The White Council

Re: Thingol's heir

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : The discssion below on the nature of Dior's legal relationship to Thingol deserves comment.

: : Lines of succession among the Eldar and other races ran to male heirs by way of male descent. Daughters were not heirs, and neither was a son of a sister or a daughter.

: Except, of course,1) that Dior is called Thingol's heir in places ("Elwing...daughter of Dior, Thingols heir..."), note the punctuation making this descriptive of function not a name. Also Dior himself states "...I am the heir of King Elwe...". 2)Idril Celebrindal, Turgon's daughter, is refered to as Turgon's heir. 3) Maeglin, son of Aredhel, sister of Turgon, is implied to at least have the possibility of being Turgon's heir.

I've been thinkning more on this. I'm going to assume the Tolkien was using the word "heir" more in the legal sense than in the more modern generic sense. An heir is simply a person who gets something due to a death by operation of law. This contrasts with a person who gets somthing due to a death by choice (the most obvious example is by a will).

Not all things pass the same way by operation of law. For example, IIRC, under older English common law, real property passed differently than personal property. Thus, land would only go to sons not to daughters or to wives. And where there was more than one son, the eldest received all land. On the other hand, there was no discrimination, sexual or age-wise, with respect to the passing of personal property.

I suspect that elvish inheritance of the crown was similar to this. The right to rule, the crown, passed similarly to how real property passed - to the eldest male of the line.

The Luthien question now arises. What if there is an intervening only daughter who has a son? I suspect the english common law works as did the succession of Dior. The fact that a male issue of Thingol existed was enough to avoid the crown passing to a collateral line. I also suspect that females could inherit land (and the crown) when there were no other direct male heirs.

There is an important point to make. Celeborn would not have been an heir so long as any issue, male or female, of Thingol was alive. This is so for the personal property because females could inherit this. However, it would also be true for the crown because Thongol himself did not inherit from anybody. Thingol was the *first*. For example, had Thingol's father been the first king of Doriath, then upon the failure of his line it could have shifted to Elmo's line.

Russ