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People have noted the similarities in the romance plots (among other elements) found in LOTR with those from William Morris's 1889 novels The House of the Wolfings and especially The Roots of the Mountains, which helped spark my curiosity to read them. The mentions in the Wikipedia article about Morris's influence on Tolkien and in Seaman's intro to ROTM are of the Aragorn-Arwen-Eowyn love triangle and the character trajectory of Eowyn, but there wasn't much detail. But I found more than just that!
Mortal-Immortal romance in The House of the Wolfings
I didn't see any mention of HOTW (the first book in the series) in association with Tolkien, only ROTM. However, while there is a love triangle - or actually a love pentacle - of cross-cultural romances in ROTM, there are not any gods or immortals on the page. There is a callback to the idea: when the protagonist meets the mysterious and nomadic People of the Wolf (forest-dwelling throwbacks to the age of heroes who dedicate themselves to protecting the borders of the sheltered little agrarian civilization), he is so awed at first that he imagines they (particularly his future wife and her brother) may be gods or spirits. But in The House of the Wolfings, the love story is between the brave war leader of the Wolfings and an immortal nature spirit - a dís - who wants to preserve his life and asks him to wear an enchanted hauberk or coat of mail. ( Read more... )
Love Pentacle in The Roots of the Mountains
As far as parallels to the romances in LOTR, ROTM offers: a woman disappointed in love who goes to war (two of them); a noble hero who reflects the past glory of his clan in a cross-cultural romance with a wise and beautiful woman of an even more noble background than his; and one of the disappointed-in-love warrior women being wounded in battle and having a dramatic cross-cultural romance with another brave warrior/political ruler character. (Also - and this isn't part of the romances - a character who like is just kind of. Hawkeye. Her entire thing is just being an amazing, unironically unbelievably the best, acknowledged master archer who is almost supernatural. She is one of the pentacle though.) Before I explain these claims, I must briefly introduce the five main characters.
A woman goes to war after being disappointed in love.
For Eowyn going to war is an act of rebellion which she has to accomplish by dressing as a man and running away. That makes her gesture far more momentous than that of the Bride, who literally does decide to go to war because she is heartbroken, ( Read more... ) and shocks her people by doing it, but doesn't break any norms; in fact there are quite a few other women from Burgdale and the shepherds and woodsfolk who go to battle, and an even larger share of the women of the House of the Wolf. Far from running away, the Bride actually stands up at the folkmote and announces her intentions to the people, and thereafter becomes a sort of figurehead and morale-booster, inspiring other young women to fight: ( Read more... )
(Two of them)
Bow-may also goes to war and is disappointed in love, but it doesn't really count because she was going to go to war either way. You can't keep her away from the war. However, she is still lowkey tragic about it: ( Read more... )
A noble hero who reflects the past glory of his people finds himself in a cross-cultural romance with a wise, beautiful woman of an even more noble background than his.
Face-of-god grows from a youth to a man during this novel and is well-liked by the people before he is chosen to be their war-leader at the folkmote, but over the course of the novel others remark on his growth and likeness to a hero of bygone days. The Sun-beam, meanwhile, comes from the House of the Wolf, the clan who led the entire Gothic peoples a few hundred years ago in HOTW, defeating an attempted Roman invasion. ( Read more... )
A warrior woman disappointed in love is wounded in battle and has a dramatic cross-cultural romance with another brave warrior/political ruler character.
As mentioned, Folk-might actually falls in love at first sight after glimpsing the Bride from afar while on a covert fact-finding mission to Burgdale, but they become engaged after she is wounded in battle. ( Read more... )
Footnotes:
1. Týr (but would be spelled slightly different in Gothic - I found a source of comparative names in various germanic languages including Gothic on one of my 4 am googling-names-from-this-book binges, but now I can't find it again)
2. Likely Dagr, or possibly his father Dellingr (but would be spelled slightly different in Gothic)
Mortal-Immortal romance in The House of the Wolfings
I didn't see any mention of HOTW (the first book in the series) in association with Tolkien, only ROTM. However, while there is a love triangle - or actually a love pentacle - of cross-cultural romances in ROTM, there are not any gods or immortals on the page. There is a callback to the idea: when the protagonist meets the mysterious and nomadic People of the Wolf (forest-dwelling throwbacks to the age of heroes who dedicate themselves to protecting the borders of the sheltered little agrarian civilization), he is so awed at first that he imagines they (particularly his future wife and her brother) may be gods or spirits. But in The House of the Wolfings, the love story is between the brave war leader of the Wolfings and an immortal nature spirit - a dís - who wants to preserve his life and asks him to wear an enchanted hauberk or coat of mail. ( Read more... )
Love Pentacle in The Roots of the Mountains
As far as parallels to the romances in LOTR, ROTM offers: a woman disappointed in love who goes to war (two of them); a noble hero who reflects the past glory of his clan in a cross-cultural romance with a wise and beautiful woman of an even more noble background than his; and one of the disappointed-in-love warrior women being wounded in battle and having a dramatic cross-cultural romance with another brave warrior/political ruler character. (Also - and this isn't part of the romances - a character who like is just kind of. Hawkeye. Her entire thing is just being an amazing, unironically unbelievably the best, acknowledged master archer who is almost supernatural. She is one of the pentacle though.) Before I explain these claims, I must briefly introduce the five main characters.
- Protagonist and hero Face-of-god, alderman's son of the House of the Face in the small walled city of Burgdale. ( Read more... )
- His childhood sweetheart and (at the beginning of the novel) promised bride, the Bride, eldest daughter of the House of the Steer. She is athletic and beautiful (like at least one heroine in every Morris novel, her description is recognizably that of Morris's wife, Jane, whose likeness is preserved in many of the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rosetti). ( Read more... )
- The war-leader of the House of the Wolf, Folk-might, who has loved the Bride ever since he glimpsed her and wants to fight Face-of-God for falling in love with Folk-might's sister instead. ( Read more... )
- Folk-might's sister and Face-of-god's new love, the Sun-beam, the young political strategist of the House of the Wolf.( Read more... )
- The Sun-beam and Folk-might's foster-sister Bow-may of the House of the Wolf, unironically the best archer imaginable, possibly a bit supernatural about it, and a blithe, jolly shieldmaiden who knows no fear. She is a little bit hopelessly in love with Face-of-god, but she's resigned to it. ( Read more... )
A woman goes to war after being disappointed in love.
For Eowyn going to war is an act of rebellion which she has to accomplish by dressing as a man and running away. That makes her gesture far more momentous than that of the Bride, who literally does decide to go to war because she is heartbroken, ( Read more... ) and shocks her people by doing it, but doesn't break any norms; in fact there are quite a few other women from Burgdale and the shepherds and woodsfolk who go to battle, and an even larger share of the women of the House of the Wolf. Far from running away, the Bride actually stands up at the folkmote and announces her intentions to the people, and thereafter becomes a sort of figurehead and morale-booster, inspiring other young women to fight: ( Read more... )
(Two of them)
Bow-may also goes to war and is disappointed in love, but it doesn't really count because she was going to go to war either way. You can't keep her away from the war. However, she is still lowkey tragic about it: ( Read more... )
A noble hero who reflects the past glory of his people finds himself in a cross-cultural romance with a wise, beautiful woman of an even more noble background than his.
Face-of-god grows from a youth to a man during this novel and is well-liked by the people before he is chosen to be their war-leader at the folkmote, but over the course of the novel others remark on his growth and likeness to a hero of bygone days. The Sun-beam, meanwhile, comes from the House of the Wolf, the clan who led the entire Gothic peoples a few hundred years ago in HOTW, defeating an attempted Roman invasion. ( Read more... )
A warrior woman disappointed in love is wounded in battle and has a dramatic cross-cultural romance with another brave warrior/political ruler character.
As mentioned, Folk-might actually falls in love at first sight after glimpsing the Bride from afar while on a covert fact-finding mission to Burgdale, but they become engaged after she is wounded in battle. ( Read more... )
Footnotes:
1. Týr (but would be spelled slightly different in Gothic - I found a source of comparative names in various germanic languages including Gothic on one of my 4 am googling-names-from-this-book binges, but now I can't find it again)
2. Likely Dagr, or possibly his father Dellingr (but would be spelled slightly different in Gothic)
