Short Take: Eomer Prince of Denmark
[For my ever so patient readers, I have a massive project in the works on a par with the Warlord’s Reading list… You will not be disappointed when its out. The recent drought of posts will abate very soon and your patience will be more than rewarded… Just wanted to get this down quickly]
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The story of Eomer and Theoden embodies a lot of what I don’t like about J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing.
There’s a profound moral cowardice to every story he tells and every manner in which he ends it.
Theoden is a decayed corrupt and senile king, leading his country to ruin in collaboration with a poisonous advisor.
This is one of the oldest stories of all time. This is the exact same setup as Hamlet.
So what does Eomer his proud warrior nephew do watching his uncle decay and lead his people to certain death? He takes his soldiers and flees into exile after falling out of favour... So far very similar to the Hamlet story. But Eomer’s position is even more dire, his sister is immediately prey to the mad king’s advisors slimey lusts, and it is not the machinations of a young Norwegian prince happening on the Kingdom’s Borders but a imminent invasion of thousands of genocidal orcs lead by evil itself..
Now there is a stock way for this story to end, indeed there is only one way for this story to end, it’s the same way the story of Hamlet ends...
Eomer has to kill Theoden. He has to slay his uncle the mad king, and take the crown for himself.
Eomer has to summon all his will, all his resources, harden his heart, take on a terrible resolve, and kill the man who partially raised him and he’s deeply attached to. He has to do what Zues did.
This is obviously a big lift, and his hesitation is fully understandable (Hamlet hesitated even more) but if he doesn’t his sister will be raped and his kingdom will be slaughtered.
Enter the Fellowship. Our heroes from the first book.
This is a great setup. You have skilled fighters, an exiled prince, a kingdom on the brink... What can you do with a Ranger, a Dwarf Fighter, and an elven archer against a corrupt kingdom and a wayward prince who needs to take the throne. There’s moral quandaries, hazards, the open field, monsters, a city of whispers, a mad king, a ticking clock... If you had a dungeon master who set this up for you you’d be in for a treat.
So what happens? What Did Tolkien decide happened?
Tolkien decided A wizard magically comes back to life, and then magics the mad king into being a good king.
The conflict between Theoden and Eomer never happens.
Eomer never has to face the mad king or the traitors of the court, Eowin’s subplot goes nowhere, there’s no Shakespearean showdown for the throne as the Orc Hordes descend, no glorious vengeance against Worm-tongue... No desperate rallying of a divided land in the final moments with the crown pulled from the gutter...
No moral judgement has to be made at all and no one has to get their hands dirty. It’s as if Shakespeare ended Hamlet with “And then they shook hands and made up”
At every instance Tolkien’s Eucatastrophes, his inverse catastrophes, his sudden turnings for the good, his “miracles” exist to dodge the moral quandaries, lessons, virtues, tragedies, and hard choices that better older writers wrote better older stories about...
The miracle of story is not supposed to be divine intervention. The miracle is supposed to be that great men prove worthy of their moment. The Miracle of Hamlet is that even as he’s slain he gets his revenge and the chance to tell see his story told and proves himself worthy of his forefathers and wins the esteem of his peers... After 4 hours of dithering and torturous doubts, he succeeds and is buried in full military honors worthy of a warrior prince... He has proven himself worthy of the ghost of his father.
Instead Eomer has to make ZERO hard choices, the Fellowship has to navigate none of the terrible intrigues of a kingdom collapsing, and the consequences and terrible necessity of royal power and hard judgement is wished away.
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And the terrible thing is everyone learnt Tolkien’s lesson. Even as the foreign hordes conquer Britain and America and mass rape the women and children of the west... Everyone’s still shouting into the wind hoping the boomers, normies, bureaucrats, voters, and leaders will “Wake up”... They aren’t going to wake. They’re catatonic or worse.
To save the world the first thing you have to do is take up the sword and take power from those who are failing to save it.
Even Zues, the God of kingship himself, usurped the throne from his traitorous father.
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It is not that Eomer is lacking in moral courage it is that you simply do not understand why he does what he does. He wants to slay wormtongue and possibly even his uncle, but the honor of his people would mean that no one would follow him or trust him if he did something so treacherous. Theoden’s son who had just died days before was in line for the throne not Eomer so up until that point it would have been his decision, not Eomer’s. The honor of their culture dictates that he let the king to live with his dishonor rather than to begin his rule with the ultimate dishonor and have that permanently stain his legacy. The king must be allowed redemption. You continuously fail to understand Tolkien at every turn and it’s honestly getting weird and pathetic at this point, as if your own moral bankruptcy is preventing you from understanding a greater moral framework.
I just hafta air this here, because probably most people won’t read my comment below about LOTR vis à vis the Arthurian cycle. LOTR is like, what if the Holy Grail is actually an unprepossessing old tin cup knocking around in Camelot’s scullery, and nobody knows about it except Sir Kay the seneschal, the knight in charge of Camelot ‘s larder? (Charles Williams’ novel “ War in Heaven” uses such a conceit) Kay is like Bilbo, he’s just too busy fretting about food deliveries to the castle , having enough candles and torches, and supervising the cooking to be taken over by the Grail’s power. (The magic of the quotidian, like what protects Harry Potter in the Dursley household). But : one night the vivacious vessel escapes him and appears above the Round Table, tantalizingly veiled, and..it breaks up the Fellowship. The knights disperse and go questing around through hollow lands and hilly lands looking for it, (which is weird cuz Camelot is the only place it’s ever been spotted). Trusty, crusty old Sir Kay ( who never gets to do anything heroic in the legends, but he must be a veteran, right?) who is now not so busy because there are a lot fewer knights eating and carousing at the Round Table, dons a pilgrim’s cloak, tucks the troublesome tumbler into a deep pocket, and sets off to find some place to …maybe return it to? Maybe Jerusalem? He hopes agains hope that his quest will result in the restoration of the Fellowship of the Round Table. Hijinks ensue as Kay tries to keep the ebullient Mug o’ Mystery under wraps, occasionally encountering some of his former fellow knights, alone and palely loitering, pining away seeking it……
Welp, time to get outta bed and do my morning chores.