[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

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:

Are you implying that Morwe and Nurwe were descendants of Imin/Tata/Enel? Because that would be a pretty interesting development.

However, given the fact that the Elf-fathers (with possible exception of Enel) were pretty dead-set on keeping their authority, even after c. 2,000 years had passed since the Awakening of the Elves, I'm not quite sure about them relegating their authority to Morwe/Nurwe after the Eldar/Avar split.

Also, slightly off-topic, but the name 'Morwe' (for whatever reason) makes me think that he was a Tatyarin Elf (maybe even a relative of Finwe - though he was certainly older than Finwe due to the fact that he was born before Orome found the Quendi! Of course, this is just bat**** speculation); same with Nurwe, who strikes me as a Nelyarin Elf - perhaps another descendant of Enel who decided to stay at Cuivienen and was groomed for leadership by Enel (though Nurwe was also older than Thingol and probably his parents too)!

And before I end my wild speculations, I just remembered a passage by CT from The War of the Jewels, Note 12 to the 'Quendi and Eldar', p. 418:

The story found in the 'Annals of Aman' of the kindreds of Morwë and Nurwë, who refused the summons of the Valar and became the Avari (X.81-2, 88, 168), had been abandoned.

However, I strongly disagree with CT's interpretation of the situation - it seems that he based his conclusion on the simple fact that Morwe and Nurwe are not mentioned in the first phase of the 'Later Quenta'.

But I digress.

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.

Can you elaborate? Because that entire mess of texts in the NoME dealing with the number of ambassadors makes my head hurt! Is there by any chance a date-by-date chronology of the texts regarding the ambassadors, and which version was final?

However, as to your second point, wouldn't it make much more sense that the original 144 Elves and their immediate descendants would've been the most attached to their place of origin and most resistant to change? Not that this argument really matters if Tolkien ultimately decided against it.

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".

Well, after spending way too much time pondering the intricacies of their hypothetical genealogy, my conclusion is that either:

a) Thingol and Cirdan are first cousins

or

b) Cirdan is Thingol's uncle

With that said, both of these theories are not exactly foolproof, to put it mildly.

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?

'Tatyarin Eol' was rejected by Tolkien in his (very) old age - but who knows if he would have made up some other origin for him, or otherwise returned to that same idea if he lived long enough.

And as to Cirdan and Eol being brothers...well...that would've been a plot twist

What would the Primitive Quendian version of Eol be, anyway?

Oh boy, now you're kicking the hornet's nest: the truth is, the name 'Eol' hasn't been changed in the slightest from the 1910's to the 1970's.

In fact, it has gotten so bad that Tolkien eventually just threw his arms up in the air and said "screw it, sometimes names don't really mean anything" - which hasn't prevented language nerds digging through obsure scribbles and linguistic journals trying to find some clue. In fact, in a recent Discord discussion at the Vinye Lambengolmor server I proposed that the name might be of Khuzdul origin (one of my more out-there ideas, to be honest).

But my post is already way too long as it is.