[Amarinth]

i also never perceived the "laying down" of the lives of numenorean kings as suicide, thingol. it was more like another element in the continuum of grace accorded to the descendants of elros, in that elros having chosen to be joined with the atani and sundered from the quendi, had forfeited eternal life for all his seed, but nevertheless bestowed with the mitigating grace of lengthy years and the privilege of declaring such grace full by commending one's soul to illuvatar. in short, it was sort of not ending life itself, but rather, ending the grace of a longer life, which by ancestral choice should've been short.

the distinction of suicide being less acceptable in elves also escaped me, hmmm...from what i understood, tolkien associated the taking (not commending) of one's life with negative conditions, such as niennor's despair at discovering the truth, maedhros torment from the silmaril or miriel's post-partum despondency after the birth of fiery feanor, as the guys above have pointed out. because of such states occasioning it, suicide as i understand was, for tolkien, something wrong regardless of who commits it, be he elf or no. and i'm more inclined to think that it must be more grevious for men to commit it, because this is an act tantamount to forcing the gift of death to men from illuvatar.