Did Finwe have daughters?
 

I´m confused, always believed Finwe had three sons, Feanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, but now I read theat he has two or three daughters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Finw%C3%AB What is canon? Maybe it was just a early thought of tolkien?

And did galadriel has 3 or 4 brothers? I always believed this were Finrod, Orodreth, Angrod und Aegnor. But I read that Orodreth was Firods son and therefore gil-galad (last high king of the noldor) came from the house of Finarfin?
After Finarfon returned to Valinor he was amnestied by the valar and became king of the noldor. After the third age, where all the noldor returned, was he still king, or could another claim the crown?
Many of the noldor died, therefore I have no idea how much he ruled. Were that hundreds, thousands?

There are some Elves from late texts that do not appear in the tree in the 1977 Silmarillion.

As for Galadriel, Tolkien's idea was that Orodreth (Arothir) was the son of Angrod, according to the later notion. Here Christopher Tolkien went with the tradition from earlier texts (for the 1977 Silmarillion).

Arothir (Orodreth) is not Finarfin's son according to The Shibboleth of Feanor, which is fairly late -- according to Scull and Hammond's Reader's Guide dated '1968 or later', or IIRC, 1969 or later, under an entry in Chronology.

The question of canon is not a new one here on the Downs. My belief is that 'canon' in Tolkien's case consists of The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarillion, and to a more debatable extent, Unfinished Tales. Oh, and now The Children of Húrin, I suppose.

The Silmarillion indicates indeed that Finwë had only three children: Fëanor, by Míriel, and Fingolfin and Finarfin by Indis. If there are other ideas that Finwë may also have had daughters, I would suspect the source would be The History of Middle Earth. I don't actually have those books, basically which consist of early versions of the stories we know.

Again, I consider The Silmarillion canon. Why? Because it was pieced together after the Professor's death by the one who knew his work best, his son Christopher. It isn't a perfect work by any means, but CT had to make some difficult decisions, and I quite like the result.

The Simarillion also gives Galadriel four brothers, Orodreth being among them. In a note in Unfinished Tales, CT explains:

UT The History of Galadriel and Celeborn (footnote 20)

Part of that idea slipped through in LOTR, when Gildor tells Frodo he is 'Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod'.

As for your other questions about Finarfin ruling the Noldor in Valinor, I would think that he continued to do so even after the return of the Exiles, because none of them would have had the same hereditary right (through kinship with Finwë) that he had.

It's only a guess as to how many of the Noldor he ruled. Probably hundreds, at least, though as you said very many had died in the First Age wars with Morgoth, and later in the Last Alliance.

x/d with Galin

The History of Middle-Earth also contains later versions of the Silmarillion -- for example, the later Quenta Silmarillion, the later Annals (used in the construction of the 1977 Silmarillion), and other writings that post-date the writing of The Lord of the Rings... and lots of other great stuff (plenty of earlier stuff as well)!

Gil-galad as a Finarfinian was also JRRT's latest known thought there (Gil-galad as the son of Orodreth).

About the matter of daughters, one can also look at what Tolkien did elsewhere. For the most part, daughters are mentioned by name when they are important to the story --Arwen, Lúthien, Galadriel, etc. -- but not if they aren't. The most notorious example of this omission is the fact that Aragorn's only son, Eldarion, is given a name, but not one of his daughters. They're simply mentioned as existing, but not even their number is given. Finwë was clearly (at least to me) obsessed with Fëanor; I think he noticed his other sons because of their conflict with Fëanor. Daughters? Did they do anything important, or did they have some kind of notable relationship with Fëanor? No? Not worth mentioning, then. The same can be said for the wives of Fëanor's sons. Tolkien did state somewhere (probably in the HoME books, I think) that they were all married, but we don't know a thing about the wives, not even their names.

*puts on scholarly spectacles*

Well, the "Later Quenta Silmarillion" (text given in HoME Vol X, "Morgoth's Ring", and otherwise very close to the published version) has a number of references to the three daughters of Finwë and Indis: Findis, Faniel and Irimë/Finvain/Lalwendë). I honestly can't work out what happened to them– this is whether Tolkien himself later revised them out of existence, or if Christopher Tolkien made an editorial decision to leave them out of the published Silmarillion– which I guess puts them in the same kind of semi-canonical limbo as, say, Elboron or Argon.

Anyway, looks like Wikipedia's "Project Middle-earth" suffers the same problem as many other "Tolkien Wikis" out there: too many people just making their own calls on what is, or isn't, "canon", without even acknowledging the issues involved... not to mention just plain getting stuff wrong.

CF article on Amrod/Amras: "For this reason wherever both Amrod and Amras appear in the published material it should be read as Amrod alone."

Christopher Tolkien has provided the evidence that at least two daughters remained to Finwe according to text dated 1968 or later (The Shibboleth of Feanor): Findis, who did not go into Exile, while Irien Lalwende did.

The confusion concerns the 'third daughter', as Faniel existed in earlier text published in Morgoth's Ring, including the Elvish genealogies seemingly dating from 1959... and considering that Tolkien had the genealogies in front of him while he was working on the 1968 text -- in these tables there are still three daughters, while in the late description itself there are two, and the text specifically refers to four children, (not five as in Morgoth's Ring).

More confusion concerns the names, but I have chosen the forms that seem to go with the actual excursus (The Shibboleth) rather than the tables (Tolkien may have slipped in the text itself, as there he refers to one daughter with a name from the table, then later she is Irien rather).


So again, the later text refers to four children and two daughters, while the tables have three daughters -- and so one wonders why Tolkien did not correct the tables to agree with the text, since he was again using the 1959 tables at the time.

A little bit more on the names...

The names and texts concerned are, from Morgoth's Ring:

Findis, Faniel and Irime (from Finwe And Miriel I)
Findis, Faniel and Irime (from a footnote to Laws and Customs of the Eldar)
Findis, Finvain and Faniel (from a footnote to Finwe And Miriel IV)

Findis, Faniel and Irime (from the genealogies dated 1959)


From 1968 or later: The Shibboleth of Feanor

Findis and Irime -- but a few sentences later in the same work, 'Irime' becomes Irien Lalwende. Christopher Tolkien notes:

For the main entry Wikipedia currently chooses Findis and Irime. I would not, for though the matter is speculative the new writing in 1968 would suggest the loss of Faniel, and Finvain/Irime are the 'older forms'...

... although obviously Irien is only moments 'newer' (!) as far as appearing in the actual 1968 text along with Irime -- still, if one has to choose I would go with Irien. And Christopher Tolkien's suggestion, or explanation, also seems to make sense, as Irime being the older existing form could have slipped in at first.

OK, to clarify, indeed he had daghters, right? If two or three is for the moment not that important (at least for me).

"Finwë was clearly (at least to me) obsessed with Fëanor; I think he noticed his other sons because of their conflict with Fëanor."

Makes the impression that he wasn´t a really good father...

I wouldn't be too hard on Finwë. Fëanor's mother, Míriel had died giving birth to him, and her death was devastating to Finwë. It's understandable he would have given most of his attention to Fëanor afterward, even though it wasn't really fair to Fingolfin and Finarfin. I think his other sons didn't hold that against Finwë, as evidenced by Fingolfin's forgivness of Fëanor's drawing a blade against him.

Well, I'm not sure Wikipedia should be "choosing" at all, in this case. It seems that often the people writing these articles are trying to make a final judgement on which unpublished variant is the "true" version– in a way which ends up being pretty arbitrary and which I think is well beyond the scope of a short encyclopedia article for general readers. Similarly, the tendency to favour material from HoME over the published version (e.g. stating categorically that "Orodreth was the son of Angrod"), may be in line with Tolkien's later wishes, but it's pointlessly confusing to the casual reader who just wants to brush up on Middle-earth– see the original post.

If I had to choose I would choose Irien over Irime -- but for clarity, I didn't and don't mean that in the context of me writing a Wikipedia article. That's my choice for my personal internal history.

If I were to write a Wikipedia article I would include that Orodreth as the son of Angrod is Tolkien's latest known thought on the matter, along with other information, as I know this is different from the 1977 Silmarillion. Tolkien's work on the Elder Days can be confusing, and unless Wikipedia is going to limit itself to the constructed Silmarillion...

Yes, according to JRR Tolkien in relatively late papers :)


I don't think this actually clashes with the constructed Silmarillion in any case, though granted a reader looking at the text and tables there would hardly know Finwe's daughters existed. I suppose someone could argue that because they don't appear in the 1977 Silmarillion that they do not exist internally...

... but if so I would not agree, nor do I think that that truly represents the purpose behind the 1977 Silmarillion.

No, I don't think Wikipedia should do that, of course! I'm just saying I think the writers of these articles need to be more systematic. I mean when there's significant conflict they probably should make it standard practice to say something like, "in the 1977 Silmarillion it says such-and-such, but in Tolkien's last-known writings on the subject..." etc. etc. I think that would cover all bases without being too complicated. In the articles I've seen, the writer seems to have arbitrarily picked one version to be "official". Given the authority that Wikipedia has in the eyes of many people, I think that's quite problematic.