God, I'm not cut out to be a genealogist...

[Yeade]

Hi all,

The newest member of the Barrow-Downs humbly sends greetings. I look forward to many lively discussions in the company of friends here, and I hope I will acquit myself well for as long as I'm part of this community.

As my welcome present, I offer a project I've been working on in my spare time. I often find myself at a loss when it comes to LOTR genealogy, and while the Hobbit family trees in the ROTK appendices are a great help, I don't have easy access to the like for the other characters. I didn't know of any such resources online so I decided to draw up my own genealogies, mainly for personal use, though hopefully others will find these helpful.

Thus far, the only one I have in presentable form is Aragorn's line. I would appreciate any suggestions, corrections or additions. If it's not too much trouble.

I'd taken pains to get the entire line in one chart, only to find I couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB to Geocities. The chart is now split into two parts, which can be accessed at the below link:

http://www.geocities.com/zincpiccalilli/index.html (ETA: dead link)

Both files are, well, rather large, so please be patient. Also, the bandwidth might be exceeded while downloading. I don't have the technical skills to do any better. Any ideas here would be welcome.

Now, a few notes:

Probably the nicest thing about the whole tedious business is that I could color code the chart. I've always had a hard time differentiating between men and women when the names get exotic, so I took the liberty of doing so by color. I've also numbered six lines of noble succession with separate colors (okay, okay, the Lords of Andúnië are only two), as well as made notes of racial divisions.

Speaking of exotic names, I had a helluva time with the Númenórean royals and the Kings of Gondor. Don't hesitate to point out any inaccuracies. The same goes for all the names and information, really.

Dotted lines are used to represent separation by one or more generations (except in the special case of Melian). Any numbers on the lines count the generations between those connected. So, for example, since Vëantur is the grandfather of Almarian, but no father or mother is known to me, there's a dotted line with a one centered on it.

On the topic of organization, I'm afraid I couldn't stick to placing siblings in age from eldest to youngest, left to right. I also couldn't manage to consistently place the married couples. In the interest of saving space and avoiding long connections, I've probably made many awkward mistakes. I don't really know the rules of drawing family trees, but I'm sure I've broken a few. Please forgive.

A few questions:

Is there anything else on the Lords of Andúnië? I thought Eärendur was about during the reign of Ar-Sakalthôr, but things don't quite work out that way when counting generations. I feel like I'm missing something.

I tried to label the various groupings of Elves, but only got as far as Vanyar, Noldor, and Sindar. As I understand it, the Sindar are a subgroup of the Teleri, which also include the Falmari, Nandor, and Silvan Elves. Olwë is, I think, the only one who counts as Falmari. I have no clue whether there are any Elves on the chart who belong to the other two groups. The Lórien Elves are Silvan, like those in Mirkwood, but neither Celeborn nor Galadriel are of the same descent. Frankly, I'm confused.

Those are the only two clear questions I can come up with right now. Besides that, I generally feel a bit inadequate. There are a lot of holes in this genealogy, and I don't have the knowledge to determine whether these result from my ignorance or there wasn't anything to be ignorant of.

Um, okay. Thanks for putting up with my rambling.


Cheers,
Yeade

[Boromir88]

Welcome to the downs Yeade, if you want to make an introduction The New Members thread would be the place to do it. Yes, it does get quite confusing, and I don't even attempt to figure out genealogies but I think I can help you with a few things...

I tried to label the various groupings of elves, but only got as far as Vanyar, Noldor, and Sindar. As I understand it, the Sindar are a subgroup of the Teleri, which also include the Falmari, Nandor, and Silvan Elves. Olwë is, I think, the only one who counts as Falmari. I have no clue whether there are any elves on the chart who belong to the other two groups. The Lórien elves are Silvan, like those in Mirkwood, but neither Celeborn nor Galadriel are of the same descent. Frankly, I'm confused.

It's like a tree, there's two big groupings the Eldar and the Avari. The Eldar are the elves that journeyed from Cuivienen to Beleriand, the Avari were the ones who refused. The Eldar break further into Vanyar, Noldor, and Teleri. All Vanyar, Noldor, and some Teleri that went to the Undying Lands in the days of the two trees were Calaquendi. The Teleri that didn't go to the Undying lands are further broken down into Sindar, Nandor, and Laiquendi. That's the basics.

As to answer the question of Galadriel and Celeborn...Celeborn was Teleri, and was one of them that went to the Undying lands (some years after Galadriel left). Galadriel was a Noldor Elf, she created Lorien as to sort of mimic the Undying lands, and she sustained it with the power of her ring, Nenya. Yes, the rest of the elves in Lorien are Sindar. So once Nenya lost it's power, Lorien faded away.

[Yeade]

I wasn't sure where to post, and I thought all the genealogy stuff would warrant a new thread. Sorry if this was a breach of forum etiquette.

Originally Posted by Boromir88

All Vanyar, Noldor, and some Teleri that went to the Undying Lands in the days of the Two Trees were Calaquendi. The Teleri that didn't go to the Undying Lands are further broken down into Sindar, Nandor, and Laiquendi.

So, Calaquendi is more a title than a... family grouping? In that the Calaquendi Elves all belong to another group in addition, one that probably has more impact on, say, physical characteristics or social mannerisms.

With Celeborn being Sindar and Galadriel Noldor, how exactly did the two of them end up Lord and Lady of Lothlórien? Is that even allowed? I can't remember if there was anything on this in The Silmarillion. I kept confusing myself and thinking there's some connection between the Lórien Elves and Celeborn's relations because of similarities in the names: the Lórien Elves are also called the Galadhrim, and Celeborn married Galadriel, with Galadhon as father, Galathil as brother. Only then there's also Gil-galad. Now I see this is just an Elvish naming streak. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Nothing to worry about, Yeade, no forum etiquette has been harmed in the making of this thread! You're fine with starting a new thread for a new topic. Welcome to the Downs, and enjoy yourself here!

[Yeade]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Nothing to worry about, Yeade, no forum etiquette has been harmed in the making of this thread!

Whew, that's good to know. Thank you.

I updated the family tree with a few more names and as many dates as I could look up. Naturally, this created more... issues.

Most of the new names belong to the Houses of Bëor, Haleth, and Hador. And unfortunately--in the House of Bëor particularly--I have no way of determining the gender of all these people. I mean, it just doesn't seem likely that everyone has as many sons as Fëanor, give or take a couple! In those sections--also notable is the lineage of Hallacar, husband of Númenórean Queen Tar-Ancalimë--I, er, arbitrarily marked people as women. Any hints here would be very helpful.

I did the best I could with the dates, but there are a lot of uncertainties and a lot of holes. The higher up in the tree, the less confident I am about the dates. While editing the chart, I mentally checked a few points to ask about later, but I can only remember one... Drat. At any rate, I can throw out my one question. Amrod and Amras, the twins of Fëanor, were both lost in the assault on the Mouths of Sirion, right? When exactly was that?

Oh, and on the notation, most of the abbreviations and such used are pretty standard, I think. The various royals have two bracketed numbers. The first, in italics, is the number of years ruling; the second is the date his or her reign ended, usually also the date of death. Herucalmo in the Númenórean line and Castamir of Gondor have dates in parentheses as both are essentially usurpers of their respective thrones. Aragorn's dates aren't formatted with italics yet because [whine] it was 3 AM, I was tired, I didn't notice the error until I'd already uploaded the damn 4+ MB thing, and I just couldn't be bothered to fix the numbers, then wait another five or something minutes to upload the file again! [/whine] I've already added the italics, but will wait and see if there are other corrections to be made before uploading the new version.

So, any takers? There must be mistakes, I know it... And, as always, I'm open to suggestions for improvements. For one, should I mark birth dates during the Age of the Trees? I didn't--it seemed more excessive than I'm willing to let this already excessive project get--but if it helps...

[Maédhros]

You might want to check this thread out, especially since it has a very complete although not perfect tree of the Eldar and Edain genealogy.

Eldar

Look at post 32.

Some things that come to my mind after seeing your trees are the following:
Why do you have Erenion as the son of Fingon?
You should read the Shibboleth of Fëanor to have a fresher perspective.
Orodreth shold be the son of Angrod and Eldalótë, and Erenion should be the son of Orodreth and brother to Finduilas.

You might also want to inlcude Arakáno, who is the younger brother of Fingon and Turgon. And have Anairë as the wife of Ñolofinwë.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Yeade

Most of the new names belong to the Houses of Bëor, Haleth, and Hador. And unfortunately - in the House of Bëor particularly - I have no way of determining the gender of all these people. I mean, it just doesn't seem likely that everyone has as many sons as Fëanor, give or take a couple! In those sections - also notable is the lineage of Hallacar, husband of Númenórean Queen Tar-Ancalimë - I, er, arbitrarily marked people as women. Any hints here would be very helpful.

In general, unless mentioned as women, wives, or daughters, it's generally a safe assumption to assume that a name belongs to a man. This doesn't mean that Arda was overbalanced by one gender, just that the names and lineage of most women were never recorded or remembered in the records in the same way as those of men.