HOME | DD
Mellaril — The Boy on the Wall (Maeglin and Idril)
#elves #fantasy #gondolin #lotr #maeglin #prince #princess #silmarillion #tolkien
Published: 2018-05-18 05:09:42 +0000 UTC; Views: 8072; Favourites: 112; Downloads: 8
Redirect to original
Description
Idril stumbles across Maeglin sitting on the Northern wall. Do you ever make up dialogue when painting a scene?"So you do talk. What are you doing up here?"
"My mother came up here once, to watch the sun rise, alone."
"It's a nice spot, sure. Just don't fall off."
"You look just like her. Like my mother."
"Yes, that's what they always used to say."
Sequel to Father and Idril in honor of the release of The Fall of Gondolin. It's hard to reconcile liking Maeglin so much while being a feminist (and a decent person) but I can't help but feel that the tragedy of his story-- evil borne of idealism and love-- makes him sympathetic as far as villains go. Tolkien did devote an entire chapter to his backstory, and through progressive drafts seemed to give him more thought, more nuance, more streaks of good into the wickedest of all the elves. I like to think that at some point in the two-hundred odd years Maeglin spent in Gondolin, which included participation in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Idril took pity on him and they had some sort of a decent human interaction.
Related content
Comments: 22
Love this piece. Really captures the emotions and feelings of Maeglin.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks so much! It’s one of my favorites too. I always found Maeglin to be a surprisingly sympathetic character and it’s a really big inspiration for my art
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
It is not necessary to sympathize with the villain, if you understand his story of "falling into evil." But a good drawing does not show the artist's attitude toward the "model", but tells a true story. I'm not sure that everyone agrees with me, but ... most villains are charming people.)))
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Oh, I love this piece! I always feel a certain amount of sympathy for Maeglin, who was, after all, very young when he lost both his parents, and in such a horrible way, too. My headcanon of him is much less blackhearted than the canon one... and this image is so sweet! One must wonder what Gondolin really felt like, to him... his mother had been telling him stories of the beauty and all the great people living there, and then tragedy strikes. No matter how he felt about his father, seeing him summarily executed in front of his eyes must have been a terrible trauma - and I feel he must have, at least to some extent, resented Turgon for it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks so much! It's always so lovely to meet a fellow Maeglin fan. There are hints of what Maeglin thought of Gondolin: he listened in wonder to his mother's stories, and the yearning to see it all for himself, and to bring her back to her family, was so strong that he flagrantly fled the home of his childhood and flouted his father's wishes. Then to arrive at last, and find it just as beautiful as he had imagined, only to suddenly be trapped there, alone. I absolutely think he resented Turgon for the execution of his father-- not only that, it must have shattered the idealistic view he had of his kinsmen, the Noldor. It's true that Eöl would rather have died than to be a prisoner in Gondolin; yet what must young Maeglin have thought to see people who were supposed to be his family, these noble and perfect elves of Gondolin, perform the barbaric act of throwing a human being to his death? It's undoubtedly where the first seeds of darkness were sown, and in a sense Turgon's own ruthlessness, and his extreme paranoia about keeping Gondolin hidden, ultimately led to the very thing he feared the most.
👍: 1 ⏩: 0
I love this! Maeglin looks so young and vulnerable here, and his expression seems both smitten and guarded, which is how I think it would be. Love the perspective, and how you framed it so we only see Idril's sexy legs (the shading on her calves is beautifully done).
Maeglin falling in love with Idril who looks like his mother... a touch of Oedipal complex there, eh?
Tolkien did evolve the character a lot - from describing Maeglin as repulsively ugly and orc-blooded, to being tall, white-skinned and beautiful like his mother, and having a persuasive tongue. I think Tolkien intended Maeglin's attraction for Idril to remain a perverted lust, but I think most people reading it would be able to understand that this was a young elf just out of his teens, understandably smitten by a dazzlingly beautiful maiden who was not just a remote, unattainable figure but his close kin and someone he had grown up hearing about. And honestly, given that in so many societies first cousins do get married, a lot of people wouldn't see anything wrong in his loving his cousin.
I don't know whether I'm excited about The Fall of Gondolin or not - I don't think Christopher would have squeezed any new materials out of Dad's notebooks and I've already read it all. The only thing is that it would be great to have all the fragments compiled into one volume. And of course it would give more publicity and love to my favourite part of The Silmarillion!! Looking forward to the fanart that I hope will go into it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks so much!! Vulnerable, guarded and curious/"smitten" in the expression is what I was going for. The idea for this perspective actually popped into my head first, and then the rest of the scene followed. And I am definitely guilty of making Idril's lower legs visible (to us at least) and sexy. Idril strikes me as being someone who would be perfectly comfortable in her own skin; beautiful and proud of it. Oh I absolutely think there's an Oedipal thing going on with Maeglin, in the way his love for his mother was examined and emphasized; in his curious silence at her tragic death. His lust for his cousin is already inherently incestuous (elves "wedded not with kin so near"), and there's other precedent for Oedipal themes in The Silmarillion (ie, Túrin and Nienor). And I think you're spot on with your description: she was someone he'd heard about in his mother's stories, a figure he idealized long before he had met her as he had the city of Gondolin. Tolkien says that his love for her "turned to darkness", and yet that sentence also hints that it may not have started out that way. I really want to read more about it in The Fall of Gondolin... though I'm sure you're right; it may be there's nothing more in any of Prof. Tolkien's notebooks to give us any more answers. All the better for us to imagine for ourselves, I suppose.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I know right? the whole "cousincest" thing would have made Maeglin look like such a perv to all the other elves. I'm glad he was slowly evolving into a more complex and potentially sympathetic character in Tolkien's mind. Your Oedipal Maeglin is interesting. In fact, the whole outpouring of sympathy for Maeglin across the fandom has been such a phenomenon, in the wake of revisionist readings of The Silm. In the early years, it was standard to read him as written, which I think usually went along the lines of antisocial personality disorder. His early love for Idril may have been the one good thing in him (as you said, it turned to darkness, which implies it was once light), but that went bad when he was spurned...
I must say I'm happy the Arda Tolkien left to us fanfic writers and fanartists is such a big playground to mess around in. Honestly, it's more fun to have a whole spectrum of Maeglins, from absolute villain to misunderstood, falsely-accused, unsung hero. And to have half a dozen different headcanons for Glorfindel's parentage than having Tolkien tell us definitively that he was Elenwe's bro or Findis' son (which are the most likely options in my mind). Glorfy's my boy!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Sometimes it's much more fun to speculate!! Glorfindel as an Elenwë relative would make him Vanyarin and definitely connect him more with Idril. As a son of Findis he would be cousin to Turgon. Curious as to the reasoning behind behind that theory? There's a parallel between Maeglin and Boromir in my mind. Traitors who were not cowards, both led astray by desire. Boromir was permitted his redemption. That's the difference between LOTR and the silm... The feeling that everything will be all right, versus not. I like the Maeglin on the unsung hero end of the spectrum whether or not it's the correct interpretation though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
For Glorfindel, the reasoning is simple: his rare golden hair has to come from Vanyarin blood, but the Vanyar were deeply loyal and obedient to the Valar, so no Vanya would rebel against them and follow the Noldor into exile except he be linked by ties of blood or great love. He and Idril were probably the only golden-haired individuals in the entire city of Gondolin when it was first founded. A pureblood brother (I think of him even as a twin of Elenwe) following his sister into exile, then watching over his niece and serving his bro-in-law makes a lot of sense. If a son of Findis, Glorfindel could have based himself with any of his cousins, so the "in love with Ecthelion" theory would explain why he chose to be with Turgon at Nevrast and Gondolin. Power/rank being patrilineal among the Eldar would explain why Glorfindel was a Lord, not a Prince.
I like Maeglin somewhere in the mid-range of the spectrum, but it's definitely possible to paint him as a wrongly maligned unsung hero. I think we both tried in our own way to do that in our fics...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Your reasoning is impeccable! And you make a good argument for both theories. In love with Ecthelion? Now I've got to hear more about that fanon 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The Glorfindel/Ecthelion thing has been in fanon for a while - no idea how it started! Seems it's only necessary for two names to be linked with "and" anywhere in the canon for them to be shipped!! I haven't read it, but apparently "Flawed and Fair" is a good fic for the ship.
Most of the elves outside of the House of Finwe have obscure parentage, and I guess only someone deeply invested in any of them would care to imagine all kinds of headcanons+back stories for them. Love can't abide mysteries but desires to know.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thank you!!! I loved playing with the colors in this one. Thanks for the watch!! ^_^
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
given that he was 190 years old at death and spent 110 years in Gondolin, more than half his life, you can really agree that living in Gondolin must have shaped Maeglin
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Indeed! Though I imagine he must have felt like a stranger there in many ways.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
an interesting visual solution! in your picture he really causes sympathy
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks! I really enjoyed playing around with camera angle and perspective.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very beautiful illustration! Yes, I know the thing with the dialogue...actually, I'm working on a piece at the moment which is based on such a thing, but the dialogue was in this case first, or both at the same time. 
I really like your depiction of Maeglin, I think he is a very interesting character (and tragic, yes. But this seems kinda normal in Tolkien's stories) Did you plan doing more of 'The Fall of Gondolin', or will you let it by those three works first?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ah thanks so much! I can't wait to see your finished piece 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Nice! 
Well, even if 'the Hobbit' and 'LotR' are more lighthearted, I'm still not quite sure if I can call them 'good-ending'...
👍: 0 ⏩: 0