Character history
Mar. 31st, 2014 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
durinsdaughterThings that are taken from PJ and override Tolkien information are: Some of the ages of the dwarves of the company; looks of the company, most prominently amounts of beard and Kíli's hair colour, but also general style of dress; that Azog survived the battle of Azanulbizar and that Thorin finished him there; generally happenings of the Hobbit that she wasn't present for.
Dís was born the third child of three and first daughter to the crown prince of the mighty dwarf kingdom of the Lonely Mountain, the immensely prosperous and rich state of the Longbeards of the line of Durin, the dwarf clan held in the highest esteem in her world throughout the times. It was the second homeland of the Longbeards, the first having been Khazad-dûm which they lost to a monster called balrog long before Dís was born.
It should not remain the only homeland of her kind lost to a creature of evil. When she was still a child, a dragon, attracted by the mountain's riches, attacked the Lonely Mountain and killed many among them Dís's mother, forcing the remainder of the Longbeards to evacuate the mountain and go into exile. For a while the number of victims seemed exorbitantly high, and it took over a century until it became clear that a large number of dwarves simply had preferred to go to the Grey Mountains and live there than follow their king into years of wanderings.
Those wanderings came to a temporary stop when king Thrór, mad and longing for his birthplace of Khazad-dûm, handed kingship over to his son and went to that place, now called the mines of Moria. Wandering into them alone, he fell prey to the orcs that now housed there, who killed him in the most insulting manner possible. What followed came to be known as the war of the dwarves and orcs. Dwarf culture has a strong concept of a "duty of vengeance". A huge host of warriors gathered as Dís's father Thráin, the new king, called upon them to avenge his father; the man might have been old and mad, but he was a symbol, the dwarf of the most noble blood in Middle Earth and thus the orcs's action was an insult to everyone - plus really, everyone hates orcs.
A year after Thrór's death, the war began, aiming to kill every orc in the general area. We don't know if Thráin's children were fighting from the beginning, but both her brothers are mentioned to have been in the last battle (the battle of Azanulbizar) and since dwarf women fight just like men in Dís's culture and the number of heavily underage Longbeards that are mentioned to have been on that battlefield is very high, we can infer that Dís was there as well.
The war's outcome might have been a victory and the death of those that had offered insult to the dwarves, but the death toll on the side of the dwarves had been very high, among them the younger of Dís's brothers, Frerin, and the mines of Moria could not be taken back because the balrog still lived there. Everyone went home, and Dís's family went back to wandering until they settled in the Blue Mountains. Fifty years later, Thráin, driven by the same madness as his father, took a few men and went north-eastwards, planning to take back the Lonely Mountain, but he vanished in the middle of the night and was lost. Many years later, it was found that he had been taken hostage by orcs and been tortured to death.
Around the same time, Dís got married and had two children: Fíli, who upon her father's death became the new crown prince as her brother had no wife and no inclination to get married (something perfectly normal among dwarves, though unusual for a king), and her second son Kíli. Shortly after Kíli's birth, her husband was killed by a raiding band of orcs. The children did, however, not lack in male parental figures, with her brother Thorin and others who lived in the household having a hand in their raising as well. The place where they now lived came to be known as Thorin's halls and eventually the poverty and precarious economical situation of the decades after the fall of the Erebor ended and the Longbeards of the Blue Mountains recovered, becoming wealthy once again.
But the Blue Mountains weren't their homeland, and towards the end of her second century of life, most of the household, including her brother and her sons, left to take back the Lonely Mountain to give back to their people the safety and pride that they had once had while Dís remained in the Blue Mountains to run the community there in their absence. Most of them returned, but neither Thorin nor Fíli and Kíli did. Dís, now the only survivor of the primary line of Durin, led the move of her people towards the mountain together with some of those that had returned and some that had remained, but after that took a backseat. The titel of the king had been given to the head of the secondary line of Durin, which was just fine with her; while she pushed through, she still had lost all of her family over the years, and as much as she was happy that the Longbeards had the mountain back, it held little for her. Having grown up on the roads and having spent a lot of time travelling selling things and offering smithing and other repair services even after settling in the Blue Mountains added to the unrest. She didn't desert her people like her father and grandfather had, but took every chance to go with a diplomatic envoy or accompany or lead other travels. When upon returning home after a long travel she learned that contact with her relative Balin and his group who had gone to resettle Khazad-dûm had ceased, she stayed at the Lonely Mountain until a path of action had been decided and messengers were sent to Rivendell to learn more. That is why she was home for the peril and siege of the Lonely Mountain that occurred during the war against Sauron and his allies. Dís died a good while later in the Fourth Age, not long before Dwalin, half a life after she had buried the last of her closer relatives, as one of the oldest dwarves of her time.
Dís was born the third child of three and first daughter to the crown prince of the mighty dwarf kingdom of the Lonely Mountain, the immensely prosperous and rich state of the Longbeards of the line of Durin, the dwarf clan held in the highest esteem in her world throughout the times. It was the second homeland of the Longbeards, the first having been Khazad-dûm which they lost to a monster called balrog long before Dís was born.
It should not remain the only homeland of her kind lost to a creature of evil. When she was still a child, a dragon, attracted by the mountain's riches, attacked the Lonely Mountain and killed many among them Dís's mother, forcing the remainder of the Longbeards to evacuate the mountain and go into exile. For a while the number of victims seemed exorbitantly high, and it took over a century until it became clear that a large number of dwarves simply had preferred to go to the Grey Mountains and live there than follow their king into years of wanderings.
Those wanderings came to a temporary stop when king Thrór, mad and longing for his birthplace of Khazad-dûm, handed kingship over to his son and went to that place, now called the mines of Moria. Wandering into them alone, he fell prey to the orcs that now housed there, who killed him in the most insulting manner possible. What followed came to be known as the war of the dwarves and orcs. Dwarf culture has a strong concept of a "duty of vengeance". A huge host of warriors gathered as Dís's father Thráin, the new king, called upon them to avenge his father; the man might have been old and mad, but he was a symbol, the dwarf of the most noble blood in Middle Earth and thus the orcs's action was an insult to everyone - plus really, everyone hates orcs.
A year after Thrór's death, the war began, aiming to kill every orc in the general area. We don't know if Thráin's children were fighting from the beginning, but both her brothers are mentioned to have been in the last battle (the battle of Azanulbizar) and since dwarf women fight just like men in Dís's culture and the number of heavily underage Longbeards that are mentioned to have been on that battlefield is very high, we can infer that Dís was there as well.
The war's outcome might have been a victory and the death of those that had offered insult to the dwarves, but the death toll on the side of the dwarves had been very high, among them the younger of Dís's brothers, Frerin, and the mines of Moria could not be taken back because the balrog still lived there. Everyone went home, and Dís's family went back to wandering until they settled in the Blue Mountains. Fifty years later, Thráin, driven by the same madness as his father, took a few men and went north-eastwards, planning to take back the Lonely Mountain, but he vanished in the middle of the night and was lost. Many years later, it was found that he had been taken hostage by orcs and been tortured to death.
Around the same time, Dís got married and had two children: Fíli, who upon her father's death became the new crown prince as her brother had no wife and no inclination to get married (something perfectly normal among dwarves, though unusual for a king), and her second son Kíli. Shortly after Kíli's birth, her husband was killed by a raiding band of orcs. The children did, however, not lack in male parental figures, with her brother Thorin and others who lived in the household having a hand in their raising as well. The place where they now lived came to be known as Thorin's halls and eventually the poverty and precarious economical situation of the decades after the fall of the Erebor ended and the Longbeards of the Blue Mountains recovered, becoming wealthy once again.
But the Blue Mountains weren't their homeland, and towards the end of her second century of life, most of the household, including her brother and her sons, left to take back the Lonely Mountain to give back to their people the safety and pride that they had once had while Dís remained in the Blue Mountains to run the community there in their absence. Most of them returned, but neither Thorin nor Fíli and Kíli did. Dís, now the only survivor of the primary line of Durin, led the move of her people towards the mountain together with some of those that had returned and some that had remained, but after that took a backseat. The titel of the king had been given to the head of the secondary line of Durin, which was just fine with her; while she pushed through, she still had lost all of her family over the years, and as much as she was happy that the Longbeards had the mountain back, it held little for her. Having grown up on the roads and having spent a lot of time travelling selling things and offering smithing and other repair services even after settling in the Blue Mountains added to the unrest. She didn't desert her people like her father and grandfather had, but took every chance to go with a diplomatic envoy or accompany or lead other travels. When upon returning home after a long travel she learned that contact with her relative Balin and his group who had gone to resettle Khazad-dûm had ceased, she stayed at the Lonely Mountain until a path of action had been decided and messengers were sent to Rivendell to learn more. That is why she was home for the peril and siege of the Lonely Mountain that occurred during the war against Sauron and his allies. Dís died a good while later in the Fourth Age, not long before Dwalin, half a life after she had buried the last of her closer relatives, as one of the oldest dwarves of her time.
