By my lights the famous seafarer had immortalized his parents’ names in the best possible way. Nevertheless, the love story of the Umbarian courtesan and the Gondorian aristocrat had been a favorite topic of writers ever since. For some reason these people either turn the protagonists into disembodied romantic ghosts or reduce everything to primitive erotica.
Alas, the recent Amengian screen version – The Spy and The Whore – was no exception: it was rightfully rated XXX in Gondorian theaters and banned outright in puritanical Angmar.
The movie’s artistic merits are scant, but it’s totally politically correct: Alviss is black (excuse me – Harado-Amengian) and the relationship between Tangorn and Grager has distinct gay overtones. The critics predicted as one man that the judges of the Silver Harbors Film Festival would protect themselves from the charges of racism, sexism, and other horrible “isms” by throwing every conceivable award at it, which is exactly what happened. In any event, the inimitable Gunun-Tua’s Golden Elanor for Best Actress was well-deserved.
Almandin and Jacuzzi were hanged in the courtyard of the Ar-Horan prison on one of the exhaustingly hot August nights of 3019; Flag Captain Makarioni and seven other officers that had participated in ‘Admiral Carnero’s mutiny’ were executed along with them. This was the post factum description of Operation Sirocco, during which the admiral first destroyed the entire Gondorian invasion fleet right at the piers in a pre-emptive strike, and then landed a raiding party which burned Pelargir shipyards to the ground. To save face, Aragorn had to sign the Dol Amroth Compact. By its terms Umbar did acknowledge itself “an inseparable part of the Reunited Kingdom,” but got itself permanent free city status in return. Its Senate was renamed to ‘magistrate’ and its army to ‘garrison;’ Special Envoy Alkabir, who represented the Republic, even managed to wangle a special provision banning His Majesty’s Secret Guard from operating in its territory. To the mutual satisfaction of the king of Gondor and Umbarian senators, Admiral Carnero’s raid was declared to have been a banal pirate foray, and its participants deserters and traitors who had abandoned their oath and military honor.
Of course, the people viewed Carnero’s co-conspirators (the admiral avoided court-martial by getting himself killed at Pelargir) as heroes who had saved their Motherland from a foreign invasion, but the fact remained that they had gone against orders. The Republic’s Prosecutor General Almaran had a simple solution to this ethical dilemma: “Winners are always right, you say? Like hell! Either law exists and is the same for everybody, or there’s no law at all.” The pathos of his prosecutor’s speech (quoted in whole or in part in every modern law textbook) can be summed up exhaustively by its concluding statement: “Let the world perish but justice be done!” Be that as it may, the executed officials of the Umbarian secret service should have known that motherland’s gratitude usually takes strange forms…
Sonya never found out about Haladdin’s mission (as we already know, this had been his special concern) and remained certain that he and Kumai had perished at the Field of Pelennor. But time is merciful, so once those wounds had healed she fulfilled her life’s destiny by becoming a loving wife and wonderful mother, having married a worthy man whose name is absolutely irrelevant to our story.
In my opinion, royal personages are of much lesser interest, since their fates are well-known.
For those too lazy to pick up a book or at least review their sixth-grade history textbook, let me remind you that Aragorn’s reign was one of the most magnificent in Middle Earth history and is one of the watershed events separating the Middle Ages (the Third Age) from modernity. The usurper did not try to win the love of the Gondorian aristocracy (such a project would have been dead on arrival), instead betting correctly on the third estate, which cared for things like tax rates and safety of trade routes, rather than dynastic rights and other such phantoms. Since His Majesty had effectively burned all bridges with the aristocracy, paradoxically this gave him freedom to implement radical agrarian reform, drastically curtailing the rights of landlords in favor of free farmers. These factors were the basis for the famous ‘Gondorian economic miracle’ and the colonial expansion that followed, while the representative legislative bodies Aragorn had created to counterweight the aristocracy have survived to our day almost unchanged, earning the Reunited Kingdom its well-deserved title of Middle Earth’s oldest democracy.
It is common knowledge that the king advanced and supported science, craftsmanship, and sea-faring ventures, appointed talented men to important state positions without regard to their lineage, and was sincerely loved by his subjects. The only dark stain on Elessar Elfstone’s reputation is the early period of his reign, when his Secret Guard (admittedly a really scary outfit) had to protect the throne from the feudal lords with an iron hand; actually, most of today’s experts believe that the scale of terror had been greatly magnified by the nobility’s historians. Aragorn’s famously beautiful wife Arwen (Elven-born, according to legend) played no role in matters of state and only imparted a certain mysterious luster to his court. They had no children, so the Elfstone dynasty ended with its founder, with the throne reverting to the Prince of Ithilien – in other words, things went back to the way they were.
It is rather hard to analyze the reign of the first Princes of Ithilien, Faramir and Éowyn, in political or economical terms – it appears that they had neither politics nor economics over there, but only a never-ending romantic ballad. Nearly all the contemporary poets and painters must have contributed to the creation of the captivating image of the Fairy of the Ithilien Woods (weird, isn’t it – Ithilien, the industrial heart of Middle Earth, had forests once!), since Faramir’s modest court had become a sort of a holy shrine to them, and not making a pilgrimage there was the height of bad taste. But even correcting for the unavoidable idealization, one has to admit that Éowyn must have been an exceptionally pure soul.
Thanks to that army of artists we have several portraits of Prince Faramir; the best one I know of is reproduced in a monograph entitled Philosophical Agnosticism and its Early Adepts recently printed by the Amon Súl Tower Publishers in Annuminas. In any case none of those portraits have anything in common with the chiseled profile gracing the cockades on the mustard-colored berets worn by the commandos of the Ithilien Paratrooper Regiment.
By the way, the famous ‘mongooses’ – a special anti-terrorist unit whose soldiers were on every TV screen in Arda recently when they brilliantly freed the passengers of a Vendotenian airliner captured in Minas Tirith airport by the Hannani fanatics from the Northern Mingad Liberation Front – are part of that regiment, as well.
Faramir had committed exactly one act of foreign policy during his entire reign – he approved Baron Grager’s request to send him south of the river Harnen to conduct a series of intelligence and sabotage operations: “…by all signs the fate of Middle Earth will be decided there, in Near Harad.” Strangely, the subsequent fate of Grager of Aran (often called, not without justification, the savior of Western civilization) remains the stuff of unverified legends and anecdotes. The only thing that is known is the end result of his efforts – the massive rebellion of nomad Aranians against their Haradi masters, which had led, domino-fashion, to the fall of the entire ominous Harad Empire and its fracturing into a non-threatening bunch of warring tribes. Nobody knows how this adventurous intellectual had earned his iron-clad authority among the fierce savages of the Harnen savannah. The fairy tale of him accidentally buying a son of an Aranian chieftain at the Khand slave market appears entirely unreliable; the idea that his way to power went through chief priestess Svantatra’s bed is cute and romantic, but people familiar with the realities of the South can only laugh at it. Even the manner of the baron’s death is uncertain: either he perished in a lion hunt, or was killed accidentally while mediating a conflict over summer watering-hole rights between two small Aranian clans.
But the fate of Éomer is so incredible that some authors are still trying to prove that he was a legend rather than a real person
. Having ascended to the throne of the Mark of Rohan after the Mordorian campaign, he had discovered – to his great surprise and displeasure – that there was no one left to fight any more, at least in the near Middle Earth. For some time the famed warrior had tried to amuse himself with tournaments, hunts, and amorous adventures, but quickly tired of it all and fell into depression. (Historical veracity impels me to admit that on the battlefields of love this chevalier sans per et sans rеproche was characterized by a total lack of taste combined with a fantastic appetite, so much so that Edoras wags suggested that their monarch’s motto should be ‘one for all.’) That was when the involuntarily idle monarch remembered a certain marvelous eastern faith that had led him to victory on the Field of Pelennor. At first Éomer wanted to make Hakimianism the state religion of Rohan, but then he came up with a more interesting plan.
At that time the Khand Caliphate was in the middle of an anemic religious war between two sects of Hakimians. It is still uncertain how Éomer decided which one of those was the one true faith. Personally, I suspect that he flipped a coin – the actual dogmatic differences were and are a fertile field for armies of theologians. Be that as it may, he converted his entire Royal Guard, idle and ready to fight anyone at all, to that sect (legend has it that one of Éomer’s warriors, when asked how he felt on the path of True Faith, responded: “Not bad, Tulkas be praised – my boots aren’t leaking”) and went South. The king left his cousin-twice-removed as regent in Edoras; sure thing, this plunged the country into dynastic struggles that lasted almost a century and culminated in the War of Nine Castles, which wiped out the entire knighthood of Rohan.
To the total astonishment of his companions, once in Khand Éomer did renounce his previous life, gave all his possessions but the sword to the poor, and joined the order of Hannanites (warrior dervishes). Utilizing his commander’s talent in the service of his chosen sect, he crushed the opposition in three decisive battles, ending the twenty-six-year ‘holy war’ in only six months; the ‘good’ Hakimians dubbed him The Prophet’s Sword, while the ‘schismatics’ called him God’s Wrath. At the end of the third battle, when the heretics’ defeat was all but assured, Éomer was killed by a missile from an enemy catapult –truly the best death a genuine commander may wish for. The Hakimians promptly canonized him as a holy martyr, so he should have no problems obtaining the companionship of houranies.
This looks like a good place to stop… In conclusion, I would like to stress that I have filled the gaps in Tzerlag’s story at my own discretion. The old soldier bears no responsibility for my inventions, especially since many will now passionately charge the storyteller – who else? – with deviating from the mainstream version of the events of the end of the Third Age. One has to note that the public’s knowledge of these events is mostly derived from the adapted Western epos, The Lord of the Rings, at best, and often from the Sword of Isildur TV series and the Galleries of Moria first-person shooter game.
I have to sonorously remind those critics that The Lord of the Rings is the historiography of the victors, who have a clear interest in presenting the vanquished in a certain way. Had genocide taken place back then (where did those peoples vanish if it hadn’t?), then it’s doubly important to convince everybody, including oneself, that those had been orcs and trolls rather than people. Or I could ask them: how often do we find in human history rulers that would relinquish their power, for free, to some nobody from nowhere (pardon me – a Dúnadan from the North)? Yet another subject of immodest curiosity might be the actual payment Elessar Elfstone had to make to the wonderful companions he had acquired on the Paths of the Dead. I mean, summoning the powers of Absolute Evil (for a noble cause, of course) is totally commonplace, he’s neither the first nor the last; but for those powers to meekly revert back to nothingness after doing their job without asking anything in return sounds highly doubtful. At least I’ve never heard of such a thing. Or I can… I can, but I won’t. Whatever for? I have no desire to engage in this sort of polemics.
In other words, guys, live and let live.
In our case it translates to this:
You don’t have to listen to me spin tall tales if you don’t like them.
THE END
FROM THE TRANSLATOR
More than 15 years ago Russian scientist Kirill Yeskov tried to settle certain geographical problems in Tolkien's fantasy world. One thing led to another, and he tackled a bigger project - what if we assumed that it's no less real than our world? His conclusion was that in such a case, the story of the Ring of Power is most likely a much-altered heroic retelling of a major war - but what was that war really about?
The result of this re-appraisal was the publication in 1999 of The Last Ring-bearer - a re-thinking of Tolkien's story in real-world terms. Dr. Yeskov, a professional paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life from fossil remnants, performs essentially the same feat in The Last Ring-bearer, reconstructing the real world of Tolkien's Arda from The Lord of the Rings - the heroic tales of the Free Men of the West written in that world. We have a pretty good idea how well heroic tales map to reality from our own world...
I was impressed enough by this work to spend a few dozen lunch hours translating it to English. (Reportedly, some publishing houses have considered a commercial translation of this book, which had been published in several major European languages, but abandoned the idea out of fear of the Tolkien estate, which doesn't countenance any derivative works, especially in English. Witness the history of its relationship with New Line Cinema. This translation is non-commercial.
I have been fortunate to establish communication with the author and have the translation vetted (and much corrected) by him. I now offer this work for your perusal. At 139,000 words, this story is about 80% of the length of The Fellowship of the Ring.
I have to disappoint the fans of Sauron: His Majesty Sauron the VIII rates only a few mentions in this work, having been nothing more than an enlightened king. Nor does the Ring of Power rate more than a passing mention. Likewise the Hobbits: unlike LOTR, this story is not about them.
Finally, no attempt has been made to imitate J.R.R. Tolkien's style - it is deliberately modern and down-to-earth.
Yisroel Markov
2010
FROM THE AUTHOR
Well, it seems like the translation has been making some rounds. Never mind the panning it has received from some readers for style; some comments posted exhibit a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of the book. Here, then, is a backgrounder Dr. Yeskov wrote in 2000 for a Russian sci-fi fanzine Семечки ("Semechki," meaning "sunflower seeds." Eating toasted sunflower seeds is associated with idle relaxation.).
First, a few words about myself. I’m not a writer either in form (no literary memberships; royalties are a negligible share of my income) or in substance (writing fiction is not my only or even main occupation). I’m a senior researcher at the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences – the very place where Yefremov used to work; professionally I’m known as the author of almost a hundred works on the classification of Chelicerata and historical biogeography. In the last few years I have found it more interesting to deal with living children than with extinct arthropods – I teach electives in high school, summer and winter supplemental courses, etc. I wrote a couple of textbooks, got involved in creating a new natural history school curriculum; if I had to state a preference, it is precisely those activities that I consider my most important. I graduated from the Biology College of the Moscow University (a well-known nest of Voltairians) and have gained most of my life experience in expeditions through Siberia and Middle Asia; I’m an epicurean hedonist in my aspirations and a skeptical rationalist by conviction. Do you get the picture?
I’m saying this to explain that I wrote The Last Ring-bearer (like my previous novel, The Gospel According to Afranius) strictly for my own enjoyment and that of my friends; I can be termed a graphomaniac in that sense. A graphomaniac can
be a good or a bad writer (there were some geniuses among them, like Griboedov and Lewis Carroll), but he never writes competitively – that is, to fit the tastes of a publisher or some average book-buying audience; he only writes for his own niche (whether it’s some group or Alice Liddell is irrelevant).
The Last Ring-bearer was written for a very specific audience, too – it’s just another “fairy tale for junior scientists” of which I am one. It is meant for skeptics and agnostics brought up on Hemingway and brothers Strugatzky, for whom Tolkien is only a charming, albeit slightly tedious, writer of children’s books. Those were the people who got the biggest kick out of the novel; theirs were the reviews that used the expression “sleepless night,” dear to any writer’s heart, most often.
On the other hand, I can somewhat understand the feelings of “professional” Tolkien fans who foolishly parted with their money to buy this… this… whatever. This is not unlike some teenager, besotted with pirate fiction, tricked by the Corsair title into buying a book by a certain G. G. Byron, and then inveighing on the net: “Total baloney – loads of stupid love stories and not one decent boarding! The name must be there to trick the readers, otherwise who’d buy this crap!” Guys, please understand that this was not written for you! If you do grab something not meant for you – which ought to be obvious after reading about three paragraphs, n'est-ce pas? – then don’t whine like an Arkansas bumpkin who got taken by The Royal Nonesuch.
However, the reaction of the upset Tolkien fans leads us to a really interesting problem regarding the propriety of utilizing secondary worlds created by one’s demiurge predecessors. (Whether our own world is all that primary – whether Richard the IIIrd was an evil traitorous hunchback or Alexander of Neva a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche – is another question that is well beyond the scope of this essay.) The founder of this literary tradition of playing with others’ masks and backdrops is one Dio Chrysostomos, a Greek who lived during in the Roman Empire; dissecting Homer’s text with the scalpel of irony, while strictly abiding by his “facts,” he had rather convincingly proved that the Greek Achaeans had suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the Greek Trojans and went home empty-handed, and that the rest was all pure PR, to use a modern term.
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