roasting terrible tolkien men, part 2: eol the dark elf
In which I continue my journey into roasting the worst of the worst of Tolkien men and mine the story of Eol the Dark Elf for dating advice.
Next up is Eol the Dark Elf, a person with the heinous distinction of being abusive to his wife in the canon maintext. We don’t know much about him before we find him in the forests of Nimloth, but we know that even the sons of Feanor thought he was an asshole.
By the way, Eol isn’t called the Dark Elf because he’s an asshole, it’s a heritage thing because unlike Feanor, who had lived in Valinor and seen the light of the Two Trees (which he then stole, but irrelevant), Eol had never been there or seen that. There’s a lot of lore here about the different races of elves, but what you need to know for the purposes of roasting this particular fuckboy(fuckelf, if I’m going to be accurate to his high fantasy race) is that Feanor and his extended family are members of the Noldor, considered Light elves because they lived in Valinor, while Eol is a Teleri elf, most of whom didn’t make that journey to Valinor (or the very messed up journey back). Remember when Feanor killed those guys with the ships? Those people were Eol’s people, and the Teleri in Middle Earth took it personally.
It seems like Eol and Feanor have nothing in common, but they do share one quality: they were both excellent artisans and craftsmen. Eol wasn’t out here making elvish telephones or inventing the alphabet, but he was great at making weapons. Actually, one of Eol’s swords is going to play a major part in another Tolkien fuckboy’s story in this dissertation, so this is worth mentioning now. Anyway, while Eol’s hanging out in forests making swords, Feanor’s sons and nephews were out here building kingdoms for themselves.
We’re going to need to basically copy and paste this section of the Silmarillion to this post to understand which elf man ruled which part of old Middle Earth, then called Beleriand, but for the purposes of telling Eol’s story, we just need to know about the kingdom of Gondolin. It was ruled by Turgon, the second son of Feanor’s brother Fingolfin. Gondolin was a secret kingdom that was basically just a hidden city state. Turgon built the place and left his first kingdom of Nevrast, and Gondolin was by all accounts a great place to live, but there was one rule: Gondolin was to remain a secret, so once you made it there, you could never leave. As expected, as any hard and fast rule like this works in literature, it is broken in significant ways.
King Turgon had one sister, Aredhel, who was really good friends with the sons of Feanor despite, you know, most of them being assholes. She goes to her brother and says that she doesn’t want to live within the walls of Gondolin for the rest of her immortality and she wants to venture out to see her buddies for a while and she’ll come right back. Turgon’s not super happy about it as there’s a lot of familial bad blood: on the journey back to Middle Earth, Feanor and his followers, after killing all those Teleri elves, took the boats and left everybody else behind, leaving Turgon, his father and siblings, and all of his people to cross a glacial wasteland on foot. However, that’s his sister and he wants her to be happy, so he lets her go. Naturally, Aredhel gets lost and strays into Eol’s territory. When he sees her, he recognizes her, and he resolves to take her for his own. He sets a plan into motion that gets Aredhel more lost, and then he makes contact and takes her home and doesn’t let her leave.
The Silmarillion is quick to say that Aredhel wasn’t wholly unhappy living there, but it’s clearly not a good situation for her. Eol’s forest is so dark and wooded that the sun doesn’t shine through the trees, so Aredhel gives birth to their only son Maeglin (spoiler alert, he’s next in this dissertation) in the darkness. There’s no evidence that Eol was physically abusive towards her, but the emotional and mental mind kibosh put on this poor elf woman was staggering. Sadly, she stays with him despite opportunities to escape (Eol spent most of his time away from his family) for the sake of her son, plus she has that whole “my brother rules a secret kingdom and I can’t let my husband find it” thing to deal with. However, this doesn’t stop Maeglin from seeing the fuckery of this situation, so he tries to make the best of it. He learns craftsmanship from his father on the rare occasion he’s home and absorbs everything until he’s sure Eol has taught him everything that he knows.
Maeglin steals one of Eol’s best swords and convinces Aredhel to make her escape at the right moment, and thankfully, they do. Aredhel leads them back to Gondolin and Turgon welcomes them back and takes a real liking to his new nephew, but once Eol sees they’re gone, he follows them down their path and finds Gondolin himself. He’s brought before Turgon, who says something to the effect of “hey, you have to stay here for the rest of your life, but also you kidnapped my sister so your life might actually be a little short, kthxbai.” Eol loses his temper at the situation and throws a weapon at Maeglin, who he blames for this turn of events, but it hits Aredhel instead. She’s healed from the physical wound, but they missed the fact that the weapon was poisoned, so Aredhel dies during the night. Eol, having literally murdered his wife, is summarily executed while his son Maeglin looks on, saying nothing.
Unlike Feanor, Eol is more obviously #TheWorst, to the point that the canon doesn’t write around it much. He’s emotionally and mentally and probably physically abusive, and he’s a shitty dad who spends the majority of his time away from home while forbidding his wife and son to leave. However, there are some red flags that go undiscussed over those blaring red sirens, and those red flags are worth discussing when you want to compare Tolkien’s fuckboys to their real life counterparts.
Lessons to learn from this story:
- Never, ever let a man isolate you from your support network. That was the way Eol successfully trapped and isolated Aredhel and tried to exert control over his son. Your support network is precious and men who try and pull you away from them are more than likely trash.
- Do not tolerate a race fetishist, drop them as soon as you smell a hint of that. This sounds out there, but Eol was a racist fetishist of women. The fact that Aredhel came from a race of elves that Eol hated was a huge factor in why he chose her and was ultimately a shitty spouse to her. Some men have those sorts of issues, and you are a person, not an outlet for their racial aggression.
- Cool. Girls. Always. Lose. I cannot overstate this. Aredhel’s life would have been much easier (and spoilers: Gondolin would have actually survived) had she not decided she wanted to fuck off to hang out with Feanor’s sons. Keep in mind, Feanor’s sons are also shitty in their own right. They’re her cousins, but most, if not all of them, were messed up and had quite a lot to answer for. Turgon was actually pretty great and had his sister Aredhel’s best interests at heart. It wouldn’t have been cool to stay in Gondolin, but she’d be alive if she stayed, and so would an elven civilization. I could say a lot about Aredhel and her pick me girl behaviors, but Tolkien pick me girls need their own write-up.
- Don’t justify emotionally abusive behavior, because it can easily turn into physical abuse. We have no evidence in the canon that Eol hit Aredhel or Maeglin before Eol attacked Maeglin in Gondolin, but in reality there doesn’t need to be a pattern of physical abuse there before he starts doing it. The goal is not to be “not wholly unhappy” with a man who is subjugating you. The goal is to be happy, your best self, and if a man is there being an equal partner, that’s a bonus.
- Shitty men make shitty dads, so pick the father of your children wisely. Not only did Maeglin suffer with Eol as his father, Maeglin was also AWFUL and took after him in personality. Nowadays there’s therapy to help with all that, but bad parenting across the gender spectrum impacts generations.
- Don’t stay in a bad relationship for the sake of your kids. Your kids will be happier if you divorce and you’ll be teaching them a lesson about what’s acceptable behavior and what they should tolerate. Tolkien was a devout Catholic in a marriage so lovely it’s actually written in the Silmarillion, but even he knew that in certain situations, you’ve got to know when to leave.
Eol the Dark Elf is pretty obviously the worst, but there’s even more to learn from his very shitty son, Maeglin, porn addict extraordinaire. Yep, I’m going to argue that the Silmarillion has commentary on kink, so I’m pretty sure part 3 is going to upset men everywhere.