Indeed. There was another author who put Rúmil of Tirion through Angband pre-story, one who gave Denethor II of Gondor a badly deformed librarian for an OC sister, and then I made Andreth a sickly borderline-midget who in her last years loses her mobility as well. I was wondering where this impulse in all of us comes from (and had forgotten about the tradition of blind poets that tehta just mentioned, else I'd have cited that too).