Elrond or Galadriel

[afro-elf]

Who "could" claim the High-King (Queenship) of Elves in Middle-Earth?

I think that "SOMEWHERE" it is said "that Elrond COULD have made the claim but didn't and just called himself the Master of Rivendell"

1)What is his connection to the High Kingship?

2) Did he choose the same choice as the Chieftains of the Dunedain after the fall of Arnor ( I know his choice was first, but you understand the point)

What about Galadriel? Wasn't she the most "NOBLE" ELF left in Middle -Earth with the closest connection to Finwe?

[Ñólendil]

The High-Kingship does not appear to depend on direct lineage, and things of that sort. There's more to it than that. A great deal more, it appears. Michael Martinez typed a great article about how the rulers of the Eldar may have been chosen (the essay actually had much to do with magic), I'm looking for it.

The Ñoldoráni or 'Kings of the Ñoldor' included Finwë, Curufinwë Fëanáro (Faenor {Fëanor}), Nolofinwë Aracáno (Fingolfin), Arafinwë Ingoldo (Finarfin, he was considered a King after his return to Tirion and repentence according to the Shibboleth of Fëanor published in the Vol. XII of HoMe), Fingon, Turgon, Maedros {Maedhros}, Finrod and Gil-galad. Anyone, feel free to correct me on these facts if you are not as I, and are not too lazy to check the sources. I believe after the death of Fingon, the Kingships became divided among his younger brother Turgon, his cousin Finrod and his half-cousin Maedros. Finrod's following was the greatest. I'm not sure if Fingon was ever considered High-King, but if he was not than the first High-King was his brother Turgon, after Fingon's death.

After the destruction of Nargothrond and the Fall of Gondolin and all that, when the Free Peoples were gathered about the Mouths of Sirion, Gil-Galad became High-King. Turgon had perished (according to the very early 'Tale of Tuor' -- the only source we have on the subject -- he perished in the destruction of his Tower in the Fall of his City), and Finrod also (he died saving Beren son of Barahir in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth), so the only other Noldorin King was Maedros. No Noldo ever claimed Kingship after the death of Gil-Galad, though they could have (Elrond and Galadriel could have took up the titles of 'King' and 'Queen' in Rivendell and Lothlórien respectively). Gil-Galad was not only the last Noldorin King, but also the last of the Noldorin Ingaráni or 'High-kings'. There's no need for a High-King when there are no other Kings (or Queens). Finwe was not an Ingaran.

Your quote about Elrond sounds familiar, but I need Michael Martinez's essay to see clearly what might make a High-King, to see why Elrond would have some claim to the High-Kingship or even Kingship. I know it says somewhere (probably in the Shibboleth of Feanor) that Elrond had inherited the right to Kingship of the Teleri (from Elwë) and also of the Noldor (from Turgon). But as I have said above, among the Eldar it took more than to be the son of a King to be a King.

Elrond (and his brother Elros) was descended from Haldad (father of the first chieftain of the Haladin: Haleth), Marach, Beor the Old, Elwë & Melian, Elmo (one of Elrond's brothers), Finwë and Ingwe's sister. In those lines you can see many Kingships, I'm sure.

At the end of the Third Age Galadriel was the greatest of the Eldar in Middle-earth, and certainly closest akin to Finwë, if that is what you mean.

None of this really answers your chief question.

[afro-elf]

thanks for the info

i found this from mike martinez also


He governed Imladris as an outpost of Gil-galad's kingdom in the Second Age and maintained it as a stronghold of Eldarin power in the Third Age. But Elrond never took the title of king. It may be that, legally, he felt he could not claim a kingship, since Earendil was the son of a mortal man and not an Elf king.


it continued about, it may also have had to do with his feeling the time of Noldo kings was over

[Captain Stern]

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Elrond (and his brother Elros) was descended from Haldad (father of the first chieftain of the Haladin: Haleth), Marach, Beor the Old, Elwë & Melian, Elmo (one of Elrond's brothers),
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Who is Elmo? I wasn't aware that Elrond had more than one brother?

[galadriel]

Um... I think that Inoldonil must have meant that Elmo was one of Elwe's brothers, because that's who he is. Elmo is the little-known brother of Elwe (Elu Thingol) and Olwe, kings of Doriath and Alqualonde respectively. We don't know much about Elmo. He stayed with Thingol in Doriath, and was Celeborn's grandfather, as well as the great-grandfather of Nimloth, Dior's wife. Going through Nimloth, this makes him Elrond's great-great-great grandfather, I think.

[UnStashable]

I thought that Maedhros had given up entirely the house of Feanors claim to the high kingship. I also thought (at least in middle earth not Aman apparently) that the high kingship stayed within the house of Fingolfin and thats why we never hear of Finrod or Galadriel claiming the Title. I'm probably Oversimplifying though.

[Ñólendil]

Thank you for the correction galadriel, 'Elrond' there should indeed read 'Elwe'. (Elmo was indeed Elrond's great-great-great grandfather, too, worked it out in my head, can't be wrong if we both come out to that). Naturally I would not have said that Elrond was descended from his brother, which would be very odd indeed.

UnStashable, I almost agreed with you just now, but I thought of Gil-galad. In Tolkien's latest conception of Gil-galad's parentage (Gil-galad as Fingon's son was an ephemeral idea, Christopher Tolkien realized around 1996, when Peoples of Middle-earth was published), it is revealed that he was Finduilas's brother, son of Arothir (formerly named and better known as Orodreth), son of Angrod (not his brother), son of Finarfin and Earwen. So Tolkien couldn't have thought (at least late in his life) that the High-Kingship (or Queenship, I assume that was a possibility) depended upon descent from Fingolfin.

[Selwythe]

If I had to choose between Elrond and Galadriel, I'd choose Galadriel, simply because she was from an older generation. When Finwe died, the title passed to Feanor and when Feanor died, it passed to Fingolfin. Only when Fingolfin died and there were no more of that generation (except Finarfin cowering behind the Valar) did the high-kingship pass on to the next generation.

Then of course, the Elves could be pretty sexist and deny her her title. I don't recall an Elven high-queen.

[Ñólendil]

I don't think Fingolfin, Faenor or Finwë were High-Kings. I could be wrong. But 'cowering behind the Valar'? Finarfin was perhaps the noblest of the Ñoldor of Aman, and his repentence ought to be seen as a sign of moral strength, wisdom and intelligence.

[Darkhalcyon]

I don't think the elves were sexist. i know they weren't elven, but the people of Numenor did have a queen here and there, even before the schist with the elves. Plus, Galadriel herself pretty much ran Lothlorien, in my opinion. When did anyone see Celeborn taking much action during that part of FotR??

[Tar-Elenion]

Elf-women do not seem to have been eligible for the Kingship. Both Idril and Galadriel were alive when Gil-galad became High King, and both were older than Gil-galad. Neither became King.

Fingolfin was High King (of the Noldor in Exile). Neither Finwe nor Feanor were 'High King'. Finwe was Noldoran, King of the Noldor (there dont seem to have been other kings that he ruled).

[Ñólendil]

High-Kingship started with Fingolfin then? Thanks for the correction. Fingolfin, Fingon, Turgon, Gil-galad. Got it.

[Finmandos12]

Finwe was referred to as the High King of the Noldor . Feanor "claimed the kingship of the Noldor" after Finwe's death (I don't know if he was or not). The kingship became split after the Noldor left between Finarfin in valinor and Fingolfin in ME. Then it was: Fingon, Turgon, and Gil-Galad.

[Tar-Elenion]

---------------
Quothe Finmandos:
Finwe was referred to as the High King of the Noldor .
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Provide the citation and or quote for this please.


----------------------
Quote:
Feanor "claimed the kingship of the Noldor" after Finwe's death (I don't know if he was or not).
----------------------

Some have argued that Feanor was King of the Noldor (and Maedhros as well, at Feanor's death). I argue differently. Feanor was not King of the Noldor, and neither was Maedhros (although Maedhros was a king of the Noldor).

[Ñólendil]

Ofcourse during the Rebellion in and march from Aman, we can probably all agree that Feanáro thought of himself as King. Maybe his Host did too.

[Lalaith]

Hiya!
I searched for a Elrond vs. Galadriel thread and found this.
I wanted to ask you about your opinion about Galadriel and Elrond. Who was stronger, who was more tempted by the ring? If it came to a fight, who would win?

[Bombadillo]

Well I'll be really unprofesional and stupid sounding, because I haven't read the Sil as of yet.

Both Elrond and Galadriel are equally cool and wise as far as I can tell. But Galadriel has the amazing mind-reading powers. (Also, she could use these to bribe her way to the top, but that'd be against her nature.) However, you can't ignore the fact that she does live in a tree-house, while Elrond has a mansion that dominates most of Rivendell. So he has the magnificence.

In summary, I don't know.
But neither are in ME anymore anyway.

[Lady_Of_The_Wood]

Galadriel of course. I mean after all she's been around for a long time. So why not. galadriel goes through alot making her stronger. After all who can survive having your husband killed. Heck she's Arwen's grandmother. Galadriel is more tempted by the ring yet she survives. Elrond just wanted it gone from Rivendell.

[Arien the Maia]

Originally posted by Lady_Of_The_Wood
Galadriel of course. I mean after all she's been around for a long time. So why not. galadriel goes through alot making her stronger. After all who can survive having your husband killed. Heck she's Arwen's grandmother. Galadriel is more tempted by the ring yet she survives. Elrond just wanted it gone from Rivendell.

When did Celeborn die?

And yes I think that Galadriel would win...she is older and wiser and pure elven...Elrond, although noble does have that mannish blood in him which could lead him astry :D

[Lalaith]

Originally posted by Arien the Maia
When did Celeborn die?

Yeah, I think I missed that part too. Strange. lol

[celeb-galad]

Celeborn never died. He took ship and sailed into the West sometime in the 4th Age.

Elrond, although noble does have that mannish blood in him which could lead him astry

Don't forget he also had 'divine', Maiarin blood flowing through his veins.

[Lalaith]

Originally posted by celeb-galad
Celeborn never died. He took ship and sailed into the West sometime in the 4th Age.

guess what. I knew that. I was just sarcastic.

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by Arien the Maia
And yes I think that Galadriel would win...she is older and wiser and pure elven...Elrond, although noble does have that mannish blood in him which could lead him astry :D I agree that Galadriel must have been more powerful than Elrond because she was noldor and he "just" a peredhil.
However, they have totally different powers. Elrond has the power of healing while Galadriel has her mind reading powers, her far sight and her calm.

But I think Galadriel was more tempted by the Ring than Elrond. She saw the Ring's potential of making her a great queen and she would know how to weild the Ring if she got her hands on it.
I don't think Elrond ever thought of what the Ring could do for him, he just wanted to get rid of it. He was present when Isildur took the Ring from Sauron, and Elronds only thought was to let Isildur destroy it in Mt. Doom.

[Anglorfin]

I only remember four Noldorin Elves refered to as High King after coming to Middle Earth; Fingolfin first, then Fingon, Turgon and finally Erenion.

If this is indeed correct, then taking into consideration that most of these were descended from the house of Fingolfin, some direct lineage was present. And if going by direct lineage Elrond has closer ties through descendance to the house of Fingolfin than Galadriel does.

Be that as it may, the line of Kingship was quite erratic anyway, sorta just skipping between different children of the same father and then ending in a cousin. Galadriel could claim descendance as being Gil-Galad's aunt or something, or only surviving member in Middle Earth of Fingolfin's brother's line. No other 1st generation children of Fingolfin were left in Middle Earth by that time.

[Tar-Elenion]

According to the essay Ósanwe-kenta, 'Enquiry into the Communication of Thought' (published in VT 39), 'mind reading' (or 'telepathy') could be performed by anyone (with limitations) thus it was not something only Galadriel was capable of. Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn and Gandalf all engage in this in the chapter Many Partings:
"If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro."
As to who would win in a fight, Elrond or Galadriel, how are they going to fight? With swords? If so Elrond was not just a loremaster and healer, but a great warrior as well.
JRRT never states who is more powerful, whatever that means, though in Letter 246 he writes:
"In the 'Mirror of Galadriel', 1381, it appears that Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring and supplanting the Dark Lord. If so, so also were the other guardians of the Three, especially Elrond. But this is another matter. It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power. But this the Great had well considered and had rejected, as is seen in Elrond's words at the Council."
The statement that "especially Elrond" would be capable of weilding the Ring against Sauron is intriguing, to say the least. Why "especially Elrond"? Perhaps because, as celeb-galad mentioned, of his 'divine heritage', he was after all a scion of Melian the Maia, and hence essentially descended from the 'gods'.

[Lírean Cárnesir]

Well, Galadriel was (as far as i know) the Daughter of Finarfin, technically making her the Graddaughter of Finwe, the first high King (He was the first by the way) However because of the passing of the kingship through the house of Fingolfin and Elrond being a descendant of Fingolfin and he married into the house of Finarfin (through CelebrÃ*an) he would effectively have a better say to the Kingship. Though lets not forget Galadriel being Great granddaughter of Finwe.

[Jon S.]

An admitted aside but why is Gil-Galad's name hyphenated? And are there other examples of Elves with hyphenated names?

[Jon S.]

I guess it's help yourself today ...

In discussing compound formation, we do not make any real difference in the following between compounds where the words are really written together, such as Mordor, or where the compound nature is indicated by a hyphen, such as Gil-Galad. We do this because we have seen in the case of articles and prepositions that hyphenation is apparently used to indicate compound formation. Most of the compounds are names, and the formation of names is a very complex issue with Tolkien sometimes changing the explanation for a name after some time. Often, Quenya elements intrude in names and are blended with Sindarin. We will not attempt to discuss all possible compounds but just give several examples to show the range of possible outcomes.

A fair share of compounds exhibits mutation types other than lenition. Here, we find mor + dor -> Mordor (Darkland) (SIL) with liquid mutation (the first element is explicitly listed as mor and morannon (black gate) indicates that this is indeed mor and not morn), similarly mor + caint -> morchaint (darkshapes) (SIL), one explanation of Barad-dûr (Dark tower) would see this as a compound with stop mutation (for a different explanation see adjectives further down), in Caradhras (Redhorn) (LOTR) we see nasal mutation, likewise in eledhrim (star-folk) (WJ:363).

However, there is also a fair share of compounds showing lenition by analogy, in spite of the fact that the final consonant would require different mutation, among them Gil-Galad ('starlight', at least according to UT:65. In PM:347 however, the name is explained as 'star of radiance' introducing a new word galad, one of the mentioned mind-changes of Tolkien regarding names), calen + sad -> calenhad instead of **calessad (greenspace) (UT:425), nin + talf -> Nindalf instead of Nithalf (Wetwang) (A Tolkien Compass: 195) or gil + taur -> Gildor instead of **Gilthor (Starlord) or celebrin + tal -> Celebrindal (Silver-foot) (SIL).

We may think of establishing the time period of a compound formation by studying its mutation pattern. Consider for example Angband (Iron Prison) (SIL) ,Angmar (Iron Home) (LOTR) and Anghabar (Iron-delvings) (SIL), all with the same initial element ang- from CE: angâ (PM:347) and yet in the first case, no mutation is caused whereas the second two lenition is the result.

Evidently, Angband is a very old structure (it is for sure older than the elves...). Therefore, the compound word probably stems from the CE stage already and would probably be CE: angambandô. This directly developed into S: Angband, preserving the b- in analogy with CE: andambundâ -> S: annabon (elephant) (LR:372).

On the other hand, Anghabar (persumably derived from a root SAPA 'dig, excavate' (PE12:82)), is a structure of Gondolin at a time where Sindarin was completely developed already - therefore lenition by analogy would have been in place (and there would never have been a CE form **angasapâ or such like), resulting in Anghabar instead of **Angsabar. Similar arguments hold for the even later kingdom Angmar which is a modern compound, lenited by analogy, and not a descendant of a CE compound C**angambarê.

We may map out later changes in the difference between Calenhad and Caradhras. Colors in PQ are usually derived using a suffix -i, this is changed into -e in CE and lost in OS, hence we may assume that both prefixed elements had no final vowel in OS already, hence OS: calen and OS: caran. However, an OS compound OS: calensad would be subject to the rules of nasal mutation in compound words and end up in S: **calessad - hence the compound has to me more recent than the OS development phase. On the other hand, Caradhras does exhibit nasal mutation and may therefore be a true OS compound or may be a later compound not subject to lenition by analogy.

There are a few compounds in Sindarin which do not seem to show any mutation, among them the river names Anduin, Baranduin, Esgalduin and Taur-im-Duinath (SIL). However, these could potentially all result in lenition of d -> dh which Tolkien though of as 'uncouth' (UT:267) (if you try to pronouce some of them carrying out the lenition you might get an idea why...).

http://sindarin.weet.us/mutations.html

[The Telcontarion]

I think it would be Elrond who would have the right to kingship not galadriel; even his sons would would have more claim and would be nexxt in line after him.

I believe I read in the silmarillion (could have been the LOTR-but I know I read it) that after the death of Gil-galad the bloddline of the high kings of not only the eldar were represented by his bloddline only, but the the three houses of men as well.

So Elrond is the heir of the kings not Galadriel, she was never in line for kingship. When Elrond left, assuming his sons left with him, Eldarion held that title as well.

[Earniel]

I guess it's help yourself today ...
I think you did it quite well. ;)

The article you dug up was an interesting read.