Quote:
Originally Posted by Huinesoron
Thank you! But I have to disagree with Hostetter on "later". XVIII is solidly dated to 1965 (being written on calendar pages); HoME XI:350 talks about a family tree which CT dates to December 1959, and confirms that text as the source for UT as well. Therefore "Celeborn is Elmo's son if the period from sailing to Aman to the fall of Angband lasted 3100 years" is the later idea.
The trouble is that this footnote is conditional.
IF the First Age is an undefined amount of time longer, THEN Celeborn was not the son of Elmo. But accepting that IF means rejecting... well, the whole idea of a timeline, because we then have no idea how long the latter half of the Age should be. AAm would give us about 4067 years for the same period, so I suppose we could adopt that; but that means rejecting the 888 date for the death of the Trees, which lines up perfectly with the 3100 years figure. That's a lot to discard on the strength of "very likely".
|
I'm aware that the table dates from the end of 1959, but I could've sworn that there's another place which dates the Elmo-Galadhon-Celeborn family tree to the late '60s, but my brain isn't cooperating...
Even so, while the footnote 5 is conditional, I'm not sure we should straight up delete a whole character (well...name on a family tree really), especially since even in the '3,100 loar' timeline the 'Elmo-Galadhon-Celeborn' idea fits better in regards to the stops at the March.
Another thing is, even though Celeborn is older than Galadriel in every scheme, we very rarely see Elves marrying outside of their generation (which is the reason, I think, why Tolkien pushed Ingwe a generation above Finwe) - also, moving Celeborn up a generation means that Celeborn and Galadriel are 1st cousins once removed: this is almost bordering the 'Idril-Maeglin'...eh...situation. While I know that in his later schemes Tolkien made Celeborn and Galadriel into 1st cousins, I'm not completely sure if Tolkien himself even realized it.
And finally, lest you take anything Tolkien said in this chapter too seriously, there's this quote:
Quote:
|
But the relative ages of the Kings Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë is not known.
|
Which basically invalidates the entirety of Tolkien's elaborate schemes and calculations in one sentence IMO. Obviously I don't think you should take it up, but if you don't take it up it means that you provided some leeway in regards to the interpretation of the text...Everything that Tolkien ever wrote is conditional in one sense or another IMO, and the entire premise of the timeline relies on best-guesses and interpretation based on an idea Tolkien almost certainly would've changed - but, when in Rome...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Huinesoron
Elwe:Olwe was just a maths error; corrected. Very nicely, 59 years from Olwe's corrected year puts Elmo in 2388 - exactly the earliest year he could be born! I've upgraded him to "probable".
I feel like the marriage date for Ingwe is treated as more of a decision, while Indis' birth is a calculation. Ingwil's birth is then set to a specific date, independent of others. Both of them, by the way, come very close to the 45 years I have between Findis and Fingolfin - meaning Indis had her first kids as quickly as her parents.
The Ingwe:Ilwen age gap: my read is that at the time, Tolkien was aiming at the idea that men married at 24, women at 21. The three years between them was calculated from that, so I expanded it to meet the later aging.
|
In regards to the Ingwe/Ilwen gap, perhaps you're right, but I still lean towards the more conservative side of just keeping the gap as written, and keep speculation to a minimum. Not that it really matters that much, but since we're splitting hairs...
And as to the marriages vs births, well, I don't actually have any good argument other than that I consider births more significant than marriages - but that's just my personal preference.
And yeah, BTW, you referred to Idril as Ingwe's granddaughter in your 'birth of Ilion' entry - she should be Ingwe's great-great-granddaughter. Again, sorry for the pedantic stuff, but for some reason these things stick out to me like a sore thumb.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Huinesoron
I've taken a glance at the Grey Annals, and straightaway I've run into a problem: Luthien's birth is fixed at 1/3 of the way through Melkor's chaining, which would put her a hundred years before the departure of Olwe. ^_^
It's worth noting at this point that the other possible date for the chaining of Melkor is 12 VY before his release (the number has to be divisible by three); that falls in 2834, 30 years after the end of the March, and gives him plenty of time to corrupt Men if we think that's more plausible. Under that scheme, Luthien would be born in 3410, which would work nicely, but I don't know how it affects the rest of the GA.
More work needed, basically.  |
If I were you, I would just anchor all the YT Beleriand dates to the YT 1133, which Tolkien did in regards to Feanor's conception and birth in the NoME.
Or even better, I would just put the AAm and GA YT side by side in a spreadsheet (including your calculated dates) and make that the basis.