Spin City

My Dearest Kendrah,

Pleas forgive my lack of correspondence. Faramir and I have had our hands full dealing with the media fall-out from Elf-Fest and I've barely had time to focus on Reality at all in the past few weeks. (Which is a HUGE pain because I had to host the Samhain party, have a show opening at work and have to go to North Carolina to visit my brother for Thanksgiving!)

So let's begin at the beginning. The trip to Lothlorien was rather uneventful and actually quite pleasant. Viggo and the king kept each other entertained so I could focus on riding, and most importantly, not falling on my ample butt in front of Gondorian nobility.

We arrived at Lothlorien at twilight (I swear Galdders used some of that Elven sorcery. It seemed to be twilight far more often than is natural during our stay. I think she arranges it that way so we can all admire the beauty of last rays of the setting sun highlight her famously golden tresses.

The first few days weren't too bad. Viggo fit right in and he, the King and the Sons spent a lot of quality time together. Gladders spent a lot of time on official schmoozing, and I wasn't worth the effort. I was worried about meals, but SOMEHOW I always ended up at the Low end of the table. Gladders fluttered her eyelashes and promised to speak to her steward about the order of precedence and the king got all enamoured of the fluttering eyelashes and asked me to be gracious so as not to cause a scene, so I held my peace and actually rather enjoyed not having to be all polite with the big-wigs.

All of this would have been fine if it weren't for the paparazzi. Apparently, some rag newspaper in the White City sent spies after us. It's much harder to detect the paps in Middle Earth due to the lack of flashbulbs. Mostly they just sneak around, hide behind bushes and sketch frantically with pen and ink on parchment. So you don't know they've caught you, say, flashing an ankle to the steward to get a better seat at dinner, or passed out drunk on a tree root with Celeborn, or arguing with the King about how much time he's spending with Gladders or mysterious" until after the picture is printed. (I still haven't figured out when they invented the printing press!)

In any case, this caused quite a stir! Eowyn and Faramir were sending desperate messages daily reporting the latest reported scandal. Of course, papers fell into the hands of the Elves and we had to put up with their smug sniggering. There was even a picture featuring Aragorn and Viggo side by side. wondering which of them was the real king!

Then the news came about poor Thranduil's "accident". The papers had a field day with conspiracy theories! My favorite was that Gondor was secretly involved in the incident and plotting to put Leggs on the throne so we could have Mirkwood under our control. (and making some rather inappropriate speculations as the nature of the relationship between Leggs and the King!) Naturally, this did not go over too well with any of the Elves! Poor Celeborn! He tried to stand up for us, but Gladders just glared him down! Fortunately the Ons were able to calm everyone for the moment, but rumours spread like wildfire and we're still dealing with the diplomatic fall-out from Mirkwood, Lothlorien, Imladris, Edoras (apparently some of the Rohirrim suspect that we were trying to control Mirkwood so that we would be in a better position to control their trade routes, or something...) Anyway...the Elves thing it is a Man plot and the Men think it is an Elvish plot. We're getting it straightened out, I thing, but I think the papers are deliberately stirring the pot o' trouble. Perhaps this whole free press thing is over-rated.

Well, I have a Dwarf delegation waiting. Who knows what plots they've imagined in all of this. Hope all is well with you. It was lovely seeing you at Samhain, a brief reality respite from the troubles at home.

Your Affectionate Friend,
Corwynne