Quote:
Originally Posted by gondowe
Yes, I know. But, still in my opinion, as the Athrabeth is of the same time, it could only reveal that the swap is a thought of this years 1958-59 (or the unknown date of the pencilled notes) and that perhaps later was forgotten or rethought.
Greetings
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A lot of 'ifs', 'coulds', 'maybes'...
Do I think that it's possible that Tolkien changed his mind later on? Certainly. But you can make the same argument about half of the stuff that we included in 'The New Silmarillion' - especially the names: Tolkien kept changing those all the time as if he was changing his socks!
Also, I'm quite aware that Tolkien in his late years had a habit of just inexplicably changing some elements of the story, the most egregious example of it being IMO the fact that he seems to have totally forgotten about the existence of Fingolfin in the notes to the 'Maeglin' text!
However, in the absence of any concrete, textual proof that he reverted back to the older idea, the evidence is pretty clear: the latest texts dealing with the subject of Hador's family tree have him as the son of Malach Aradan and brother to Adanel.