Chapter Text
I'm a wordy author, so I'm taking a full chapter to introduce the story, and the inspiration behind it.
All mistakes are entirely mine. Volunteers for beta reading are welcome.
Inspiration for the story:
Slightly altering the blurb from Wikipedia: The Turkish historical drama Magnificent Century, and it's sequel Magnificent Century: Kosem, were written by Meral Okay and Yılmaz Şahin and are based on the life of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and his wife Hürrem Sultan, a slave girl who became the first Ottoman Haseki Sultan. The sequel shines a light on the era known as the Sultanate of Women.
It's important to credit the writers and point to the historical inspiration, but by and large, this story will only be recognizable as inspired by Magnificent Century if you're familiar with that show, or have studied royal and harem culture of the Ottoman empire. I urge you to go watch it, regardless! Available free on Youtube in North America with English subtitles, it has significant historical liberties taken, and there's a fair amount of problematic misogyny and male and female archetypes alike. But it's also a brilliantly performed show that provides a lot of great breadcrumb trails for those who are interested in studying the actual language and history. It's Turkish Game of Thrones without the dragons, and breaking the characters and their flawed motivations down in critical analysis on Tumblr is a hell of a lot of fun.
Aside from some events and character parallels, I have also lifted and bastardized many things from Ottoman Turkish culture and it's very worthwhile to remember that I am not Turkish, I have no emotional or cultural ties to the things that inspired this, and utilizing these notions in the way that I have may be considered culturally offensive or even appropriating. Don't take anything about Turkish culture away from this fic, don't take anything about Tolkien or his characters away from this fic, and do not read it if you may be offended by these things.
On February 6, 2023, at 4:17 a.m. local time, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit southeast Turkey near the Syrian border. The death toll was unprecedented and continues to climb still with aftershocks over a month later, and the suffering is unimaginable. Consider donating to reputable organization that provides relief to refugees.
Nature of the story:
One of the things I observed back in the Hobbit fandom heyday between discourse on Ao3 and tumblr was an overall attitude of "if your work is problematic and the point of the story is not to redeem the characters, your work isn't valid". I'm a dinosaur now, and it's somewhat gross to see it all over again across fandom in general, but with shiny new vocabulary.
Back then a lot of writers packed up their shit and left. I still spend time on the Archive Machine trying to hunt things down, though I am resigned that some things are lost forever. As a fairly vanilla smut writer, I wasn't receiving any of that criticism, but I saw it crop up in a lot of tumblr essays and actual comments on Ao3.
It's a shame, but this fandom still cries out for dead dove aid, and I shall answer. That being said, this is a an un-apologetically dark, fully self-indulgent, borderline disturbed piece of fiction. There's just enough reconciliation and heart to suit me, but it may not be near enough for you.
Warnings:
This story contains mentions or direct depictions of miscarriage, child death, fratricide, murder, betrayal, infidelity, imbalanced power dynamics, enforced non-monogamy, bigotry, fantasy racism, rigid caste structures, chattel and sexual slavery, breeding, absolutely disrespectful A/B/O dynamics, violence and brutality to a minor extent, more incest than anyone wanted or asked for, and bad BDSM etiquette by everyone except Gandalf.
More will be added to this list as I sink into further depths of depravity. I will do my best tag throughout, and list individual warnings on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Feel free to point out if I have missed something.
MY INTENTION IS NOT TO TRAUMATIZE. With that being said, I'm doing my part. You do yours. Go away if you don't belong here.
Much like in Magnificent Century, part of the point is that the characters are living in and upholding a system that breaks many who participate in it, for the benefit of very few. This is not a result of the will of the gods having gone wrong, it IS the will of the gods in this story. For Thorin to be the best son-of-Mahal that he can be, he may potentially leave the readers with a sour taste in their mouths. Possibly, hopefully, also extremely turned on. For all my high-falutin' words and nonsense, this is really just smut for smut's sake. Not even that, really. More like smut for MY sake.
I just happen to like my smut with a lot of bullshit world-building, for sex reasons.
Stay safe, folks, and if ever you find yourself lost, just follow the tags.
Scope of the story:
Currently I have inspiration for content that covers the course of several years in universe. I won't curse myself by putting a number, but I think we're in for many chapters.
Khuzdul:
The incredible amount of work that has gone into Dwarrow Scholar Khuzdul resources available on the wordpress website is astounding. If I've done anything right with the Khuzdul in this story, it's thanks to the dictionary, sentence maker, and support documents available for free from those amazing folks. Mahal bless them, they even came up with naughty words for us naughty writers, so I don't have to constantly refer to Thorin's hammer.
For all the mistakes and obvious gibberish, the responsibility is mine. It's very easy to spend hours trying to figure out which words to use to make a phrase and in what order that will fit in a certain place in a sentence that has seven other words you have to come up with (no matter HOW brilliant these tools are) so I had to put my foot down on some of it and just mash words together. Such as the Khuzdul word for harem I came up with. The Khuzdul dictionary does not have a word for 'harem' or many of the parallel terminology you would find in Ottoman culture. I'll be damned if a Khuzdul expert is reading this, but if so, I sincerely apologize. For everything.
I also use Khuzdul what seems to me like a LOT. If you hover your cursor over the word, phrase, or sentence, the translation will be provided. Sometimes it's my own version of the translation because it's actual gobbledeegook, and sometimes its the Dwarrow Scholar translation. If I feel I've already used the word a lot at the beginning of the chapter, the translation will not be included throughout, as the HTML is a bit of a nightmare.
MOBILE/APP USERS: These hover-translations are apparently not available to you. I've provided a vocabulary key at the end of every chapter including all relevant terms and phrases for that chapter.
The fanfic author:
For as long as I've been writing fanfiction, I really ought to be better at it, but I don't write to be better, I write to get the thing out of my brain and by-the-by, maybe it will amuse others. So long as it satisfies my writing drive, then I've accomplished my goal.
I don't expect it here, but discourse is welcome. Every kudos and comment counts when the majority of people who pass through will read, but not interact.
My dead dove blog on tumblr - fortheloveofdeaddove - is where I ramble and reblog related and unrelated things alike. All adults are invited to come play in my sandbox (and only adults should be here OR there, for Mahal's sake).
Kudos, comments, bookmarks, subscriptions all hit that dopamine button very nicely. Thanks for coming along on this delightfully debauched journey!