A moving moment, in hindsight.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It would take two decades before the hidden grief was revealed to readers: Elrond was raised by Maglor. No heart in the history of Arda was more broken by sworn word!

Oh. Oh, wow. I never even thought of that. That's amazingly tragic.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

That whole Maglor adopting Elrond and Elros sequence is relatively short, and leaves a great chasm into what actually happened. For instance, did Elrond and Elros actually know as children what happened to Earendil and Elwing? Did Maglor even know? It could be assumed that they had died, couldn't it? And who would be to blame for that but the sons of Feanor? Seems odd that great love could spring from this adoption unless there was at least an inkling about what happened.

I think almost everyone would have thought them both dead. Earendil was trying to sail to Valinor, an endeavour which had sunk almost every ship that attempted it; when he didn't come back, the natural assumption would be that he was just the latest casualty. Elwing was last seen leaping off a cliff into the sea; only a crazy person would believe she'd been magically transformed into a bird on the way down.

Of course, the refugees from the Havens would probably assume the twins were dead, too: Tolkien seems to have settled on their names coming from being found at a cave by a waterfall, so it doesn't sound like anyone from the Havens saw them being captured rather than killed (as the previous generation of Doriathrin royal twins had been).

That great love did spring from Maglor's raising of the pair is seen through those very names: the timelines suggest the twins were six at the Third Kinslaying, easily old enough to remember their own names! I'd conjecture that they refused to give their names to Maglor when he found them - he was, after all, the person who'd just destroyed their home, even if they didn't know about their mother yet - and so he coined two nicknames for them. The fact that those nicknames stuck, and were still in use over six thousand years later, tells you how close they must have been.

hS