[ SECRET POST #2643 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2643 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 075 secrets from Secret Submission Post #378.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

It sucks that a fandom of something you love is full of something that squicks you. That's rubbish, regardless of what the squick is.

However, my inner pedant wants to note that relationships between cousins are not universally considered incestuous.* They are not incest by modern British definitions, for instance (though they might lead to jokes about inbred aristos who only have one chin to go round, or possibly about people from Norfolk, and I'm not arguing that making a habit of having babies with your first cousins is a sensible reproductive strategy, not that applies in this case**).

* And suddenly I'm flashing back to Harry Potter fandom and the Black Family Tree.

** Unless there's tonnes of Silmarillion MPREG fic out there, but I somehow doubt it.

[gondremark]

There's a bit in the Silmarillion, actually, where a Maeglin starts crushing on his first cousin Idril, and she's squicked out because the Noldor do not wed with kin so close (I'm probably remembering the quote wrong, but it was something like that). So I'm going to have to side with OP on this one, within the world of the Elves of the Silmarillion first cousins are incest.

[(Anonymous)]

But there's also a little bit of "Is it just the Noldor who think that?" and "What about Galadriel and Celeborn? How close is so close?" to consider, so I think it's more complicated and therefore more interesting than a mere matter of "Nope, cousincest! Shut that shit down!" OP is within their rights to not be into that, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Galadriel and Celeborn especially, since late in his life Tolkien wanted to change their story in a way that would have made them first cousins instead of second.

(The line from the Silm is "the Eldar wedded not with kin so near", so the taboo extends to the other groups as well.)

[(Anonymous)]

But if you think about, say, the Vanyar, all of whom are descended from a mere seven couples... it seems unlikely that no one ever wedded a near-enough kin in their entire history.

[(Anonymous)]

+1 to this.

Also, if you look through the family trees that are provided, Elrond is his own cousin about three times, iirc, and it's even worse for his kids. That's pretty well in line with what happens in royalty in general. It's one thing to say they don't marry that closely, but where is the line drawn? Elrond and Celebrian are second cousins twice removed (I think?) if you only count one side of the family tree, and it doesn't seem to be an issue there.

Plus, more broadly, I don't know if we just have different fandom experiences - I really don't ship Maedhros/Fingon at all, and I know it's extremely prevalent, but I've never had any kind of problem with it intruding into any other fandom space except its own (pretty considerable) shipping.

[(Anonymous)]

a ayrt rt

The famous Ansereg essay about this mentions that there are notes in Morgoth's Ring which imply that the line of acceptability is half-cousins (which is curiously specific if true, since Finwë's grandchildren are the only ones it could apply to).

http://www.ansereg.com/what_tolkien_officially_said_abo.htm

But yeah, it's a complicated issue because the Elvish royal lines are intermarried as fuck after a certain point and Tolkien himself doesn't seem to have been entirely consistent about it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't recall this in detail, but I think the reasoning behind this was that Aredhel was specifically stated to not have fallen in love with any of her half-cousins, but the wording of the text didn't seem to imply this was due to it being taboo (like Idril & Maeglin), and even made the possibility sound like something that could have happened. In that case, Fingon/Maedhros would certainly be cleared of incest charges, in-universe.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, thank you. I'd suspected it might have to do with Aredhel, since she's the only female cousin in that group who's portrayed as being close to Feanor's sons.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, fair point. All the same, it is a cultural variable.

Actually, I find it interesting that Tolkien gave the Noldor that taboo, given that it wasn't actually one within his own society at the time - I wonder what was behind his thinking?

[recessional]

Yeeeah cousins is explicitly incest per the world-rules. Not only was Idril squicked the hell out by Maeglin's attention, as the other commenter pointed out, it was still impossible for him to marry her even if she hadn't been, because Quendi didn't ever marry that close. It's part of Maeglin's bit tragedy.