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Thorin Oakenshield has never been in love.
He has never felt the fluttering of butterflies in his stomach, the racing heartbeat, the breathless giddiness of infatuation. He has never felt a blazing in his heart or… elsewhere. He has never felt a trace of attraction, to any dwarf, of any gender.
There are many reasons for this. First of all, he’s the king. His duties are endless: treaties to broker with the local Men, mines to oversee, threats both outside and inside his people to thwart. Second of all, he’s an uncle. He has two dwarflings to raise. Fili and Kili are handfuls on their own; together, they are a force of nature. Dis would struggle to raise them by herself. Of all his duties, this is his most pressing, his most precious. It, conveniently, consumes all his spare time.
One day, while Dis and Fili have gone to the market and Thorin is watching Kili, the lad puts down his wooden horses and turns to him as though the thought just occurred. “Uncle Thorin, why don’t you have a wife?”
Thorin blinks, pipe halfway to his lips. What sort of question is that? Such a young lad, not even ten, and already Kili is thinking about romance? He tries to deflect: “Why would I need a wife when I have you and Fili to care for?”
Unappeased, Kili straightens. “Then why don’t you have a husband? Or a partner?”
Under his peering eyes, Thorin finds himself scrutinized in a way he doesn’t exactly know how to process. In Kili’s words, he hears the echo of his people’s whispers: Why doesn’t Thorin have a partner yet? Is it not his duty to further the royal line? Yet it feels more insistent and prodding from the mouth of his sister-son.
Slowly, he says, “I have no interest in a partner.”
Kili studies him a moment longer, and Thorin squirms. The truth in his statement, the depth of its resonance, bewilders him. Not only does he feel no desire, he has no desire for desire. He has so many loved ones around him that a One would add very little. It is so simple. Yet it seems so odd, when the words come out of his mouth.
To his relief, the lad returns to his game, leaving Thorin chewing the stump of his pipe, unsettled.
Dwarves are no strangers to lacking interest in marriage. Though many dwarves marry, either to a different gender or the same gender, many simply choose to not take partners. Instead, they devote themselves to their craft. Thorin believes the same for himself: he chooses the love of his people over love of any One. But he is king, not only a craftsman, though he labors as a smith in the villages of Men. The question begins to chase him: Why don’t you have a partner? His answer, his haunting answer, whispers back: I do not want one.
Why?
It could be, he thinks, because of Erebor. Dragonfire and screams fill his nightmares even decades later. Those memories haunt his days: the glint of cruel greed in his grandfather’s eyes; his father vanishing into a horde of orcs (missing? Where is he?); his precious brother lying silent and bloodied against a tree; the smell of burnt flesh; the suffering of his people breaking even his rock-hewn soul into dust. Have these horrors driven from him the ability to feel such affection? To look into another dwarf’s eyes and feel, Yes, they are my One? Is he too broken to love?
But when he’s drinking with Dwalin, when his best friend jokes easily with him, there’s this warmth like hot beer after a winter’s journey. When he listens to Balin tell tales of Erebor in its glory days, there’s a deep softness like sinking into a feather pillow. With Dis, sharing one of those wry, tired, understanding looks over Fili and Kili’s heads, there’s admiration and care stronger than mithril. And of course, with his little nephews, there’s a bright joy like sunshine after a storm. He loves them. No matter how difficult it is to express it, it lives in his heart, deeper than the roots of the mountains. He loves. So why has he never been in love?
No one has ever shown an interest, he thinks. Then he realizes that, short of kissing him or asking to bed him, he is not entirely sure what interest looks like. Girlar, a friend from Erebor days, once asked him out for drinks. He leaned close to Thorin in the crowded tavern, a warm smile on his lips—Thorin can’t tell whether that was friendship, or beckoning: Come and kiss me. When one of Dis’s friends, Maet, chooses a seat next to him at a social gathering and speaks primarily to him the whole evening, he doesn’t know if she wants to be…closer.
Mahal’s beard, I hope not, he finds himself thinking.
Truly, when the talk turns to… that, around campfires or over drinks, Thorin finds an excuse not to engage. He’ll sit through boastful stories (admittedly, letting his thoughts drift elsewhere), but when it becomes suggestions, he wants to leave. This obsession seems to lurk in the back of everyone’s minds at all times. He meets Nori in prison, and the young thief’s first words to him are, “Come to take me to your bed or to finally free me from the filthy grasp of your little toy soldiers?” Only years of concealing emotions keeps Thorin from exposing his discomfort, his bone-deep revulsion. Maybe he is a prude, like Dis has said—like many dwarves have. But he does not care what his people do in private. He just wants no part in it.
Why don’t you want a partner?
It worsens as his sister-sons grow up. He’s proud of them, and he loves them so, but still. Now they’re closer to the age where such things are often on their minds—for themselves, and for him. Kili doesn’t say it directly, but Thorin knows the lad thinks he needs a partner, even a one-night bedfellow, to “loosen up.” Fili has hinted he wouldn’t mind another aunt, uncle, or unty. Dis drops gentle hints he should try to get to know some of the dwarves around him better. He knows they are all tired of him directing the lads to Dis for answers about topics with which he has no experience.
Why, when even Mahal himself has a wife, don’t you want a partner? The question becomes a constant dull roar, a blade in his side, a mocking voice in his ear. What is wrong with you? Why, even for the sake of duty, could he not take a partner, pretend to be happy? He despairs. Is this his fate—to be a lonely king of a Lonely Mountain?
And yet….
Is he truly lonely? His nephews make him laugh; Dwalin and Balin and Dis are steady presences at his side; he meets more and more of his people—merchants and miners, tinkers and toymakers, and from them makes more dear friends. He is alone, but only in one sense. He is poor in one area, yet his riches outnumber the coffers of Erebor in all the others. He is happy, as much as he can be here in exile.
Mahal’s beard, is it dragon sickness? Is it a lust for gold which drowns his longing for romance?
Yet during the quest, he feels desire for neither. Even when he gets to know their their burglar—quiet, fussy, earnest, and brave Mr. Baggins, who is like no one Thorin has ever met—he feels little more than deep respect, trust, and care (as though that could be called little ). And he feels love. Yes, love. But in Thorin’s own way, on his own terms, without romance or desire.
Not even the dragon sickness can change that. It tries. It buries him beneath a deep desire for treasure; for a while, nothing delights him but the shine of gold. Yet he defeats it, and all the old love rushes back like water held behind a dam. But no romantic love appears. When he lies dying with Bilbo at his side, all he feels is friendship, kin-love, love of his people.
It is enough , he thinks. It has always been enough.