#character: thingol

[iridescentoracle]

#100% #his whole thranduil performance is chanelling thingol from the lay of leithian #he should get to do the original (via warrioreowynofrohan)

Whenever I picture Thingol in my head, I always imagine Lee Pace as Thranduil from the Hobbit movies

If I were making a Beren and Lúthien movie, I would totally cast Lee Pace as Thingol.

He already looks amazing as Thranduil. But can you imagine him as the OG Forest Elf King?

[afanofmanyhats]

One of my favorite things about Tolkien's writing is that he has a very specific, recurring trope. For lack of a better term, I'm dubbing this the Tolkien Wife-Guy.

This is mainly obvious in the Silmarillion, but Tolkien loves to write couples where the man is a notable individual- nobility, commits a great deed, or both- but the wife is at least equally notable, if not more beloved or powerful. Manwe is the king of the Valar and Eru's main representative in Arda? Everyone loves Varda more, and Melkor fears her more than his own brother. Elu Thingol is the king of the Silvan Elves? His wife is Melian, whose Girdle is the magic that keeps Morgoth's forces at bay. Beren is a chief among the Edain, who befriends animals and survives one of the most nightmarish places in Beleriand? His wife is Luthien.

Even in Lord of the Rings we see this occur, though the couples are on more even footing. Tom Bombadil is... Tom Bombadil, but Goldberry is the River-daughter, and Tom adores her above everything else, and the hobbits are completely taken in with her when she's their host. Similarly, while Celeborn is a mighty lord among Elves, Galadriel is one of the only Noldor in Middle-earth who saw the Two Trees, and her hair inspired Feanor to make the Silmarils, not to mention her own accomplishments in the war against Morgoth. Aragorn is the king of Gondor and Arnor, but Arwen is the Evenstar of the Elves, the descendant of three(?) different royal Elven lines. And Faramir becomes the Steward of Gondor and is one of the noblest men alive, but Eowyn killed the Witch-king, so you know. She got the grander moment for the saga.

But with (most) of these couples, we never get the impression that the man views his wife as Less-Than, or as a junior partner. Thingol is the main exception to this in how he dismisses Melian's counsel, and that's made out to be his foolishness within the text. Otherwise, Manwe treats Varda as his co-ruler, Beren never tries to downplay Luthien's achievements, and I'm pretty sure most of Tom Bombadil's dialogue is about how gorgeous Goldberry is. It's really sweet.

All of these examples really testify to how much Tolkien loved his wife. People rightly point to Beren and Luthien as the prime example of that, but I think you can find it in these other couples too. Even though Edith is mainly known to history as Mrs. Tolkien, it's evident to me that Jirt saw her as a whole person worthy of admiration outside of being his wife.

[eglerieth]

Silm!

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

i have to laugh about people complaining about how Bigoted and Disrespectful thingol is to the noldor as if he doesn't:

remain friends with finrod and tell him the location of nargothrond, which finrod goes on to be the king of - meaning thingol is fine with there being a noldorin elven ruler in beleriand

outright state that he will not cut ties with fingolfin and his followers, who do participate in the slaughter of his brother's people, merely because he sees that they've atoned for their actions

host galadriel in doriath and make no objection to her wedding with celeborn, his own grand-nephew - meaning he is also fine with noldor staying in his court and marrying into his own family

the only noldor whom he openly dismisses and dislikes are the fëanorians, who participated in the aforementioned slaughter of his brother's people, insult him, and refuse to acknowledge him as a king despite him having maintained his kingdom in beleriand since before they were born and certainly long before they came there. but that's just it isn't it. fandom can't handle someone in-universe disdaining their precious innocent war criminals and that's why everything bad that happens in the first age is thingol's fault. or the fault of his grandson for not giving the silmaril that his parents nearly died to obtain to the people who disrespected his grandfather and tried to rape his mother. or the fault of his great-granddaughter for not giving the silmaril to the people that sacked her home, killed her entire family including her brothers who were children, and made her a refugee as a toddler. it is definitely not the fault of the people who decided to do all the ambushing and attacking, no absolutely not. that's nonsense, they're just victims of tyrannical close-minded racist elu thingol and his equally entitled descendants :DDD

[lycheesodas]

brothers

-

commissions | shop | ig | twt

i like the idea of Elwe and Olwe being twins. They started out being the same height (while Elmo is the youngest and shortest) until Elwe meets Melian and gets a makeover (???) but of course Olwe doesn’t know that. Here’s how that Valinor reunion would go:

[silmarillaure]

I may not like Finwë but he deserves to be so angry that Thingol that he'd genuinely be willing to commit a kinslaying himself.

Honestly, I do think Finwë x Elwë is cute. It really is, but notice how I said Elwë, who wanted to go to Valinor simply because Finwë wanted to go there, even if the reason Finwë wanted to go there was for Míriel (which is painfully ironic, both Finwë & Elwë ended up betraying the person they were initially so devoted to).

Thingol on the other hand clearly isn't Elwë anymore. He rejected that name, he rejected Finwë's family (which might as well have been a rejection of Finwë himself since he died loving Míriel & her descendants more than he loved his own life), and stole the very thing Finwë's favorite son made that Finwë died trying to protect.

He can and WOULD be enraged over how Thingol treated the Fëanorians even before C&C stirred shit up.

Finwë feeling so betrayed by Elwë and despising the person Thingol became so much that he beats Thingol to a bloody pulp and goes to give Fëanor a comforting hug while his hands are still covered in Thingol's blood... is something helps me sleep at night.

[superloves4]

Something that compels me so much about Maglor/Luthien is that if you change Beren with Maglor, the quest for the silmaril becomes so much more juicy

Because, yeah, on one hand it's still a suicide quest designated to either make Maglor give up Luthien or die in the process of the quest, thus freeing Luthien.

But on the other hand, this is Maglor's family treasure he is asking as bride price (which also makes it an actually accurate as a bride price is supposed to be something the groom's family already has yk), Thingol is asking Maglor to give him the whole reason the Feanorians even left Aman in the first place, the thing Feanor died trying to re-take, the reason he has been fighting for years.

Not to mention that depending on how you decide to read the oath, Thingol is asking him to not only curse himself but his entire family for Luthien, asking him if a life with Luthien is worth eternal damnation.

[ladysternchen]

From the Book of Lost Tales to the Silmarillion and further- the rounding off of a character

I'm sweetly going to ignore my half-finished character headcanon/character study-series and write this character study of Elu Thingol and associated character here anew.

And no, I'm not only picking Elu here because he's my favourite and I need to push his defence-agenda, I pick him because he is quite a beautiful example of character development and how characters tend to not do what their creators want them to do (and yes, speaking as a fanfiction-author who borrows him regularly, Elu is a VERY talkative character). Also, he is quite an old character within the Legendarium, and one whose influence is woven throughout Tolkien's works- in other words, Elu Thingol never truly left Tolkien.

I would need a little more time (thanks, kids!) to do some proper research here, to really look up where the concept of him appears first, whether it is in the Book of Lost Tales I as "Linwë Tinto, King of the pipers" who stumbled across the "lonely twilight spirit Wendelin" and danced with her forever beneath the beeches, with only their children Tinúviel and Tinfang Warble later returning amongst the Eldar, or really as Tinwelint in the earliest versions of the 'Tale of Tinúviel", or when these two characters became one in Tolkien's mind.

In both cases, he was a trope. The prince who stumbles across the fairy queen in the woods and is lost (a tale as old as storytelling itself and present in many many cultures- the tale of Tam Lin is just one of them), the king who opposes the marriage of his only daughter (a trope even older than the lost prince, and appearing just about every fairy tale). Not much explaining needed with the latter, the former, however, is more interesting. Because Tolkien, apparently sick and tired with the Fairy Queen always being evil and snatching the prince away from the world, created a Fairy that is good, and a relationship that is not toxic, but one of true and honest love. (Yes, I know there are other interpretations out there, but sorry, this is openly contradicting canon).

Now, there is not much development in the relationship between Elu Thingol and Melian, despite the fact that they do return among the Elves in all but this earliest version, so that part of his character did not really need developing (Elu Thingol the mosterfucker, established. No no, I never said that). Other parts did.

One of the most irksome experiences a writer can make are characters that crawl out of your manuscripts (they all do that, sooner or later. Writers only don't talk about it because everyone thinks them crazy if they do) and side-eye what you've written about them.

"No, that is not me, re-write that!"

Sigh. Some solid advice, if you can, do what they tell you. You need them more than they need you. But with tropes, especially tropes you want and need, that gets difficult. So what does a writer do then? Exactly, they apologise. Telling how much the character is loved by everyone, how they are 'the greatest amongst the Eldar safe for Fëanor alone'. In Elu Thingol's case, this creates this weird situation where the story tells us one thing, while it shows us another. We are told that he was a great king, but what we see of him is... something different. That's unsatisfying, for everyone involved. And that is when characters stay on your mind forever.

There is, of course, a much more scientific explanation for the way Tolkien wrote Elu Thingol than talkative characters- and that is one that is rather obvious to me, but I've truly never seen it expressed anywhere else. You see, a marriage being prevented by an overprotective father is a trope, but it is also a very real experience Tolkien himself made- only that it was his legal guardian rather than Edith's who opposed their relationship. Now, there is no evidence for what I write next, but it is very hard to believe that Tolkien would not write some of his resentment over Father Francis' refusal to allow their relationship into the Tale of Tinúviel- especially since we know that it was Edith herself who was his inspiration for Lúthien. Only the resentment didn't last. Eventually, John Ronald and Edith were wed, with the blessings (although not with the whole-hearted approval) of Francis Morgan, and Father Francis would later even baptise the Tolkiens' first son, who was respectively named after him.

I think it would be going too far to call Father Francis Morgan the inspiration for Elu Thingol as Edith was for Lúthien, but I think Tolkien's own relationship with his legal guardian and only father-figure he had ever known did influence the forming of that character, and certainly not least the respect that Beren almost always shows Elu Thingol- insisting on fulfilling his quest, wanting to return Lúthien to Doriath rather than living with her in the wild, even calming a very angry Lúthien down when she snaps at her father upon their return to Menegroth. Beren later even goes on to not only save his father-in-law's life (WHY, Beren? You blithering idiot!) at the expense of his own, he also goes to war one last time to revenge his murder.

Another really interesting thing is the way Tolkien wrote Elu Thingol in "The Children of Húrin". It almost seems a little out-of-character in contrast to the rest of the Silmarillion, but I really don't think so. I think this is the real King Thingol, the one who was so loved by his people and his family. Why? Well, Tolkien did get much more mellow in his writings as he grew older. The 'Book of Lost Tales' is still written in a very lyrical and archaic style, with the characters being much more self-centred and pompous than in his later works. That accounts for many characters becoming much more likeable, and Elu Thingol is no exception to that. Tinwelint is a much more difficult character than Elu Thingol is. But the 'Children of Húrin' are an old tale, a very old one. And that is at least worthy of notice.

That leaves us with the two last bits that have to come together to complete the character that we today know as Elu Thingol - and that is his death, and his youth.

It is very telling in my opinion that Tolkien himself never found a satisfactory ending to this character. He knew he had to die undefeated by Morgoth (and that truly is an honour shown), and also that he had to die at the hands of the Dwarves without the Dwarves being altogether in the wrong, sparking the conflict that was essential in both the 'Hobbit' and the 'Lord of the Rings'.

Tolkien did write one version that can be read in the 'Book of Lost Tales II', one which he later disregarded and openly disliked (thank God. It took me months and months to get over the beheading 🤮). In that version, both the Dwarves and Elu play VERY dirty indeed, and are driven by nothing more than greed. It's quite disgusting.

Christopher Tolkien and Guy Kay later had to piece together and write anew the 'Ruin of Doriath', and all in all, they did a remarkable job, creating a chapter in which no-one really loses their honour altogether, at least not before their respective people. But there are nonetheless issues. For one, trying to incorporate as much of the original texts as possible, they put the infamous 'uncouth race' in there, a quote that stems from earlier writings (in which language like that was normal) and of which I heartily wish that it hadn't found its way into the published Silmarillion. Not because I want my fave to be better than he is, but because it paves the way to a discussion that I really feels has no room within this very story. No, I still believe that Elu Thingol was never meant to be racist. Why? Because even if you want to see the different species of humanoids in Middle-Earth as an allegory for different human peoples, the fact remains that apart from that last insult, he did not act the racist at all. He greeted and had dealings with the Dwarves for a millennium before that fateful day. He let Haleth and her people life as a free people on his lands. They did never call him their lord, but had his protection when needed. Yes, it was Finrod who persuaded him to do that, but it was still Elu Thingol who granted them Brethil. And I want to stress the point here that the people of Haleth were the only tribe of Men who lived as free people, not as the liegemen of an Elf-lord. Yes, he was very suspicious at first towards Men, but I hate to say it, history proved him very very right. Both within the Legendarium and real life. And he came around. He took Beren as his son-in-law and honoured him, he took in Túrin and loved him like his son, he treated Morwen and Níenor with nothing but the highest respect. No, sorry, that are not the actions of someone who believes himself and his kind worth more than others. Were it not for that accursed insult at the very end.

The other thing I really would have loved to have in the published version of the 'Ruin of Doriath' is the reactions and relationships all around. You get but a little of the grief and despair of Melian in the published version. And I personally am so sad that the relationship between Mablung and Elu got cut so short. I love that they die side by side as friends in the original text. But yeah, that's just me. I have a thing with those two.

That now leaves us with the final changes Tolkien made to the character- making him also Elwë, the ambassador, the best friend of Finwë (and Finwë's voice of reason). I love how Finwë, fiery as he is (*cough* ADHD is heritable *cough*), listens to the lies of Morgoth, while Elwë, ever the cautious one, does not. And I also love how Tolkien puts the same words in Elwë's mouth that he will let Aragorn say an eternity later "I can but choose for myself, and all my people shall do likewise".

And that is pretty solid advice, actually.

@silmarillionwritersguild

[crownedwithstars]

Why doesn't Thingol just give the Silmaril to Fëanorians?

One thing I find curious about the discourse around the Silmarils and their ownership issues is how it seems to often simplify the Sindarin and especially Thingol's perspective. I mean, Thingol giving the Silmaril Beren and Lúthien stole from Morgoth's crown to the Fëanorians is framed as somehow easy and obvious option. But I don't think it really is?

It's not even about whether Thingol is right or wrong to act as he does, it's about why his actions are justified from his point of view (and why it is more believable than him being compliant to Noldor).

1. Noldor disrespected and antagonised Thingol from the start. They have given him little reason to be nice or helpful.

When the Noldor arrive in Beleriand, they immediately start to do their own thing, and disregard Thingol, the local sovereign who is regarded as the overlord or at least respected and revered by the Elves native to this region. But Noldor (and Fëanorians) do not attempt to gain his friendship and alliance, they don't establish diplomatic relationships, they bring no gifts (which would be expected in this kinda medieval based society) and neither do they ask for help as Exiles, they don't let Thingol know where they are going to settle down or ask whether it's convenient but grab lands whether the locals like it or not, they don't recognise his position even as a friendly gesture, they don't disclose the nature of their expedition, withhold important information, and most of all, they bring violent trouble to his backyard. This must seem deeply and outrageously insulting to Thingol, especially because these princes are children and grandchildren of Finwë, Thingol's close friend - and yet they treat him without an ounce of respect.

Thingol is no less proud or particular about his position than Fëanor or Fingolfin is. He probably has not had it challenged or ignored by anyone except Morgoth's servants. Also he may see it as indicative of general Noldor prejudice/disdain against Sindar.

Whether Noldor had justified reasons for the way they act upon landing in Middle-earth, you can't deny that they don't do even the bare minimum to win the locals over. Yeah, you could argue that bringing reinforcements at the time when Morgoth returns and becomes active in Middle-earth again is something, but this is still not a way to treat potential friends and allies.

2. The Kinslaying of Thingol's people and kin at Alqualondë and the burning of their ships.

Obvious, really. He may see himself as standing in for Olwë, and regards the Silmaril as weregild for slain relatives and friends - people he himself probably knew before Teleri were sundered. Also why would he respect Fëanorian property rights when from his point of view, Noldor don't give a damn about Teleri or their rights?

Thingol may also judge that the Kinslaying and burning of the ships disputes the Fëanorians' right to the Silmarils and their moral high ground to a degree where anyone brave and cunning enough to reclaim even one of them becomes a rightful owner. Obviously he is biased in Beren and Lúthien's behalf but it would be weird if he was not? After B&L's efforts and their suffering, and quite literally achieving the impossible, he may be of the opinion that they have more right to the Silmaril than Fëanorians who seem more invested in competing Morgoth for land than for the Silmarils. Thingol may share the same attitude as Dior has in one of the drafts: there are two more Silmarils in the same place where the one in his possession came from, so why don't the Fëanorians go get them first?

3. Celegorm and Curufin.

I mean, after the way Lúthien was abused and attacked by the two brothers, Thingol could be holding on to the Silmaril out of pure spite. His daughter never gets any apology for how she was treated, and Thingol has no reason to believe that C&C's actions - and the attempt to force Thingol into an alliance - were not sanctioned and approved by the rest of the brothers. These people have been consistently terrible at everyone Thingol loves and cares about, so why should he help them in any way?

4. The Silmarils mess with your brain.

It's clear that the Silmarils have an unwholesome effect on almost everyone who possess them. Time and again Tolkien describes how characters fall prey to this greedy, possessive lust for the Silmarils. I mean, Fëanor and his sons are ready to spill blood again and again just to get them back. There is something about the jewels that, if you desire them for their own sake, kind of enslaves you to them. Thingol won't give up the Silmaril to Fëanorians because he can't.

5. The Doom of the Noldor compels him.

It's explicitly stated in the Doom that while the Oath will drive the Fëanorians, it will never yield its objective, and the Silmarils will elude them. As soon as Thingol names a Silmaril as a bride price for Lúthien, he becomes involved in the Doom and what it dictates, limiting his control of the situation. Because of the Doom (and the effect the Silmaril has on him), Thingol is not free to give it to the Fëanorians.

[lime-bucket]

Before reading the Luthien & Beren chapter i was bracing myself to be angry (or disapointed) at celegorm & pretty much any male charcter beside beren.unexpectedly i finshed it being livid towards her family

& u might think oh yeah thingol was an asshole fr what he done. But no. Im talking about that fucking melian

Up to that point,the story never shut up about how wiiiiise she is & how the queen can perceives things to come & shit like that

& YET SHE SAW NO PROBLEM WITH LOCKING HER DAUGHTER UP?? Like honest to eru how melian didnt had the tiniest of forsight that wont end in nothing short than a disaster

But again what did we expect from a character whose first interaction with future spouse is locked into a looong staring context

Further whats seems upsetting about luthiens home situation is the princess dynamics with her subjects or should i say the lack of it.like the story seems to implies she spend her time w/e any friends or at least an entourage,the only non royal elf that enteracts with her is the bard that snitch on her twice cuz he got butthurt hes friendzoned.

& tho ik the servants who built that tree house to imprison luthien cant be blamed as they were under orders to it sure didnt made me feel sad towards them when the elves grieved for their princesses absense.

Or rather, they seem to miss her dances & songs.. ik im paraphrasing here

Like idk it makes u wonder if luthien rlly did embark on that dangerous quest to get the silmarils only to be with beren or was there a desire somewhere in her to get out from a place where it seems shes perceived & treated as a treasure for her unique heritage.

For the fact luthien never returned to Doriath upon ber fathers violent death where her people would have needed her the most refuses to leave my head

[valacirya]

Besides his changed attitude towards Beren (and Edain in general), there's another great evolution in Thingol's character. He goes from this: "He [Thingol] had small love for the Northern Sindar who had in regions near to Angband come under the dominion of Morgoth, and were accused of sometimes entering his service and providing him with spies." (Peoples of Middle Earth)

To this: "The most part of the Grey-elves fled south and forsook the northern war; many were received into Doriath, and the kingdom and strength of Thingol grew greater in that time." (The Silmarillion)

And this: "Then Thingol was filled with wonder and grief when he looked on him, and knew that grim and aged man for Húrin Thalion, the captive of Morgoth; but he greeted him fairly and showed him honour." (The Silmarillion)

[giaffa]

favourite silm fanfic dynamic

[emeraldskulblaka]

Lay of Leithian Character Portraits

Thingol, King of Doriath

portrayed by Konstantin Baryshnikov

If you are a hero - go to battle, And turn your word into reality. Take the northern road, to the Kingdom of Darkness, And return with a Silmaril.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

with the way i inch ever closer to hating the feanorians after reading their apologists' takes on indis, thingol, luthien, dior, elwing, etc., (while at the same time growing to love said characters, funny how that works), you'd think feanorian "stans" are actually just feanorian haters in disguise making it their mission turn the fandom against them

[iridescentoracle]

Hello! I am here to ask about your Dior headcanons re: the political cohesion of Doriath. 👀

Oh man, I didn't expect anyone to actually take me up on that!

(Okay so I got partway into writing this and then realized I should probably note up front that I tend to stick to the Silm (& LOTR/the Hobbit where applicable, but they... aren't, here) as the most authoritative version of canon, and I can get into why and where the nuances/exceptions are there (I do say tend to stick, it's not hard and fast!), but that's mostly a side note here: the point is simply that I don't really factor other drafts or the poetic Leithian into my take on Doriath, Thingol, Dior, etc, just what we're told in the actual Silm. I also read the Silm as an in-universe history text compiled by in-universe scholars, who, being people, are going to have their own biases and blind spots, even when they're doing their best to be accurate!)

So, this is a two-part thing: #1, there's the political cohesion of Doriath before & at the time of Thingol's death, which i talked about in the tags of the post that prompted this ask but is kind of necessary as context for the Dior part to make sense, and #2, there's the actual Dior headcanons. Both of these parts are very long because I've never really seen anyone else suggest any of this stuff and I want to explain where I'm coming from thoroughly enough that it actually makes sense to people who aren't me, but the TL;DRs:

TL;DR 1: I think Doriath was probably a hot mess politically after Thingol died, with tensions between various groups of Sindar and Laiquendi in the leadup to Thingol's death & Melian's departure, and more political tensions afterwards between those who wanted Beren & Lúthien to come be the new rulers, and those who thought they should stay gone, with someone still in Doriath taking over.

TL;DR 2: I think Dior became Eluchil, potentially at the request of some portion of the Iathrim, hoping to help prevent Doriath from devolving into civil war, and saw dealing with the Silmaril-Fëanorioni situation as a lower priority than stabilizing Doriath's internal political situation until it was too late.

1. The political cohesion (or rather, lack thereof) in Doriath prior to Thingol's death

So, okay, the thing about Doriath is that we don't actually have any real idea of like... how much the Iathrim liked being the Iathrim? We're never told about any intra-Iathrim conflict, but a) the Silm was probably compiled mostly by surviving Gondolindrim or their descendants, so they wouldn't know about anything liike that unless surviving Iathrim told them, and after the Second Kinslaying I don't imagine many Iathrim would've been eager to talk about how things had actually been tense/messy/etc when they could remember everything as having been perfect until it was ruined by the Fëanorionrim, and doubly so after the Third Kinslaying, so why would anything like that make it into the Silm?

and b) what we do know about Doriath is that it wasn't really Doriath as we know it until Morgoth came back to Middle-earth, and everything went to hell.

At the start of the first age, you suddenly get Doriath (the fenced land!) being the one protected area of a continent that used to be totally free and open. How many Sindar actually didn't particularly care for Thingol's style of leadership, or simply preferred to live nomadic lives, going basically wherever they pleased, until suddenly that wasn't safe anymore, and you were only guaranteed survival if you were close enough to Menegroth to be within the Girdle when it went up? ditto how many Laiquendi had no interest in swearing loyalty to Thingol right after their own king had just been killed, but again, made it to safety and stayed there over taking their chances on their own in the outside world?

I think it's entirely possible that there were always potential political tensions under the surface in Doriath that just... never got written about, because they never boiled over into actual political conflict, and so it was never the sort of tension that had any bearing on the historical record.

Except then Beren & Lúthien happen to the world, and a few years later the Narn, and in the blink of an eye suddenly the only king Doriath has ever had is dead, and the only queen Doriath has ever had is gone and the Girdle with her—and more than that, the only rulers the Sindar had ever had for three thousand years before Doriath existed.

And where a few years earlier I think the Iathrim would probably have turned pretty universally to Lúthien, now she's abandoned them for her human husband—and while she's my favorite character in the entire legendarium hands-down and I don't blame her, I think that's another place there might have actually been some very mixed feelings among the Iathrim that nobody wanted to admit to later because how could anyone have been upset with Lúthien—and on top of her abandoning them for him, I think it's extremely probable most of Doriath did not actually get over their xenophobia about humans in general or Beren in specific when Thingol did (we know for sure at least some of Doriath didn't, cf. Saeros insulting Túrin's mother & sister to his face), but again, who's going to admit to having had a grudge against the holy couple of Middle-earth after the fact, you know?

Conversely, there could've been a sizeable faction of Sindar who had been totally loyal to Thingol until everything happened with Beren & Lúthien, but who found his actions towards them and/or Finrod to be where they drew the line, and while (unlike B&L themselves) that faction stayed in Doriath, there could've been a new, additional tension on that front.

Finally, for all we know there were multiple factions within the Laiquendi of Doriath, with political tensions stretching back to before their king died, rooted in who-even-knows!

2. Dior

All of that, of course, sets up a very, very messy political situation for Dior to walk into.

The Doriath stuff is arguably more speculation than actual headcanon, but here's where the unambiguous headcanons come in: I don't think "Dior Eluchil set himself to raise anew the glory of the kingdom of Doriath." Obviously that's how it got written down, but bluntly, I can't see Beren and Lúthien having a kid that stupid or, like, power-hungry and arrogant?

What I can see is a situation where the messenger that brought word of Thingol's death and Melian's departure asked Beren & Lúthien to come take over as the new king and queen, we promise we're not mad about you leaving and we won't be xenophobic to your husband anymore we swear it's fine now pretty please, Beren & Lúthien said no, and the messenger either asked Dior as a second choice, or said "okay fine none of that was actually true but Doriath is falling apart and we need a leader ASAP and there's about eight different contenders* (mostly kinsmen of Thingol or Laiquendi) being backed by various factions and it's going to devolve into civil war any minute so if you care at all—" and Dior said "would I do?"

(* Ask me about my Galadriel headcanon)

I don't think Dior necessarily wanted to be king of Doriath, and I don't think he saw the throne as his birthright or anything like that; I don't think anyone involved, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior himself, ever considered the possibility of Thingol dying and needing an heir! I think it's possible he was asked, or at most that he offered, and either way, I think he saw becoming king as taking on a responsibility for the sake of others.

(Which, like, "well here's a potentially impossible task that I'm going to take up even though probably no one thinks I'm actually capable of it, but it's my duty to help others as best I can" sure does sound to me like an attitude one might develop when raised by Lúthien "I kicked Sauron's ass cast a sleep spell on Morgoth and persuaded the Valar to find a loophole in the fabric of reality" Tinuviel and Beren "I stayed by my father's side as an outlaw to give my mother time to lead the rest of our people away hopefully to safety knowing I would never see her or any of them again (and then spent several years being a giant thorn in Morgoth's side for good measure)" Barahirion, where "apparently my grandpa I may or may not have ever met died, guess that makes me the king of a place i may or may not have ever been" does... not.)

I also think he either took on the epithet Eluchil, or was given it by whichever factions of the Iathrim accepted him as king, when he actually became king. Obviously he's going to be referred to as Dior Eluchil even before that in retrospect because that's how he's thought of later, but that doesn't mean it was actually a name he always had, you know?

The final thing is, I think if Dior essentially walked into a political situation five seconds from devolving into civil war, it makes his inaction regarding the Silmaril prior to the Second Kinslaying make more sense: the Fëanorioni have been sitting around doing nothing about the Silmaril in Doriath / with Beren & Lúthien this whole time, the letter saying "hey that's our Silmaril give it back now" is probably just a formality, and Dior's only been ruling for a couple years, there's still plenty of people dubious about whether he should be king at all, he might well be subject to at least some of whatever xenophobia remains about humans in Doriath, and in general all the work he's done on stabilizing the kingdom will absolutely come undone again if he screws up; he's trying to keep a kingdom from falling apart, the Silmaril thing can wait.

Of course, it wasn't a formality, and it couldn't wait, but why would Dior have known that?

[silmarillaure]

"Finwe & Elwe would get back together-" NOOO BITCH!!!

I'm sure hardly anyone can blame Thingol for disliking the Feanorians but Thingol took the extra step too far of stealing Feanor's work from Feanor's sons/Finwe's grandsons/The rightful owners of the Silmarills.

That's his favorite fucking person in the entire world despite it not being a high bar, but like... he would still fight GOD for Feanor & you think he'd ever be able to like Thingol again instead of rightfully strangling him.