Servants of the Elves?

[Kalimac]

With all due respect, Maeglin, I don't think anyone's under the impression that the Elves were democratic - democracies tend not to have rulers-for-eternal-life like Galadriel and Elrond, or if they do they're pretty much stripped of everything save ceremonial power, a la Great Britain. (I realize that the Queen can do some things, but she couldn't send armies out, let alone command a river to rise [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]).

While I'm not a historian - and if any real historians feel like jumping in to correct me, please do! - society even in the middle ages could shift around somewhat, and that mobility increased with the Renaissance and grew steadily greater afterwards. But even in the earlies people weren't exactly stationary, that is, they didn't have one role and one role only. Granted, a rock-hewing peasant was likely to remain a rock-hewing peasant, but he might have a son who was exceptionally intelligent and lucked into becoming a member of the clergy. A few centuries later, a young man who went into a great house as a scut-cleaner could work his way up to footman. Fagging, in the old British public schools, was a much-abused practice but it certainly gave some fairly moneyed boys the experience of being on the receiving end of unlimited power. And during the Renaissance and after, members even of fairly noble families would be sent to the households of others as pages and maids of honour; consider Anne Boleyn, to pick a random example, who was sent at a young age to be a waiting-woman in France. Granted, she wasn't exactly top-drawer, not a princess, but her family was connected to the ducal Howards, which was nothing to sneeze at. And similarly to the proposed theory about the Elves, page/waiting-woman/stuff like that was not an occupation that lasted your entire life. It was a stage, and you moved on to your "real" occupation later, after the first blush of youth.

Now, obviously, this didn't apply to everyone. Waiting-women did not do the kinds of things that scullery maids did, and a scullery maid was highly unlikely to ever become a waiting woman. But within their own spheres, they could rise, and did. So I think it is reasonable to hypothesize that a large number of the folk waiting on Thranduil et al were younger Elves getting their training, so to speak. As to who did the scullery-type work, there's so little information that I hesitate even to guess. I doubt very much that they would hire outsiders; Rivendell is by far the most outsider-friendly Elvish establishment, and even then you get the impression that they were pretty picky about whom they let in the front door - it wouldn't make sense for them to let unnecessary men and others in through the servants' entrance at the back. So I will take a flying leap and hypothesize that there were spheres of Elves, rather like the spheres of humans earlier, only more simply structured. Not a lower class, not in the sense of eking out a bare living and being subject to your lord's every whim, but basically a noble caste (very few members - basically the rulers of Lorien, Rivendell, Mirkwood, etc and their heirs and immediate relatives) and a common caste (everyone else). Both the children of the noble caste and most of the children of the common caste would start off with basic serving jobs in the enormous communes that seem to be the favoured Elvish method of living. There would be some preference, very likely - can't see Arwen ever up to her elbows in soapsuds, to be honest - but most would work their way up in time - maybe start off with general serving stuff, then as your first talent became apparent, you'd be apprenticed, then work on your own, something like that.

Granted, this is incredibly idealistic and presupposes lots of harmony and agreement and all those other bizarre things [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. I'm proposing it for two reasons. First of all, they live forever save for violent death. The concept of "I'm stuck in this job for my whole life" does not apply to them, since inevitably there will be younger people coming up behind them whose turn it is to do that job, and yet you still live on. Secondly, they're Elves, dang it! They're so in control of their emotions and actions (most of them, anyway) that it's hard to see an idealistic system failing for them unless someone went to a huge amount of trouble to sabotage it.