Tidbits of Curiosity

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

A What If tangent: what if it did happen? Could it ever have happened?

Idril wasn't willing to marry Maeglin, so even if Turgon gave the ok and even pressured Idril to accept her cousin, she may not have agreed unless there was something else at stake. Would Maeglin do what his father had done - kidnap Idril and hold her captive somewhere against her will?

That depends when Tolkien wrote it. I'm pretty sure the early versions of Aredhel's story have her being, as you said, kidnapped and forced into marriage. But the rapiness of that story clearly made Tolkien deeply uncomfortable, so he softened it in later versions; by the time of the published Silm, we get 'it is not said that Aredhel was wholly unwilling', and the implication that while Eol may have pressured her, she ultimately made the decision to marry him herself. (It's still pretty rapey, because the power dynamics in that scenario are totally messed-up, but it's... arguably a bit better?)

Early Maeglin - call him Meglin - could have easily followed his father's example. He's said to have tunnelled clear out of the Echoriath, entirely deliberately; so there's room for a hypothetical world where he straight up kidnapped Idril and dragged her off to Nan Elmoth (probably you'd trigger that by altering the events of his parents' death slightly, maybe simply by having Eol deliberately kill Aredhel rather than trying to take out Meglin). But later Maeglin doesn't have the same example. He could still, hypothetically, kidnap Idril, but he has to know that she'd never give in the way his mother did.

... unless, of course, he lied to her. We know that Maeglin spent a lot of time whispering in Thingol's ear, persuading him first to arm Gondolin, and then to disarm it. What if instead he turned his persuasion on Idril - not to try and make her love him, but to convince her that Gondolin was under imminent threat? That would tie into her visions and premonitions, and if this takes place before Tuor, there's no Earendil for her to foresee Maeglin killing.

So perhaps we end up with Idril and Maeglin constructing the Way of Escape. She doesn't like him, you understand, but he sees the same threat - and he is the city's Master Miner. They get it built, all the way to the mountains...

... and then Maeglin drugs Idril up to the eyeballs and carries her off.

She wakes up in the mines, where Maeglin spins her a tale of Gondolin in flames. He keeps her drugged-up on hallucinogens, so that she starts to see - and thinks she's Seen - the things he's telling her about. They're the only two left, he tells her - but luckily, he knows a place they can flee too...

Once secured in Nan Elmoth, would Idril eventually have given in? Possibly - but I think it more likely that she would have Seen the truth and made her own escape (to Doriath, perhaps?). Heck, if we want to get really convoluted, what if she reaches Menegroth around the time that a certain mortal boy named Turin is coming to manhood? She knew his father, so they have a connection...

... I suspect that's the first time anyone has ever justified a Turin/Idril 'ship.

hS