If you don’t mind because I love to hear it, what editorial choices did Christopher Tolkien make that really frustrate you?
My top one would be Turin’s character assaination.
I do not mind being asked!! this is an incomplete list but I hope it gets the point across
Túrin’s character assassination is astonishing, you’re right, for me it’s specifically everything in Nargothrond as well as the minimizing of Saeros (and sometimes Daeron) harassing him for racist and xenophobic reasons. This is really well-known so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it unless people want me to? it’s probably best encapsulated in another post lol.
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN, CHRISTOPHER, WHERE ARE THEY. Haleth’s all-woman bodyguards get cut out! MĂriel being the inventor of sewing gets cut out! Indis and Nerdanel having a friendship gets cut out! Andreth gets cut out, with not even a mention of the Athrabeth! Morwen and NiĂ«nor lose all their character traits! Finduilas is a ghost of her former self! Idril’s character gets cut down to nothing!
Findis and Lalwen not existing. I’m actually going to give them their own bullet point because Lalwen goes to Beleriand with her brother Fingolfin. That’s an entire extra Finwëan princess to talk about!
cutting the Wanderings of Húrin from the Silmarillion was a Bad Choice because it robs Húrin of his status as like. almost a warning of divine punishment. With the Wanderings, and specifically his travels to Gondolin and Menegroth, you can make the argument that Doriath falling and Gondolin falling were in large part because they failed to look after innocents and refugees, and that’s a really neat angle
Gil-galad Son Of Fingon. Gil-galad’s parentage changed so many damn times. I am all for Gil-galad the adopted son of Findekáno and also kind of Maitimo? but Gil-galad the biological son of Fingon has caused so many fandom problems. Leaving his parentage ambiguous would have been the right choice, and Christopher himself agrees with me here.
Beren and Lúthien being directly involved with killing the dwarves who killed Thingol. Christopher also admits in HoME that having Guy Gavriel Kay help with ghostwriting that Silm chapter was a mistake, and that he probably could have succeeded in creating a coherent narrative from his father’s later work (specifically the draft where Celegorm and Curufin kill the dwarves, assuming they have the Silmaril, but Melian actually took it and went to Lúthien)
I’m still doing research on this so I can’t actually speak authoritatively on it yet but what inspired my original frustrated post was the fact that as far as I can tell, the bits in the Silm chapter “Of Maeglin” about Maeglin’s desire to marry Idril being seen as incestuous and twisted and disgusting? Entirely absent from the drafts. All I’ve found in HoME and TFOG so far indicates that J.R.R. Tolkien never wrote anything close to that - Maeglin wanted to marry her, sure, but in the Book of Lost Tales, their marriage is frowned upon because Turgon thought that his nephew was clout-chasing rather than genuinely in love with his daughter. And the other HoME volumes usually have some variation on “Maeglin wanted to marry her, and Turgon loved and trusted him, but she married Tuor instead”, if they mention him at all. All the stuff about how he loved without hope, and how she saw him as terrifyingly warped? I’m willing to say that there’s a very good chance he invented that. Maeglin’s characterization in JRRT’s writing is very different from how he is in the Silm.
Amrod surviving at Losgar. I feel like this is a pretty agreed-upon fandom thing? We all sort of just accept that he died. But it still annoys me that Chris decided not to follow that path.
Argon not existing at all. Argon’s death mirrors Amrod’s death - both Fëanor and Fingolfin have to lose a son before they can begin life in exile, and one dies in fire and the other dies in freezing cold. It also sets up an interesting relationship since Argon died defending his family and his people and Amrod died because of someone else’s selfish and misguided attempt to defend his family.
the removal of a lot of the more queercoded/queer-subtext moments. Túrin and Beleg kiss in front of the Gaurwaith in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, and in that version and the Book of Lost Tales version of the story, Túrin kisses Beleg after he dies. The green Elessar that Galadriel gives to Aragorn is mentioned to be a betrothal gift in Laws and Customs among the Eldar, and there’s one version of the story where that same green stone was given to Fingon by Maedhros.
downplaying the presence of Taliska in the narrative and stripping out a lot of Edainic cultural worldbuilding. Taliska, one of the Edainic languages (or an Edainic language with several distinct dialects) hasn’t had any publicly released information about grammar and construction. We never find out in the published Silm that the Atani - the mortal Men - call themselves the Seekers, the way the elves call themselves the Quendi. We don’t learn that nothlir is the Taliska word for “folk” or “people”, so nothlir Haletha means “folk of Haleth”. All the lengthy discussion of Edainic philosophy from the Athrabeth is gone, and Chris’s decimation of the Narn i Chin Húrin means we don’t know anything in the Silm chapter about life in Dor-lómin under Húrin and Morwen’s leadership.
I hope that answers your question? sorry, this turned out to be long.
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