#there was me with 'what if aredhel met luthien at the border of doriath and maeglin was never born' months earlier

[elvesofnoldor]

ok in all seriousness, i do have such complicated feeling abt fall of gondolin these days because how big of an absolute mess everything surrounding maeglin was in all five drafts of this story. but these days i’m especially frustrated about how weird idril and maeglin’s relationship is. 

actually, let’s start off with idril. it actually baffles me how they just did not bond over the shared trauma of losing their beloved mother at a young age. idril lost her mom to the icy water at helacraxe when she was but a child, she probably witnessed it happening in front of her own eyes! and then decades and decades later, she saw her own kid cousin (maeglin was 20 something but it takes 50 years for an elf to reach full statue/adulthood so yeah he’s like a teen at most), losing his beloved mother at a young age, witnessing her death with his own eyes, and her first reaction to her cousin was essentially “oh there is darkness in his heart, i don’t like him.”  bro im not saying this female character just has to sympathize this troubled little boy, but if my father tried to murder me for escaping his abusive household and my mother, whom i love more, gave her life to save me from the murder attempt, there would be darkness in my heart too m’am! that darkness is called childhood trauma m’am!!! And apparently idril didn’t like the fact that maeglin didn’t say anything when his father, who tried to murder him, was executed. like, honestly, she just witnessed all these horrible things happening to the cousin she just met and decided that because he didn’t react to these traumatic events in a way that she understood, his vibe is rancid and she would try to avoid him as much as possible ever since. like im sorry idril was supposed to be so much kinder and perceptive and wiser than maeglin and yet this is...actually how she was? ok??? 

and then there is maeglin. i actually do not fault him for revealing gondolin’s location at all. he was captured by the enemy and only did such thing under torture for who knows how long (yes we are going with what happened in the final draft!) Also, the city would not be hidden for long, everyone knows this, even turgon knows this. while sauron was never named to be involved in gondolin’s downfall, he was active in an area VERY close to gondolin’s location at the time.  sauron must be trying desperately to regain morgroth’s favour after his earlier failure that cost morgroth great humiliation and a silmaril, and someone pointed out that sauron literally flew past gondolin as a giant vampire bat when he fled from his battle with huan years and years earlier. personally, i like to headcanon that when maeglin is captured, he was brought to sauron for interrogation first and after he cracked, he was brought to morgroth. so if he was tortured by sauron the CRUEL, well, idk what more can you ask from this guy, the circumstance is just extremely unfortunate and tragic. 

that being said, i do have a giant problem with him developing a crush on his cousin. listen, listen, i get it,  he didn’t grow up with idirl, when he met her, she was like a complete stranger to him because not only did he never see her in his life, he’s never even met his uncle either. And since idril avoided him all the time, they never really develop the sort of familial relationship they are supposed to develop. but idril was pretty and i guess he likes her because of it, and even though there was no mention and implication of him ever stalking her and making her uncomfortable, he still wanted to marry her KNOWING that she doesn’t like him. the girl doesn’t even like you??? perhaps he wanted to “unite” their houses with a marriage, and hope, with certain amount of absolute stupidity, that when idril is married to him she will start liking him or whatever and they can be a family. idk what was going through his mind. but obviously he knows idril doesn’t like him, so he bypassed her and went to uh, his uncle and idril’s father Turgon for permission. it’s kinda a typical trait for a secondary villain in a tolkien story, so typical it makes its way to lord of the rings when grima appears in the story. there was celegorm who wanted to marry luthien by trying to ask permission from her father and then there is maeglin. it’s almost like, it doesn’t matter if SHE consent or not, as long as her father agrees, all is good. it’s almost like, these dudes are thinking of these women as their father’s possessions and property to give away or withhold from them. hum!! oh boy, someone ought to scoop out these moffos’ brains from their noggings and squeeze the sexism out of them!!! with humans, it’s like, whatever, that’s just how it was, but with elves, tolkien specifically stated in LACE that elven men and women are EQUAL, so what is with this ingrained sexism and misogyny in these elf dudes’ brains huh. 

idk what was going on later, when he tried to kidnap both idril and her son.  idk what was going through his head. perhaps he felt that, the only way to keep them safe was to keep them with him. either way. just a cherry on top of the pile of mess that is his relationship with idril. 

honestly, imagine an AU where idril and maeglin actually developed a functional familial relationship cousins are supposed to develop because they bond over their share grief over losing their mothers. maeglin never developed weird crush on idril and idril didn’t avoid him out of some bizarre reason, and when they grew up and idril got married to tuor, maeglin was happy for her and he’d later became earendil’s cool smith uncle who brought him pretty rocks from his trips to the mountains all the time. maeglin would still be caught up with his work, not because he was avoiding anybody but because he was going to be bit of a workholic either way. tragedy would still strike, because the doom of noldor is laid upon everyone, and maeglin would still be captured and interrogated. with his mind weaken from the abuse, maeglin would still believed, in desperation and despair, that the only way to keep his family and his people safe was to side with their enemy--the very people who tortured him. but when he returned to gondolin he wouldn’t be alone in his pain--he would have his family, reaching out to him, and maybe he would have the courage to reveal what has happened to him and warn the people of gondolin about the imminent attack.  maeglin would still die, he may still fall from the wall as the curse his father laid upon him entails, but he would die an honourable death holding back their enemy and saving people he loves and making up his failure doing so. 

i think i would actually LOVE maeglin in this au. and idril too. maybe it’s not a more compelling story, but i would like this version better.