Random (non-canonical) Thought on Éowyn and the Witch-king

[Alcuin]

Rereading the confrontation between Éowyn and the Witch-king last night, I had a completely un-canonical, uncharacteristically romantic notion.

In another forum, Alvin Eriol theorized that perhaps

the Faithful and the King’s Party were ethnically identifiable, because they seemed to have corresponding geographic and linguistic distributions. …the Faithful appeared to be predominantly of Beoric derivation whose ancestors had adopted Sindarin and settled in the western and northern provinces. It would follow that the King’s Men would be expected to be predominantly Marachian; Adunaic was derived from the Marachians’ old tongue. The Dunedain of western Middle-Earth physically resembled Beorians more so than Marachians.

This thought has stuck with me: a lot of the Númenóreans probably looked like the Rohirrim, who were also descended from the Third House of the Edain or their closest kin. Among other citations I could offer, there is this from Two Towers, “Window on the West”, when Faramir tells Frodo and Sam that the Dúnedain of Gondor

…love [the Rohirrim]: tall men and fair women, valiant both alike, golden-haired, bright-eyed, and strong; they remind us of the youth of Men, as they were in the Elder Days. Indeed it is said by our lore-masters that they have from of old this affinity with us that they are come from those same Three Houses of Men as were the Númenóreans in their beginning. Not from Hador the Golden-haired, the Elf-friend, maybe, yet from such of his sons and people as went not over Sea into the West, refusing the call.

So here is the Lord of the Nazgûl, an old Númenórean prince long since fallen into depravity, evil, and unimaginable slavery to Sauron the Cruel. He threatens this knight of Rohan, who doffs his helmet to reveal this beautiful young woman with glowing golden hair. And the utterly non-canonical thought hit me:

Might Éowyn look like the Dúnadan girl the Witch-king left behind? Before his fall, was he not a man? Might have he have fallen in love? Here this young woman before him “golden-haired, bright-eyed, and strong” like unto “the youth of” the Women of Númenor “as they were in the Elder Days.” Might the Lord of the Nazgûl pause not only because Éowyn was “no man” but a woman, stripping away the riddle of the Prophecy of the North – but also because she looked like his long-lost love come again to walk upon the green grass of Arda? Might his “cry of hatred that stung the very ears like venom” be not only a war-cry, but a cry against the life and love and hope he spurned in his lust for wealth and power, abandoned in a past now forever lost, a cry against his own damnation, as gazing again upon his unseen face with tears in her eyes he sees once more among the living the girl he left behind?

It’s just a notion, a passing fancy. And it has NO basis in the text: none whatsoever. It’s just a thought. But I thought I’d share it.