You just know that the court of Gondor would have developed all the same sort of rituals as the courts of the Middle Ages and onwards, to protect the royal mother and child. Particularly as the heavily elven blood line became more and more 'ordinary human' and the relevant people became more and more prone to infection.
No visitors to the queen until her post-partum blood loss would be over, no breast-feeding as it might over-tax her strength - and it would allow her to get on with producing the next heir more quickly; no possibility of the baby being in close contact with anyone to infect them, and so wrapped up if they do go out that insect bites etc would be almost impossible...
They were often doing sensible things, but for all the wrong reasons, and had no idea why some of their rituals worked! Or, in many cases, failed to work and actually did harm...
Infection resistant Elves, with a much higher emphasis on spiritual development, would have had very different rituals - certainly a major point for culture clash, I reckoned!
Arwen's life, I think, would have been happy in the private moments, but generally not as happy as it would have been had she stayed amongst her own people. Sometimes I wonder if this ever crossed JRRT's mind at all; whether he thought he was giving her something wonderful (him being a man!), or whether he actually was 'punishing' her for standing up to her father and making her own choice of partner even though it was outside her own culture...
I thought of what effect this heritage would have on their children when I wrote Many Happy Returns (http://community.livejournal.com/tolkien_weekly/539704.html) - not all shiny and bright!
And if we think Prince Charles is having a long wait to get to the throne... chances are that, if Eldarion married when he would have been expected to, his wife would have died of old age before he became king.
no subject
No visitors to the queen until her post-partum blood loss would be over, no breast-feeding as it might over-tax her strength - and it would allow her to get on with producing the next heir more quickly; no possibility of the baby being in close contact with anyone to infect them, and so wrapped up if they do go out that insect bites etc would be almost impossible...
They were often doing sensible things, but for all the wrong reasons, and had no idea why some of their rituals worked! Or, in many cases, failed to work and actually did harm...
Infection resistant Elves, with a much higher emphasis on spiritual development, would have had very different rituals - certainly a major point for culture clash, I reckoned!
Arwen's life, I think, would have been happy in the private moments, but generally not as happy as it would have been had she stayed amongst her own people. Sometimes I wonder if this ever crossed JRRT's mind at all; whether he thought he was giving her something wonderful (him being a man!), or whether he actually was 'punishing' her for standing up to her father and making her own choice of partner even though it was outside her own culture...
I thought of what effect this heritage would have on their children when I wrote Many Happy Returns (http://community.livejournal.com/tolkien_weekly/539704.html) - not all shiny and bright!
And if we think Prince Charles is having a long wait to get to the throne... chances are that, if Eldarion married when he would have been expected to, his wife would have died of old age before he became king.