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Old 04-15-2019, 06:11 AM   #77
Huinesoron
Overshadowed Eagle
 
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Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andsigil View Post
There’s no evidence, to my recollection, that elves matured more slowly than men; they simply lived in their physical prime much longer.

190 year old elf might be young, but he has the accumulated knowledge and presumed wisdom of any 190 year old man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Laws and Customs of the Eldar
The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind more swiftly. They learned to speak before they were one year old; and in the same time they learned to walk and to dance, for their wills came soon to the mastery of their bodies. Nonetheless there was less difference between the two Kindreds, Elves and Men, in early youth; and a man who watched elf-children at play might well have believed that they were the children of Men, of some fair and happy people. For in their early days elf-children delighted still in the world about them, and the fire of their spirit had not consumed them, and the burden of memory was still light upon them.

This same watcher might indeed have wondered at the small limbs and stature of these children, judging their age by their skill in words and grace in motion. For at the end of the third year mortal children began to outstrip the Elves, hastening on to a full stature while the Elves lingered in the first spring of childhood. Children of Men might reach their full height while Eldar of the same age were still in body like to mortals of no more than seven years. Not until the fiftieth year did the Eldar attain the stature and shape in which their lives would afterwards endure, and for some a hundred years would pass before they were full-grown.
If you want to lean into the 'child' thing, you could have Maeglin be a late-bloomer, still 20 years shy of full growth when he reached Gondolin. But that's not evidenced in the text, and Silm: Of Maeglin actually implies the opposite.

hS
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