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Originally Posted by Arvegil145
I believe that the characters of Morwe and Nurwe were ultimately abandoned.
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I'm not sure we can really call them abandoned. Morwe and Nurwe appear in the Annals of Aman typescript, which CT dates to ca. 1958. That makes it pretty much the last thing Tolkien did before working on the ca. 1959 "Time and Aging" material. It's true that they're not named in that material, but there is this quote, from exactly the time the Unbegotten entered the narrative:
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Originally Posted by NoME VII
Elvish lords or Kings... tended to hand on lordship and affairs to their descendents if they could or were engrossed in some pursuit. Often... after passing 200 age-years they would resign.
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By the last "Time and Aging" text (XIII.1), the Three Fathers are involved in the Great Debate, in one version of which they are explicitly jealous of the authority the Ambassadors are gathering. But in the
last version in that text, the Fathers went to Aman
with the Ambassadors, and two of them wanted to go back; the paragraph indicating that they all stayed was explicitly deleted by Tolkien. So the final-final version may imply that only Enel stayed by Cuivienen, which leaves space for Morwe and Nurwe as "young leaders" of the Avari. I don't think there's a post-1959 telling of the Debate, though I may be wrong.
Anyway, leaving Enel to his fate, what about Cirdan? I quite like your point about important families, and the stuff about the Debate feeds into it: Ingwe, Finwe, and Elwe were leaders because they were descended in direct male line from the Three Fathers. Then virtually every grandson of Finwe winds up ruling someplace or another.
I was dubious, because Elmo and his line appear to do
nothing except for Celeborn and Nimloth, but a) that's partly because they were invented so late, and b) younger brothers being subordinate to their elders is pretty typical. Finrod's siblings all answered to him, for instance.
I still think they're of an age, and that cousin is more likely than uncle, but I'm willing to be persuaded on "first cousin".
Which seems to be about the degree of kinship Eol exhibits, come to think of it - he acts as an independent ruler who owes a certain degree of fealty to the senior line, much like House Finarfin to Fingolfin. Were Nowe and Eol brothers? Or (if "Tatyarin Eol" is accepted), are they both first cousins to Thingol, with Eol's mother being of the Second Kindred? What would the Primitive Quendian version of Eol be, anyway?
hS