Seeing Aldarion through Gil-galad's eyes is quite a shock, isn't it? I found that quite affecting: we've been invited to see Aldarion as having been neglectful of his various princely and familial responsibilities (and there's certainly justification for that). We suddenly get a view of him as a useful ally and statesman with more in his head than his own 'Prince Hal the Sailor' pleasures at heart - a position that I think he ended up in, though I don't think that is at all how it started out. (I think he was going to build and sail ships whatever).
Not JRRT's style through the rest of the works. I'm trying to think of more. There is Dernhelm's reveal...do we get materially surprised anywhere else?

[I'm very interested in tropes of late, but hope not to become boring about it...] Well, you can always chat with yourself about it and become an autotrop(h)e.

So it is easy enough to see the "fair", long-lived characters as being those JRRT himself favours...
(which, I agree with you, does seem a bit objectionable) but..
Doesn't the awful Ring give you long life but no satisfaction in it ? I think the Ring gives what he refers to as serial existence: not the same as life...and something not to be envied, in his mind, as he clearly makes it part of the closest to Absolute Evil as the muscle, so to speak.

And the Curse of Immortality is also an ongoing theme in Tolkien- whether Ring-induced, or an occupational hazard of being an elf (an Numenorean also, judging from Erendis' speech about how they fritter-away their long lives on Internet forums...)
And, didn't some say it is all about what we do with the time that is given us? I'd like to believe that, anyway. I think he was trying to sell us, the reader, a rough bill of goods: acceptance, with happiness, of the mortal lot in life. To elevate the mortal above the human dream of the Immortal and to enfold in it the ideas of humility and undisclosed joy. How to do it: make the Immortal a curse. But his lightness of touch, I think, is commendable. We don't get the agonizing, brooding speeches of the trope as we have in the modern take on Cursed Immortality. We get it wrapped in light and beauty instead, and as a faint whisper in our own heritage. Erendis seems a bit time-obsessed. Superficially: she won't live as long, and her fertility will end sooner than her husbands. But again that 'what to do with the time given to us...' in worrying about the time lost, she, in short loses all of it.

---

Have an idea relating to the world of JRR Tolkien that you would like to write about? If so, the Third TORn Amateur Symposium will be running in the Reading Room in April, 2014. We hope to see you there!





(This post was edited by Brethil on Jan 29 2014, 4:35am)

...What if a big part of what annoys this fictional wife is that her husband spends inordinate amounts of time discussing his writing with his literary cronies at the Bird and Baby?

Those friends who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection between them. It was visible in the small things, the almost absurd degree in which each worried about the other's health, and the care in which they chose and wrapped each other's birthday presents'; and in the large matters, the way in which Ronald willingly abandoned such a large part of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years in Bournemouth that he felt she deserved, and the degree in which she showed pride in his fame as an author. A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love of their family. This bound them together until the end of their lives, and it was perhaps the strongest force in the marriage. They delighted to discuss and mull over every detail of the lives of their children, and later their grandchildren.

Humphrey Carpenter, "Tolkien: The Authorized Biography," page 158. (my italics)