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Old 07-11-2006, 08:25 PM   #22
Kuruharan
Regal Dwarven Shade
 
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: A Remote Dwarven Hold
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Basically Turgon seems to rule in Council, you might say, but always has the final decision. The Houses of Gondolin seem not unlike feudal entities.

So if Gondolin can be taken as typical, feudalism does seem to be some kind of norm. As Gondolin is supposed to reflect Tirion, blueprint of Noldor culture...I'd say that's all pretty good grounds for suspecting a feudal system.

-and-

However, I can see Hithlum and the Feanorion realms being run on far more authoritarian, regal, Homeric lines.
Interesting you would say this because Gondolin and Nargothrond do not seem conducive to feudal systems whereas Hithlum and the Feanorian realms do i.e. there doesn't seem to be land available for fiefs and vassalage in Gondolin and Nargothrond (who now beyond the Western Seas have passed away...I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist ). In Hithlum and the Feanorian realms there seems to have been plenty of land.

Perhaps Tolkien wasn't conceiving of this system as being exactly "feudal" in the way we traditionally think of it.
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