RE: Elrond/ next high king of the Noldor.

[CSteefel]

I recall there has been some discussion on this point, but I seem to remember that Gil-galad was also described as the son of Fingon, at least in the Silmarillion... So this would have placed him before any son of Turgon...

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by CSteefel

I recall there has been some discussion on this point, but I seem to remember that Gil-galad was also described as the son of Fingon, at least in the Silmarillion... So this would have placed him before any son of Turgon...

You are correct, CSteefel. That was my reference to, “The most obvious explanation for the discrepancy is that the exact lineage had not been resolved.” I should have been more explicit. Thank you for correcting me; but I was trying to avoid that subject. One reason is that even the original lineage, or the lineage that Christopher Tolkien used when editing Silmarillion, would not answer Dloomis494’s question.

And when the tidings came to Balar of the fall of Gondolin and the death of Turgon, Ereinion Gil-galad son of Fingon was named High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth.

The citation is from Silmarillion, “Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin”. The other reason to avoid the subject is that it rapidly becomes very complicated. In “Shibboleth of Fëanor”, Christopher Tolkien says that

My father originally supposed that Gil-galad was the son of Felagund King of Nargothrond. … it remained his belief until after the completion of The Lord of the Rings… in the published text (The Silmarillion, p. 286) Fingon is an editorial alteration of Felagund.

So the discussion starts with “an editorial alteration”, but not what we usually call a “typo”: I think it means that it was deliberately altered while Silmarillion was being edited. Was “Fingon” for “Felagund” right or wrong? I don’t know. Christopher Tolkien goes on to note that in Silmarillion, Galadriel was Gil-galad’s sister.

It emerged, however, … that Felagund had no wife, for … Amarië whom he loved had not been permitted to leave Valinor.

So unless Gil-galad and Galadriel popped out of Felagund’s forehead like Athena from Zeus’s headache, they aren’t his kids.

There follows a paragraph on Orodreth, who started off as Felagund’s brother, becomes his son and Finduilas’s father, while “Rhodothir” (Gil-galad) becomes Felagund’s nephew. That isn’t all the information in just that one paragraph; and there are six more, each dense as uranium, before there is a discussion of the Dwarvish origins of the name “Felagund.”

In short, after several more transpositions in the Finwë family tree, Ereinion Gil-galad, son of Fingon son of Fingolfin in Silmarillion, becomes Rodnor Gil-galad, son of Orodreth son of Angrod son of Finarfin, ending with the mea culpa

Much closer analysis of the admittedly extremely complex material than I made twenty years ago makes it clear that Gil-galad as the son of Fingon … was an ephemeral idea.

I suspect there is a thread on the subject someplace on Barrow-downs that one of the more experienced participants will recall and might helpfully point out for us. It certainly deserves – nay, requires – a thread of its own.

Since it came no closer to answering Dloomis494’s question – but mostly because it is both mind-numbing and the subject of sometimes heated debate in some venues – I tried to skate around it. You caught me.