The Making of "We Band of Brothers"

Paola Cartoceti

The actual "making of" is pretty straightforward. Fanfic author is unhappy. She grabs the closest of her favourite characters within reach, reduces him to an emotional wreck and feels much better. A new fanfic is born. The end. While I was writing I was also watching "Band of Brothers", which has quite similar themes (comradeship and comfort in extreme situations) and touches me greatly; hence the wildly imaginative title. Add that I'm reading Beowulf and other Nordic texts, and this accounts for the unabashed sentimentalisms of "dear head" and "bereaved breast" and all that. Actually, in the end, it sounds involuntarily more like Frodo and Sam, but I was greatly inspired by a passage of "The Wanderer" (translation by T. Romano: have fun with the Old English original):
When misery and sleep
mixed together
ally to afflict
the unfortunate exile
it seems to him
that he hold and kiss
his lord and master
and lay upon knee
hands and head
as he had done
in times past
at the taking of gifts.
Or Tolkien's own "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth":
It's only plain language. If a poet sang you:
"I bowed my head on his breast beloved,
and weary of weeping woeful slept I;
thus joined we journeyed, gentle master
and faithful servant, over fen and boulder
to his last resting and love's ending",
you would not call it cruel.
Quite a learned background for our humble dabblings in H/C. The ancient feudal custom of swearing fealty to a lord by putting one's hands inside his also came into play in my fanfic.

But part of the inspiration for this story is, of course, the tall blond armoured and cloaked soldier talking to Gandalf when Faramir comes back from Osgiliath and later bringing the wounded Faramir to his father during the siege in PJ's ROTK. I drew mainly from the book for the timeline (one whole night between Faramir's return and his departure for Osgiliath) but I see in my mind David Wenham's Faramir, and the unnamed officer as his countepart in the dialogue. The guy is good H/C material. OK, but if I put him in a fanfic I can't get away all the time with "Ah, you jester, I have missed you" or "Mind your words, soldier." What is his name?

He is played by Ian Hughes, who thankfully has a precise identity and physical existence. (Mr. Hughes, if you happened here while Googling for your name, congratulations for your performance!) Let's start from here. According to early rumours, Hughes was to play Beregond, the guard who befriends Pippin along with his son Bergil. But Beregond, by his own admission, is a simple guard, while Hughes' character is someone more important, judging from his nice cloak. In the credits of the movie he is listed as Irolas. This would have been fine, if I had not had a temporary dimensional displacement at reading that name, or simply a fit of irritation at PJ. In the book, Iorlas is the name of Beregond's brother or brother-in-law, and though Tolkien says of him only that he is 29, nothing would prevent him from being an officer of the city guard; so why on earth did not PJ just call the guy IORLAS instead of IROLAS? (See also Faramir's ill-fated old sergeant in Osgliliath, MADRIL, *almost* named after Steward MARDIL). But I'm a humble philologist, a bit like Tolkien was, so if Irolas is called Irolas in the end titles, I must not presume to correct this version of the Saga. All fine, then, it's official, The guy's name is Irolas, I can use it in the story... OK?

No! Fate has one last card to deal! Quite literally: his Decipher card, offering us Irolas's fair countenance, lists him as - ta dah! - IMRAHIL, PRINCE OF DOL AMROTH. Poor Iorlas (spelled this way) is reduced to common Orc fodder.

I can understand why this choice. Irolas looks noble and kind, he fits Imrahil's shoes perfectly, he also does a bit of what Imrahil does in the book. There are just two problems. First: he wears the Minas Tirith White Tree on his chest, not the Dol Amroth Swan. Second: I don't need Faramir's UNCLE on the ramparts with him in my fanfic! It would change the way they relate to each other. Irolas, though he could be a very fit fiftysomething Elvish-blooded prince (the age can be found in the genealogies in History of Middle Earth, I think), feels like a peer of Faramir to me, despite the difference in rank: a comrade, and of course a brother. Faramir unconsciously looks at the armoured and cloaked Irolas and sees Boromir as he last saw him in Osgiliath. It may sound banal and stereotyped, but it was unconscious for me too. I realized it fully halfway into the tale, while Faramir looks at Irolas inside the guardroom, and played on it.

Anyway, Fate can deal all the cards she wants, but I have the ultimate weapon - Ian Hughes' own word! Assuming it's him writing on The White Council; but come on, who would pretend to be Irolas? And he uses Irolas as his username. This clinches it. The officer in my fanfic is Irolas, period. There is a website about Bogans, a short movie Hughes made with other LOTR actors, where he is always listed as Irolas. (Apart for one instance where he is called Beregond. Not listening, not listening.)

Were it not that my affections are already engaged by the unlucky Captain of Gondor, Irolas could be the McKay of LOTR: little screen time but a lot to discover. In the fanfic, I thought of him as the young pre-war McKay, whose main worries were 1) Army, 2) Girls and 3) Pa and Ma, the kind of nice and simple man to try and cheer up someone with soup and companionship, before his own clean "sword cuts" turned into "festering gangrene" and he became somebody in need of cheering up himself. I don't think Irolas will go this way, supposing he survives the siege and does not die some gruesome death in the ROTK EE, though Hughes said mostly all the material he shot went into the finished movie. There may be more H/C to be written, however, about him and his beloved lord. I'm surprised more hasn't been done by fans about this character, but probably they are still trying to decide who he is.