1. Thingol. Seriously, pretty much everything that went wrong in Doriath was down to Thingol making really bad decisions. And it's not like there wasn't someone right at hand to give him good advice...
2. Elrond and Maglor/Maedhros. Actually, Elrond in general. Admittedly, it may help that we get a lot more actual dialogue for him than we do for others, but he manages to be chill about an awful lot that most people would NOT be calm about. Foster dad has a Silmaril addiction? Elrond doesn't hate him. Wizards running around with ideas like 'hey, do you mind putting up these rowdy dwarves before I send them off to fight a dragon?' and 'I left the One Ring with a halfling who has no clue'? Elrond takes it in stride.
3. Sauron. Morgoth may be malicious as hell, but he wasn't much of a planner. Sauron, on the other hand, did long-term planning.
4. Eärwen. "Ya'll go do whatever crazy thing you want to do. I'm going to go take a walk on the beach and stay out of trouble."
5. Maedhros. I mean, elves are good looking by default, so Nerdanel has to have named him Maitimo for a reason...
6. Ok, so this is in no way his fault or within his control, but I do not like that Elrond gets such an awful deal. His parents leave him. His foster parents leave him. Most of his relatives end up dead, including his twin brother who chose to die. He's Middle Earth's greatest healer but can't help his own wife - she has to sail without him. Somehow he still finds the strength/masochism to foster the children of Isildur's line throughout the Third Age. His own daughter decides to marry one of them and accept mortality. How is he not curled up in a whimpering ball of misery by the time he gets to Mithlond??
7. Honestly, I tried really hard but I can't think of anything about Turin I like. I get that it wasn't his fault. But I still can't stand him. Moody little emo brat. Wait, he made his band of outlaws behave a little bit better. I like that.
8. "They came at unawares in the middle of winter, and fought with Dior in the Thousand Caves; and so befell the second slaying of Elf by Elf." (If you don't believe this understated sentence is haunting, consider that the man who wrote it was in WWI and saw trench warfare.)
Although if we're going to include Lord of the Rings, the departure of the Fellowship when Elrond is insistent that there is no oath or bond on anyone accompanying the Ringbearer to go further than they will is also pretty haunting.
9. Like I told sulien, this is not really a problem the Silmarillion fandom has. Pretty much the only ones still standing by the end are Elrond, Galadriel, and the elves who never left Aman in the first place. I feel like there should be a special variant of this question for the Silmarillion/Tolkien fandom: who do you wish died sooner? (In which case, toss-up between Fëanor and Hurin. Both in a 'let's minimize the damage' way. Actually, no, strike that. Someone stick a sword through Turin. Mim, maybe.)
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Date: 2017-05-14 10:03 pm (UTC)2. Elrond and Maglor/Maedhros. Actually, Elrond in general. Admittedly, it may help that we get a lot more actual dialogue for him than we do for others, but he manages to be chill about an awful lot that most people would NOT be calm about. Foster dad has a Silmaril addiction? Elrond doesn't hate him. Wizards running around with ideas like 'hey, do you mind putting up these rowdy dwarves before I send them off to fight a dragon?' and 'I left the One Ring with a halfling who has no clue'? Elrond takes it in stride.
3. Sauron. Morgoth may be malicious as hell, but he wasn't much of a planner. Sauron, on the other hand, did long-term planning.
4. Eärwen. "Ya'll go do whatever crazy thing you want to do. I'm going to go take a walk on the beach and stay out of trouble."
5. Maedhros. I mean, elves are good looking by default, so Nerdanel has to have named him Maitimo for a reason...
6. Ok, so this is in no way his fault or within his control, but I do not like that Elrond gets such an awful deal. His parents leave him. His foster parents leave him. Most of his relatives end up dead, including his twin brother who chose to die. He's Middle Earth's greatest healer but can't help his own wife - she has to sail without him. Somehow he still finds the strength/masochism to foster the children of Isildur's line throughout the Third Age. His own daughter decides to marry one of them and accept mortality. How is he not curled up in a whimpering ball of misery by the time he gets to Mithlond??
7. Honestly, I tried really hard but I can't think of anything about Turin I like. I get that it wasn't his fault. But I still can't stand him. Moody little emo brat. Wait, he made his band of outlaws behave a little bit better. I like that.
8. "They came at unawares in the middle of winter, and fought with Dior in the Thousand Caves; and so befell the second slaying of Elf by Elf." (If you don't believe this understated sentence is haunting, consider that the man who wrote it was in WWI and saw trench warfare.)
Although if we're going to include Lord of the Rings, the departure of the Fellowship when Elrond is insistent that there is no oath or bond on anyone accompanying the Ringbearer to go further than they will is also pretty haunting.
9. Like I told
10. Caranthir/Haleth