Talk:Denethor

On Denethor's brothers: I've always interpreted that line in HoME that Denethor was Ecthelion's "third child and first son" as simply telling us that the first two children were daughters, rather than implying that he was the first of more sons. I've always written Denethor as being an only son. Would it be possible to edit the family trees, Barbara, or is that a massive hassle?

Hi Altariel,

I strongly disagree with you on the canon, Altariel.... if Denethor had no brothers, Tolkien would have said "third child and only son". For example, compare the App A entry for Fengel, where it says "Thengel, his third child and only son, left Rohan when he came to manhood....". (Of course, there is no indication anywhere that the brothers were still alive during the events of LoTR.)

However, I consider these to be Unabeauverse family trees, not Tolkien-canon. I didn't realize that D's brothers were not in that 'verse, so of course I'll change the trees...

Removing a character is pretty much the easiest change that can be made.... but the hard part will be remembering how many overlapping trees have Denethor's brothers in them.... For example, I just pieced together three different descendant trees to create Brandmir's ancestor tree, since he is related to just about everybody important (except Hethlin, at least so far....), including Denethor..... Now, that tree was a nightmare to create!

- Barbara

Elena Tiriel 13:21, July 6, 2010 (UTC)

Hi Altariel,

I removed Denethor's brothers from the family trees for Faramir and Brandmir. Don't plan to create a tree for Denethor himself, since it is basically identical to Faramir's.

I noticed that you are creating a Denethor entry.... If you would like to put a comment somewhere appropriate in the Denethor entry that says "For a family tree of Denethor, Steward of Gondor, see the entry for Faramir.", I would be grateful. I've never quite figured out where that would fit best into a character's entry....

Thanks for letting me know of the error, and don't hesitate to let me know if you see any other oddities in the trees. Whenever I create something new, I usually make at least a couple of mistakes, before getting it right.... LOL!

- Barbara

Elena Tiriel 14:29, July 6, 2010 (UTC)

Hi Barbara,

Kudos on the Brand family tree! I did notice, however, that Boromir is listed as "married: 3006, III"...

Dwim

Dwimordene 19:55, July 6, 2010 (UTC)

Hi Dwim,

Unfortunately, the Family Tree Maker software that I'm using to create these trees is rather limited to very traditionally-organized trees, and their central organizing theme is the marriage relationship.

You can, indeed, assign a "beginning status" to the marriage: e.g. "Married", "Friends", "Partners", "Private", "Single", "Unknown".... but, since there is no category for "one-night stand", I chose "Other". However, try as I might, the marriage status values will not appear in the family trees. (There's a fixed list of fields you can include, and it's not on the list....)

I tried to hint at the actual relationship in two ways, by stating that the place of "Marriage" was "The Drunkard's Dream" (and even added "brothel" to make it more explicit), plus in Nellith's Occupation, I put the dates of her being a prostitute, which overlap with the encounter with Boromir, and the (later) date of becoming a carter's wife, to reinforce the situation.

Now, if you look at the Faramir family tree, you'll see that the marriage info is in Nellith's box, which I think makes it look less odd. Unfortunately, for Nellith's family tree (and Brand's, where I manually combined 3 different trees), since both her "husbands" are listed, the marriage date/location info is added to the "husband's" box.

So, this is all a long-winded way of saying that I tried to shoehorn info about the nature of the relationship within the very limiting structure the software imposes.

That being said, the location info is a text field, so I might be able to add a bit more to "The Drunkard's Dream brothel"... if you would like to suggest something less, erm, glaring than "one-night stand", I would be willing to try to add it.... (My hesitation is not out of reluctance, but uncertainty about the maximum length of the text field, and how it would increase the size of Boromir's box.... so, on Brand's tree, I might have to manually move all the other boxes on his level and lower.... which is kind of a pain, but, hey, it's not like I haven't done it before... turning three separate trees into a single one that doesn't look like Frankenstein's monster takes a bit of doing, and a human mind, not software....)

Anyway, any suggestion as to how to describe the relationship would be appreciated.... words fail me before breakfast.... well, words describing one-night stands, anyway....

- Barbara

P.S. I just tried an experiment, by putting "Customer, The Drunkard's Dream brothel" into the "marriage location" text field.... it looks okay when it's added to Boromir's box (on Nellith's tree), but looks distinctly weird in Nellith's box (on Faramir's tree). So, whatever you suggest should apply to both Boromir and Nellith equally....

P.P.S Oh, wait, just remembered... don't worrry about the size limitations of the text field, I can always add a new text field just for Boromir, and try to make it look like an extension of the marriage date/location info....


 * eyes glaze*

In light of the limitations of software, maybe just leave it as is! If there's the option of using a caption field, maybe a footnote could be placed there explaining Boromir/Nellith.

Otherwise, the only term that would apply equally to Boromir and Nellith that doesn't suggest too much and could be used as a verb would be "partnered." That sounds a rather too nice for the limited and unequal relationship they had, but it does clearly differ from being married.

- Dwim

Dwimordene 23:54, July 6, 2010 (UTC)

Barbara - thanks so much for making that change: I'll keep an eye out in case any stray brothers have escaped into the wild ;-D And I've added a note to Denethor's page directing people towards Faramir's family tree.

Una

Umm10 16:50, July 7, 2010 (UTC)

Brand's begetting ;-)
Hi Dwim,

Yeah, sometimes it's hard to imagine that I write drabbles, isn't it? Sorry 'bout that....

Anyway, how about "Single Transaction", which hints at the business aspect of the "relationship" between Boromir and Nellith?

Since I can't change the name of the field, it would look like this in Boromir's box:

"Married: Dec 3006 III, single transaction, The Drunkard's Dream brothel".

- Barbara