Did Finwe have daughters?

[elbenprincess]

I´m confused, always believed Finwe had three sons, Feanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, but now I read theat he has two or three daughters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Finw%C3%AB What is canon? Maybe it was just a early thought of tolkien?

And did galadriel has 3 or 4 brothers? I always believed this were Finrod, Orodreth, Angrod und Aegnor. But I read that Orodreth was Firods son and therefore gil-galad (last high king of the noldor) came from the house of Finarfin?
After Finarfon returned to Valinor he was amnestied by the valar and became king of the noldor. After the third age, where all the noldor returned, was he still king, or could another claim the crown?
Many of the noldor died, therefore I have no idea how much he ruled. Were that hundreds, thousands?

[Galin]

There are some Elves from late texts that do not appear in the tree in the 1977 Silmarillion.

As for Galadriel, Tolkien's idea was that Orodreth (Arothir) was the son of Angrod, according to the later notion. Here Christopher Tolkien went with the tradition from earlier texts (for the 1977 Silmarillion).

Arothir (Orodreth) is not Finarfin's son according to The Shibboleth of Feanor, which is fairly late -- according to Scull and Hammond's Reader's Guide dated '1968 or later', or IIRC, 1969 or later, under an entry in Chronology.

[Inziladun]

The question of canon is not a new one here on the Downs. My belief is that 'canon' in Tolkien's case consists of The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarillion, and to a more debatable extent, Unfinished Tales. Oh, and now The Children of Húrin, I suppose.

The Silmarillion indicates indeed that Finwë had only three children: Fëanor, by Míriel, and Fingolfin and Finarfin by Indis. If there are other ideas that Finwë may also have had daughters, I would suspect the source would be The History of Middle Earth. I don't actually have those books, basically which consist of early versions of the stories we know.

Again, I consider The Silmarillion canon. Why? Because it was pieced together after the Professor's death by the one who knew his work best, his son Christopher. It isn't a perfect work by any means, but CT had to make some difficult decisions, and I quite like the result.

The Simarillion also gives Galadriel four brothers, Orodreth being among them. In a note in Unfinished Tales, CT explains:

Before the revised edition of The Lord of the Rings was published in 1966 my father changed Finrod to Finarfin, while his son Felagund, previously called Inglor Felagund, became Finrod Felagund.....For a reason unknown to me, my father displaced the second King of Nargothrond and made him a member of the same family in the next generation; but this and associated genealogical changes were never incorporated in the narratives of The Silmarillion.

UT The History of Galadriel and Celeborn (footnote 20)

Part of that idea slipped through in LOTR, when Gildor tells Frodo he is 'Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod'.

As for your other questions about Finarfin ruling the Noldor in Valinor, I would think that he continued to do so even after the return of the Exiles, because none of them would have had the same hereditary right (through kinship with Finwë) that he had.

It's only a guess as to how many of the Noldor he ruled. Probably hundreds, at least, though as you said very many had died in the First Age wars with Morgoth, and later in the Last Alliance.

x/d with Galin

[Galin]

The History of Middle-Earth also contains later versions of the Silmarillion -- for example, the later Quenta Silmarillion, the later Annals (used in the construction of the 1977 Silmarillion), and other writings that post-date the writing of The Lord of the Rings... and lots of other great stuff (plenty of earlier stuff as well)!

Gil-galad as a Finarfinian was also JRRT's latest known thought there (Gil-galad as the son of Orodreth).

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

About the matter of daughters, one can also look at what Tolkien did elsewhere. For the most part, daughters are mentioned by name when they are important to the story --Arwen, Lúthien, Galadriel, etc. -- but not if they aren't. The most notorious example of this omission is the fact that Aragorn's only son, Eldarion, is given a name, but not one of his daughters. They're simply mentioned as existing, but not even their number is given. Finwë was clearly (at least to me) obsessed with Fëanor; I think he noticed his other sons because of their conflict with Fëanor. Daughters? Did they do anything important, or did they have some kind of notable relationship with Fëanor? No? Not worth mentioning, then. The same can be said for the wives of Fëanor's sons. Tolkien did state somewhere (probably in the HoME books, I think) that they were all married, but we don't know a thing about the wives, not even their names.

[Nerwen]

*puts on scholarly spectacles*

Well, the "Later Quenta Silmarillion" (text given in HoME Vol X, "Morgoth's Ring", and otherwise very close to the published version) has a number of references to the three daughters of Finwë and Indis: Findis, Faniel and Irimë/Finvain/Lalwendë). I honestly can't work out what happened to them– this is whether Tolkien himself later revised them out of existence, or if Christopher Tolkien made an editorial decision to leave them out of the published Silmarillion– which I guess puts them in the same kind of semi-canonical limbo as, say, Elboron or Argon.

Anyway, looks like Wikipedia's "Project Middle-earth" suffers the same problem as many other "Tolkien Wikis" out there: too many people just making their own calls on what is, or isn't, "canon", without even acknowledging the issues involved... not to mention just plain getting stuff wrong.

CF article on Amrod/Amras: "For this reason wherever both Amrod and Amras appear in the published material it should be read as Amrod alone."

[Galin]

(...) I honestly can't work out what happened to them– this is whether Tolkien himself later revised them out of existence, or if Christopher Tolkien made an editorial decision to leave them out of the published Silmarillion– which I guess puts them in the same kind of semi-canonical limbo as, say, Elboron or Argon.

Christopher Tolkien has provided the evidence that at least two daughters remained to Finwe according to text dated 1968 or later (The Shibboleth of Feanor): Findis, who did not go into Exile, while Irien Lalwende did.

The confusion concerns the 'third daughter', as Faniel existed in earlier text published in Morgoth's Ring, including the Elvish genealogies seemingly dating from 1959... and considering that Tolkien had the genealogies in front of him while he was working on the 1968 text -- in these tables there are still three daughters, while in the late description itself there are two, and the text specifically refers to four children, (not five as in Morgoth's Ring).

More confusion concerns the names, but I have chosen the forms that seem to go with the actual excursus (The Shibboleth) rather than the tables (Tolkien may have slipped in the text itself, as there he refers to one daughter with a name from the table, then later she is Irien rather).


So again, the later text refers to four children and two daughters, while the tables have three daughters -- and so one wonders why Tolkien did not correct the tables to agree with the text, since he was again using the 1959 tables at the time.