Your Take On Eöl & Maeglin

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Maeglin is a cool character too. Morally he really is detestable. Ungrateful son, ungrateful foster-son, traitor to all. But still, you can feel for him, he had some rough times.

I think Maeglin is more cold than cool. He's calculating and self-centered. If he'd been raised by his father in isolated Nan Elmoth that might be explicable, but he's instead welcomed into the top tier of Gondolin society and treated like a prince, which he basically is. He then, out of all the women in the city, decides on his first cousin as a love interest. That alone doesn't speak well for him, as such unions were obviously considered to be of evil in Arda. The later Ar-Pharazön took that even further, of course, forcibly taking his cousin to wife. Maeglin was promised "possession" of Idril by Morgoth as a reward for his treachery, and that also speaks of less a true love than a desire for power and control.