Q: Was Finduilas Gil-galad’s Sister in the Silmarillion?
ANSWER: In the published version of The Silmarillion Finduilas was the daughter of Orodreth and Gil-galad was the son of Fingon. In 2003 I wrote an essay called The Final Eldarin Genealogy (which was based on a news group article I had written in 1996) in which I laid out the “correct” genealogy of the House of Finwë according to Christopher Tolkien per his notes in The Peoples of Middle-earth. In this genealogy, Gil-galad is presented as the son and heir of Orodreth and Finduilas as Gil-galad’s sister.
The correctness of the final Eldarin genealogy tables is determined by the latest stage of J.R.R. Tolkien’s notes, but as I pointed out in the essay Is Your Canon on the Loose? such determinations can sometimes be misleading. J.R.R. Tolkien re-imagined and rebuilt all aspects of his stories. There are transitions between mythologies (from the Mythology of England to the Mythology of Beleriand to the Mythology of Middle-earth, for example) and there are distinct layers or traditions within each of the mythologies.
Beyond these separate components of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work there are the intra-work “phases” or stages of development, such as the very complex evolution of The Hobbit from the “Pryftan fragment” to the Third Edition of 1965 (and various corrected editions beyond 1965).
I thus chose my title very carefully: The FINAL Eldarin Genealogy is intended only to reflect the last available information on the most complete and authoritative history of the families of the Kings of the Eldar, but that final genealogy is by no means consistent with The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings. There are too many pieces from too many puzzles (some never completely finished) thrown together.
In essence, we can say that J.R.R. Tolkien eventually decided that Finduilas should be the sister of Gil-galad, and that Gil-galad should be the son of Orodreth; and that on the basis of this decision he envisioned (or intended) updating all the constituent texts of The Silmarillion and the main “Quenta Silmarillion” narrative itself to reflect this decision. But time was against him, and he left this work incomplete.
We cannot really ignore The Silmarillion, for it has been constant publication since 1977 and seems unlikely to vanish from either the bookshelves or the commentaries that followed it. The Silmarillion is at the same time both a self-contained story and Christopher Tolkien’s attempt to represent something of the form and style of the book of legends his father had hoped to finish. But as Christopher himself noted in the Foreword to The Silmarillion:
A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my fathers) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost….
Christopher returned to this note while documenting the editorial decisions and changes he made in The History of Middle-earth, gently reminding his readers that even with all his explanations, this desired consistency cannot truly be realized. We can, at best, compose for ourselves our own ideas of what we want the Silmarillion to say; but such compositions are neither authoritative nor universally satisfying.
When I first attempted to document the final Eldarin genealogies a number of people argued against such an attempt, preferring the genealogies of the published book. Whether those people or others have changed their minds in the years since doesn’t really matter: The Silmarillion has not been changed despite considerable debate and discussion among fans and scholars over whether such a revision should be attempted. Christopher Tolkien has no desire to attempt a revision, and he apparently has not even considered whether anyone else might be suited to the task.
Hence, to the question about whether Finduilas and Gil-galad were brother and sister, the best answer may be: if you wish them to be, there is support for that sentiment; and you don’t wish them to be, there is The Silmarillion as it was published with all its flaws and faults.
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