Elves and Ringwraiths

[Galin]

For the record I am not saying [in my last post] that there are no cases where we can say X is 'greatest' based on the text, but I was responding to two examples where there was, in my opinion, more comparative text [the Galadriel as Queen matter, for example]

Later as I have said previously Tolkien seemed to move away from this position and wanted a more definitive story most of the time, but certainly not all the time.

Can you explain what you mean here in more detail, maybe including examples to help mark the external time frame?

If I recall correctly, in general in the old scenario [let's say with the start of the 'Silmarillion', after The Book of Lost Tales and the poetry of the 1920s] Elfwine was to be a studious scribe, trying not to alter the tales as he heard them from Elvish Eresseans. This is more 'direct' than the later scenario.

My example of Annals of Aman and my conjecturing about Rumil's only possible 'bias' actually reflects the later scenario, with the transmission through Numenor and the Mannish Kindoms down to Imladris, allowing for more 'mistakes' and purposed variations.

I do think there was some intentional variation [compared to QS] in the Annals when they were first revised in the 1950s, that is, when they were still imagined as a variant tradition to Quenta Silmarillion.

But in any case we are essentially dealing with draft texts here: what would Tolkien's Silmarillon contain versus his Annals? It seems as if the existing Annals of the 1950s grew and morphed into another Silmarillion, and thus could be 'absorbed' into the Silmarillion, with The Tale of Years taking over for the Annals -- thus Christopher Tolkien took plenty of passages from the Annals, Aman and Grey, for his constructed Silmarillion.

What was to be intentional inconsistency, when there is plenty of natural inconsistency [Tolkien changing his mind, letting new and different stories flow as they came to him, and so on] in the external evolution of a complex tale, is very hard to say.