# Eärendil and Elwing



## Radaghast (Jan 1, 2022)

Considering Eärendil (derived from the Old English name Earendel) was the beginning of Tolkien's legendarium, it strikes me a bit odd that there isn't more written about him. Of all the stories in The Silmarillion that could have been novelized, the tale of Eärendil and Elwing seems like it should have been a prime candidate, including a more fleshed out account of the War of Wrath and Eärendil's slaying of Ancalagon.

I've yet to dive into The History of Middle-earth (I've started but my progress has been halting). Is there more said about Eärendil and Elwing in this series?


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## Alcuin (Jan 1, 2022)

There is a brief mention of Eärendil’s sailing into the South, where he found, battled, and killed Ungoliant, but no details are provided, and even that idea might have been dropped. Somewhere (the one-volume _Fall of Gondolin_ perhaps?) Christopher Tolkien remarks upon the paucity of Eärendil stories in a vein quite similar to yours.


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## Radaghast (Jan 1, 2022)

Interesting. It seems like it would have been a rousing epic. The best fantasy novel never written.

I have a vision the climax being Eärendil sailing through the air and impaling Ancalagon with his ship, kind of like how Ursula dies in _The Little Mermaid_.


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## Olorgando (Jan 1, 2022)

Alcuin said:


> There is a brief mention of Eärendil’s sailing into the South, where he found, battled, and killed Ungoliant, but no details are provided, and even that idea might have been dropped. Somewhere (the one-volume _Fall of Gondolin_ perhaps?) Christopher Tolkien remarks upon the paucity of Eärendil stories in a vein quite similar to yours.


I have this dim notion rattling around in my cranium (this is *deep* mulch territory) that at some time JRRT had planned a fourth - and greatest, including in length! - of the Great Tales, after (in M-e chronology) Beren & Lúthien, Children of Húrin and Fall of Gondolin: the Journeys of Eärendil, a lot of which would have dealt with the journeys *before* Elwing joined him (in the form of a "great white bird" given her by Ulmo as per the published Sil) with the Silmaril. There is this matter of his stating to Milton Waldman of of the publishers Collins (letter #126, a draft dated 10 March 1950) that LoTR and The Sil were about the same length (600,000 words each!!!).

Excuse me?

The published Silmarillion is about the length (with a hefty index) of TT; without the index, it's about the size of RoTK without appendices and index!
As we know (now), The Sil was very far from being a finished text like LoTR was. So even the parts that Christopher included would likely have become larger in a polished, finished version of his father's. But my guesstimate is that that would still leave a bare minimum of one third of the intended 'Silmarillion' not just an un*finished* tale, but an un*started* one. Did JRRT envision the Great Tale of Eärendil's voyages to take up all of that slack?? Dealing with regions, peoples, and occurrences that JRRT had up to that time not even wasted more than very cursory thoughts on, if that?

Assuming this having been JRRT's intention (a *huge* if!) ... my only conclusion is that JRRT had seriously lost the overview of the 'Silmarillion' writings as they stood in 1950. Excusable, as they represented over 35 years of intermittent, self-contradictory (in parts) and in style widely divergent writings - tales, poems, annals and not a little philology with daunting etymology.


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