Some thoughts on today’s Silmarillion Daily, and especially the debate of the Edain about whether to stay in Beleriand or not.
Doing some of the research for this, especially of people’s ages and Edain family trees, made me realize things I hadn’t before. First, Bereg and Amlach, the two leaders of the movement to leave Beleriand, are relatively young - 29 and 32 respectively. At any rate, young enough to have been born in Beleriand, which means that they could easily have a rosier view about the safety of the non-Beleriand areas of Middle-earth than people who lived through the journey there. Also ypung enough that they might like to strike out on their own, with followings of their own, rather than remain u der the established chieftains.
And on that latter note, they’re also from younger branches of their houses - they’re not people who can expect to succeed to the chieftainship, so proposing something different from what the current chiefs are doing gives them, again, a chance to gather their own following. Amlach is especially interesting in this respect, if you look at his family tree. He’s the son of the younger brother of Malach Aradan. Now, Malach arrived in Beleriand as a young child, and he embraced it - he went off to live in Hithlum with Fingolfin’s Noldor at age 15 and stayed there until he was 29, and the elves liked him so much they gave him his epessë (Aradan, meaning royal/noble man). And he liked the elves and their culture back - so much so that when he finally came back to east Beleriand where the rest of the Edain were and got married, he convinced his wife Zimrahin (btw, you can immediately see the origins of the Númenorean language in the language of what would become the House of Hador) to translate her name into Sindarin (Meldis).
Now, during all this time that Malach was away in Hithlum, Malach’s younger brother Imlach was still with the rest of the Edain in East Beleriand. And now Malach comes back speaking a foreign language and obsessed with these strange Eldar. On top of that, Imlach’s son Amlach is older than Malach’s son. So it wouldn’t be at all surprising if he raised his son with some strong opinions on about who really should be running things. All that’s prospective - Marach, the father of Malach and Imlach and the one who led their people to Beleriand, is still alive at the time of the big debate. But there’s a lot of space in all that for political fractures.
So Amlach is doing pretty ordinary, typical politics - the Edain splitting into different groups under new leaders with different ideas isn’t unusual. (Hador leaving his father’s people in the Teiglin area and moving his family and followers to Hithlum to align more closely with the Elves there is a later example.) And then this phantom or shapechanger apparently shows up at apublic meeting pretending to be him and says all kinds of crazy stuff about the elves being outright evil and Morgoth not existing. Which - nothing says ‘yes, there’s sonething spooky going on’ like someone who can show up looking and sounding like you when you’re not even there! So in reaction to this old-style deepfake, Amlach decides there’s something bigger going on here than ordinary politics, and he’s not going to be played and taken advantage of in this way, and he’s going to get back at Morgoth for it. But he’s also not going to copycat his uncle and head to Hithlum. So he goes north and joins up with Maedhros.