Prince Imrahil was a happy camper. He was alive, the Enemy had been defeated, and he was at the Cormallen Camp with two bachelor Kings. And chummy with them both. Immediately after the decision to head for Cormallen had been made he summoned his 19 y/o daughter Lothiriel. Travelling by ship she arrived in just over a week of travel after receiving the letter. A ship might be slower than a horse, but it made the same speed all day and all night and was thus ultimately faster.
After he had presented his female offspring to Aragorn he had been full of hope for an union. The northerner had smiled at the girl, treated her courteously and complimented her on her looks and wits. However, afterwards he had drawn Imrahil aside for a joint wee at a camp fire. Accompanied by the hiss of the hot liquid on the flaming wood and red-hot embers Aragorn's words were blunt:
"Listen, dude. My family has been trying to marry me off for the last sixty five years. I know matchmaking when I see it and I'm not taking any of this shit. Sod off or I'll get nasty. The kid doesn't deserve it, huh?".
His attention then turned to Eomer. Middle Men and all that notwithstanding, a king was a king and a Good Match for any girl. He was now having doubts as to the suitability of such an alliance, however. During the day the Rohirr's behaviour towards Lothiriel was beyond reproach – they took walks, he rowed her around in a boat, he listened to her sing, play an instrument or delivery poetry in Westron, Sindarin and the Old Tongue, and so on and so forth. Nonetheless the king's of the Mark enthusiasm for gathering experience on how to pleasure his future, virginal wife was a bit too much. Needing something from the tall blond the Prince of Dol Amroth had tracked the Rohirr outside the camp and walked upon Eomer while he was dallying with several tarts and was invited "to join the fun!". Naturally Men had urges which they needed to satiate, this being their right, but to the Gondorian aristocrat's taste Eomer seemed to be taking too much after his stud Firefoot. A gentleman was supposed to be discrete ...
Twice bitten and thrice shy Imrahil turned down all suitors and all and any requests for his daughter's hand in marriage. This earned him the wrath of his sister Ivriniel. His sister held very strong views on all possible subjects, one being that for a girl past fifteen the married state was the natural state. Very vocally and persistently Ivriniel pressed the point that Imrahil was denying his daughter her natural rights, that he was cruelly depriving her of the joys of being pregnant every other year. In wedlock, of course, as otherwise such a condition was unthinkable.
Fearful of being left on the shelf Lothiriel took matters into her own slender and dainty fingers and eloped with Delgaranor, the swashbuckling captain of The Yellow Peril, an Umbarian reefer hauling bananas from Harad to Gondor - and lived happily ever after.
