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THE CROWN
Second Age 3441
The Woodland Realm, Greenwood the Great
Shortly before sunset they all sweep into your chambers, bearing trunks of regalia and armfuls of fabric. No less than a dozen attendants, most faces familiar and a few less so, work in movements so organized and efficient that amid their whirlwind of activity, the room remains respectfully quiet. Unmoved is the somber stillness that has blanketed it over the long nights past.
When the last clasp on your gown has been fastened and the final stroke of the brush has run through your hair, the elleths who attend you curtsy simultaneously. "My Queen," murmurs Caethel, your own sweet handmaid. You give her a gracious smile but shake your head. "Thank you," you whisper. "But no. Not yet.”
After they leave, you walk over to the open double doors that lead out to the balcony, lingering behind the sheer white curtains to breathe in the crisp autumn air and feel the sun’s fading rays on your face. This evening, your life changes drastically, setting you on a road of so many possibilities not even your foresight can offer the comfort of certainty.
It frightens you, this new role and unfamiliar future that you never, in the long years of your youth, desired for yourself. But you desired him. From the moment you crossed paths with Thranduil Oropherion, you lost your heart and your choice.
You turn away from the balcony view and back to matters at hand. Across the chamber, the last two remaining servants hover about the feet of your husband, one working the straps of his tall boots, the other standing back to survey the overall effect. You had worked closely with the palace tailors to oversee the making of his coronation robes, and the final product they presented pleased you. Whatever Thranduil thinks of them, however, remains unclear. You watch as he stands still, eerily like a statue of cold marble, while they adjust the long ends of heavily embroidered fabric around his booted legs.
Finally, they turn their attention to his hair. The head valet, the late king’s personal own, reaches up to tug the loose silver locks away from his ears, and you see it. A barely perceptible grimace flickers over Thranduil’s face. The sight calls out to you, and you take one unbidden step forward.
He hears your movement. His eyes suddenly rise and carry his gaze across the room to where you stand, a silent, tearless cry that stabs you in shared grief.
“Let me,” you call out, gliding swiftly to your husband’s side. The valet blinks at you in confusion, so you clarify. “I shall take it from here. Thank you for all you have done.”
He hesitates with a hand still resting over the cascade of Thranduil’s hair. “Would you like me to show you how, my lady?”
You shake your head and answer simply. “I will see it done.”
He senses your intention and is determined enough to try and object. “But Princess--”
“She said it will be done!” Thranduil cuts him off sharply. “And you are finished here. Leave us.” Robes swirling in his wake, he storms to the bedroom chamber, where none but you would dare follow.
You do not undermine your husband by apologizing on his behalf, but you thank the servants again as you see them out the door. Then entering your bedroom, you find Thranduil glaring at his reflection in a gilded mirror on the wall, a wine goblet in his hand.
“They want your ceremony executed properly, down to the last detail, so it may have the dignity it deserves. That is all.”
He remains silent and does not even look at you until you come up to him. You take the empty goblet from his hand and replace it with your own. A gentle squeeze of your palm brings his eyes on you, and in their blue depths you finally catch a glimmer of something other than pain.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispers.
“Melmenya…” You hold your intertwined fingers to your cheek. “It is you who matters tonight, and only you. Let us finish getting you ready.”
His eyes dart back to the mirror. “Those braids,” he mutters. “Such a trivial thing. Such a small, trivial, foolish matter to have ever quarreled about.”
Thranduil has never been one to weep, and the death of his father did not change that. But his clear eyes, distant manner, and brusque comments cannot mask his sorrow from you. You do not press him for anything, but you simply listen to him grieve in his own way.
You wonder how Oropher’s personal valet could have missed the significance of hair braids in the late king’s tumultuous relationship with his only child. Perhaps the father and son had succeeded in concealing the tides of their estrangement from those close to them. But over the course of the two millenia you have known Thranduil, you became his most intimate confidante, and by the time you were married, you had heard the story behind every single deep-seated grievance your husband carried against his sire.
All his life, Oropher regarded braided hair as a sign of Elven refinement. A lord of old traditions, he braided his waist-length hair, a crowning glory of silver among the Silvans he ruled, in an elaborate and precise style that he considered the hallmark of his kingly visage. Hair ornamentation was neither the first nor most contentious matter Thranduil and Oropher disagreed on. But it was the first dissension that the prince actually expressed, which then emboldened him to start speaking his mind against every decreed formality or royal practice he did not wish to observe. And there were many.
By his account, Thranduil started rejecting the tying back of his hair as soon as he left the care of a nursemaid. His father tolerated this childish rebellion only by the intercession of his wife. But after this gentle mediator was lost to them both in the destruction of Doriath, the young Thranduil who had barely come of age only grew more determined to exert his independence from Oropher.
As wild as one of Araw’s Kine , Oropher had grumbled regarding your husband, when you once asked what he had been like in his youth. And as stubborn as the whole herd.
Reflecting on all this, you comb your fingers repeatedly through the silken strands that flow freely down Thranduil’s shoulder to his chest.
“We shall not braid or tie your hair,” you declare. “It is a practice that has no bearing on your ability to rule, and you have always sought to be a king of your own mind, your own customs. Let this be the first official departure from protocol towards your own image.”
“As you say, my love.” Thranduil takes your hand to press kisses on your palm before resting it against his chest. You feel the strong and steady beating of his heart, and once again feel weak with relief that he had not been among those lost upon the plains of Mordor.
“Despite his shortcomings as a father, he was a good king.” The slightest quiver in his voice betrays him. “A great king, where it mattered. He earned and deserved the people’s love and loyalty.”
“And so shall you.” You cradle his anguished face between your hands, wishing desperately for the power to heal him of his emotional wounds as well. “Your father rode to battle in confidence and in peace, knowing he had a worthy successor in place.”
“Successors . ”
You smile at this correction and gentle reminder of your young son. “Yes. But tonight, only one of you shall be crowned.”
You brush a kiss on his lips before walking away to the dressing room once more. You fetch the gilded coffer that had been delivered to you earlier that day and set it on a table before your husband. He stares silently at the seal worked in gold upon the lid, the seal of the Crown Prince, now the seal of the Elvenking.
His lack of response disappoints you. “Do you not wish to see it?”
He shakes his head and raises his eyes from the box to meet your gaze. “I wish for you to do it.”
It takes you a moment to discern his meaning, and then you stammer through a protest. “I-I cannot. I must not. That honor has been reserved for Silevion.”
A scowl darkens his face. “That craven deserves no honors.”
In the past, Thranduil’s incorrigible disdain of politics had led him to mark himself as unfit to be king. He refused to employ his natural charisma to gain the friendship of Oropher’s councilors, instead amusing himself by subtly mocking them to their unknowing faces. But over time, once he had fully accepted his role as heir to the throne, he formed amicable relationships with all the key lords of Greenwood. Except one.
In the woodlands north of the Emyn Duir, Lord Silevion governs the largest province in the kingdom. He has held his seat since the foundation of the realm, which in his mind--as well as of the general populace--makes him the second highest authority in the land.
So great is Silevion’s accorded power that he had been permitted to stay behind while both King and Prince marched to battle, and safeguard the realm in the Crown’s stead. Rule the elflord did, warming the throne for seven years after Oropher was entombed and while Thranduil remained with the half-decimated Woodland forces to finish the war.
You cannot blame your husband for his grudges. You harbor your own private distrust of the elflord and his brazen ambition, but Thranduil’s enmity needs tempering, not fuel.
“It was your father’s expressed will that the chief councilor crown you when your time comes.” You move close and run your hands up his chest, hoping your touch can make the words easier to accept. “Let us not attempt to overturn decisions that were made long ago.”
Thranduil leans into your caresses, but a smirk lifts the corner of his mouth. “If there is one lesson my father made clear, there is nothing decided in this realm that its king cannot overturn.” His arms around your waist suddenly tighten. “I want you , my wife. My Queen. Their Queen.”
His abrupt change in tone makes you recoil, as it dawns on you what is truly bothering him. “Thranduil, no…"
"Yes." His nostrils flare and his jaw trembles as he chokes a roar back into a snarl. “ Yes. ”
He is still so angry, after all these years. Years of seemingly endless debates, arguments, negotiations, threats and entreaties. Finally, at your behest, he had conceded to the Council’s ruling, burying his outrage at the choice forced on him. It is a fury you know he would never be able to extinguish.
The Crown Prince may marry the Noldor Exile, she who is of Kinslayer blood. She may bear and raise his heirs, who will join the line of succession. When the Prince inherits the throne and the title of King, she will be given the title of Queen, a title that carries prestige, but no rule or regency. Thranduil’s Queen shall not govern alongside her King, but shall serve under him. In matters brought before the crown, she shall have no voice, and no power shall be exercised by her unless granted by the unanimous vote of the King’s Council.
“Am I to stand by as they continue to insult my wife,” Thranduil fumes. “Let them again proclaim you an outsider, call attention to your lineage to goad our people’s suspicions and distrust?”
A prick of your own hurt at the memory threatens to surface, but you push it away. “Their edict did not poison the people against me when you made me your princess. It will be no different when you make me your queen.”
He barks a cold, humorless laugh. “Whenever they may permit me to crown you! A queen’s crown which, by their perversion, is no more than a shiny trinket.”
"That is mere posturing,” you say calmly. “I am mother to the Crown Prince, and wife to a King who respects me as his partner and equal. That is great power only I can hold and can never be taken from me. Your councilors may tell the people whatever they wish about me, so long as it is the truth. And you must allow it, as you had agreed to long ago.”
You can see your reasoning piercing through his wrath. But he holds you tight, as though pleading for permission to succumb to his impulses. “You deserve far better than this. I should have fought for it then, and I should demand it now.”
“I beg you, husband.” You grasp his arms firmly. “Do not take your focus away from what truly matters. Tonight you rise to your father’s place, and you will at last be king. My king, as much as the people’s. My devotion to you shall be as subject as well as wife. And know this without doubt, Thranduil Oropherion. It shall be my proudest honor to serve you. For I know no greater Elvenking shall ever walk upon Middle-earth.”
Your words rob him of speech, momentarily even of his breath. You extricate yourself from his arms and return to the gilded coffer. You undo the latch and lift the lid to extract the treasure within.
In making the new King’s crown, you sought guidance from your nephew, the son of your beloved late brother and inheritor of his father’s craft. Olondir lent his knowledge in working the pieces of oak branches into the precise shape and measurements, but the long months of troublesome design and delicate labor had been mostly yours.
The hours spent battling frustration and sore, bleeding fingers vanish from memory when you see the wonder light Thranduil’s face. Silently, he sinks down on one knee, so that his head comes at level to your shoulders. You slip the tall, intricate crown over his silver hair, and the entwined lengths of wood fit neatly around his ears and frame the strong lines of his cheekbones.
“It is living and breathing oak given by one of our own trees,” you say softly, brushing your fingertip along the orange autumn foliage sprouting from the wooden weaves. At your touch, the small leaves seem to shift and grow fuller and brighter in hue. “It will change and flourish with the woodlands over the seasons of your rule.”
He tilts his face up to you, love and worship pouring from his gaze, but also renewed strength and determination. Pride swells in your heart at the majestic vision of him, a dream that had graced you long, long ago and has finally come to life before your eyes. In this private moment, you vow to yourself that you would fear no darkness or uncertainty ever again, not while your lord husband held reign over the kingdom.
“On your feet, my King Thranduil,” you command him for the last time. “From this night forward, you kneel to no one.”