The White Council

Re: Gildor Inglorion

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : When Tolkien says "House of Finrod", doesn't he mean, "house of : : Finarfin", because Finrod was the original name for Finarfin, : : which, I believe, survived in the first printing of LOTR? And : : presumably, at that time, he didn't think of Inglor Felagund as : : necessarily being childless? So maybe it's just an : : inconsistency, which he failed to change.

: Maybe, but I feel he deliberately left the name unchanged.

: : Does anyone know how much the whole encounter with Gildor : : changed from it's first draft to the final version we see?

: That part of the book changed very little. Gildor's name was introduced only toward the end of the encounter as first written and Tolkien went back and added it in later. Gildor does mention that his people are related to the Elves of Rivdendell, which I think pretty much settles the issue of whether they were from Rivendell themselves.

: Gildor is a problem for many of us because we know the history of the name of the character now called Finrod Felagund. Until 1966 (11 years before THE SILMARILLION was published), Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod was probably indeed the son of Inglor Felagund -- but only in the most ephemeral sense.

: I say it was ephemeral because Tolkien began replacing occurrences of "Inglor" with "Finrod" in the "Grey Annals" (so named by Christopher in THE WAR OF THE JEWELS to distinguish them from the "Annals of Beleriand" composed in the 1930s). Tolkien began work on the "Grey Annals" soon after resuming work on the "Annals of Aman" (so named by Christopher in MORGOTH'S RING to distinguish them from the "Annals of Valinor", which were composed in the 1930s) in 1951. The decision to change Inglor's name to Finrod therefore appears to have been made before THE LORD OF THE RINGS was published, but somehow Tolkien didn't correct the references to the House of Finrod in the text.

: So, when the ACE unauthorized edition brought about the Second Edition of 1966, Tolkien changed "Finrod" to "Finarphir" (not "Finarfin" as occurs in THE SILMARILLION) wherever the princely family of Inglor was concerned, and he changed "Inglor" to "Finrod" to reflect that Elf's name change. But, I think, presented with the issue of Gildor's full name ("Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod"), Tolkien may have decided to leave well enough alone. At that time he was not sure of whether Finrod would have had any descendants or not.

: "The Shibboleth of Feanor", published in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH, is dated to 1968 by Christopher. By this time "Finarphir" (perhaps no more than a typo in the Second Edition) had been replaced by "Finarfin" and his eldest son was given the names "Findarato Ingoldo". The "Ingoldo" uses as a stem "Ing-" which seems to imply a kinship to the House of Ingwe (the Vanyar called themselves the "Ingweron", meaning the "Folk of Ingwe" and the "Ing-" stem seems to have been reserved to him and his relatives only).

: Christopher says that he drew upon the "Shibboleth" for help in preparing THE SILMARILLION for publication, although he was not entirely faithful to it (in fact, he was very unfaithful in some respects). But though the family of Finarfin is listed in detail which occurs nowhere else in any published source, Gildor doesn't appear among them -- not even as a postscript from the Second or Third Ages.

: Hence, I believe that Tolkien overlooked the name problem in the First Edition and simply moved to correct as much as he reasonably could in the Second Edition without altering the story too much.

: This would therefore mean that Gildor had to become an enigma, perhaps descended of another Elf called Finrod (use of the same names by Elven lords of the First Age is not without precedent). The "Shibboleth" says that after the death of Gil-galad Elrond was the last surviving male descendant of Finwe in Middle-earth. That is, of all the Finweans left in Middle-earth, only Elrond was male, not that Elrond was descended of a male line (his father was Earendil -- his descent from Finwe came through his paternal grandmother only).

: : Gil-galad was originally the son of Inglor. So the descent of the Gildor Inglorion of the First Edition might have been:

:

 :              Finwe = Indis :                    | :                 Finrod = Earwen :                        | :                     Inglor = Amarie :                            | :                    +-------+--------+ :                    |                | :                 Gil-galad        Galadriel :                    ? :                Gildor Inglorion : 

: The idea of Galadriel as a daughter of Inglor may strike some people as strange, but Christopher notes that his father did not decide Amarie had remained in Aman until the composition of the "Grey Annals". Hence, he had to do something with both Gil-galad and Galadriel.

: The placement of Gildor is questionable, but there are not many options. In the fourth draft for "The Tale of Years" (Appendix B to THE LORD OF THE RINGS -- referred to as "T4" by Christopher in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH), Tolkien included the following entry for year 10 of the Second Age:

:

 :   10 Foundation of the Grey Havens, and of the Kingdom of Lindon. :      This was ruled by Gil-galad son of Felagund, chief of all :      the Noldor who did not yet depart to Avallon. : 

: He says "son of Felagund", not "elder son", "only son", or "only descendant". So was Gildor at this time a son of Inglor or a son of Gil-galad? We can't tell.

: : In 1965 Tolkien wrote a note concerning the matter, and Gil-galad was then made the son of Orodreth, Inglor's brother, and Galadriel was made their sister. She remained in that position but Gildor dropped into limbo (assuming he was, in fact, ever conceived of as the son of either Inglor or Gil-galad).

: I should perhaps note that at the same time Orodreth was dropped from among the children of Finarfin and made a son of Angrod, one of the other brothers of Inglor and Galadriel. So the final family tree looks like:

:

 :              Finwe = Indis :                    | :                 Finarfin = Earwen :                        | :     +----------+-------+---------+-----------+ :     |          |                 |           | :   Finrod   Angrod = Edhellos    Aegnor   Galadriel = Celeborn :                   |                                | :                Orodreth = [unnamed Sindarin lady]  | :                         |                          | :               +---------+-------+                  | :               |                 |                  | :           Finduilas       Gil-galad                | :                                                Celebrian :              : 

: : The 1965 note reads as follows: :

 :   Finrod left his wife in Valinor and had no children in exile. :   Angrod's son was Artaresto, who was beloved by Finrod and :   escaped when Angrod was slain, and dwelt with Finrod.  Finrod :   made him his 'steward' and he succeeded him in Nargothrond. :   His Sindarin name was Rodreth (altered to :   Orodreth because of his love of the mountains .. ... :   His children were Finduilas and Artanaro = Rodnor later called :   Gil-galad.  (There mother was a Sindarin lady of the North. :   She called her son Gil-galad.)  Rodnor Gil-galad escaped and :   eventually came to Sirion's Mouth and was King of the Noldor :   there. : 

: The ellipsis (.. ...) represents a section Christopher could not read.

: Christopher says after presenting all this information that "there can be no doubt that this was my father's last word on the subject; but nothing of this late and radically altered conception ever touched the existing narratives, and it was obvioudly impossible to introduce it into the published Silmarillion. It would nonetheless have been very much better to have left Gil-galad's parentage obscure."

: I cannot agree with him on either point. Given the immense number of textual changes he introduced throughout the book, and considering that most of the family references consisted of lists of names, it should have been very easy to alter the text to conform to this latest definition of the family tree.

: Christopher also notes that Gil-galad originally referred to himself of the House of Finarfin in the letter he sent to Tar-Meneldur in "Aldarion and Erendis". The story was composed sometime around 1960-65 (the latest version was typed in January 1965 according to Christopher in UNFINISHED TALES, but in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH he suggest the story may date from around 1960). "A Description of the Isle of Numenor" comes from the same period. In both works J.R.R. Tolkien had called him "Finellach Gil-galad of the House of Finarfin" or "King Finellach Gil-galad of Lindon" respectively. Christopher's conclusion is that these stories predate the decision to make Gil-galad a great-grandson of Finarfin, but nonetheless shows he was indeed to be a member of that family for quite some time.

There are of course many possible interpretations of the phrase "Of the House of Finrod" - this, it should be noted, does not have the same explicit meaning as "Son of."

These include: Gildor was a relative by marriage (related to Edhellos, Earwen, Finrod's wife or Orodreth's wife); Gildor was unrelated or distantly related to Finrod, though he had been fostered or adopted by Finrod; Gildor was unrelated to Finrod but had been a retainer or courtier of Finrod and was merely claiming to be "Of the House[hold]" of Finrod.