[Aiwendil]

Findegil wrote:

Safer it would clearly be to drop all my additions. But I found it very furstarting that I could learn near to nothing about that last battle that was clearly so improtant for the History of the Hitherlands when I have read The Silmarillion.

I certainly sympathize with that frustration. But really there are many, many things we could add but probably shouldn't. My understanding has been that the goal of this project is not to provide as long or as detailed a narrative as possible, but rather to provide a full narrative of everything that can be considered canonical (in the sense of "true within Middle-earth"). Roughly speaking, there are three categories into which ideas can be placed: clearly valid, clearly invalid, and dubious. In a different Revised Silmarillion - one with different fundamental goals, like the fan-fictionalized Silmarillion that jallanite once talked about - the "dubious" ideas could be used. These are things that might be true and even that seem likely to be true. But I think that for this project only the "clearly valid" ideas ought to be accepted.

Of course, I haven't said anything just now that hasn't been said before in other words. And of course, in the end it still all comes down to shades of grey. But I think it's important to note that just because we can invent justification for something, that doesn't mean we ought to use it. Now I'm not saying that the issue of the battle of the Silent Pools is a simple or obvious one. But in the end I think I still come down on the conservative side on this issue. In retaining it we would be completely altering its circumstances.

The liberation of Hithlum is a different matter since it appears in the Annals of Beleriand and no part of it is contradicted later, as far as I know.

Thus if the Elves of Beleriand did assemble under the banner of Eönwë we must have some reason why they did not know much about the battle in the north. A catastrophic defeat in Tathren could be such a reason, and would also account for Elronds recollection of "many defeats, since I can otherwise not see so many defeats in his history (fall of Eregion, sige of Rivendell in the second age).

This makes a lot of sense, but again it seems to me to be the kind of speculation that's out of place in our version, either overtly stated or used as an implicit justification for part of the text. I'm still very doubtful about specifying the Noldor.