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#also the feanorian children were DUMB and would try it
freezingwhitefire · 6 years
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Once a year this always comes across my dash and once a year I always get ticked off because of it. What am I talking about you ask? I’m talking about the Elwing was the victim and did nothing wrong mentality that I see every single year here in the Silmarillion fandom. Now I can practically hear the indignant ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all!’ that some of you are thinking/saying. Really though that is exactly what many of those arguments I see say.
Some arguments I see are these: ‘she wasn’t a horrible mother leaving her children for a piece of jewelry’, ‘she was terrified of them, they attacked her childhood home and murdered everyone she knew’, ‘and my personal favorite ‘she didn’t know her children were still alive’. Now then I’m going to point out a few things.
Sirion had the survivors of Doriath and of Gondolin out of those there stories would be shared about not only Doriath but also Tirion and Alqualonde so she would be able to hear where Dior, her father, had acted to keep the jewel but also she would have potentially heard about the oath that was sworn about the Silmarili and what happened to both the Teleri at Alqualonde and the Sindar at Doriath. Thus she would have know possibly even heard first hand accounts of the battles at both places, because they were battles not senseless slaughter of one side going in and killing the other both sides were fighting and dying, yet rather than learn from her father’s mistake of keeping the jewel which had the effect of causing the attack on Doriath to happen she chose to keep it herself and the same thing happened at Sirion.
The Feanorians sent letters/messengers to get the Silmaril back, that is to say they sent as representatives people who may not have been involved at Doriath or perhaps they were but they could easily say they were simply following orders. Why? To be able to give her as unbiased an opinion as possible. It’s even possible that Celebrimbor was there in Sirion at some point during all of this and she could have spoken to him or her husband, Earendil was Idril’s son and his mother and grandfather knew them personally so he was bound to know something about them, yet she didn’t try to learn everything she could about the people who attacked her home once already? This not only seems highly unlikely but also a very dumb move on her part because she would be able to do nothing but to possibly repeat the same mistakes that had already been made. Another point is she was like four years old! So how could she reasonably have remembered them or even really known them outside of other’s stories.
Now it is possible that she didn’t know her children were alive, but unlikely. Tolkien went to great lengths to say how children were held dear by the elves, and while the Oath may have caused some doubt for that it seems likely that elven parents would have some bond with their children to help stabilize their abilities, Osanwë being one of the big ones, further as part Maia children the bonds with Elwing would have been more necessary so unless she truly is a bad mother, and always pushing them away, then she was probably completely aware that they were alive. Thus her choice to jump off the cliff while possibly not a sign she was suicidal was certainly her turning her back on not only what was left of her people but also on her children.
With all of this evidence that can be gathered from the different texts, particularly The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, her actions were very poorly thought out and rashly acted up at best and a complete negligence and failure of her duties as both a ruler and as a parent at worst.
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