Tol Eressea

[Arvegil145]

How much of the early, BoLT Eressea storyline do you think Tolkien would've kept in his later (c. 1940 onward) imagining of Aelfwine and his life? And how much, if any, could be salvaged for the purposes of this (Aelfwine-less) project?

Do you think that in the '50s Tolkien still meant for Aelfwine to marry an Elf? Was there still some sort of 'Cottage of Lost Play'-analogue in some way; was there still a queen of Eressea descended from Ingwe?

Was the vivid description of the BoLT Eressea what Tolkien still had in mind when he was writing the ending of the LOTR (i.e. Bilbo, Frodo and Sam)?

Obviously, no one really knows (at the moment at least), yet still...I ask because BoLT is really the only book that describes Eressea in detail (+ the texts in PE that are associated with it anyway).

Of course, in the earliest iterations of the BoLT, Eressea was England (or rather it became the British Isles) - however, I don't really see any obvious reason why, in Tolkien's mind, Eressea of the later legendarium wouldn't have similar description, especially since Tolkien was pretty quick to abandon the Eressea > Britain plot, replacing it with Elven refugees in Eressea copy/pasting their old home Luthany (an island remnant of 'Beleriand') which later became British Isles.