Quote:
Originally Posted by Corsair_Caruso
1. Celebrimbor and Celebrian fall in love while Galadriel and Celeborn are in Eregion; the two marry and Galadriel never leaves, staying either a, or the, leader of the realm (depending on your reading of UT).
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Any takers on this? My preliminary thoughts are: if Celebrimbor and Celebrian marry, have children, etc, this increases the likelihood that Galadriel and Celeborn remain in Eregion and maintain leadership positions there. This means that when Annatar shows up claiming to be an emissary of the Valar here to help out the poor Noldor in Endor, Galadriel is in a better position to tell Annatar to shove off, or advise her son-in-law to do so. Celebrimbor is likely to heed the advice of his mother-in-law, especially with a wife and possible child to think of, and so Sauron is shut out of all the realms of the Eldar in Middle-earth.
Two things happen: one, the Gwaith-i-mirdain never begin making Rings of Power, or at least, not ones using Sauron's blueprints. The One Ring is almost certainly never made, and even if it is, it has no need to be invested with most of Sauron's power, since it has no other Rings to rule over. The Rings as we know them do not exist.
However, without a foothold into
any of the Eldarin realms, Sauron is likely to abandon his attempts at subterfuge and move on to military action. The War of the Elves and Sauron begins earlier, but with different stakes. Eregion, in my opinion, is less likely to fall as completely as it did in the OTL, if Galadriel and Celeborn are still around. Despite not having Nenya to bolster her power, she is still one of the most powerful Eldar in Middle-earth (and besides, the Three weren't weapons anyway), as well as one of the wisest.
Now, will Celebrimbor and the Elves of Eregion survive the war? That, I don't know. The individual dynamics of the alternate war would have to be figured out more specifically. Celebrimbor might be advised by Galadriel to evacuate his people in the face of invasion, or he might not. If he is advised to do so, he might heed the advice or ignore it. I think he
would evacuate his wife and child in the face of such danger. Such a child, were it to be a male, could be a feasible heir to the High-kingship of the Noldor, since Elrond now has no children (with Celebrian, anyway).
I know what you're going to say: the Feanorians were devested of their claim on the kingship when it was forsworn by Maedhros in favor of the lines of Fingolfin and Finarfin, but I actually think they didn't give up their claim entirely. I interpret it as the House of Feanor's claim on the throne being subordinated to the claims of the Houses of Fingolfin and Finarfin, and without extant members of those houses to exercise a claim, then the kingship would return to the only remaining male-line descendants of Finwe: the heir of Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, son of Feanor.
Also this: the Kingdom of Lindon collapsed at the end of the Second Age! Elrond didn't claim the Kingship because there was neither a kingdom, nor enough Noldor to merit a king. Well, that's a good point, but who knows how Lindon will fare in this timeline? The butterflies from this POD (no Rings of Power, an alternate War with more survivors from Eregion, or even a surviving Eregion?!) prevent us from predicting exactly
what shape the Elven realms will be in by the end of the age... unless someone develops a story devoted to exploring it.