Finduilas and the Doom of Turin

[Huinesoron]

A suggestion that doesn't seem to have been made is that "saving Finduilas will save you from your doom" could have been on purely practical considerations. davem quoted this passage:

Yet he began to fear that Túrin would grow to such a power that the curse that he had laid upon him would become void, and he would escape the doom that had been designed for him, or else that he might retreat to Doriath and be lost to his sight again.

There's two scenarios in which Turin can save Finduilas. Either he somehow manages to drive back Glaurung's army long enough to evacuate Nargothrond (this seems unlikely), or he doesn't intervene, watches Finduilas being dragged away, but then (either by fighting off the dragon-spell or by never getting under it in the first place) goes after her and rescues her and the others. In either situation, he has a group of traumatised Nargothrond civilians, and an army of Orcs and an angry dragon on his tail.

What does he do next? He's not going to take them to Amon Rudh. He's not going to drag them over the mountains to Dor-lomin. He doesn't know of any safe settlements on the south coast (I'm not sure there is one at this time). He's certainly not going to turn them into soldiers in five minutes flat. I submit that he has only one viable option here: take the refugees of Nargothrond to Doriath.

Where Morgoth's curse can't get to him. Where he meets his mother and sister. Where he stays.

This scenario doesn't end well for Hurin, but his family presumably think him dead anyway. There is a distinct possibility that it winds up with the refugees of Gondolin also fleeing to an intact Doriath, and meeting the half-elven child of Turin Turambar there; the Valar alone know how that would have shaken out.

hS