Discussion Characters / TheSilmarillion

Ok, I removed one entry from Celegorm's sheet and took it to the YMMV page. This is what I'm referring to:

• Token Evil Team Mate: Celegorm, even more so than Curufin. Like his brother, Celegorm craved power over his oath, but was also a sadistic brute to the point where he was one of the few elves who ever tried to commit rape. And while Tolkien at least made a belated effort to give his brother a Pet the Dog moment, he never tried to make Celegorm anything other than a thuggish monster.

And this is what I added:

• Alternative Character Interpretation Steps in once more. The rape part of the above is heavily contested. Celegorm wanted to marry Lúthien, but it's not said if he wanted to force her to have sex with him against her will, or if he was simply arrogant enough to believe that Lúthien would come to see his merits. Also, "sadistic brute" and "thuggish monster" sound inappropriate descriptions of someone who was the personal friend of Oromë to the point Oromë gave him a precious gift, who had the friendship and loyalty of Huan all until the moment he tried to make Lúthien marry him, and who was the personal close friend of Aredhel to the point that she seeked out him rather than her own brother when she left Gondolin. Not to mention the man liked animals, which is a very positive personal trait in any character.

I also confess to making myself guilty of discussion on the trope page by adding a Alternative Character Interpretation note to claims of Curufin being or wanting to be a Big Bad. Perhaps that should be removed to the YMMV page too. Or Alternative Character Interpretation should be listed under Celegorm and Curufin and these varying interpretations should be mentioned under them.

So, I had more time so I expanded on the previous.

I brought the Token Evil Team Mate trope back to Celegorm's character entry, as it's without a doubt a correct trope for him. However, I changed the highly subjective trope description into something more neutral and factual.

I also took out Big Bad from Curufin's entry and instead added Alternative Character Interpretation entries for both Curufin and Celegorm, where I brought up the potential interpretations suggested for them, including the possibility that Celegorm wanted to rape Lúthien. Plus I made some further additions and certain minor changes to smoothen out these problematic entries, mainly to make them more objective and diversified.

Naturally, I'm saying this myself, but I find the made alterations fair and in keeping with high wiki quality standards. If someone wants to move the Alternative Character Interpretation tropes to the YMMV page, go ahead, but I rather wish you won't - I fear it will enable an edit war to happen here, or at least lead into debate on the main page.

Alternative Character Interpretation by default goes on the YMMV tab.

I see. Well, if the topics discussed under them creep back into the character page I'll just have to negotiate it with the other troper.

I do not think the intent was to flame Celegorm or even use Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil to imply dislike. However, you are right; for reference, the passage is in "Laws and Customs among the Eldar" in Morgoth's Ring.

Sorry if I over reacted, but it seriously pisses me off when rape is used lightly. Wanting to force Lúthien into marrying him was work of a true master class Jerkass, but it speaks more of him being arrogant enough to think Lúthien would want him for being oh so awesome son of Fëanor, and less of him lacking the morals to respect her right to govern her own body.

Also in the same entry it was claimed Celegorm lacks any redeeming qualities. But the same Celegorm is good friends with Aredhel (is willing to acknowledge a girl as an equal partner in masculine hobbies), likes animals and in Valinor used to be friends with Oromë, who should have some taste.

Also removed claims of rape from Eöl's sheet. Eöl didn't rape Aredhel. First of all, as explained above Tolkien said no Elf has ever raped anyone. Secondly, if someone would have tried to rape Aredhel she wouldn't have lived to tell the tale, but her soul would have departed her body and passed to Mandos. Thirdly, it's said in the Silmarillion that she was not originally wholly unwilling to live with Eöl. Had he raped her, she wouldn't have felt that way. Eöl seduced her (possibly with magic) and then prevented her from leaving when she wished to.

I don't know whether Eöl raped Aredhel, but History of Middle-earth is not Canon, as it was not published by Tolkien himself. For a character page for The Silmarillion, the primary question is what is backed up (or not) by the text of The Silmarillion.

The Silmarillion is not published by Tolkien himself... Only books published by him are Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Everything outside them is a wilderness of grey areas of canon.

The Silm is an artifical product put together (somewhat clumsily) by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay from the gigantic mess Tolkien left behind. Ho ME are the (massive) leftovers of leftovers that Chris chose not to include for editorial reasons. There's nothing making the Silmarillion more "real" than Ho ME, because Chris is not his father, quite the opposite:

- Chris only included in the Silmarillion (some of the) writings that are in the form of fictional stories. But those are only small part of everythung that Tolkien wrote. He also produced poetry, and philosophical, historical and linguistic essays. None of them are included in the Silmarillion because that is not the purpose of the Silmarillion, but that doesn't make them any less real. In the earlier part of his life Tolkien wrote much of what are the actual stories of Middle-Earth. But in the later part of his life he concentrated more on pondering the linguistic, philosophical and such questions, putting his thoughts into essays. Are these less important or less relevant because Chris chose publish them in Ho ME instead of the Silm? Of course not. They just serve a different purpose, just like Silm and Ho ME serve a different purpose.

- Chris has admitted himself that Silmarillion does not represent Tolkien's final will in all matters, it's just his best shot at getting some of the original tales published. For example, Chris has said Tolkien most certainly intended his final vision of Galadriel's tale to be the real one and to edit the Silmarillion accordingly, but he died before he had time to do that.

- At some points he even outright screwed up, such as making Gil-Galad Fingon's son, when he's really of the House of Finarfin.

The real differenrce between Silm and Ho ME is not that Silm is somehow more canon, but that Ho ME doesn't try to pretend there would exist any uniform canon. Tolkien's imagination was vivid and his thoughts changed constantly. Just like the Middle-Earth doesn't really exist, any one canon doesn't really exist, only sparkles of a genious mind.

As far as I'm concerned, I respect Tolkien the way I see best: only texts born out his pen that are not canon are those that have new, contradicting material replacing the original ideas. Tolkien very certainly intended that the Elves do not rape anyone, and just because this philosophical essay didn't make it into Christopher's edit doesn't make it any less Tolkien's will.

I see. But it's still a character page of The Silmarillion. And as Tolkien never published his essay that states that elves cannot rape, there is also no need to accept it as more canonical than the Silmarillion.

I'm not against including information from other sources (Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth etc) on this page, but it's a fact that there are many contradictions in the posthumously published works of J. R. R. Tolkien (both towards each other and towards the pre-humous works). So rather than try to create a "canonical" version on the wiki (whis is bound to fail), we should just acknowledge the contradictions where they exist.

I consulted The Silmarillion about Eöl and Aredhel. Aredhel only got lost in Nan Elmoth because of Eöl's magic. On the other hand the marriage was, initially, consenual. The text is very compressed, but it seems sufficiently clear that Aredhel did not realize that he was the cause of her troubles from which he had seemingly saved her. In short, he manipulated her and only showed his true face after the marriage.

Can't say anything about Celegorm or Maeglin attempting or planning rape.

First, Maia Maiden chill out. Seriously. There is no reason to have a shouting fight over something so trivial.

Second, let me first point out "Quendi and Eldar" which explicitly states that Eol "took [Aredhel] to wife by force." (War of the Jewels p. 409) "Marriage" is the same thing as sex for elves (see "Laws and Customs"). "By force" is quite explicit.

Third, I recall "Laws and Customs of the Eldar" draft A stated that elves die if raped, although that was immediately crossed out and didn't make it into B. I recall no text categorically saying no elves ever rape anyone. Where did you read that?

Lastly, there can't be an objective "canon" when the books were posthumously edited together from scraps. This character page explicitly includes information from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and History — we're just supposed to make note of it if two sources contradict each other.

Please don't delete something without at least discussing it (as Filby did below), even if it contradicts something else on the page. I am restoring the deleted passages, with references/citations to their sources and noting the other version as well.

Oookay... tbh I was reluctant to come back because I expected a huge outburst from you guys.

The question of what is canon in the Legendarium is hardly trivial, but something that often pops up and needs to be established in the community discussing it. So... that's what I was trying to do in the latest post.

As for the original shouting (of which I've calmed down ages ago, and which I didn't continue in my later detailed explanation of what I understand to be the relationship between Silm and Ho ME), it was because I felt insulted by what seemed to me an attempt to use the rape card to flame characters that can at best be only suspected of rape, instead of committing it for certain. And yes, that's not trivial either, and it happens again and again in many fandoms I'm part of. I might have been mistaken in this particular case, of course, as people so often mistake each others intention here on the net where we can't see each other's faces and hear each other's voices.

But in my opinion, accusations this heavy should be thrown around only with the best of evidence. Aredhel marrying Eöl "not wholy unwillingly" most certainly doesn't qualify, nor does Huan guarding Lúthien's door. I've always just thought Celegorm ordered Huan to guard the door to prevent any escape attempts by Lúthien.

Also, I think when one looks at the whole picture it's quite clear what kind of moral code Tolkien had, and what he wanted to express with his characters. Tolkien loved mythology, but he was displeaced by the moral code - including the sexual moral code - impilicated in pre-Christian mythos. He went through the effort of writing an essay about how Elves never commit adultery nor rape (yes Arcades Sabboth, I indeed remember that exact mention, though I don't own the book so I can't check it - perhaps somebody can help?), and he never wrote anything that would contradict it either. The whole Finwë-Míriel-Indis tragedy is a huge discussion about the morality of second marriages, something that must have ment a lot for a devout Roman-Catholic like Tolkien.

I'm not saying that every Tolkien fan should share his moral opinions - I would green light Finwë and Indis in a heart beat - but that respecting his will when it comes to his characters is the least we can do for a man who gave us this whole mythology. I just feel it's disrespectful towards Tolkien to make his characters rapists, that's all.

Of course I understand that 90 % or so of the fanfiction is romantic/erotic and that people write fics as they please, but I'm not fighting a war against fanfiction, just guarding (my understanding of) the canonical characterization from being too much influenced by fanon.

Oh, and I'm not shouting this, I'm perfectly calm and in quite a good mood actually - it's great to discuss Tolkien with such depth. Just saying, so that nobody feels attacked. :)

(Or perhaps I'm just traumatized by Narnia "fans" who make all the Pevensie children have homosexual underage incestuous sex, or have children born out of incestuos relationships. When a few were reminded that Lewis would have a stroke if he ever read it, they just laughed at him and said they don't need to care about opinions of closed minded old bores - even though that same closed minded old bore created the characters and the verse for them in the first place. Urgh. I could tell other stories, too. Even of fans claiming that their version of the characters is actually TRUER than the original canonical characterization, as in, their fanfiction should be regarded as the REAL characterization. >.<)

As I mentioned below, I think Tolkien also intended Middle-Earth to be a fictional reality distinct from his own opinions. I don't think that a fan of the legendarium must necessarily say that their own interpretations are invalid, because mythology is a consensus exercise by default.

Maia Maiden, I will quote the whole sentence from "Quendi and Eldar" for clarity. The "by force" is not my merely interpretation but is explicit in the text. Saying that JRRT was wholly against this interpretation requires you to dismiss/ignore his actual statements as Fanon Discontinuity. Which is fine, you can't have a self-consistent Arda without a ton of Fanon Discontinuity, but that's irrelevant to the content of this Characters/ page.

"Quendi and Eldar" (written Nov 1959 - Mar 1960 by J. R. R. Tolkien), History of Middle-earth Volume XII, The War of the Jewels, p. 409 (hardcover, tradeback):

And I doubt that the man who murdered his wife while trying to poison his son was held up by Tolkien as a moral paragon. Also bear in mind the context of this sentence is a paragraph describing the ways in which some Dark Elves were less than morally upstanding, going on to cite Maeglin and Saeros.

Of your recollection that elves are incapable of committing adultery or rape: do you remember at all where you read it? Possibly I own the book and can look it up. If you're thinking of "Laws and Customs," I'm pretty sure you're mis-remembering (I'm checking it now).

Edit: I've got the part of "Laws and Customs" you're probably remembering (HOME vol. X p. 228). It states that "The Eldar [here apparently all Elves/Quendi] wedded once and for all. ... there is no record of any among the Elves that took another's spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life..." So here Elves do not rape married Elves; presumably don't commit adultery at all. It doesn't actually say anything about unlawful marriages inflicted on an unwilling but unwed elf. (This is an endnote to the passage that states "marriage" for Elves is accomplished solely by bodily union, aka. sex.)

But regardless, Tolkien contradicts himself a lot in the unpublished/unfinished writings. The Characters page says right on it, contradiction doesn't mean you have to remove something. So if "Laws and Customs" or whatever contradicts "Quendi and Eldar," it does not matter. This Characters/ page doesn't establish any book as more Canon than another.

And I would be more surprised at those who aren't traumatized by incest slash fics. Why did you subject yourself to that? *shudder*

As for Maeglin, Celegorm, etc. I do not recall any passage stating they were planning rape. My interpretation is that Maeglin could have intended nothing else, since he expressely set out to murder Tuor and Eärendil, and Morgoth had offered to let him possess Idril. I don't know what else that could mean.

Edit: Yes, that would appear to contradict "Laws and Customs," hmmm.

Edit: My post here was somewhat caustic, because I took Arcades' post above as directed at me. I edited it to take out the vitriol.

The points I made were these:

The Silmarillion was edited and published by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, so it may be considered a book with several authors rather than authored by JRR Tolkien only. Its plus is that it is a finished, fairly consistent work, while the collections of manuscripts published in The History of Middle-Earth and Unfinished Tales are neither.

If you don't premise that J.R.R. Tolkien is the only source of Middle Earth "facts", then there isn't any reason to consider The Silmarillion as less "valid" than any other Middle Earth work. This is a page about characters from The Silmarillion, not "Characters by J.R.R. Tolkien".

The line at the top is not an universal solution to the page purpose conflict. I have doubts that whoever put it there bothered to get a consensus from the wiki first.

But I already said that I am okay with including additional material from Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle Earth here. But I am against the additional material overruling the Silmarillion material. If you really want to create a "synoptic" version of the history of Arda, then the page would be better at home at Characters.Tolkiens Legendarium instead.

My suggestion is to use the Silmarillion as the primary basis of this page, and treat the other works as sources of subsidiary information where it isn't too much of a stretch, and with a specification of the work referenced.

My chief concern is that the page does not become impossible to edit or to follow for someone who has only read The Silmarillion. You should not have to have read the History of Middle-Earth to be able to contribute to this page.

As for the various "[intended] rape or not" cases discussed above: I think the assumption that there is a "true" answer that can be unearthed is wrong. Tolkien himself may not have had an answer to these questions.

Whoa! No I am not saying any of that. Now you're strawmanning me way out of proportion.

I did not add the thing at the top of the page saying material from multiple books was included in it. I'm just pointing out that it is the way many editors have been editing this page for a while. I had (mis?)taken it for a consensus, so I thought we had to go with it. If you think it's silly or confusing, that's a separate conversation, but I wasn't even justifying it, just pointing out that it's been this way for a while now.

I didn't actually object to the fact you deleted that stuff, since it hadn't been written clearly in the first place. I was mostly responding to Maia Maiden's claims about what appears to be total Fanon.

I never said people should not add things to the page, or that only certain people can edit it. And I don't worship anybody nor did I say The Silmarillion is not valid. I have no reason to say any of that. Where are you getting this? Total straw man, putting words in my mouth that don't resemble my intention at all.

I was only objecting to A. the yelling, which I now realize had ended before I posted. B. adding Fanon ("rape is impossible") that a fan just made up, which isn't OK on any work page that I know of, And C. the statement that stuff should be deleted because it is not in The Silmarillion when the page says the info is from multiple books. Maybe the page needs splitting or a rename, I don't know. But that is a separate question.

But I think clearly this conversation isn't going anywhere fun. I'm not angry, but I don't need this. I'm bowing out. Whatever.

I think that we can accurately portray what happened with Eöl and Aredhel with the phrase "forced into marriage" without explicitly mentioning rape, which is consistent with the depiction in The Silmarillion. That said, debates about the canonicity of various elements of Tolkien's work are unwelcome when they lead to these kinds of arguments. Maia Maiden, you are being disruptive by insisting on hyperpedantic interpretations of Tolkien's writing that 99 percent of people who read this article have never even heard of, never mind studied. When we have a conflict between perfect accuracy and keeping the wiki fun, we go with the latter. So chill out.

I've chilled out ages ago. All I want to say anymore is that my problem was never with the (in)accuracy itself, but the suspicion that someone is filling the page with headcanon as canon out of malicious feelings towards the characters, something which has been bothering me a lot in the Silm entry. I could well be wrong, but that's how I felt, and it all erupted when I saw the rape claims.

Even at risk of resurrecting the fight, I'd like to point out that Curufin is explicitly portrayed as a rapist in the Lay of Leithian (HOME vol.III). It's said that he "looked with hot desire at Luthien" (something that worries Huan), and later on, Huan guards her bedroom "so Curufin wouldn't approach and touch that maiden". It's all too explicit to be explained otherwise.

One could argue that the Lay of Leithian is a very old work, overrided by the later version of the tale of Beren and Lúthien. But in any case, that proves that there was a time in which Elven rape was conceivable by Tolkien, and possibly, that was still the idea when he wrote the Silm stuff. Even if he changed his mind in later essays, the new information can't be retroactively applied to previous writings. As someone said above, there's A LOT of contradictions in those late essays, things that were never included in the narratives, fleeting ideas, incomplete notes, and so on. At least in my opinion, Christopher Tolkien did a good work staying with the narrative of the Silmarillion as it was (more or less) written by Tolkien, instead of including late and contradictory ideas from essays, that may or may not be Tolkien's final view on the issue.

^ Yeah, that was my impression too.

Caranthir was a harsh schemer who always did things on multiple layers. It would be entirely in keeping with him to both keep them as allies and to admire and respect them.

Did you mean "to both keep them as meat shields and to admire and respect them"?

I don't have Ho ME or the Letters at hand right now, so I can't swear it's the truth. However I'm rather certain Tolkien decided their marriages are platonic. I'll look it up as soon as I can (4.1., when I'll have access to the books.)

I can't confirm the lack of Valarian libido. Perhaps the mention should go?

In "Annals of Aman" (Morgoth's Ring) the concept of Children of the Valar was eliminated, a change accompanied by this note:

"Note that 'spouse' meant only an 'association'. The Valar had no bodies, but could assume shapes."

This only implies they had no sex, but I think the implication is pretty strong.

My personal opinion is that the different versions of the legendarium are just that - different versions - and not necessarily try to hold one absolute truth by trying to make them all agree. It seems smartest to say that in some versions of the mythos the Valar are sexless and in others they are not. There's no clear answer, and for that matter a level of ambiguity and detachment from the author's biases is very much in keeping with the idea of Middle-Earth as a legendarium.

I'm not normally in favor of Death of the Author as a constant concept. But I think that Professor Tolkien would very much view his mythology as a fictional reality with a life of its own, distinct from his own biases and opinions, something that others could find different truths and interpretations within. That may be my giving him too much credit.

Yeah, this has a lot of shoehorning. I've been gradually trying to fix some, but I'm not familiar with a lot of these tropes.

Ungoliant's entry is kind of a mess IMO, but Bauglir already reverted a lot of my edits and I don't want to get in trouble for starting an edit war, so.

You can go to ask the tropers, or PM Bauglir, or PM a mod, to try to resolve it.

I've been working on clearing zero context examples. I commented out most of them because I'm not familar with the trope definitions, and know I shouldn't guess based on their names.

Agreed, it fits the trope. A second bullet point really isn't necessary, btw—I'll just merge your comment into the previous line.

Yeah, Mim's racist against elves..

posted to wrong section

Neither can I remember any such implication in canon. Perhpas OP's memory has been infiltrated by fanon, where Melkor and Ungoliant are somethimes portrayed in such light.

FYI, in the Lost Tales Melkor did indeed have a spouse and a son at some point, before the whole Valar-cannot-reproduce thing came into being. Also in the Lost Tales Melkor rapes the Maia of the Sun, which is the mythological explanation for why the sun has "lost its magic" (its Maia has left it), while the moon is still magical.

Right, Ulbandi, I remember her. I don't think she was ever identified with Ungoliant.

I just don't remember Ungoliant's relationship with Morgoth being anything other than that of two thieves temporarily working together. So I'll tentatively remove it, though if Baulgir can provide a citation I won't object to it going back in.

(I think all the tropes describing Ungoliant as Morgoth's Dragon are interpreting her relationship as much too close with him, too, but that's more a matter of debate.)

Re: Arien: Totally off-topic since it has nothing to do with the page, but are you sure Morgoth raped Arien in the Lost Tales? I thought he merely attacked and killed her.

He raped her in the late-1950s "Round World" stories in which JRRT tried to totally restructure the cosmology to make sense with real astronomy and physics. It was as radical a change as the move from Lost Tales to Silmarillion, and it's in Morgoth's Ring. The Sun and Moon were made before the Two Trees, and after Morgoth defiled the Moon and raped Arien, the Two Trees were the only clean light... oh and the Moon was Morgoth's space station, so don't ask me how it was clean in the first place. Stuff is weird.

Can't recall details from Lost Tales.

But yeah, I can't recall anything about Ungoliant being his girlfriend/wife/Dragon. She's just Cthulhu-for-hire.

Oh, that explains it, I've only read the first five issues of HOME. Thanks for the clarification.

There's nothing about a hunch back in UT or HOME vols IV-V or XI-XII. I'm pulling Red Right Hand. It can always be restored if it turns out to be true in Lost Tales.

No worries, it's cool - I and other users have already been putting info from other books on this page; the Silm just takes precedence if there's a conflict, and even in those cases I've added info from other sources in a hottip. It's fine how it is.