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It's All in the Family: The Elweans and Ingweans - Page 10

© Michael Martinez

If we put all the pieces together, we may contrive several family trees for Elwe and Olwe, but none of them are very satisfying. I doubt that Eol and Cirdan would have been brothers. They just seem to be too different in temperament and proclivities to have had much association with one another. Hence, I think there would have to be three branches of the family: the primary branch, consisting of Elwe, Olwe, and possibly Elmo (although the name doesn't seem to fit well) and their descendants; Cirdan (originally called Nowe, according to an essay published in "The Peoples of Middle-earth") and his "kin", perhaps a sister or several siblings and their descendants, including Voronwe; and Eol, who would not have had any siblings. If we accept this as the working genealogy, there would have to be at least two generations missing from the tree. Enel and Enelya could have been the grandparents. Some people seem to be compelled to insist that would have to be so, and I know of no reason to argue otherwise. There would have to be at least three siblings, the eldest of whom would be the father or mother of Elwe, Olwe, and Elmo. However, limiting the family to three generations like this makes Doriath seem awful empty. The text says that Thingol's friends and kinsmen stayed behind, but I get the impression that he had a lot of relatives. Now, I don't mean hundreds. But keeping Elwe in the third generation just makes it all too tight and cozy. A lot of time elapsed between the awakening of the Elves and the Great Jouney. I think Tolkien eventually came to realize this and that is why he began making the genealogical explanations much vaguer. He was leaving himself room to fill out the family trees, or to at least introduce new cousins and kinsmen later on, if the need arose. Even Beleg and Mablung could have eventually become kinsmen of Thingol (although I would not find that satisfying -- it's nice to know there are other families which can produce a few lords and heroes). And, too, some people like to see Oropher and his son Thranduil as kinsmen of Thingol who wandered into the eastern lands of Middle-earth hoping to revive the spirit of Doriath. Keeping them in the family would provide an adequate context for Celeborn's cryptic "Too seldom do my kindred journey hither from the North" in "The Mirror of Galadriel" (a statement which seems to clearly imply that Celeborn is a Wood Elf, since Legolas has already declared himself to be "of the Silvan Folk" in "The Ring Goes South").

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