Perhaps he would never have visited the Blighted Isle and drawn the Sword of Khaine. He might never have met Morathi. Malekith might never have been born.
Such speculation is fruitless. What happened, happened. The Sword was drawn. The elves of Nagarythe followed Aenarion into its shadow and into damnation. And the world was saved.
Perhaps because Aenarion was never told that his children were alive.
Many scholars think that once the Sword was drawn, Oakheart and those princes in his confidence were right to keep the knowledge of the children’s survival from Aenarion. They point out what happened to those elves who followed the Phoenix King, and what happened to Malekith who was to become known as the Witch King. By keeping the children apart from their father, they kept them safe from the Sword’s baleful influence.
And thus, from Yvraine, the elves of Ulthuan still have an Everqueen unsullied in her purity, for which we should all give thanks.
Perhaps those who kept the secret from Aenarion had other reasons. Scholars point out that given the ambitions that Morathi had for her son, Malekith, it is unlikely the children would have survived long in Nagarythe where they would easily have been within her grasp. Aenarion’s second wife has become famous for her knowledge of poisons, potions and malefic sorcery. Who knows how long Morelion and Yvraine would have lived had she known of their existence?
Whatever their reasons, by their actions, Oakheart and the princes ensured the survival of Aenarion’s line in two main branches – one line has given us all the succeeding Everqueens unto the present generation. The other line has blessed and cursed Ulthuan with many heirs of Aenarion’s brilliant, tainted blood. In part, they, like their great ancestor, have given the elves as much cause to curse them as to be grateful.
– Prince Iltharis, A History of the Blood of Aenarion.
DELETE ME
10th Year of the Reign of Finubar, Arathion’s Villa, Cothique
Tyrion sat on the edge of the wall of his father’s villa, legs dangling, enjoying the sense of danger. Behind him lay a twenty-foot drop and the one in front of him was even steeper, for the ground sloped away downhill. If he fell from here he might break a limb on the rock-strewn ground below.
The late winter sun burned bright in the clear blue sky. It was cold this high in the mountains of Cothique. His breath came out frosted and he felt the chill through the thin cloth of his tattered tunic and his patched woollen cloak. In the distance, he could see a troop of mounted figures riding up-slope towards the hilltop villa.
Strangers were rare in this part of Ulthuan. Very few people ever came to visit them. Most were passing hunters dropping off part of their kill as a tithe for hunting on his father’s lands. One or two were highland villagers who came to consult his father about a sickness in their family or on some minor matter of magic or scholarship.
Things had been different when his mother was alive, or so Thornberry claimed. The house had been busy then when his parents had arrived to occupy it for a summer season or two, escaping from the heat of the lowlands. Sorcerers and scholars from all over Ulthuan had come to visit it along with his mother’s rich relatives. People had liked his mother and were prepared to travel to even this remote place to visit her.
Tyrion was in no position to know. She had died during the difficult birth of himself and his brother and he had never known a world with her in it. There was one thing of which he was sure – none of the locals except his father could afford a horse, let alone a warhorse.
Tyrion’s eyes were keen as an eagle’s and he could see that the strangers were mounted on steeds even larger than his father’s, caparisoned in a way he had only seen illustrated in books. Most of them were carrying lances. He could not imagine what else that long pole with its fluttering pennon might be.
The truth was he did not want it to be anything else. He wanted them to be knights, glamorous warriors such as he and his brother were always reading about in their father’s old books. He wondered if this were somehow connected with his birthday, which was tomorrow, although his father appeared to have forgotten yet again. He felt somehow that it was. It seemed right.