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Old 04-16-2019, 11:52 AM   #103
Huinesoron
Overshadowed Eagle
 
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Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,778
Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Urwen View Post
I am not saying that there shouldn't be consequences. I am saying death is too extreme of a consequence.

Besides, I have always found bad guys more interesting than good guys and goody-two-shoes characters. Forgive me for being upset that one of my favorite characters died. :c

I especially like it when bad guys turned over a new leaf. That is what should have happened here too, imho.
Except that Maeglin had every chance to turn over a new leaf, and didn't. Even if he didn't want to confess his treason (reasonable), or turn directly against Morgoth during the battle - all he had to do was accept that Idril wasn't his. To walk away from the city, flash his hypothetical credentials to the nearest Balrog, and sit back to watch it all burn.

He didn't. He went after her - despite her being married to someone else - and while trying to abduct her, also did his best to kill her son and erase the tangible evidence of that marriage.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Fall of Gondolin
Now then Meglin had Idril by the hair and sought to drag her to the battlements out of cruelty of heart, that she might see the fall of Earendel to the flames; but he was cumbered by that child, and she fought, alone as she was, like a tigress for all her beauty and slenderness. There he now struggles and delays amid oaths while that folk of the Wing draws nigh - and lo! Tuor gives a shout so great that the Orcs hear it afar and waver at the sound of it. Like a crash of tempest the guard of the Wing were amid the men of the Mole [who were guarding but not intervening], and these were stricken asunder. When Meglin saw this he would stab Earendel with a short knife he had; but that child bit his left hand, that his teeth sank in, and he staggered, and stabbed weakly, and the mail of the small coat turned the blade aside; and thereupon Tuor was upon him and his wrath was terrible to see. He seized Meglin by that hand that held the knife and broke the arm with the wrench, and then taking him by the middle leapt with him upon the walls, and flung him far out.
M[a]eglin's response to the person he hates coming at him with a sword... is to try and murder a seven-year-old child before Tuor can stop him. At that point, even if you can somehow justify 'drag Idril to the wall to watch him throw her son over', he was irredeemable. There's no way he could tell himself he was really doing a good thing, or just misunderstood, or just protecting himself - he'd crossed the line into outright evil.

And that's okay! Evil characters can be fun (evil people, not so much). They can be tragic. Gollum proves that we can very much like reading them. But in Middle-earth, with Tolkien writing it, they also eventually - sometimes very eventually - either are redeemed, or get their comeuppance.

Maeglin made the choice to be irredeemable. His death was a direct result of that.

(Also, practically: what else could Tuor have done? They could hardly drag him with them through the secret tunnel and up the mountains, and letting an enemy go free during a battle is a great way to get stabbed in the back. I suppose he could have crippled him and left him to burn with the city - but would that really be better?)

hS
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