Your Take On Eöl & Maeglin

[Nikkolas]

Apart from Feanor and his more despicable children, these are probably the two most infamous elves.

Eöl at the very least tends to be vilified quite a lot online from what I can see. There s apparently another telling of the story between him and Maeglin's mother where he outright rapes her or forces her or something. But that isn't in The Silmarillion so i don't care about it. Based just on The Sil, he was initially not such a bad guy as far as I'm concerned. He liked his solitude and disliked other elves and that was it. He used some manner of enchantment to lead Aredhel to him but there's nothing at all to even vaguely suggest he forced her to stay with him. She fell in love with him of her own free will and they were happy for a time.

Then he kinda went overboard with his possessiveness but my main point is that often he is painted as always having been some kind of a monster and I don't see it.

Maeglin meanwhile gets an unfair rap with the whole "the only Elf ever to turn to Morgoth" thing. But ya know, I'd still take him over Feanor. It took literal torture by the hands of the most evil being ever to exist to break him, even if he had seeds of lust already planted within. Moreover, it was desire for a woman that prompted his actions and I can understand that infinitely more than desire for jewels.

And of cours all of that came after being orphaned in a rather dramatic and obviously taumatizing way.

So that's my two cents. How about you? Do you view them as black-hearted villains or more greyish antagonists?