This is very useful and fascinating. I particularly like the comparison with the three-brothers fairytale trope.

There are so few citations!! I already have included all of the ones you cite above in my up coming bio and I am not quite half done yet!

Thank you so very much for sharing this here. I do intend to quote from you and encourage others to read it.

Very good! Some of these points Dawn made in a similar way in her essay on this site, but you've got a different angle on them. Others are new to me.

Many, many years ago, I wrote an essay on Finarfin (it is in the References section here) that arrived at a similar conclusion, although it came from a more defensive place: At the time, Finarfin-the-wimp was a very common trope in Tolkienfic, and I was sick of it, believing the arguments that you advance here that Finarfin was actually a character of deliberate, considered, and courageous choices. In particular, his willingness to oversee a shattered people plunged into darkness--a natural disaster beyond anything we can imagine--doesn't suggest someone who was weak or traitorous or indecisive, but someone who was willing to take on a very difficult task without the side order of renown and glory that his brothers earned for themselves.

I loved the fairytale parallel, which I'd never thought of before. I agree with you that I doubt Tolkien chose and wrote this parallel intentionally, but it's wholly possible that it could have been on his mind (or in the back of his mind, where he wasn't fully aware of it but knew that the story clicked in a way that was very pleasing). I think you hit the nail on the head in noting the difference in endings: In "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien notes that it is not the similarities between stories that he finds interesting but the ways in which they differ and what that difference means. I agree with you that I think it has a lot of meaning here.

I've never interpreted the "high prince" remark as a slight to Finarfin; I assumed that the title went to the eldest son and heir. Since Finwe has two eldest sons by two different queens, it would belong to Feanor and Fingolfin but not Finarfin. The very fact that Melkor could so easily capitalize on Feanor's anxiety over the succession has always suggested to me that the Noldorin succession (if there even was such a thing, but I've always gone with the assumption that Finwe would one day wish to abdicate and pass his crown on to one of his children; this is one of the perils of trying to impose a medieval-style succession on an immortal people! :) wasn't unequivocally in Feanor's favor, that doubts had been raised over who should take over Finwe in the case of abdication (or perhaps that they should share the throne). In any case, that's always been the explanation I've assumed for why Finarfin seems apart from his brothers in the text.

Ultimately, I think that Finarfin represents values that were important to Tolkien and that are found throughout his work: The humble and the seeming small triumph. Even as I don't think he was without admiration for the Exiles and their "Northern courage" (quite the opposite, in fact), I also don't think that his value system would allow them to be anything but doomed or the allow the triumph of the forceful and the powerful while relegating Finarfin to the merely weak.

As you can hopefully tell by the length of this comment, this was a well done essay that made me think! :)

I love this essay! I'm a big Arafinwe fan and am sad that he doent get enogh love.