#(eg if their choices were ruled by anger and impulse they wouldn’t have sat back and besieged angband for Literal Centuries)

[shinraelectricpowercom]

I mean, that’s not a bad analysis of one way the situation could have played out, but I was specifically thinking of “why did the Fëanorians move straight to Let’s Do A Kinslaying so quickly after the Sack of Menegroth instead of waiting to see if they could improve their odds of success before acting, when they had besieged Angband for centuries and never felt the need to attack it head-on to retrieve the Silmarils sooner instead, and had also not made any moves to retrieve Beren’s Silmaril, either by requesting or by threatening or by attacking anyone, up until that point”, and my analysis is not that “concern that if they don’t get it soon, Morgoth will get it first” is a pretext for why they moved quickly; it is the specific reason they chose to attack immediately instead of trying more diplomatic (and slower) methods or, idk, allying with the remaining dwarves of Nogrod and then attacking, or whatever else

is it a good reason to attack people who haven’t done anything to them? no, but i’m not arguing about the purity of their motives or the morality of their actions, just that their actions were motivated by a logical assessment of how best to achieve their main priority (ie, getting the silmaril and also, as a corollary, preventing it from falling into Morgoth’s hands again), and not just anger or garden-variety impatience

has anybody done the meta on how the second kinslaying was probably also motivated by the knowledge that with the Girdle fallen, Morgoth’s forces WOULD make it into Menegroth sooner or later, and they’d kill everyone there and then take the Silmaril, and then the Fëanorians would be Right Back Where They Started (morgoth 3, them 0) but actually in a worse position than before on account of the Multiple Crushing Defeats the Noldor had suffered since arriving in Beleriand