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Old 02-20-2007, 02:53 PM   #52
Findegil
King's Writer
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,694
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Okay, if it is wanted I will add a further information of how I see it as possible that Legolas of Gondolin and Legolas of Mirkwood are one and the same person.

My main arguments for Legolas being older as normaly acounted comes from The Lord of the Ring:
1. Legolas tells that only in Fangorn he feels young again since wandering with the companions. Considering that just before he had meet such old elves like Galadriel and Celeborn makes it very suspicious that he is as young as many see him.
2. In Moria he is beside Gandalf the only one and he is the first to identify the Balrog as what he is. Compare that to Aragorn. He has been educated in the last High-elven refuge. But even after hearing Gandalf and Legolas name the demon he does not use that name when telling about it in Lorien. For me that means he has never heard before about Balrogs at all. Therefore this matter seems not to be anything Elves thought their children or young warriors. At least this should make us suspicious about the curriculum viëta of Thranduil and Oropher. Doriathrim had never any known contact to Balrogs in the wars of Beleriand. How would they get a knowledge good enough to educate Legolas so that he could identify the Balrog at once?

A further point is added by The Unfinished Tales: There we are told about the feelings of Thranduil after the war of the Last Alliance. That he did know that the peace would not last for ever and that he was anguish when ever he thought about Mordor. And all what we hear seems to me to contradict that he could have had a child in the third age.

Now all these points would be solved at once when Legolas of Gondolin and Legolas of Mirkwood would be one and the same. But that would of course need a special viëta for Thranduil his father. If we assume for the reason of a possibility check that the Legolases are only one Legoas and that he is the son of Thranduil. Than Thranduil would need the following viëta:

Oropher was a Elf from Doriath and he stayed their until its final downfall in the fight against the Fëanorians. (From this his embitterment against the Noldor.) I assume that he fled to Ossiriand but that is only a guess.
Thranduil seems also to have been witnessed the building of Menegroth, since he build his own fortress very similar to it. Which probably meant he was born in the early days of Doriath. In the long time of peace that followed the building of Menegroth he wandered into the north and settled in Nevrast, were he stayed until he moved with Turgon to Gondolin. In Gondolin Legolas was born (since he never had heard the cry of the gulls he can not have been born in Nevrast).
After the Fall of Gondolin Thranduil and Legolas separated from the fugitives of Gondolin (possibly when Tuor deicide to move from Nan-Tathren to Sirions mouth) and went in search of Oropher. (If we assume that they found him in Ossiriand, than we might have found the missing link, that triggered the move of Nimloth with Elwing from Ossiriand to Sirions mouth.) From That point onward the story is more or less given in UT beside the fact that Legolas was all the time with his father and grandfather.

I know very well that this viëta of Thranduil is pressed to fit the assumption that Legolas of Mirkwood was in Gondolin, but since we did not find any clear no go in this way, such a viëta is possible even if improbable. I do not say that is how it was, but I say that is one possibility how it could have been.

For me the faint possibility given above is enough to deny any drastic change of the name.

Respectfully
Findegil
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