wildehack:

BASICALLY I was just thinking about her hair. Because red hair is supposed to be So Super Remarkable, right? Everyone’s like “oh my god, Nerdanel the Red Haired daughter of Mahtan the Red-Haired”, and Maedhros’s nickname was Russandol as a child, which literally just means “Copper-head”, (important sidenote his other nickname was Maitimo which is like the elven equivalent of calling him Hottie Boom Battie–clearly Tauriel inherits this from him as well) and, like, there’s all this other Serious Hair Talk amongst the elves that I neither fully understand nor fully care about but essentially I’m into the idea that a red-haired bastard literally just means DESCENDED FROM MAHTAN, THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION. (brief background on maedhros in case he is a mystery to you)

Everyone knows that Maedhros never married, first because he was in love with Fingon, and then because Fingon was dead. That doesn’t mean he never took lovers.

Tauriel’s mother is born the year that Sirion was sacked. Because, see, I figure that Tauriel’s grandmother is nobody that song would remember, although she is good and bright and clever. She is a Sindar elf, and Maedhros is a son of Fëanor–a king with a thousand passionate dreams that had all crumbled to dust by the time she met him. I figure a woman might think hot tragic sad-eyed Maedhros a good lover. But he’s not really husband material, is he? So when she finds herself with child, she’d hesitate before telling him. And then she’d watch him take an army to Sirion, she’d hear about the murders, that beautiful princess who threw herself into the sea just to escape her lover, she’d see the two terrified orphans the army brought back–and she’d swear to herself that Maedhros would be no father to her child. 

She’d leave, obviously, and he would let her go. But when she had the child, the boy would take after his father, his striking god-defying father, parentage written plain as day in the color of his hair. She couldn’t stay in Beleriand–not where Maedhros was a king (a traitor), a public figure, (a mass murderer) very nearly a living myth (a man who treats love casually but family with a terrifying seriousness.) 

Obviously, Tauriel’s grandmother would go go to the Silvan elves, far away. They wouldn’t know the significance of her son’s hair, except that it was remarkable. Even if they heard tales of Maedhros Kinslayer, they would not recognize the ghost of his features in the child. It makes perfect sense. Especially if she marries a Silvan elf, in due time. Especially if her son, when he is grown, also marries a Silvan elf. They are Silvan. The world has changed, Maedhros himself lost to history and the earth, and the secret of her child’s birth seems lost with him. 

(Tauriel’s grandmother passes away to the West, in time. Tauriel’s father does not know he is not a Silvan elf. When Tauriel is born, her hair is as red and true as her father’s, as her grandfather’s, as Nerdanel’s and Mahtan’s hair before her.) 

Except, well. You know who becomes the Lord of the Silvan Elves in the Greenwood, right? Thranduil of Doriath, who most certainly would have seen the sons of Fëanor, who most certainly knew what Maedhros One-handed looked like in the dappled light of the forest, who would most certainly recognize the echoes of the most famous king of the second age in a red-haired child. 

(Though it is Tauriel’s father who he meets, as a lowly soldier in Thranduil’s own army during the Last Alliance, and for a heart-stopping moment Thranduil believes he has genuinely seen a ghost. This is a mere week before Tauriel’s father dies in the field of battle, defending Gil-Galad. Thranduil takes great pains when he returns to the Greenwood to seek out the dead soldier’s wife, to question her about his parentage, to see the small blood-haired child standing under the trees.) 

The line of Fëanor is cursed, but it also bred great heroes, who did great deeds. Thranduil keeps Tauriel close. He never speaks to her of what he knows. The Elvenking is not immune to gold-sickness–he enjoys rare treasures, dangerous secrets, valuable weapons. Tauriel Fëanáro, though she knows it not, is all three.