallen & Sauron would have gone through the west like a dose of salts!

[Lalwendë]

Reading what formendacil and davem have just posted raises some interesting questions. Firstly, it is likely that Eomer was not the natural next in line to the throne; most of us would view a line of succession to naturally follow the 'first born' logic. If Theodwyn had older sisters then Eomer would have been likely to have cousins and even if Rohan used primogeniture to determine the succession then it's likely he would not have been first in line.

It is possible that Eomer was the first male in line to the throne - he was the Third Marshall of the Riddermark, wouldn't Theoden and Theodred have been first and second?

Theoden also has to name Eomer as his heir, which is odd. Surely the line of succession would be well known? Comparing Rohan with the real world, there is a long and bloody history about lines of succession to the British throne. And the same happened in Numenor.

However, the culture could have been different in Rohan. If this is the case, that the king had to formally name his heir, then Saruman would have been all too well aware of this and would have sought to exploit it - by killing Theodred, discrediting Eomer and having his quisling Grima try to wheedle his way in.

Grima was clearly someone of high status already in Rohan, who has chosen a non-military path to success, and he must have already been in a position to get close to Theoden in order to deceive and manipulate him so thoroughly. We do not know exactly how close he could have been to the 'royal family' or line himself, but he must have had some supporters within Rohan, even if they may have been only willing to go along with him due to his position of influence on the King. If he had gained the throne somehow, there would certainly have been civil war.

This makes me think about Eowyn's sense of desperation again. Her 'cage' could have been the bars which she saw closing around her as Grima's influence grew stronger. Meeting Aragorn who was inspirational, and who had the right qualities of nobility she could have seen in him what had been suppressed in her own country where the men no doubt were in fear of Grima. This could have even prompted her to think about how at the last she might have to fight against the doom which was heading for her. When she was told to stay behind again after Aragorn left, and then yet again when the Rohirrim made for war, her fear of ending up a chattel may have risen a little more each time until she thought she may as well fight alongside the men as much as risk dying at the hands of the orcs. Aragorn seems to have woken her from her fears and made her realise what was making her so afraid.

[Guinevere]

the two weeks have passed and again I haven't managed to post anything...
I did read the chapter though, and followed the interesting discussion, I just didn't have any original thoughts of my own.
As always, I enjoyed Esty's excellent summary, and I loved Davem's posts about Merry and the roads running together, and about Eowyn. There's not really much to discuss if I agree with everything, is there!
Lalwende's link to the prehistorical stones was very interesting too, and her mentioning that the description of the mountainous area sounded rather like Switzerland. Tolkien must have been a very good observer with an almost photografical memory to keep all these evoking details in mind. The description of the mountains must have derived from his only trip to the Swiss alps , which he made as a lad. It must really have made a lasting impression on him! I wonder, if he himself felt rather a bit like Merry, that mountains are grand to look at from afar, but if you are surrounded by them you feel rather oppressed.

He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by the fire.

I agree very much with Fordim and Formendacil that the last sentence is very "hobbittish"!

...trying to understand the slow sonourous speech of Rohan that he heard the men behind him using. It was a language in which there seemed to be many words that he knew, though spoken more richly and strongly than in the Shire, yet he could not piece the words together.

Is that the reaction of a person of English mothertongue when hearing Anglo-Saxon ? I wish I could hear how it sounds... Well, at least I can listen to Tolkien himself reading the poem of the great ride towards the end of the chapter, because I have the CD with those precious recordings!

Something which made me wonder, are Eowyn's words about the Ghosts, in answer to Théoden's tale:

"But the Dead come seldom forth and only at times of great unquiet and coming death."
"Yet it is said in Harrowdale," said Eowyn in a low voice, "that in the moonless nights but little while ago a great host in strange array passed by. Whence they came, none knew, but they went up the stony road and vanished into the hill, as if they went to keep a tryst"

This must have been before Aragorn entered the Paths (8th March). Theoden & co came to Dunharrow on the 9th March in the evening , and that's when Eowyn made that remark.
So the Dead must have had a foreboding that the time had finally come when they would be summoned?? Aragorn made up his mind to take this path after he had looked into the Palantír on the 6th March in Helm' Deep, but how could the Ghosts have known this?
Anyhow, I find the chronology in the Appendix very useful to keep track of which events took place in which order, and especially what happened simultaneously to the other members of the fellowship. It must have been an enormous piece of work to synchronize all these facts! And it adds greatly to the feeling of "reality".

The discussion about Théoden calling Eomer "son" was also interesting. I couldn't find any other cousins mentioned, and remember that Eomer and Eowyn were brought up in the king's house since their parents had died when Eomer was about 11,
"Her children he took into his house, calling them son and daughter." it says in Appendix B II.

That Théoden rides himself to war with his people instead of staying at home, is a contrast to Denethor (and Sauron himself) who make the plans, but order others to the front. Those were heroic days, when a king in reality was the leader of his people!

[davem]

Quick one on the significance of the Red Arrow.

In Egil's Saga we find:

King Audbjorn sent around an arrow of war as a signal to call men to arms throughout his kingdom & dispatched messengers to powerful men asking them to meet him.

Or in another translation it reads:

By such persuasion king Arnvid was determined to gather his forces and defend his land. He and Solvi made a league, and sent messengers to Audbjorn, king of the Firthfolk, that he should come and help them. Audbjorn, after counsel taken with friends, consented, and bade cut the war-arrow and send the war-summons throughout his realm, with word to his nobles that they should join him.

'Cutting the war arrow' seems quite similar to the painted mark on the Red Arrow....

[davem]

More on the War-arrow:

The king split up a war-arrow, which he sent off in all directions, and by that token a number of men was collected in all haste. (Hakon the Good's Saga)

"-ör, f. 'war-arrow' (sent round as a to of war); skera upp -ör, to summon a district to arms." http://www.northvegr.org/zoega/h197.php

Hammond & Scull refer the Red Arrow back to Morris's 'House of the Wolfings', which Tolkien had read in 1914 - "the Wolfings are summoned to war against the Romans in part by a messenger who carries 'the token of the war-arrow ragged and burnt and bloody' "(Chapter 2).

Don't know if Tolkien was drawing directly on Morris work - or if he was, whether he was drawing on it consciously.

So, the War-arrow was a common 'signal'/summons in the Norse world, & it seems (in some cases at least) that it would be 'split up' & sent out to different places as a summons. Tolkien's example is painted red but Morris's has it covered in blood.

[Formendacil]

I have it in my memory that Tolkien wrote Merry and the journey to the muster BEFORE he wrote Aragorn and the journey through the Paths of the Dead. Even if I misremember now that I hit my senile, elder years, it is still the case that we have, yet again, a split plot and time being covered from a new perspectove that has already been seen. Wherever that's the case, the question can be asked, "why follow that story first?" and this general consideration of how Tolkien structures this part of the RotK has been on my mind.

Following Aragorn first does a couple of things. One: it means that we follow the fastest storylines first: Shadowfax on the wind to Minas Tirith, then the Grey Company racing over the plains to Edoras before a mad march through the Paths of the Dead, them finally the Rohirrim marching by mountain paths to Dunharrow. There's a logic tonit, and it means that when we go backwards AGAIN to Theoden and Merry, we have an increased sense that they are behind, a sense brutally exploited when Hirgon arrives with the Red Arrow: Minas Tirith needed help yesterday, is his basic attitude. And the next two chapters will take this sense of a race against time and build on it: "The Siege of Gondor" will show Minas Tirith trying desperately to hold out until help can come while "The Ride of the Rohirrim" shows the help in its mad dash to not arrive too late.

It also lets us see, as the reader who knows more, Eowyn's story in sequence. Since she's not a member of the Fellowship (i.e. not a point of view character), her story is told far more coyly than others, but it is one of the most important threads in Book V, tied right into one of its biggest moments, the death of the Witch-king. Her story is easier to follow, going from Aragorn leaving her behind in the previous chapter to its fallout here, since her decision to turn Dernhelm (and take Merry with her) stems directly from her being left behind by Aragorn--she won't be left behind again. Even if Merry doesn't know who she is, we might--Tolkien doesn't tell us Dernhelm is Eowyn, but he really doesn't hide it, either.