Details in HOME about inventing Arwen?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by mindil

Eowyn's potential Pelennor death is well documented.
The implication of her being the love interest is clear in HoME, too.

The combination doesn't provide for a Queen, though. Perhaps that's why JRRT had death/ no death versions going almost simultaneously, trying to figure out where A&E should go? Where does your manuscript fit in the sequence of Eowyn's death/no death endings?

Was the original thought at the time of your manuscript that Aragorn would lose Eowyn to death on the Pelennor and then turn to Arwen? That wouldn't wash well. Perhaps recognizing the impossibility of such a sudden transfer of devotion back to Rivendell was what ruled out Eowyn as even a temporary interest? And once Arwen was established as a long-standing fiancee, there was no obstacle to Eowyn living, and that's why her survival was settled?

But mostly, what position gives you access to unpublished manuscripts?

By the time Tolkien wrote the jotted notes in question he had already decided on the Faramir marriage. Apparently right about that time, in fact, since on the previous page the entry "[Gandalf] rescues Eowyn" was an insertion, not originally present. But it must be emphasized that the paper in question was a flurry of possible turns in the account of the battle and its aftermath which had definitely not yet taken on anything like its familiar form.

As to date: there is no question that at this time Tolkien was working on what would become the first full draft of Minas Tirith; the entries appear to accord with the abortive draft which preceded it, in which the guardsman and his son were named Berethil and Gwindor. From the dating it is definitely certain that it precedes the start of what would become 'The Passing of the Grey Company,' in which Elrond's sons first appeared; everything still happens in February rather than March.