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taur-en-faroth · 2 months ago

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Regarding daddy issues, what's your opinion on Maeglin? His father trying to kill him, him being raised by Turgon, his uncle killing his father and having an attraction to Turgon's daughter, and Eol's "curse" that he will die the same way he did. He must have some daddy issues and some complicated feelings for Turgon, who I think spoiled him? Does Idril think Turgon would listen to Maeglin more than her?

I sat on this ask for a couple of days because unfortunately my answer is a little bit of a killjoy answer and this is partly because I've been thinking about the Of Maeglin chapter lately, thanks to two different scholarly works on incest in Victorian Britain I've been reading of late - in this case, the prominence of first cousin marriage amongst the Victorian bourgeoise, to the point that this form of marriage was considered somewhat nearly the ideal until the First World War at least. And which therefore is all the more striking for the whole "Eldar wed not with kin so near" thing that Tolkien inserts, considering that in every other respect, both the Silm and LOTR are heavily in conversation with a much older Victorian era Romanticism than Tolkien's Modernist contemporaries.

My very short answer to this is that I think that Maeglin has well. He has kid of a relationship defined by cross-colonial and racial politics issues.

My longer answer is that you need to look at the implied subtext of the relationship between Eol and Aredhel, which appears to be very weird once you start digging deeper, especially on the front of Elvish racial differences and relationships. Eol's dialogues at multiple points where he appears - in conversation with Curufin, in conversation with Turgon - draw very heavily on positioning himself as Teleri, the Noldor as oppressors who have taken away their rights to move about freely, who have seized their lands, who now dictate where they come and go as they please and who, crucially, have killed his kin. (He is married to a Noldo princess). His ban on Aredhel's movements specifically relates to a) movement in the sun and b) movement towards the Noldor & esp. the SoF. The very political nature of Eol's ban is reinforced again in this little speech:

But when he declared his purpose to Eöl, his father was wrathful. ‘You are of the house of Eöl, Maeglin, my son,’ he said, ‘and not of the Golodhrim. All this land is the land of the Teleri, and I will not deal nor have my son deal with the slayers of our kin, the invaders and usurpers of our homes. In this you shall obey me, or I will set you in bonds.’

(Aredhel consistently wants to go towards the Sons of Feanor. There is something very interesting in this, considering both Turgon & Eol forbid this and each time, she begins by going towards them first.)

Maeglin, on the other hand, is drawn to his mother. Tolkien describes him as looking more like and being more like the Noldor in stature. There is a lacunae in the text there, but we might imagine that Aredhel saw this too and that Maeglin noticed this himself too, in the difference between himself and his father in appearance - and therefore, when Aredhel tells tales of Gondolin and her relatives to Maeglin, we get a sense of both desire emanating from him, but also the kind of envy which is familiar to the colonised/formerly colonised: "What hope is there in this wood for you or for me? Here we are held in bondage, and no profit shall I find here; for I have learned all that my father has to teach, or that the Naugrim will reveal to me."

There is a very interesting passage at the end of this chapter, which I think underlines this reading:

Yet he did not reveal his heart; and though not all things went as he would he endured it in silence, hiding his mind so that few could read it, unless it were Idril Celebrindal. For from his first days in Gondolin he had borne a grief, ever worsening, that robbed him of all joy: he loved the beauty of Idril and desired her, without hope. The Eldar wedded not with kin so near, nor ever before had any desired to do so. And however that might be, Idril loved Maeglin not at all; and knowing his thought of her she loved him the less. For it seemed to her a thing strange and crooked in him, as indeed the Eldar ever since have deemed it: an evil fruit of the Kinslaying, whereby the shadow of the curse of Mandos fell upon the last hope of the Noldor. But as the years passed still Maeglin watched Idril, and waited, and his love turned to darkness in his heart. And he sought the more to have his will in other matters, shirking no toil or burden, if he might thereby have power.

It's easy to get stuck on the treason of kin unto kin as pertains specifically to the Noldor, but just half a page before, we have this little note tucked away in Eol's curse to Maeglin:

"‘So you forsake your father and his kin, ill-gotten son! Here shall you fail of all your hopes..."

If you read the chapter closely, it becomes pretty evident that Maeglin sees Gondolin, he is very impressed with it, and then he wants nothing more than to be part of it, because it seems more elevated and greater than Nan Elmoth - which is forsaken, which is dark and which has run out of things to offer him by way of knowledge and also, power. Turgon looks on Maeglin and sees in him someone "worthy to be accounted amongst the princes of the Noldor". Maeglin pretty clearly leans really hard into this and as his father accuses him, eschews the Telerin part of his identity. This is all, again, deeply familiar racial politics.

It's also very interesting that Tolkien describes Maeglin's desire for Idril in terms of her seeming like the sun: "for she was golden as the Vanyar, her mother’s kindred, and she seemed to him as the sun from which all the King’s hall drew its light".

Earlier on in the chapter, when Aredhel and he come to the edge of Nan Elmoth, they see the sun and "desire grew hot" in Maeglin to leave Nan Elmoth. That is the point at which he makes his little speech above about "what do we have left here for either of us". Sunlight = Noldor = Gondolin = Idril. You might also argue that for Eol (and therefore Maeglin) the association is also a political one, given that the sun rose in Middle Earth with the arrival of Fingolfin's army, which is the point at which the Noldor seem to go from a shattered force, to one that establishes its own kingdom and which, in Eol's eyes, pushes them off their lands. Put together, Maeglin's desire for Idril is not merely only a desire for Idril i.e. sexual desire alone. Its also symbolic desire to possess Gondolin (the King's Hall), therefore to possess the great and lofty things that make the Noldor great and therefore, to possess that greatness and beauty himself.

On some level it is also political, because the point at which Maeglin is galvanised into action is the point at which Idril marries Tuor and has a son. There's a throwaway detail in Of Maeglin - "Maeglin would not remain in Gondolin as regent of the King" - that makes this more obvious (and also answers your question: pretty patently, yes, Turgon was listening to Maeglin more than Idril and placing him above her as political heir). Idril should be Turgon's heir and therefore his regent. Idril is his firstborn and is significantly older than Maeglin. But Maeglin's appearance places Maeglin above Idril in a system built on male primogeniture. However, when Idril marries and has a son, everything that Maeglin has built for himself essentially is at risk, because Earendil is then the heir to Gondolin and supplants Maeglin - despite being the son of a Man (inferior to an Elf) and Idril (a symbol of Gondolin, the Noldor, the things that Maeglin desires).

By every bourgeoise English definition, Maeglin should marry Idril and that would be the ideal marriage, closing off all political challenges for the throne of Gondolin and keeping it in the family. However, because this is Tolkien, the driving theme is not the realpolitik or bourgeoise values, but concerns Maeglin's libidinal desire to possess "Noldorness" and to do so by possessing Gondolin and to do that by possessing Idril - i.e. Maeglin's will to power. (Ofc, will to power is the animating force between incestuous marriages amongst the English bourgeoise, in retaining control over and consolidating estates; but that is immaterial because Tolkien does not believe in economics, unfortunately, or he does so only when its strategic to whatever idea/point he's trying to drive home). Ergo, I think, "the Eldar wed not with kin so near", when many of the Sindar marriages are littered with marriages occurring within the third degree of consanguinity and um, considerably closer in terms of broader kinship/affinity structures (e.g. Aragorn being, more or less, Arwen's foster-brother, though again, Tolkien puts his finger on the balance and conveniently has her staying with Galadriel for many decades through Aragon's coming of age; though it still has troubling implications viz. relationality to Elrond). THE POINT BEING that "the Eldar wed not with kin so near" serves as a moralistic symbol within the text to suggest that Maeglin's will to power over Idril via marriage is immoral not only because the will to power over an individual via marriage/kinship is wrong, but because it contravenes Elvish law of marriage as well (i.e. if we followed the same principle viz. C&C's violent approach to Luthien but subtract the question of consanguinity from the equation, Maeglin only would commit "wrong" when he attempts to force Idril into marriage; Tolkien wants us to know that Maeglin's desire is wrong right from the start, but cannot serve it to us in straightforwardly moralistic terms and therefore, the incest taboo also serves as cipher to demonstrate the wrongness of Maeglin's desire right from the get go)

So I don't know that his feelings for Turgon are complicated, or that daddy issues are his main problem. I think they're pretty straightforward textually. Maeglin is the half-Teleri, half-Noldor son of Aredhel (friend of the sons of Feanor, who tells Maeglin stories of them) and Eol (kin of Thingol, high kin of the Teleri) who is brought up between these two clearly politically and racially polarised individuals, is filled with a sense of rejection of home for being lesser compared to the tales of Valinor & Gondolin, desires to possess Gondolin, is acknowledged as worthy of possessing Gondolin by Turgon and then seeks to legitimate all of that by possessing Turgon's blood daughter and heir. (There are a lot of parallels to be made in this reading, of Maeglin and Caliban in The Tempest). Turgon substitutes for his father's authority, because Turgon is judged by Maeglin to be a more superior individual and therefore, a father he would like to possess - as a half-Teleri, half-Noldo child who looks more Noldo than Teleri. Clearly Maeglin resents his father's control, but he also rejects his father's perceived "lessness" - the first treason of kin unto kin, which lies in Maeglin rejecting his Teleri heritage and deciding to lean only into the Noldor part.

Maeglin clearly has a much closer attachment to Aredhel, that may stem from so many potential sources (his perceived racial inferiority drawing him to the "greater" parent; his shared place of relative powerlessness as a child and her as a woman under a clearly very patriarchal model of fatherhood viz. Eol's argument that Maeglin is "his" since he is his father) but which finally manifest in a desire to only acknowledge his Noldor heritage. If you read the text closely, it seems more like Aredhel's influence has a lot more to do with the shaping of Maeglin's desires as a child - and it does make you wonder how exactly she related the tales of Gondolin and her brothers and her cousins. It is also interesting, as I said, that she gravitates towards the Sons of Feanor (even above Fingon!) - which suggests at least some kind of affinity there, whether that is in terms of sharing their politics, or at least being willing to overlook those politics in favour of having a good fun time with male relatives who have no authority over her / whose authority she can reject without incurring censure. Whatever it is, her narration clearly positions Gondolin as aspirational and it all gets tangled up within Maeglin's broader desire for freedom and for more than Nan Elmoth's limited borders (and associations) have to offer him (and, probably, some of the thrill in pursuing the forbidden). Honestly, Turgon and Idril are pretty incidental, I think, in Maeglin's actual emotional landscape because everything he does in relation to Turgon and Idril are pre-formed by whatever the hell was going on in Nan Elmoth between Aredhel and Eol.

TL;DR: Maeglin may have some daddy issues, but crucially also, he has mommy issues out the wazoo and its those mommy issues that actually serve as the catalyst for the way the tragedy of Gondolin finally plays out. But beneath those mommy issues are, well, Noldor issues because any sense of racial superiority of the Noldor is ultimately one that has come cooked up by the Noldor themselves and most likely, on a deeper level, from the Sons of Feanor.

Please note I am not placing any responsibility on Aredhel or Idril for Maeglin's actions, or trying to excuse his actions by pointing to the elements of racialisation present in Maeglin's story; I am simply trying to describe how these pieces fit together and also suggest that Eol and Turgon are far less important to Maeglin's story than Aredhel is as his mother and as the person who seems (or is implied textually) to have done a lot more of the emotional caregiving.

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