It follows that anybody who wants to get by, or rise to the top, in an imperial context has to look and sound as though they possess the cultural trappings, values and beliefs of the hegemon. And so it is, for example, that in Britain in 2025 social climbers make strenuous efforts to ape the mores of what they perceive to be the elite culture in their current imperial overlord, the USA - following its politics, learning its history and its slang words, even watching its sports, and so on, whereas 2000 years previously the same types of people would have been donning togas, developing an interest in mosaics, and swanning around saying things like 'disce ut semper victurus, vive ut cras moriturus'.
It seems to me that we can say that, were elves to exist in the real world in any real number, they would establish empires, whether territorial or cultural. Elves have superior intellects, skills and wisdom, if fantasy literature has taught me anything - so it stands to reason that they would be able to put their superiority to good use by creating regimes in which they rule and humans, whether through conquest or vassalage or else simply cultural forcefulness (as in the example of the USA), are rendered subaltern.
And it follows from this that in societies where elves rule, whether directly, or indirectly from a distant capital through an envoy or consul, the human population - particularly amongst the social-climbing classes - would seek to 'elvenise' itself just as the ancient Britons Romanised themselves and just as the social climbers in any imperial context model themselves after those who rule. These elvenised humans would not be half-elves, because no interbreeding is implied. Rather, they would be ordinary humans who are drive to elvenise in order to distinguish themselves from their crude, low-status, fellows.
Whether the elvenisation process would extend to deliberately sharpening one's ears with careful pruning of the flesh with sharpened knives, or would consist merely of changes in dress, adoption of mannerisms, and the extensive use of elven loanwords in their daily conservation, is a subject for considered debate. So is what the elven overlords themselves would make of all of this. For the time being I leave you with the idea to do with it as you wish.
Isn’t this pretty much what happens with Men in the Silmarillion?
ReplyDeleteExactly. Noisms is sounding like Morgoth writing a dark enlightenment Substack in pre-fall Numenor.
DeleteThat was my immediate thought as well. 3000+ years later in the Third Age the elite of Gondor are still taking Elvish names so it goes on for a long time.
DeleteI wonder if Tolkien had read Gramsci??
DeletePerhaps ear-binding?
ReplyDeleteNice idea!
DeleteI've always liked the idea of half-elves being the ambassadors of elven kingdoms in human realms. I imagine that, in a human vassal state to an elven empire, elvenised humans would try to make themselves appear more like half-elves, rather than full elves, as they know that would be easier to pull off (and may be less offensive to their narcisstic elven overlords).
ReplyDeleteThere is a very fine line between mimicry as a form of obeisance, as a kind of mockery, and as a threat, and walking that line will be the key to success in elvenised human society (with failure possibly leading to the guillotine or whatever punishment exists in these lands).
Yes - the only thing I would add would be that elves would probably have less messy and more painful/horrible punishments than the guillotine. Like slowly transforming you into a crystal, or something.
DeleteMaybe something like the modern Silicon Valley obsession with life extension and odd health measures but through a fantasy lens - silphium-like exhaustion of an herb reputed to grant longevity, for instance
ReplyDeleteOr would the elves view that as a heretical threat to their unique character?
DeleteThe "elves as imperialists / slavers" thing, often combined with a subsequent collapse and retreat to the forests, is one of the Tolkeinisms that seems to show up everywhere in fantasy worlds that include elves. And there's a line of "half elf" types as well, sometimes of mixed blood, sometimes just inheritors of elven imperial culture. I feel like the image of a human or demi-human slave sent as an emissary, garlanded with ridiculous little frills and flowers in the elven style, shows up in more than once place.
ReplyDeleteIn keeping with the theme of elven imperialism and its subalterns: I once tried to create a setting for Dennis Sustare's Swordbearer RPG using the rules as written to inform worldbuilding, and I ended up with the idea of humans as the newcomers on a continent people by previous waves of humanoid invaders, Ireland-style. The elves in that game had an affinity for Wood magic, granting them easy access to a spell that really caught my imagination, a sort of Geas enchantment that could bind someone to fulfill an oath; breaking the oath would result in the offender transforming into a tree. I imagined armies of goblins and trolls, oath-bound as slaves to the elves, and an ancient catastrophe in which an entire army refused to fight for their masters and instantly gave birth to one of the forests in the game region. I think that was the one piece of lore -- backstory for a weird forest full of trees with reputedly spooky properties -- that I came up with for that setting that I actually liked.
Great backstory.
DeleteRegarding elves as imperialists/slavers, human slave ambassadors, etc. - I know what you mean, but I have a hard time putting my finger on actual books where the motif appears.
Yeah, for some reason my mind keeps coming back to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster stuff — like this:
Deletehttps://www.michaeljamesobrien.com/matthew-barney
The satyr sprouting into floral shapes seems like the sort of pseudo-sexual body-horror humiliation the elves would inflict on their slaves.
Also feels like something out of Changeling: The Lost?
DeleteAnd speaking of real-world cultural hegemony, it's funny that 100 years ago the roles were reversed, with upper-crust Americans taking elocution lessons to perfect the Anglicised "mid-Atlantic" accent you can still hear in films of the period.
ReplyDeleteYes. I suppose it was the end of WWII that marked the switching point, although I suppose it was the late 50s and early 60s when British pop stars began singing in American accents...
DeleteElf Jackeens...west-Doriathians...
ReplyDeleteI think though I prefer my Elves to be so psychologically different to humans that making an empire wouldn't really be interesting to them.
But what you're talking about is bang on for the influence of the Noldor on the Edain. Much more sinister, and makes me like the men who rejects the elves even more (since as an Irish Culchie, I'm implacably opposed to my West-Brit South of Dublin fellows).
The concept of 'West Britishness' came up in conversation a week or so ago - weird coincidence. A (English) colleague was recounting the story of the fateful day he said to a hall full of Irish people that he regretted the fact that Ireland had achieved its independence, and could no longer call itself West Britain... He had sincerely meant this to be nice!
DeleteHahaha, I can imagine that would have gone down like a bucket of cold sick! Yeah, West-Brit is a fairly common insult for a certain kind of Dubliner from country bumpkins like myself. I'm not serious about it of course - Ireland's cultural cringe about this stuff is fairly embarrassing at times (we'll do the opposite of the UK JUST BECAUSE at times, and other times we'll copy the UK without acknowledging it). But it struck a chord with me while reading your piece, because even reading LOTR originally I realised that the Dunlanders were really the "Irish" analogue and it put me back a bit because I wanted to be on the "good guy" side, but of course Tolkien was writing from an English POV.
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