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In the quiet before the storm in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, a man who would be king meets a daughter who can never wear such a crown. The man is Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), son of Arathorn, and the lady is Éowyn (Miranda Otto), niece of the Rohan’s aged and infuriated monarch. They both come from great lineage, with Aragorn even praising Éowyn as being “a daughter of kings” and a shieldmaiden of Rohan. But as the hour grows late, and a foul threat blows from the south, Éowyn’s pride knows no joy.
“Women of this country learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them,” she intones.
It is one of the best lines in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and it’s taken straight from Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s text. When considered by itself, this is a grim yet strangely noble assertion that teases out a bloody past on the great plains roamed by the Riders of the West. But now, thanks to the first gorgeously animated trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim, we see just what that past was like for those with—and without—swords.
Directed by legendary Japanese anime talent Kenji Kamiyama, whose career includes working on Akira and directing several Ghost in the Shell series, The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim is based on several salient crumbs left by Professor Tolkien in Lord of the Rings’ famously trenchant appendices about the beginning of King Théoden’s family line and the founding of Helm’s Deep. Yet what might surprise viewers of the trailer is how crucial the hitherto unnamed daughter of Helm Hammerhand is in the fateful war of the Rohirrim. But rest assured that she too has deep roots in Tolkien’s text.
Voiced by Gaia Wise in the film, Hèra is revealed to be Helm’s daughter, a character who figured prominently in Tolkien’s appendices. As depicted in the trailer, the daughter of the king becomes the central prize of contention among men when Freca, a powerful warlord who claimed royal lineage, but who was likely descended from the Dunlending men of Dunland (a realm neighboring Rohan), arrived in Edoras in the year T.A. 2754—roughly 300 years before the events of the Lord of the Rings films.
Edoras is the same hilltop castle from The Two Towers, and there Freca demands the hand in marriage of the king’s daughter. He wishes to marry her to his own son Wulf. What we know from Tolkien is that instead of accepting this political arrangement, Helm Hammerhand instead insulted Freca, and eventually took it outside where the aptly named Hammerhand hit Freca so hard, the Dunlending man died from the blow.
The war which soon followed would reshape the kingship in Rohan and lead to a conflict so bloody, Helm would be forced to erect an impenetrable fortress… Helm’s Deep. It’s the same place where Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and even Théoden and Éowyn made a final stand against the forces of Isengard. The War of the Rohirrim movie seems intent on tracking the build-up to that conflict while expanding the role of Helm’s unnamed daughter into a leading role.
This is smart. First of all, it brings into the spotlight the irony, or horror, of a war beginning because one strongman demanded another to marry off his daughter as if she was so much grain or livestock to be traded. The wishes of Hèra—-or even her name—entered the minds of none of these leaders, or even perhaps their creator. But in the film, we will see Hèra be an ancestor at least in spirit to Éowyn. In so doing, she will give further weight to what it means to be a shieldmaiden of Rohan and why the women of this country learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them.
“I pledge to fight for my king,” Hèra proclaims. And when she is told she knows nothing of war, she can counter, like Arwen from another generation, “I am the fastest rider you have.”
It would seem The War of the Rohirrim will fill out one of the darker chapters of Rohan’s history while also unpacking the emotional and patriarchal complexities that a simple summary leaves out. It’s an approach that serves modern fantasy writers, like, say, George R.R. Martin, quite well. But it also still visually looks like a stunning work of anime faintly reminiscent of the sweeping Japanese animation epics of the 1980s and ‘90s. It seems to retain Tolkien’s sensibility, too, with an emphasis on strange creatures in the bogs and a world founded on honor, courage, and pursuing justice even in the face of overwhelming odds.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim opens on Dec. 13.
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