Lee Smith is full of good ideas these days. Her latest is a graph of the characters in LotR who call each other by the familiar pronoun.

Her graph has caused me to reconsider an earlier opinion.  I once wrote a post in which I complimented Faramir on a slick linguistic move to seduce Éowyn.  The graph, though, shows that Faramir never switched from the formal to the familiar in anything he said to her.  Worse, he went even more formal: “I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will.”

I hadn’t realized this until I looked in the French translation.  During all their conversations in the Houses of Healing, franco-Faramir addresses Éowyn as “Madame”. (N.B. He’s 36 years old; she’s 24.) Then, as he makes his move, he ratchets it upwards. The highest level of formality, when talking to a feudal ruler, was to address them in the third person.  We have only echoes of that in American English; we get the feeling when someone says to the Queen, “as Her Majesty commands”.

So I’ve changed my opinion. Faramir is just role-playing his feudal-prince fantasies again. (We discussed this over at Olga’s joint, a while back.)  Not that I can blame him; Lee’s graph shows that Denethor never called his son “thou”, either.  Poor guy had no idea how to use pronouns.

Lines of familiar address by chapter