Your Take On Eöl & Maeglin

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by Nikkolas

Eöl at the very least tends to be vilified quite a lot online from what I can see. There s apparently another telling of the story between him and Maeglin's mother where he outright rapes her or forces her or something. But that isn't in The Silmarillion so i don't care about it. Based just on The Sil, he was initially not such a bad guy as far as I'm concerned. He liked his solitude and disliked other elves and that was it. He used some manner of enchantment to lead Aredhel to him but there's nothing at all to even vaguely suggest he forced her to stay with him. She fell in love with him of her own free will and they were happy for a time.

This is pretty much how I felt when I first read the silmarillion, he does come across as a bit manipulative but not altogether evil, I think some of the negative connotations come with his later actions in Gondolin, and I think by that time, his character had maybe become 'more evil' than before,
but not a main antagonist.