Why Did Barahir Succeed Bregolas Instead of One of Bregolas’ Sons?

Q: Why Did Barahir Succeed Bregolas Instead of One of Bregolas’ Sons?

ANSWER: In The Silmarillion, in the Battle of Sudden Flame, Bregolas is the Lord of the House of Bëor when Morgoth unleashes his forces against Dorthonion. After Bregolas falls in battle, his younger brother Barahir assumes command of the Bëorian forces and the lordship of the house. Many of J.R.R. Tolkien’s readers question why this should be so. After all, should not Baragund, elder son of Bregolas, have inherited the lordship?

What many attempts to answer the question seem to overlook is the fact that Barahir goes much further back in the layers of mythology than Bregolas and his sons, and it was always going to be Barahir who inherited the lordship of the House of Bëor. In Morgoth’s Ring Christopher Tolkien wrote:

Most of the genealogical information about the House of Beor in the published Silmarillion is derived of course from post-Lord of the Rings work on the text: in QS and the Annals of Beleriand (AB 2) Beren’s father Barahir was the son of Beor the Old, and the People of Marach had not emerged.

But that is not where Barahir first appeared in the stories. In The Shaping of Middle-earth Barahir and his son Beren are Ilkorins (the predecessors of the Sindar of Beleriand in the later mythologies). Christopher notes corrections made to the manuscripts which change Barahir and Beren to Men — possibly because J.R.R. Tolkien recalled that he had already transformed Beren from an Elf to a Man in previous work on the “Lay of Leithian”. Bregolas was added to the family later as Tolkien brought Bëor into the mythology. Of the early development of the House of Bëor Christopher writes:

Annals 70 to 150 In the entries giving the birth-dates of the Bëorians is seen the emergence of an elder line of descent from Bëor the Old beside Barahir and Beren: Barahir now has a brother Bregolas, whose sons are Baragund and Belegund (in this History all three have been named in rewriting of the Lay of Leithian, III. 335, but that belongs to a much later time). In this line Morwen and Rian are genealogically placed, and as the daughters of Baragund and Belegund become cousins. But though nothing has been said before of Rian’s kindred, the idea that Morwen was related to Beren goes right back to the Tale of Turambar, where (as that text was first written, when Beren was a Man) Mavwin was akin to Egnor, Beren’s father (see II. 71, 139).

The Beorian house is thus now in its final form in the last and most important generations, though Barahir and Bregolas were later to be removed by many steps from Beor with the lengthening of the years of Beleriand from the rising of the Sun.

So why did J.R.R. Tolkien make Bregolas the elder brother? That’s an unanswerable question. In The War of the Jewels Christopher notes that an emendation to a text that states Bregolas’ sons were “not yet come to full manhood” is inconsistent with the birth-dates preserved in the changing texts. Either his father had a special concept of “full manhood” in mind or he was thinking experimentally and perhaps had considered changing the birth-dates — which might justify passing the mantle of leadership from Bregolas to Barahir rather than to Bregolas’ elder son.

In a recent online discussion of this question, Troels Forchhammer wrote:

If further strengthening of Barahir’s claim is needed, I would remind you of the meaning of the word /Bëor/ in the tongue of Men: vassal. It would seem to me that the king has some say in who gets to be the lord of the house of vassals, and in this case the king was Finrod Felagund, and so that the right by which Barahir became lord of the house of Bëor also derives from the favour that Finrod Felagund bestowes upon him in gratitude.

In fact, the gift of a ring (and pledge of friendship) upon Barahir may have had great significance. It could be that Finrod simply transferred lordship of the House of Bëor to the most experienced and capable leader available — an act he performed in front of Bregolas’ sons (who were both apparently present in Barahir’s force). Christopher may have in fact intended this reading when he edited the story of Beren and Luthien to read thus:

The sons of Finarfin bore most heavily the brunt of the assault, and Angrod and Aegnor were slain; beside them fell Bregolas lord of the house of Bëor, and a great part of the warriors of that people. But Barahir the brother of Bregolas was in the fighting farther westward, near to the Pass of Sirion. There King Finrod Felagund, hastening from the south, was cut off from his people and surrounded with small company in the Fen of Serech; and he would have been slain or taken, but Barahir came up with the bravest of his men and rescued him, and made a wall of spears about him; and they cut their way out of the battle with great loss. Thus Felagund escaped, and returned to his deep fortress of Nargothrond; but he swore an oath of abiding friendship and aid in every need to Barahir and all his kin, and in token of his vow he gave to Barahir his ring. Barahir was now by right lord of the house of Bëor, and he returned to Dorthonion; but most of his people fled from their homes and took refuge in the fastness of Hithlum.

This passage could be interpreted by some people as a feudal contract between Finrod and Barahir. It was certainly a pragmatic choice, and Christopher (like his father before him) would have been well aware of the medieval European practice of appointing march-wardens to defend the borders of large realms. Dorthonion had originally been ruled by Angrod and Aegnor, and the Bëorians dwelt under their authority. It seems as if Finrod is here — in the wake of the deaths of his brothers — following the example of other Elven kings and giving a full lordship to a house of Men, although in the subsequent events that lordship ceased to exist as Dorthonion was conquered and its people were all slain or driven off. And the dispossession of the Line of Fëanor from the High Kingship of the Noldor-in-Exile would have served as a precedent for transferring authority from one brother’s descendants to another brother’s descendants.

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