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nyxshadowhawk · 2 months ago

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I Read The Silmarillion So You Don't Have To, Part 11

Previous part.

Chapter 23: Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin In which Gondolin finally falls, spectacularly.

The Fall of Gondolin is the last of the Great Tales, but it’s heavily truncated in The Silmarillion. It goes through everything very quickly. So, I thought it was worth getting some of the missing parts of the story from The Fall of Gondolin, one of the supplemental books of incomplete drafts that Christopher Tolkien edited together. The following is a summary of the Silm version with some additional details from The Fall of Gondolin.

But first, we have to be introduced to yet another new protagonist! The last long story was about Húrin and his son Túrin. This story is about Tuor, the son of Huor (Húrin’s brother). So, Tuor is Túrin’s first cousin.

Like Túrin, Tuor was raised by Elves. While the Elves were traveling south to the Havens, they were ambushed by orcs and Easterlings, and Tuor was taken prisoner. He was enslaved to the Easterlings for three years, until he escaped into the wild and (like Túrin) became an outlaw. He goes to Nevrast (the deserted kingdom where Turgon lived before building Gondolin), and follows a river down towards the sea. When he hears a gull cry for the first time, he initially assumes it must be some kind of “fay-creature.” His first breath of sea air is like taking a swig of wine. Finally, he reaches a cliff’s edge, and looks out at the sea.

Tuor’s first view of the sea by Anke Eißmann

For the rest of his life, Tuor is obsessed with the sea. He’s afflicted with that “sea-longing” that affects all the Elves in the Third Age. (Remember when Legolas hears the gulls crying?) This is because Ulmo, the Vala of Water, plans to make Tuor his own agent in Middle-earth. Ulmo implants that mystical yearning into Tuor’s heart, so that he will do what the sea tells him to.

Tuor lives in a sea cave for a while, exploring tide pools and listening to the music of the waves. Later that year, Tuor sees seven swans fly south, and he follows them until he comes to Turgon’s old palace of Vinyamar. It’s completely deserted. Inside, he finds a sword, shield, helm, and chainmail shirt that Turgon left behind on Ulmo’s orders. Tuor puts them on, and goes down to the shore, where he finds a storm amassing over the sea. Ulmo, the Lord of Waters himself, manifests out of the storm.

Ulmo and Tuor by Daniel Pilla

Ulmo looks truly awesome, dressed in mail like fish scales and skirts like waves, riding in a chariot drawn by narwhals and sea lions. He has the deepest voice and deeper eyes. I can only imagine what Tuor must be feeling. He’s the first Man to experience this sort of theophany (or something close to theophany, if you want to be technical). It’s the only time since the Elves’ original migration that a Vala (who’s not Morgoth) manifests to anyone outside of Valinor.

Ulmo tells Tuor about Gondolin, and orders him to go find it and give the king a message. He also gives Tuor an invisibility cloak, so Morgoth’s spies won’t follow him in.

The next day, Tuor (presumably still reeling from his direct encounter with a literal Vala) finds an Elf just outside the empty palace. The Elf’s name is Voronwë, and he’s the only survivor of King Turgon’s last failed attempt at sending a ship to Valinor. Ulmo saved him, but he’s stranded, because he has no way of finding Gondolin again. When Voronwë learns that Ulmo commanded Tuor to find Gondolin, he decides to go with Tuor.

Tuor and Voronwë find the Pools of Ivrin, that beautiful place where Túrin and Gwindor stopped, and Túrin mourned for Beleg. Except now, it’s no longer beautiful: Glaurung the dragon defiled it, and it is cold and sad. Across the frozen marsh, Tuor and Voronwë see a dark man with a black sword pass by. By sheer coincidence, Tuor sees his cousin Túrin, but they never actually meet each other. They’re each the Main Characters of their own separate stories, and those stories never intersect.

Tuor and Voronwë see Túrin at the Pool of Ivrin by Ted Nasmith

Ulmo leads the Man and the Elf to the hidden entrance to Gondolin, a secret tunnel leading through the mountains. (Secret tunnel! Secret tunneeelllllllll! Through the mountaaaains!) Voronwë is able to see it with his elf-eyes. The tunnel itself is “dark, rough-going, and circuitous,” and the constant sound of echoing footsteps makes Voronwë afraid that they’re being followed. Stumbling in the dark, Tuor and Voronwë eventually reach the other side.

Before their eyes can adjust to the light, they’re immediately arrested by Turgon’s guards. (No one recognizes Voronwë, I guess.) After exhaustively listing all seven names of the great city, the guards bring them into it. They cross a flat plain with smooth rocks and clear pools, and ascend a staircase through Gondolin’s seven gates.

The city itself is pristine, with shining marble edifices and towers, cobbled streets, courtyards full of pretty trees and white birds singing, and huge fountains that flow with a crystalline rain of water. Tuor is so impressed by the splendid city, that he thinks he must be in the home of the gods.

Gondolin by David Gresit

(And to think, Gondolin is only a pale imitation of Tirion, the city in Valinor. And judging by that above picture, Leyndell is a pale imitation of Gondolin!)

As Tuor and Voronwë enter the city, a crowd forms around them. The Elves are especially interested in the Man. Tuor is taller than most Men, with rugged looks and unkempt blond hair, dressed in bearskins, and carrying a fishbone spear and a gold harp. In short, he looks like a wild barbarian who’s lived on the road for some time, a world away from the beautiful Elves of the shining city.

The guards show Turgon and Voronwë to their leader, Ecthelion of the Fountain, who questions them. Tuor dramatically throws off his cloak, revealing the armor and weapons that Turgon left behind, and proving that he is the chosen one sent by Ulmo. So saith the prophecy! The Gondolin Elves immediately welcome him. Ecthelion commands trumpets to sound, as the light of dawn washes over the beautiful white city.

Tuor finally gets to meet Turgon, King of Gondolin and now the High King of the Noldor, in his great hall, beneath the gold and silver images of the Two Trees of Valinor. Sitting at Turgon’s right is his nephew Maeglin (the edgy elf), and at his left is his daughter Idril Celebrindal. Tuor gives the king the message from Ulmo.

With a voice almost as powerful as that of the Vala, Tuor declares that Gondolin’s time is up. The Curse — the same Curse that has been following all the Noldor this whole time — has finally caught up with it. Because of the Curse, all the works of the Noldor will amount to nothing, so Gondolin will be destroyed. Turgon’s only hope for survival is to abandon his beautiful city and head for the sea.

Turgon knew that this was coming. Back when he built the city, Ulmo warned him not to grow too attached to it, and also told him that his salvation would be a Man from the west, i.e. Tuor. It’s one of those things that you know you’ll have to deal with someday, but you still assume that day will never actually come, so you try not to think about it. Turgon isn’t ready to give Gondolin up. He loves it as much as he once loved Tirion, the city in Valinor that it was based on, and he still trusts that its secrecy will protect it.

(Side note: It’s interesting to see how this part of the story changed between the original version and the Silm version. In the original version from The Fall of Gondolin, Tuor’s message was that Turgon should prepare his forces to do battle with Morgoth. Turgon refuses because he doesn’t want to expose Gondolin’s location. In the Silm version, Turgon has already gone to battle against Morgoth and exposed Gondolin’s location. So, Tuor’s message is that the city is doomed. The old version of Tuor also encourages Turgon to “trust in the Valar.” In the Silm version, the Valar — apart from Ulmo — have abandoned the Noldor.)

Turgon holds court with his lords to determine what to do, and Maeglin tells him not to listen to Tuor. This is exactly what Turgon wants to hear, so he listens to Maeglin, instead of heeding the prophetic advice of a literal Vala. Welp… he can’t say he wasn’t warned.

Despite his rejection of the warning, Turgon still allows Tuor to stay in his court, the way he’d once welcomed Huor. Turgon respects that Tuor has the favor of a Vala, and knows that his destiny is somehow intertwined with that of all the Noldor, so it’s a good idea to keep him around. During his time in the court of Gondolin, Tuor grows stronger and more refined, and learns Elvish lore and handicrafts from Turgon’s people. He falls in love with the beauty and majesty of Gondolin, though he still sometimes gets a flicker of that sea-longing when he hears the splashing of the fountains. He also falls in love with the king’s daughter, Idril Celebrindal, who loves him just as much.

Everyone in the court loves Tuor. Turgon accepts him as something like a surrogate son, since he has no son of his own, and supports his relationship with Idril.

Turgon and Idril by mysilvergreen

The only person who doesn’t like Tuor is, of course, Maeglin. Maeglin still lusts after Idril (who, I’ll remind you, is his first cousin), so he resents Tuor.

After many years, Tuor marries Idril (with a lot less drama than the marriage of Beren and Lúthien). It’s only the second time in Middle-earth history that a Man and an Elf have been married. The wedding feast is wonderful, there’s much merrymaking, and everyone but Maeglin is happy. (Maeglin is off sulking in the corner.) The following spring, Tuor and Idril have a son, Eärendil (yes, that one). Eärendil Halfelven is a beautiful boy with bright, shining blue eyes. He represents the best of both Elfkind and Mankind: the Elves’ wisdom and beauty, and the Men’s strength and hardiness. He also inherited his father’s sea-longing.

While all this was going on, Húrin was released from Angband. Around the time Eärendil is born, Húrin screams in despair near Gondolin’s hidden entrance, revealing its location to Morgoth. Morgoth’s early attempts at finding Gondolin are all thwarted by the Eagles, but Idril feels the bad vibes, and comes up with a Plan B. She builds a second secret tunnel (“SECRET TUNNEL—”), going in the opposite direction from the entrance tunnel, so that the city can evacuate if necessary. She ensures that as few people as possible know about the escape route, so there’s little chance of Maeglin hearing about it. Idril doesn’t trust Maeglin as far as she can throw him. It’s not just the creepy way he looks at her — she had a dream about him throwing her baby boy into a furnace. That would unsettle anybody.

Maeglin, meanwhile, has been skulking out of the city to do some mining. Maeglin’s father was a smith, so Maeglin is in charge of all the mining and quarrying that Gondolin needs. He genuinely loves the work, but it’s also an excuse to leave the city, which is against Turgon’s orders. For good reason. As soon as Maeglin leaves the mountains surrounding Gondolin, he’s captured by Orcs, and dragged directly to Angband.

Maeglin is tortured so horribly that he caves, and reveals to Morgoth the exact location of Gondolin, as well as how to get into it and how best to attack it. Morgoth is so pleased, he promises Maeglin that he’ll be King of Gondolin after Morgoth conquers it, and that he’ll have Idril’s hand in marriage (Morgoth definitely doesn’t intend to keep this promise.)

Maeglin the Traitor by KuraiGeijutsu

Then he lets Maeglin go, and tells him to go back to Gondolin and pretend that nothing is wrong. When the time is right, Maeglin will let Morgoth in.

This version of Maeglin is actually more sympathetic than the earlier version of him from The Fall of Gondolin. In this version, he only betrays Gondolin after being tortured. Even the strongest Elf can’t hold up under torture for too long. In the original version, Maeglin promises to give up Gondolin as soon as he’s captured, so the Orcs won’t kill him, which is much more cowardly. Either way, Maeglin’s lust for Idril and hatred of Tuor made him agree to go along with it. He could have warned Gondolin that Morgoth was coming, and helped to evacuate everyone. But no. Instead he lurks in Turgon’s court like an Among Us imposter, waiting to roll out the red carpet for Morgoth, so he’s definitely at fault here. Sympathetic or not, Maeglin’s treachery is the most infamous in the entire history of Elfkind. And considering how many examples we’ve seen so far, that’s really saying something. Is anyone surprised? I mean, he was evil-coded from the beginning.

Fun fact: Maeglin’s heraldic emblem is a sable mole. A mole. How would you like the charge on your coat of arms to be a mole? That’s basically a big sign saying “DON’T TRUST THIS GUY.”

When Eärendil is seven, Morgoth comes. He brings a devastating army of Orcs, Balrogs, wolves, even dragons (the spawn of Glaurung). Maeglin tells them to come over the high northern hills, which are less heavily guarded, and to come during the midsummer festival. After a silent all-night vigil, the Elves begin to sing to welcome the dawn, but the sun appears to rise in the north instead of the east. Morgoth’s army bursts over the northern mountains, red with fire and blood.

Another interesting thing here — in the original version, the “dragons” are machines, like tanks, rather than literal dragons:

Then on a time Melko [Morgoth] assembled all his most cunning smiths and sorcerers, and of iron and flame they wrought a host of monsters such as have only at that time been seen and shall not again be till the Great End. Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creatures of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin whatever fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode the Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin.

This version expresses Tolkien’s anti-industrialism much more clearly than the Silm version does, in which the dragons are real dragons. Dragons are awesome, but I kind of like this better.

Gondolin is caught completely off guard. Everyone panics, and the people of the great houses of Gondolin (and Tuor) rush to arm themselves. Tuor looks as splendid as any of the Elves, with a winged helmet and his emblem of the white swan’s wing emblazoned on his shield. In true “ancient epic” fashion, The Fall of Gondolin goes into detail about what everyone’s heraldic emblems look like. In that list are a few names that you may recognize: One is Galdor, the name of the first Elf we meet in The Lord of the Rings. There’s some speculation that this Galdor and the one in LotR are the same person, but this is unlikely, because of all the following events. It’s probably just a common Sindarin name. Another name you’ll recognize is the Elf, the myth, the legend, GLORFINDEL!

Glorfindel by MathiaArkoniel

This is the same Glorfindel who saves Frodo from the Nazgul at the river in Fellowship. Here, he’s the chief of the house of the Golden Flower, and one of the most powerful warriors on the battlefield.

King Turgon calls a council of his lords to decide whether they fight or run (while the dragons and/or iron tanks are all but bearing down the door). Tuor and Maeglin are both there, probably glaring daggers at each other across the room. Tuor argues that everyone should evacuate, and most of the Elves agree with him. Maeglin, of course, argues to stay and fight. Only one other Elf, Salgant, agrees with him. But Maeglin wins the debate, because he hits King Turgon where it hurts: “If Gondolin falls, then the Balrogs will get all your beautiful treasure!” So, the king commands everyone else to stay and fight. Tuor literally cries, and everyone else braces for the inevitable train wreck.

Let me just emphasize something: Everyone else is forced to fight a losing battle and watch their beloved city be destroyed, because one manipulative, malicious person preyed upon their leader’s insecurities. I really relate to the Elves’ frustrated groans and mournful sighs.

The Balrogs break down the gates, and the Orcs stream into the city. The Elves have the home field advantage, but they’re outnumbered, and the battle does not go well. Tuor rushes through the streets to get to his wife and child, get them out. But when he arrives at his house, he finds it surrounded by Mole soldiers. Maeglin is there.

Maeglin and the Black Sword by SaMo-art

Maeglin found out about Idril’s secret tunnel at the last minute. He plans to escape the city, dragging Idril along with him, and to throw little Eärendil off the walls and into the fire below. (Get your “cast it into the fire” jokes out now.) This is most likely a reference to reference to one version of the aftermath of The Iliad, in which Hector’s baby son Astyanax is thrown from the city walls by the Achaians.

Tuor calls his knights, who easily and mercilessly slaughter Maeglin’s knights. Realizing he’s losing, Maeglin tries to stab Eärendil, but Eärendil bites him, giving Tuor an opening to come at Maeglin. Tuor doesn’t just kill Maeglin—oh no. He does to Maeglin exactly what Maeglin was planning to do to Eärendil: he casts Maeglin into the fire, from atop the fortress walls.

Of the Fall of Gondolin by yidanyuan

So, Eöl’s curse comes true: Maeglin dies in the same way his father did, from being thrown from Gondolin’s walls. Tuor appoints a section of his guard, including Voronwë, to guard Idril. Then he rejoins the battle.

Ecthelion and his company, dressed in glittery crystal armor and fighting to pretty elven flute music, kill more Orcs than anyone else in the entire history of Elves. (So it is said in The Fall of Gondolin, anyway.) In short, Ecthelion is who Orcs have nightmares about. If Orcs had children, they’d keep them from misbehaving by telling them that Ecthelion would get them. So when Gothmog, the Lord of the Balrogs heads toward the king’s palace, Ecthelion fights him single-handedly. Although he’s badly wounded, Ecthelion springs at the Balrog’s chest and drives the spike on his helmet straight into Gothmog’s heart. They both fall into the king’s gigantic fountain. Ecthelion drowns, but he takes Gothmog down with him.

Gothmog vs. Ecthelion by Sandara Tang

Considering that Gothmog killed Fëanor himself, that is an impressive feat.

Turgon finally admits that Gondolin is done for, and decides (way too late) to get everyone out. In shame, he throws his crown down at the feet of the metal replicas of the Two Trees. He gathers the survivors in his palace, and tells them that Tuor will lead them out of the city. The Elves beg Turgon to come with them, but Turgon resolves to go down with the ship. It’s his city, and his fault that he didn’t heed the warnings.

Led by Tuor, the survivors flee towards the mountains. At the highest point, they look back and see the king’s tower wreathed in flames, ransacked by dragons, with Turgon standing at the top, waiting to die. Idril screams in anguish at the death of her father.

The King’s Tower Falls by Alan Lee

Gotta hand it to Idril, though — she spent most of the battle helping the other women and children get out of the city, and wielded a sword as well as any of the men. She also held her own against Maeglin when he tried to kidnap her, fighting him off “like a tigress.” We can add her to the list of badass overlooked Tolkien women.

This story has women fighting, and men crying over their fallen comrades. Tolkien is both very traditional and very ahead of his time.

It’s almost as hard to get through the secret tunnel as it was to get out of the city. The ground shakes so often with the thundering of Morgoth’s armies, that there’s sometimes rockfall that crushes members of the company. Imagine successfully surviving a war and getting to the escape tunnel, only to get crushed by rocks! It’s also completely dark, and there are poisonous fumes coming out of the earth. It takes a full two hours to travel from one end of the tunnel to the other in these conditions. A certain number of people turn back, hoping that the protective magic of the entrance tunnel will help them to get out that way. But it’s already too late: they walk right into the waiting jaws of Morgoth’s monsters.

(Fun fact: In The Fall of Gondolin, one of the Elves who helps lead the survivors out is Legolas Greenleaf. That was obviously changed, since there’s no way to explain that one, but it’s nonetheless interesting that Legolas’ distant origins are in this story. Also Legolas canonically has cat eyes in this version! WHAT DO YOUR ELF EYES SEE?)

There’s also a sad moment in The Fall of Gondolin in which Eärendil asks after Salgant and Echthelion, who played with him and told him stories during the happier times. Idril has to tell him that they’re missing or dead. The little boy cries and says he never wants to go back to Gondolin, and Tuor has to tell him that there’s no Gondolin to return to. These are the little human moments that get missing in the Silm’s condensed versions, which really hit hard emotionally.

Family by LiigaKlavina

On the other hand, Eärendil expresses how happy he was to see Maeglin die in a fire. “It was good to see Maeglin die so, for he would set arms about my mother — and I liked him not.” Yup, that is all the reasoning you need. Kids are so straightforward. That guy sucked, I’m glad he’s dead!

The last leg of the journey is across a dangerous mountain pass, which would be difficult enough to cross without being in the dark, tired, injured, and weighed down. It’s a path along a sheer, snowy cliff face, that the wind is funneled straight through. As everyone slowly struggles across the pass, suddenly, they’re surrounded by Orcs on all sides, and there’s a Balrog. Morgoth’s forces were watching the pass. The Eagles who live on the mountains swoop down to help fend off the Orcs.

(Another interesting tidbit about that: in The Fall of Gondolin, it’s said that the Eagles hate Morgoth because he chained up some of their kind, and tried to force them to divulge their magic words of flight. Morgoth wants to be able to fly, so that he’ll be better than Manwë. When the Eagles wouldn’t tell him, he cut off their wings, and tried to fly with them, but failed. I don’t know if that’s still canon in the Silm version, but I like it.)

The Orcs are taken care of, but there’s still the Balrog. Glorfindel, his hair streaming like a golden banner, fights it single-handedly. After a great battle on the highest point of the pass, Glorfindel stabs the Balrog in the belly, and it falls into the abyss below, dragging Glorfindel with it.

Glorfindel and the Balrog by Eric Velhagen

Thorondor, the King of the Eagles, retrieves Glorfindel’s body. Tuor builds a cairn on the precipice, and yellow flowers grow on Glorfindel’s grave.

But wait! I said he was the same Elf who appears in The Lord of the Rings! Glorfindel is so valorous, he’s one of very few Elves whom the Valar allow to reincarnate on Middle-earth. The reincarnated Glorfindel is blessed by Manwë, and almost as powerful as a Maia.

Why doesn’t this suped-up Glorfindel do anything else in The Lord of the Rings? Well, thematically, it’s because LotR is about the strength and virtue of common people, as a deliberate contrast to the Silm, which is about larger-than-life heroes in the manner of ancient mythology. The in-universe reason is that the strategy against Sauron is fundamentally a stealth mission. If the Fellowship included an epic, famous Elf lord in shiny armor, with shiny hair, who literally glows with divine light, that would be pretty counterproductive. Glorfindel’s only real role in LotR is as a cameo; as awesome as he is, it made perfect sense for Peter Jackson to replace him with Arwen for the river scene.

Another callback to the Fall of Gondolin in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is the two Elvish swords, Orcrist and Glamdring. The latter was Turgon’s own sword. How either of them survived the coming destruction of Beleriand, and ended up in a troll cave thousands of miles east, is unknown.

After Glorfindel’s death, the refugees continue on, traveling for a year through war-torn lands. The eight hundred people who left Gondolin — already a small percentage of the city’s population — are whittled down to five hundred. They call themselves the Lothlim, the People of the Flower, because the name “Gondolin” is too painful. Ulmo protects them as soon as they get to the river. The people sing sad songs under willow trees, mourning the loss of their city, its king, its brave knights, its beautiful women and children, and Glorfindel.

When news of Turgon’s death reaches the rest of Beleriand, Gil-galad is named High King of the Noldor. He remains the High King until the War of the Last Alliance, the one in which Sauron was defeated the first time. He’s the last King of the Noldor in Middle-earth.

Morgoth, meanwhile, enjoys his victory. He hasn’t just won the battle, he’s won the war… or so he thinks. He completely forgot about the Sons of Fëanor and their oath to retrieve the Silmarils at any cost, because Morgoth didn’t think he’d be on the receiving end of that curse. As far as he’s concerned, all that oath has done is sew discord and hatred amongst the Elves, which works to his favor. He doesn’t even care about the one Silmaril he lost to Beren and Lúthien. Of course, it’s at the moment of his triumph that he’s most vulnerable.

Tuor follows his sea-longing to the mouth of the River Sirion, which is the only safe-ish place the refugees can go. There, a small but robust community of refugees from Gondolin, Doriath, and the other desecrated kingdoms. Círden also arrives with a group of mariners from Balar, an island just off the coast. At this point, on the water is the safest place to be, because of Ulmo’s protection.

Meanwhile, Ulmo returns to Valinor to complain to the Valar. Enough is enough: Morgoth has almost won, the population of Middle-earth has been decimated, and the survival of Elves and Men hangs by a thread. The Noldor have suffered enough for their sin, Ulmo argues. It’s time for the Valar to get off their asses and do something. Manwë is not moved. Only one person has a chance of begging the Valar for forgiveness.

As for Tuor, he grows old, and the sea-longing finally gets to him. He builds a boat, and sails west with his wife Idril. No one knows what happens to them after that. Maybe they die at sea, but some believe that Tuor and Idril arrive in Valinor, and that Tuor is the only Man to ever be granted Elven immortality. Tuor lived his whole life amongst the Noldor, so, it only makes sense that he should join them for his afterlife.

And that’s the end of the story of the Fall of Gondolin! The real tragedy here is that none of the Great Tales were ever formally completed. They should have been full epics of the same scale, breadth, and detail as The Lord of the Rings, but the best we’ve got is scattered drafts and reduced summaries. These three stories—Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and the Fall of Gondolin — were supposed to be Tolkien’s true magnum opus. They were all clearly near and dear to his heart.

Oh well, at least what we’ve got is better than nothing. I’d rather know the story in some form than not know it at all. And most real mythology works that way; the “full” version of the story is lost to time, but the gist of it survives through fragments, summaries, and references. So, in a way, Tolkien achieved maximum authenticity with this one. And Tolkien did as much as he reasonably could in an already-long life. If it’s a choice between the Great Tales and The Lord of the Rings, the latter probably had a better chance of resonating for more people. I can only wonder what the fantasy genre would have looked like if the Great Tales had been published instead.

The Story of Gondolin by breath-art

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