silwritersguild | Back to Middle Earth Month: Allegiance

While the passionate affairs of lovers and foes are often reflected in our fascinations with The Silmarillion, the story would be bereft without the more practical--but just as complex--relationsh ip of Allegiance. Today's stories all focus on Allegiance in its myriad forms.

Oshun's novella "A New Day" is all about allegiance-- Maedhros's decision to hand over the Kingship of the Noldor to Fingolfin--so an excerpt from this work seems a suitable start to a feature on allegiance. "Honoring allegiances seems to get people into all kinds of trouble in The Silmarillion," says Ellie to introduce her excerpt from "Crossroads of Time," a scene showing an argument about allegiance between a Sindarin woman and a Noldorin loremaster. In Ranger1's "Allegiance Chosen," Celeborn is forced to debate between allegiance to his king and to his true love. Rhapsody and Robinka's "Written in the Starlight" considers the frail allegiances between various kindreds in The Silmarillion and how Morgoth might have been defeated had they actually managed a strong allegiance. Finally, Dawn Felagund's "Election Farce of Nargothrond" takes a humorous look at how Celegorm and Curufin allied themselves to Finrod's people upon arriving in Nargothrond.

Today's stories about Allegiance may be found at http://www.silmaril lionwritersguild .org/b2mem2008/ allegiance. php .

This concludes this week's look at Relationships. Next week, we begin to wrap up this year's B2MeM by considering Endings, beginning with Death.