An Essay on the Sons of Fëanor by clotho123

Introduction

‘fell unflinching  foes’

(The Lay of the Children of Húrin) 

They sweep across the history of the First Age: dangerous, doomed and continually ambivalent.  They are arguably the most long-standing foes of Morgoth; yet they make Morgoth’s victory easier by alienating and even killing his other enemies.  They are tough, maverick individuals; yet are bound to an Oath and a Doom beyond their control.  They differ widely in appearance, talents and characteristics; yet are continually linked together, bound by the legacy of a father long dead and although they will see, experience and suffer more than their father ever imagined still their lives remain shaped by his choices.  They will kill to regain the Silmarils; yet we do not know whether they even want them for themselves.  Above all there remains the continual uncertainty of how far they are villains and how far victims; whether their crimes are all their own, or the work of a force far stronger.

They are the Sons of Fëanor, whose powerful ambiguities prevent the battles of the First Age from being a straightforward tale of Good (Elves and Edain) versus Evil (Morgoth).  They are crucial to the history of the First Age: on the one hand the Doom placed on their house damns Beleriand; but on the other hand, although they are cursed that “To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well”, their most evil deeds will in the end rebound to cause the overthrow of Morgoth.  Yet for all their importance to events Tolkien pays little attention to their history for its own sake.  They weave in and out of the story, but the narrative never lingers on them long.  It seemed worth, therefore, pulling the disparate threads together and making a full examination of these most turbulent of Elves.  Maedhros, the steely survivor defeated at last by the Oath; elusive, shadowy Maglor and Caranthir; Celegorm and Curufin, so often the villains of the story; and Amrod and Amras, barely characters at all:  what overall do we know about them and their history and the Oath which bound them?

First, a few preliminaries.  This essay does not aim not to repeat or retell everything said about the sons of Fëanor in The Silmarillion.  It’s assumed that anyone reading this will be reasonably familiar with The Silmarillion already. The aim here is to put together an overview of The Silmarillion to see what sort of picture is created, whilst also including extracts from the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien’s great compendium of his father’s writings which contains many earlier and unfinished versions of the legends, as well as more or less obscure writings connected with the cycle of stories.   That a particular tale was not included by Christopher Tolkien in the published Silmarillion does not necessarily mean it had been abandoned; furthermore even stories which certainly had been abandoned by Tolkien can be illuminating. The way in which Tolkien worked also meant that there could be more than one version of a story existing at the same time, or the same story could be told at varying length; in particular he had two main (and frequently revised) outlines of his history up to the end of the First Age, one of which was a narrative summary and the basis of The Silmarillion as published, while the other took the form of detailed annals. Although the two were broadly similar they often differed in details, and one outline might contain elements the other did not, but both are prime sources for Silmarillion legends.  This essay therefore aims to include a wide range of information from the sources, even if that information is sometimes conflicting.

Tolkien made a number of changes to his characters’ names over the years, some major and some minor.  When quoting from the HOME I have kept minor differences of spelling, such as Maidros for Maedhros or Celegorn for Celegorm, but where the name was changed altogether, as in the replacement of Inglor by Finrod, I’ve chosen to substitute the familiar form in square brackets.  I have also followed the usual convention in distinguishing the work published as The Silmarillion by the use of italics; a reference to The Silmarillion without italics refers to the collection of legends as a whole.  Book and chapter references are included throughout the essay in square brackets, and a complete list of abbreviations used in the text can be found below.

List of Abbreviations

BLT1  = The Book of Lost Tales I (HOME I)

BLT2  = The Book of Lost Tales II (HOME II)

CH = The Children of Húrin

CT = Christopher Tolkien

L&C = Laws and Customs of the Eldar

LB = The Lays of Beleriand (HOME III)

Letters = The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

LOTR = The Lord of the Rings

LR = The Lost Road (HOME V)

HOME = The History of Middle-earth

MR = Morgoth’s Ring (HOME X)

PM = The Peoples of Middle-earth (HOME XII)

S = The Silmarillion

SM = The Shaping of Middle-earth (HOME IV)

UT = Unfinished Tales

VT 41 = Vinyar Tengwar Issue 41

WJ = The War of the Jewels (HOME XI)