[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

There's a crucial point - that she came to the world even before Melkor, and 'out of the darkness'. She certainly wasn't a creature created by him, and this also suggests she wasn't one of the Ainur either or what was she doing there before the others?

The problem is, what was she if Melkor "in the beginning (...) corrupted [her] to his service"; obviously whatever powers she had, he was able to get her to serve him (possibly in a similar way he did later when killing the Trees, which is somewhat strange service, nevertheless, she did what he wanted her to, though we know Melkor was a master of persuasion). But mainly, the point that she came before Melkor does not necessarily mean anything: the other Valar came before Melkor did, as far as I know, and there was no particular order in which Valar descended into Arda. So that's a thing I would not put much value to, and for this, she could still remain a perfectly plausible Ainu for me.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I suppose the thorny question of whether Ungoliant came about before or after Eru created the Ainur could be answered by considering that which you decide depends upon whether you are content that Eru could create Ungoliant? Or does it 'suit' that maybe she comes from outside Eru's creation?

I think it's definitely overstretching to try to find any "besides Eru" thing in Ungoliant: the main problem would be in the words the One at the very beginning of Ainulindalë. Even Genesis is not that explicite in information, where Tolkien is strict (even in Eru's "name"). If we are not agreeing with the fact that she was an Ainu, I would say the best and balanced explanation would be by taking her "from where Tom Bombadil came", as it was suggested in the opening post. We have several things like that here: Tom Bombadil and also from the darker side these "Nameless things" underground - with the latter it is somewhat easier, because we don't know about their beginnings and with a little imagination they can be spawn of Morgoth or some other nonsense, nevertheless, they also do not fit the normal scheme and Gandalf refuses to speak about them (though, it is true he acts like that even in more "conventional" cases like Balrogs and Black Riders and other quite common everyday things). Whatever the case, I wanted to say that the "laws of the universe" do not seem to apply in the case of these characters or things (which, in fact, could even allow the "outside the One" possibility, but in the meaning that they don't have anything to do with the created universe itself and are "aliens" in the whole story, which could be applied very well in TB's case), but if we want to take Middle-Earth, resp. Arda, resp. the Void and everything around it as a consistent world (with inner consistence, and not a world from a story from the outside point of view), and we do not want to accept these characters as belonging to any of the known classes, we have to say, together with the Prof, that even in this world there are some mysteries and these are some of them. Which is not much of a help, definitely, but what can we do.