The Letter of the Law

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I am currently reading a fanfic where one of the characters proposes that Amrod and Amras are the same person, because allegedly they are never seen together, and they are just all too identical even for twins.

"No, he's Amras today."

The version of this I'm thinking of is even more extreme: it holds that after Amras was burned with the ships, his spirit possessed his brother on a sort of time-share basis. Voluntarily on both sides, naturally!

Which is very much the sort of thing Tolkien might have done! We know from the Glorfindel example that he was happy to employ the nature of Elvish life to resolve what he saw as conflicts between two "fixed" works: rather than changing either the Fall of Gondolin or LotR, he used Elvish reincarnation and the fact that it is possible to sail back from "heaven" under the right conditions. So, had he considered both "Amras burns at Losgar" and "Seven sons of Feanor in Beleriand" to be unchangeable texts, he might well have turned to the comments in LaCE on possession:

Originally Posted by LaCE

Some say that the Houseless desire bodies, though they are not willing to seek them lawfully by submission to the judgement of Mandos. The wicked among them will take bodies, if they can, unlawfully. The peril of communing with them is, therefore, not only the peril of being deluded by fantasies or lies: there is peril also of destruction. For one of the hungry Houseless, if it is admitted to the friendship of the Living, may seek to eject the fea from its body; and in the contest for mastery the body may be gravely injured, even if it he not wrested from its rightful habitant. Or the Houseless may plead for shelter, and if it is admitted, then it will seek to enslave its host and use both his will and his body for its own purposes.

hS