The Human Dress

This isn't a Commonweal story.  This is something Past Me wrote, and referred to as The Doorstop.
It's been said that everyone of a certain age who winds up writing fantasy in English has a response to The Lord of the Rings in them.
This book is mine.
It's about grief, duty, and royalty as responses to violation of the natural order.  Also adversity, social change, terrible sartorial choices, and an obscure literary revenge on Thomas Hardy.
The acts of vengeance taking place in the text aren't obscure at all.  Some people make Adversity very, very sorry it ever said anything.  Gruesome and terrible things happen.
There were giants in the earth in those days.