Heget's Blatherings

Disclaimer: Here is a blend of Original Tolkien creations (aka my best efforts at recreating the author’s drawing), modifications on the original, and designs completely from cloth. Previous Entries can be found under the sigil tag. Please credit if use.

In order:

Bortë 01, Bortë 02, Bortë 03, Bortë 04, Bortë 05

Notes:
Yes, I'm reposting these once more. Because if people in the Silmarillion/Tolkien fandom continue to use them, I want nice official links to them. And so another crosspost from tumblr project is born.I could not decide on a color scheme, so instead I went wild on variations. Why a vulture? One of my favorite OCs is Bortë, first Queen of Númenor, and she needed a sigil that while keeping the Númenórean frame had a vulture and a sun.

One of my favorite lesser-known or focused-on people are those of Bór the Easterling who did not side with Morgoth and whose sons Borthand, Borlach, and Borlad died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. I’ve written head-canon posts and fic about them in which one of the visual motifs is a vulture clutching a sun in its talons. Echos of Nekhbet, I suppose, but vultures, especially paired with eagles, struck me as highly appropriate for a semi-nomadic steppe people, as one of my inspirations for them were the Huns (and of which I imagine were the same for Tolkien). Bortë’s name, however, while obviously continuing the Bor- prefix trend of Tolkien’s names, is also a direct nod to the wife of Genghis Khan. As a descendant of Bór and his wife Borte who saved their people after the disaster of the Nirnaeth, Bortë proudly carries the name and wears the symbol of her people.

(Which vulture of these five, I can’t chose.)

Bortë is my answer for who is the mysterious wife of Elros Tar-Minyatur. That she is born in the last decades of the War of Wrath, and her parents are human guides and translators for a platoon of elven soldiers from Valinor fighting up in the northern mountains. She is raised as an honorary niece by these mostly Vanyar soldiers, and grows up multilingual under a blend of influences. She speaks both Sindarin and the proto-Anduniac like the other Edain, is fluent in the regional Quenya of Valmar’s alpine monasteries and rural farmlands instead of the dialects preserved from Tirion and Gondolin, and also knows at least one of the Easterling languages. Ex-thralls from Dor-lómin latch onto her as one of their own, for many have Easterling or half-Easterling fathers. Beloved by those that could not claim only fathers of the Three Houses of the Edain, she will be the symbol for carving a new identity as Dúnedain of the Land of Gift, favored by Eru and the West. Bortë is companions with Elros and his brother Elrond, and the twins remember her father and the other Bór tribes-people who shared the camp with Maedhros and Maglor before the twins returned to Balar and the Bór renounce their former elven overlords and make to the refuge of Balar as well. Bortë’s favorite ‘uncle’ is a half-Vanya distant relative of Nerdanel who proudly creates a sigil for his mortal niece in all but name. The vulture (and vulture and eagle) symbols of the Bór wouldn't necessarily look like this or follow any elven conventions, but I’m using him as my literary hypothesis agent for a more elven conventional sigil for Queen Bortë.

• Bortë 01 - The first variation is the vulture in shades of copper and brown on a pale sea-green background. All versions have a small sun framed by wings, as the Second-born are the Children of the Sun. The symmetry is almost perfectly vertical, broken only by the profile head of the vulture. This follows Tolkien’s own rules about Edain heraldry, with only vertical and no horizontal symmetry - and Beren’s asymmetrical hand proves that even vertical symmetry can be ignored. The coppers tie back to the Urundils and the sea to Elwing and the island of Númenor. It’s one of the more natural and muted palettes.
• Bortë 02 - The second variation I went with a color scheme closer to the Ancient Eqyptian wall painting inspiration with a blend of blues, greens, and golds. I also added the outline of the island of Númenor behind the vulture.
• Bortë 03 - First in the attempt to pair the bird with a starry night sky. As the species of vulture this bird would be based on would reasonably be like the Old World vultures, thus I went with a white and dun color. It’s not specifically any species in particular, but the vultures of Middle-earth aren’t going to be the condors and turkey buzzards with naked heads and black plumage I see outside my window every day. The dark blue background and stars make this complimentary to the devices and banners of Fingolfin and Gil-galad, appropriately enough. Plus I imagine Bortë and Elros having a strong love for Manwë, Varda, and Eonwë, considering they named three of their four children after Varda, Manwë, and/or stars. Plus they fought alongside Eönwë and received a paradisaical new homeland complete with palaces by the Valar. For me, Bortë has always loved birds and the solitude of high windy palaces.
• Bortë 04 - Similar idea, only the vulture is the same blues as Eärendil’s sigil - which are also the blues I used for Elros. I bumped up the number of stars to six golden ones, which if you include the sun brings the total to seven and thus a sly call-forward to the seven stars on the banners of Arnor and Gondor.
• Bortë 05 - Lastly I did a variation with the bird in shades of crimson and brick red on a solid gold background. Red and gold are my primary colors for Easterling characters.

As of right now I can’t pick which one my OC would use are her personal sigil - or if she changed which version before and after she married Elros, became queen of Númenor, or was used by others after she died as part of her changing legacy.

Because the silence is telling that there is absolutely no canon information about Elros’s wife except that she must have been mortal. All other unions between men and elves or half-elves are noted in the text, even if the fate after death is sometimes left ambiguous. As I’ve written about before, a queen that is at least half Easterling, even if one that sided with the Valar instead of Morgoth, becomes politically undesirable in the later racist imperial mindset of the later Dúnedain. By the time of Tar-Ciryatan, Númenor is conquering other men of Middle-earth by military might, and the King’s Men factions from Tar-Ancalimon on down would not celebrate a queen of less than purely Edain bloodlines, one who spoke Quenya and was close friends with elves and revered the Valar. In the later Númenórean obsession with escaping and staving off mortality, that their forefather Elros chose the Gift of Men would weigh bitterly on the envious kings. Bortë, the Black-eyed Pearl of Armenelos, with her vulture, becomes the ill choice of death, and the vulture is no longer a Nekhbet-like guardian of the winds and motherhood as well as the necropolis but solely the despised death omen. While the vulture still stands over Noirinan, Númenor’s Valley of the Tombs, the royal symbols of Númenor are the sigils of Elros, of the white tree and the eagles of Manwë, until even those fall out of favor.

What the fuck is this? No, you do not do this to me. That center would have been bad enough, not to mention the color gradient rainbow, but the rest of it? (Okay, anyone getting the feeling the 4 designs in the corner are actually their one circular devices, maybe for different regions of Númenor?) But bullshit on me recreating this any time soon for Elros.

I knew that sigil would be a pain, but-