The climactic scene of The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam reach the Cracks of Doom, is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature. So I was very interested a little while back when noted Tolkien scholar Stephen Colbert laid out a neat little analysis of the scene. Frodo seems to fail at his appointed task – rather than throwing the ring into the fire, he claims it for himself, and the ring is only destroyed by the coincidental intervention of Gollum. Colbert then notes that Gandalf should have known that Frodo would fail. Back in the second chapter, Frodo demonstrated to Gandalf his inability to throw the ring into the much cooler fires of his own hearth, after having only possessed the ring for a few hours. Therefore, one may assume, Gandalf must have intended for one of the other members of the Fellowship to intervene and ensure the ring’s destruction.
Colbert’s analysis is clever, in the same way that the theory that Gandalf had intended all along to use the eagles to reach Mordor is clever. In its cleverness, though, I think such analyses risk treating LotR as a D&D campaign and thus losing sight of the real literary themes of the story.
One of Tolkien’s key themes is the Augustinian view of evil. Most genre fiction takes a decidedly Manichean view of evil – a view that holds that evil and good are two great opposing forces in the world, like the light and dark sides of The Force. In a Manichean view, good must triumph by opposing evil, either to eradicate it or to restore a balance to the universe.
Manichean views of evil lead to a very common type of climax to stories: the contest of wills. Our hero confronts the villain, and through superior courage, grit, love, or what-have-you, they overcome the villain and their evil power. It’s Harry going wand-to-wand with Voldemort, Thomas Covenant laughing at Lord Foul, Meg breaking IT’s hold over Charles Wallace, Luke facing down Vader and Vader facing down the Emperor.
Any other writer could have given us a very typical Manichean Cracks of Doom scene. Frodo approaches the fire, and the ring’s temptation overtakes him. He puts the ring on and begins to claim it. But a tiny voice somewhere deep inside him insists that this is wrong. Sam cries out, and thinking about Sam’s love and devotion rekindles a spark in Frodo. His Hobbitish desire for food and good cheer wells up, and he tears the ring off and throws it into the fire. A dramatic ending and a nice echo of the moral of The Hobbit.
But that’s not what happens. Frodo’s goodness – even the innocent goodness of a little old Hobbit – can’t go toe-to-toe with Sauron’s evil. Indeed, Isildur proved it. He defeated Sauron by opposing him with the force of good, and defeated him. But Isildur couldn’t destroy the ring, and within the year it had destroyed him.
Tolkien holds instead to an Augustinian view of evil. Evil, according to St. Augustine, is not a force of its own, but rather is the absence or corruption of good. We see this most explicitly in the idea that Morgoth and Sauron can’t create anything of their own, but only corrupt and warp what has been created by others. We also see it when Gandalf and Galadriel describe what would happen if they took the ring – it would warp their own desire to do good until they became evil.
An Augustinian climax can’t involve a contest of wills between good and evil. In an Augustinian world, evil can only exist by leeching off of good. So evil must be given an opportunity to destroy itself, much like the self-defeating band of thieves described by Plato (on whose philosophy Augustine drew heavily). Good wins by renouncing evil, not by overcoming it.
And that’s exactly what happens at the Cracks of Doom. The ring isn’t destroyed because Frodo’s force of good overcame the ring’s evil. Nor is Gollum’s intervention a coincidence or deus ex machina (like the series of disarmings that happened to make Harry the master of the Elder Wand). Rather, the ring’s evil collapsed in on itself by drawing Gollum. The very corruption of Gollum that enabled the ring to escape the river drove him to wrestle desperately with Frodo for it and ultimately fall to his doom, ring in hand.
An Augustinian view of evil has definite moral implications, which are also shown throughout The Lord of the Rings. A Manichean world is a consequentialist world. To defeat the forces of evil, we need to think strategically. Sometimes we may even need to indulge in a little short-term evil in order to be able to achieve the greater good. But an Augustinian world can’t allow that kind of pragmatic approach. In an Augustinian world, any compromise with evil can only strengthen it, giving it an infusion of good that delays its self-destruction. An Augustinian world demands a deontological ethic, doing the right thing regardless of the outcome.
Again and again in The Lord of the Rings, we see that strategically pursuing the greater good fails, while remaining true to moral principles succeeds even when it looked foolish. On the cautionary side, we have Saruman and Denethor. Though they may point to the palantir as an excuse, they each ultimately made a thoroughly reasonable choice in the face of Sauron’s overwhelming advantage – to ally with him while playing the long game, or to give in to despair. Our heroes, on the other hand, repeatedly make foolish decisions based on hope. Aragorn is a good example – he decides to pursue Merry and Pippin because he owes them protection even though Frodo is the one who holds the fate of the world in his hands. Later, he decides to make a suicide attack on the Morannon rather than hunkering down in Minas Tirith, in the hopes of Frodo’s quest succeeding.
But the most important instance of doing the right thing despite the consequences comes from Frodo himself: he refuses to kill Gollum. Killing Gollum would have been an eminently reasonable idea – he’s a slinker and a stinker, and we know that he never redeemed himself or turned over a new leaf. Indeed, his main accomplishments were to lead Frodo and Sam into a death trap, then to try to kill them with his own hands at the Cracks of Doom. Both Sam and Faramir were right when they said that killing Gollum would have been a good idea!
But Frodo showed Gollum pity and spared his life because it was the right thing to do. And just like Gandalf could see Frodo’s unwillingness to destroy the ring back in Bag End, he also addressed this very issue. He instructed Frodo:
Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.
And in the end, that pity was what saved the world. Frodo’s pity made it possible for Gollum to be there at the Cracks of Doom to take the ring. Frodo refused to give in to the small, reasonable evil of killing Gollum, and so he left the great evil of the ring exposed to destroy itself. That was Gandalf’s backup plan, not Aragorn’s strength to take the ring and destroy it. And so Frodo didn’t really fail. He succeeded at his quest back when he saved Gollum’s life, when he did the right thing even though it seemed foolish.
Tag: meta
Writing Materials for Elves
Paper, parchment, wax, bark, wood, bone, papyrus, slate, charcoal, chalk, pencils, ink.
Paper:
Real-world paper is a Chinese invention, so if you are aiming for a pseudo-European feel, it might not seem quite right. But silk is Chinese too, so if your Elves are clad in silk, there’s no reason they should not write on paper. (and Middle-earth isn’t really Fantasy Europe) Paper is an old technology so it should not automatically ‘feel wrong’ and we still use it, so probably you have an instinctive feel for how it works: that you can tear it, scrumple it, burn it, make it into scrolls and books.It’s easy to write elves as having paper, but maybe you feel it seems a bit too familiar…?
Parchment
This stuff is basically a kind of pale rawhide. Has a strong medieval vibe, though it’s much older than that. It lasts a long time and is really tough, so might be a good choice for someone wanting to keep very long-lasting records. It’s beautiful and it’s expensive, and it’s very very strong. The best-quality kind, made from young animals, is called vellum. Personally, I like to think of elves as the kind of people who don’t routinely slaughter lambs and calves for their skins, so I tend to think if they used parchment at all, it probably came from older animals, and they were quite careful with it. You can re-use parchment by scrubbing the ink off and writing on it again: that’s how tough it is. So you can correct mistakes made on parchment, though it’s work. Given the way it’s made, probably anyone writing on parchment is going to draft out the document on some less permanent medium before they write it on something so tough and valuable. Probably for books or law records rather than letters.It’s NOT paper. It’s not going to scrumple up or tear like paper does, and if you burn it, it’s going to take a while to burn, and it will probably stink.
Wax
THE popular temporary writing surface of the ancient world tends to get forgotten now, but if your writer is drafting out a difficult letter or making notes to be written out later in fair on good paper or parchment, this might be what he’d use. You get a flat wax surface which can easily be erased and you write on it with a simple stylus. You don’t need ink, you are essentially scratching letters into the wax. You can squish the wax around if you make a mistake to erase it. Your tablet probably has a gorgeous ornate cover which folds, so you don’t accidentally lose your notes.Downsides: given that ‘tablet’ and ‘stylus’ now have very modern equivalents, you probably need to emphasise that it’s a wax tablet and a lead stylus when you write about it in fic, not that your elves have suddenly all got Ipads.
Bark
Another old technology – at least 2000 years old, and I think this one feels nicely elven. Birchbark can be harvested without doing a lot of harm to the tree, and it’s relatively easy to harvest a lot of it, just with a sharp blade: it needs less complex manufacture than either parchment or paper. Birches like relatively exposed, relatively northern climates, so this is a good fit for Beleriand.You can write on it with anything you’d use to write on paper, such as ink, or you can scratch stuff directly into the bark, like six-year-old Onfim of Novgorod did back in 1260AD.
It’s probably going to be a little stiff to scrumple, and probably a bit harder to tear than paper, but elves can probably rip up thinner sheets and they can certainly fling it on the fire in a dramatic manner and it will burn very nicely.
Wood
It’s a lot of work to mince up wood fibres into a mush and then roll it out into paper. Why not instead simply carve wood into thin slices and write on that? This was a technology much used in the Roman Empire; the surviving writings from Hadrian’s wall are written on wood tablets in ink. Holly is a nice dense fast-growing and very pale wood, which might be particularly suited to use by the Noldor in Beleriand. Instead of sending someone an entire plank of wood, send them a set of thin tablets sewn together with thread. Perhaps you’ll have a unique signature knot, or seal your letter-knot with beeswax and a signet ring, so that you know nobody else has read it.Scrumpling is probably out, but this stuff is likely to be cheap and it will burn well, so feel free to fling it on the fire!
Bone
Bone is nice and pale, but it’s more of a pain to carve into strips than wood is, and I think has a slightly menacing feel. Still, it seems like the perfect surface for necromancers to write spells on, and like wood, you can bore holes in it with an awl and stitch the strips of bone together to make a longer document that can be folded or rolled up.Papyrus
This stuff has a very long history in Egypt of course, and makes a very durable kind of thick paper, as long as it’s kept dry. The papyrus reed is a hot-weather plant and papyrus scrolls, like paper, aren’t so tough in damp environments, so this one might be good for southern Avari elves to use, or perhaps southern Numenorean bases, or other Men of the South.Slate
This dark stone splits into smooth flat pieces easily and can be written on with chalk. It does crack very easily though, and perhaps has a less ‘ancient world’ feel to it as a writing substance than most of the previous options. Possibly suitable for notes, and for learning the alphabet, but it’s easier to preserve notes on a wax tablet than in chalk on a slate. Scratching messages on stone in general has a very long history, and is canon for Lord of the Rings!Probably not so good for letters that need to move from place to place, and definitely not so good for scrumpling or burning, though you could fling a slate dramatically out of a window and smash it, I suppose.
Charcoal
As a writing material, I always feel that the sheer ephemeral nature of charcoal can’t be overstated. It’s widely available, true: pick it out of any fireplace or bonfire – but as a writing/drawing material, it comes off almost as easily as it goes on. Good for quickly drawing secret maps that you want to be able to wipe out again.Chalk
Like charcoal, crumbly and ephemeral. So very ephemeral. Depending on the geology, your elves might be able to pick it up on any stony surface, or there might be none of it about for leagues and leagues.Ink
Sooooo many kinds of ink. You might imagine elves writing with dip-pens, but the fountain pen is an earlier technology than you might think: in the real world, it was invented in Egypt over a thousand years ago.We mostly tend to think of ink as a liquid now, but solid ink-sticks are still used, made from a mix of different kinds of soot (pine wood soot or charcoal) with a glue to hold them together: you grind them on an inkstone then add water. Perhaps the Falmari might use pinewood soot ink-sticks bound with fish-glue, and mixed with pearl-dust? And the Doriathrim might use egg-glue inksticks made with charcoal.
The mining Noldor might use ferrous salts with oak-galls to make their ink: it perhaps is fitting that iron-gall inks, though very clear and effective at first, over a long period of time corrode the writing surface.
Envision the miseries of Aragorn’s day-to-day life: the constant wandering, the weathering of roaring storms, the uncertainty that comes with night, and the noises that rustle in his shadows. Imagine, if you will, stripping yourself of all your comforts, and walking through both woodlands and friend-less plains. Aragorn, joined by naught but the stars for company, has endured much. Withstood much. And, in truth, they are not all ghastly things, but through the passing of the years, the little things pile.
Aragorn, wrapped in his cloak as a pounding rain rumbles. Aragorn, staggered by heat at the height of summer noon. His back is propped against a tree when the late hour draws, and he sifts through each noise to determine what looms beyond. His boots are muddied and worn to the sole and his cloak is frayed and tattered, and those hands – calloused, rough, harsh – had handled far more than one must in their lifetime. He is of a realm stripped entirely of peace, where dangers hound your steps and sleep never comes easy. It says much, then, that he has braved it all nobly – and without one complaint.
I just had a revelation about why I love Celebrimbor so much. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.
One idea that’s very prevalent in Tolkien’s work is the concept of hereditary or collective sin. Your ancestor screwed up? You’re probably doomed, or at least have to prove that you aren’t. (See: Aragorn, also movie!Thorin). Your folk did wrong against mine a few millennia ago? Move yourself off my lawn. The doom of Mandos cursed Feanor’s entire house, not just those who swore the oath.
Maybe it’s because I’m German and very much distance myself from the sins of my forefathers, but I have a huge problem with that. Apparently, so does Celebrimbor.
Then he basically says “Fuck the entire First Age, we’re making a new start. Curse, what curse? And remind me again why we dislike the dwarves, they’re pretty awesome from where I stand. Btw, I’m putting the star of my house on these doors, come on, judge me for the family I was born into.”
It’s such a positive attitude and a lot more progressive than most of his contemporaries. Did Tolkien view it as hubris? I don’t know. In any case he knew how to write effective tragedy, because this lack of prejudice may have been a reason why Celebrimbor trusted Annatar, and then… well, we know what happened then.
This is lovely, particularly the point about the star of Feanor on the doors : Celebrimbor isn’t ashamed of who he is. One reason why the fall of Eregion is so very poignant… Eregion, and the Union of Maedhros, are the two things that make me want to shout angrily : no, but this should have worked! It *should* have worked…
It should have worked! It would have been so right! It’s as if LotR had ended in an epic failure, the point being that sometimes history doesn’t go the way it should. (Like we didn’t know that.)
Cold ‘Tis With Sauron’s Wraiths To Wed!
Some of y’all might remember the Great Shitposting Event of December 2017, spearheaded by @cerulean-shark and @verymaedhros, aided and abetted by @tyelperinquar, @fuindar-valen, @saltysquidtea, @cataclysmofstars, @vampiraptor, and probably some other people who I’m forgetting (sorry!). As for me, I have never shitposted in my life. (She blatantly lied.)
And if not, this thread, originally posted by Vmae, tells you all you need to know. The thread deals with his passage from the Lay of Leithian:
‘Thou fool: a phantom thou didst see
that I, I Sauron, made to snare
thy lovesick wits. Naught else was there.
Cold ‘tis with Sauron’s wraiths to wed!
Thy Eilinel! She is long since dead… ’and the discussion was of whether or not this meant that Gorlim and also Sauron had canonically slept with a wraith.
There’s a widespread understanding within the Tolkien fandom that Tolkien never wrote about sex. Ever. Even in the stuff he wrote privately for himself and didn’t intend to publish. And so wherever something turns up in canon that hinted at possibly some non-platonic entanglements, a giggle goes around at daft Grampa T who was so prudish he didn’t recognize the sexual subtext within his own work, the shippers write their fic, and everyone goes about their lives. (Of course, this interpretation ignores that Tolkien canonically wrote an incestuous relationship in The Children of Hurin.)
Which is what I did too until recently. A little over a month ago, I got into one of Tolkien’s lesser known, non-Middle Earth works. The Lay of Aotru and Itroun, (good luck with the pronunciation, I don’t know either) is set in the Real World, “In Britain’s land beyond the seas,” aka Brittany, and the plot follows a nobleman and his wife who are trying to conceive. Of course she doesn’t, so Aotru seeks out a witch, who promises to give him a potion for his wife in return for an unknown price to be paid sometime later. Itroun get pregnant, and in the spring Aotru is hunting in the woods, and who does he meet but that witch again! Except now she’s young and hot, and it’s questionable whether she’s wearing any clothing, and this is what she says to Aotru:
For this at least I claim my fee,
if ever thou wouldst wander free.
With love thou shalt me here requite,
for here is long and sweet the night;
in druery dear thou here shalt deal
in bliss more deep than mortals feel.’
Italicized as in the original. In case it isn’t clear that the witch/fairy is requesting Aotru repay her by having sex with her, the footnotes helpfully inform us that “druery” means “love-making.” Count on Tolkien to use an archaic term that has gone out of use instead of the prosaic “fucking.”
Let Tolkien say “fuck” 2k18.This leads me to believe that I’ve been approaching parts of Tolkien’s work all wrong. Instead of turning cognitive cartwheels to figure out what Tolkien meant if he wasn’t talking about sex, it seems that I should roll with the more intuitive interpretation, and assume that in at least some of the cases that he was actually talking about sex. Which doesn’t mean that at other times he couldn’t have been speaking metaphorically in other cases. (Such as Melkor’s lust for the Silmarils. Or, maybe Melkor was just really into geology.)
Upshot: Gorlim/Wraith is probably a canon ship. Also, some of us (such as me) have been missing out on this whole other side of Tolkien’s work, because we’ve been dismissing the sexual subtext as the creations of people scrabbling to support their ship.
And I don’t believe in Tolkien’s personal life having any bearing on how I interpret his works, but it does stretch my credibility to suggest that a veteran for crying out loud, and someone who studied mythology, would be writing merrily along like “Sexual innuendo? I have never heard of it.”
What/who do you think Tom Bombadil is? He seems ancient but so totally different from any other character in Tolkien’s works
Ooh! what an interesting question. Sadly, I don’t have a super-interesting answer for it though.
I think Tom Bombadil is Himself. I don’t think he’s someone who is mentioned in the Silmarillion or HoME under another name. I don’t think he’s Eru. I don’t think he’s a Maiar or a Valar or anything described and categorised elsewhere. There’s lots of room in Middle-earth for things that are only mentioned in one place in passing: think of Beorn the skin-changer and the giants of the mountains in the Hobbit! Not to mention the were-worms…
I’m pretty sure Tom isn’t Maglor, as in a theory I’ve seen a couple of times: I think Elrond’s reaction to the mention of him at the Council proves that: Elrond knows Maglor, of course, and he also knows Tom Bombadil as Iarwain Ben-adar, oldest and fatherless. It would be odd for Maglor to be described as ‘fatherless’ since his entire fate was bound up with his father’s.
Probably the most precise concept I have of Tom is as a spirit of the land: something that is a self-aware part of Arda itself. (I tend to think the Rivers have similarly self-aware aspects, or at least the River Sirion did, and the Withywindle (though possibly Goldberry is the Withywindle, and she’s the daughter of the Baranduin). Old Man Willow might be something similar, if he’s not a Huorn or a darkened elf-spirit infesting a tree.
Tom Bombadil’s self-imposed boundaries that he won’t pass are rather fascinating, aren’t they? I’d love to know exactly where they lie and why he won’t cross them! And also his friendship with the Maggot family, who of all the hobbits we meet, seem to be the ones most entrenched in one place.
Lingering elf souls + Sauron’s fear of water
Pantscanon
As per the usual fan depiction the Noldor didn’t wear pants in Valinor, just long robes. Valinor being a fairly gentle climate, for the most part. And when the Feanorians got into Beleriand they encountered the Sindar wearing pants and their reaction was similar to the Romans and Greeks when they encountered pants-wearing Germanic tribes: Ew pants are for the uncivilized we will never dare wear such horrid things. And then the cold winds of Beleriand blew upon their genitals and they changed their mind pretty quick.
The Nolofinweans of course had discovered the merits of pants somewhere along the Helcaraxe.
On the Alkallabeth and Genesis 1-9
In light of Tolkien’s Catholic faith, one parallel between the Old Testament and the Silmarillion is that of the Downfall of Numenor and Noah’s Flood (and, to a lesser extent, the Eden story).
If you’ve read the Silmarillion, you’re familiar with the tale of Numenor’s slow corruption and eventual destruction. The story of Noah, which is similar to that of Numenor, is a short one in which God floods the earth due to humanity’s sinfulness yet spares Noah and his family.
In Genesis 6, human lifespan is decreased, God decreeing that “their days will be 120 years” (Gen. 6:3) because his Spirit is leaving humankind and they are marrying among people of lesser lineage (6:2). Before this, Genesis records people living over 900 years, much like how in Numenor those of the high line of Elros “had long life even according to the measure of the Numenoreans” (Silmarillion 261). As Elros’ descendants intermarry with lesser Men, the Alkallabeth records that their lifespans decreased—in the Unfinished Tales, this is a major point of conflict in the betrothal of Erendis and Aldarion as well. (Unfinished Tales 177).
Subsequently, God sees in Genesis 6:5-7 how great the evil of the human race has become, and becomes deeply troubled, deciding that he must wipe humanity off the face of the earth because of how corrupt his creation is. This almost directly parallels the Alkallabeth, where the puppeteering of Sauron in Ar-Pharazon’s kingship kindles corruption in the form of a dark cult of Morgoth, turning the Numenoreans against the Valar (Silm. 273). This leads to the eventual sundering of Aman from the rest of Arda, and the drowning of the civilization of Numenor by Eru.
Let’s take a step back to the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-3. God gave to Adam and Eve, and by extension the rest of humanity, “the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15). The mission of humankind is to be thoughtful stewards of the bountiful land (and its animal and plant inhabitants) that God entrusted to them as a free gift, and they have complete reign over it, barring one stipulation: they must not eat from a lone tree at the center of the garden (Gen. 2:17). God intended this to be for Adam and Eve’s protection, as in eating fruit from the tree they would desire that which they could not have—to be like God, which, being human, they could not do.
As the discerning reader may notice, this scenario is very similar to how Numenor came about. Numenor was “made for the Edain to dwell in” (Silm. 260), and was dubbed by the Valar “Andor, the Land of Gift” (260). Numenor and its people increased in power and wisdom under the light of Aman, much like God’s intention for Eden. And, again like Eden, the Numenoreans had free reign over the land gifted to them with one exception: they must not sail to the West and in doing so “desire to overpass the limits set to their bliss” (262). Being of the kindred of Men, they could not have the everlasting life of the Eldar and Ainur, and so they would destroy the bliss of Numenor by desiring what they could not have—like Adam and Eve in Eden.
Eden falls when humanity listens to the whispers of Satan in its ears (Gen. 3:6-7). As discussed previously, this also happens with Numenor.
Returning to Noah’s story, Noah and his kin are able to escape the fate of the rest of the world because they are faithful to God (Gen. 7:1). They take with them the remnants of the former world in order to build a new one. This is what occurs with Elendil and his followers also; “the Faithful put aboard their wives and their children, and their heirlooms, and great store of goods” (Silm. 276). They also took with them a sapling of Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor, which was a symbol of the light and goodness of the Undying Lands untainted by Sauron’s malice. Humankind may have lost their Eden in the Downfall of Numenor, but the continued lineage of the White Tree speaks to a chance for future redemption, as does the rainbow at the end of Noah’s story.
This discussion will be continued later bc I have to go to workkkk
The Nauglamir
I see a lot of reasonable speculation about what it is that drew people to desire the Silmarils, even when it might seem unwise.
Now there are situations where people genuinely seem to want a Silmaril: mostly, Feanor, whose Oath is all about Silmarils of course (rather oddly, since we are told he valued his father more highly than them). I don’t count Thingol: I don’t think Thingol wanted a Silmaril originally, I think he wanted Beren to disappear.
But consider that the Silmaril of Doriath was set into the Nauglamir. The Nauglamir, whose owner had been slain while Sauron’s prisoner. Which was part of a dragon-hoard, owned by Glaurung. The Nauglamir which was cursed with a dying curse by Mîm, and delivered to Doriath by Hurin, who had been personally cursed by Morgoth himself.
It might not be the Silmaril alone that brought doom on Doriath and the Havens.
If the Nauglamir had never come to Doriath, Thingol probably would not have died: the dwarves of Nogrod might not have been there, and if they had, they would not have killed him. The Girdle would not have fallen. The House of Feanor would not be able to attack Doriath (they were able to attack because the Girdle was gone), and so would never have attacked the Havens of Sirion.
I think the Nauglamir is an important part of the ‘why not give the Silmaril to the Sons of Feanor’ discussion too: it’s not easy to give away gold under the dragon-spell…
If the Nauglamir had never come to Doriath, then I think Doriath with its Silmaril and Maia queen would have been the last elf-kingdom standing: the Feanorian remnant would presumably have been wiped out, along eventually with the remains of the Edain, and Gondolin.
I suppose the question then is whether the Valar would ever have come to the aid of Middle-earth.
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