#maeglin betrayed gondolin– under torture sure– but he still did and boy did it have consequences

[mediumsizedpidegon]

when it comes to my Bleach/Silmarillion crossover where Maeglin dies, loses his memories and falls into Hueco Mundo (subsequently becoming a hollow)– one of the fun things to come up with is what the FUCK is going on in Arda while Maeglin is gone.

Of course, the second age and third age go as planned, the lord of the rings happens unchanged, because Middle Earth is divorced from the dead. Elves reembody into Aman, not Middle Earth and so no one in ME has any idea that Maeglin is lost to Arda (nor would this fact really change,,, any events).

But in Aman? Tolkien doesn't really talk about what's going on in Aman. In that way it's sort of a blank slate because– are the Feanorian followers allowed to leave the Halls and if they are, how are they settling into society? Who are they giving their loyalty to? Has the system of government changed over the years? What are Teleri-Noldo relations like, several Ages after the First Kinslaying? What is the balance of authority and power like with so many kings, queens and lords stuffed into one land? Who has reembodied and who refuses? How does the absence of well known figures (Finwë, Míriel, Fëanáro and his sons, Celebrimbor, Maeglin, entire generations preceding Finwë) shape politics and healing? Who forgives, who tries to forget, and who holds onto their grudges?

I imagine that at first, no one is looking for Maeglin. Why would they? He just betrayed Gondolin and caused the deaths of a good chunk of people. Those newly-dead aren't going to want to even look at him. Those that survived and sail to Valinor (like Idril) are glad to not see him among the reembodied. They aren't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth and ask questions.

The only ones who would want Maeglin back are his parents.

On the topic of Eöl, I personally find it more interesting if he wasn't evil and his and Aredhel's relationship was happy and healthy for a time. The progression of a paranoid, traumatized parent and husband trying his best to what Eöl ended up doing just. makes a bit more sense to me, especially because I keep the bit of canon where elves can't have kids accidentally. I imagine Eöl passes through the Halls in a matter of decades instead of centuries, not because he is fast to heal, but because being in the domain and under the mercy of a Vala is doing the opposite of helping him. And since he's out before Gondolin falls and lives in solitude, he even doesn't know that Maeglin has died until Aredhel reembodies and personally hunts him down to interrogate him on whether his curse (his prophecy) consigned their son to fading.

It didn't. (With where their son is now, it might have been kinder if it had.)

On Aredhel's end: she searched for her son for years within the Halls before Námo came to her, troubled, and told her that Maeglin is not in his Halls, nor reembodied in Aman, nor wandering Middle Earth– that by all accounts, Maeglin is not in Arda at all. So her son is gone, and her brother is too upset to see it, and Gondolin's people hate him enough that they would celebrate this, and when Aredhel reembodies, her niece tells her she is glad that Aredhel is freed from being bound to evil (her husband) and having borne evil (her son). Her mother embraces her but cannot forgive her for leaving her, her father sees the daughter she was and not the daughter she is, and her other brothers think she grieves having been controlled and misled. No one in her family knows her son and husband as anything but a traitor and her killer– no one in her family knows her as she is now, the Aredhel who left Gondolin and courted a elf who carried grief entangled in his every step in the dark, beautiful forest he claimed as a home. Who lived there of her own free will and had a son of her own free will, and loved them, for all that it ended horribly.

Aredhel has been mistranslated her entire life. She has borne it with what little forgiveness she has. She finds, now, she can bear it no longer.

As time goes on, some members of the family that never met him nearly forget Maeglin ever existed. Reembodied elves of Gondolin write histories of their city and Aredhel stops visiting Tirion entirely for all the stares she receives. There is still no understanding of Aredhel among the Nolofinwions for all their love and she tires of it quicker and quicker. She ends up repairing and renewing her marriage to Eöl (there is much Aredhel can forgive for understanding) and it is not the same as before everything fell apart, but it is theirs.

Maeglin will be gone six Ages before his parents succeed in calling him home. He'll be different too, older, sharper, traumatized, his body strange, but still their child.