A Revised Ruin of Doriath!

[Maedhros]

I had this idea of mine for a couple of months and I had discussed it with 2 persons which have indicated that they would like to take part in it.

Because I have been part of The Revised Silmarillion Project (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=8) , I have been interested in trying to make a more complete Ruin of Doriath, than the one in The Published Silmarillion. The knowledge required to participate would be to have read The Tale of the Nauglafrind, in Bolt 2, The Wanderings of Húrin, in Home 11 and The Quenta, in Home 4.

I was reading the Wanderings, Tale and the Quenta yesterday, and it doesn't seem to me impossible a reconcilation between the accounts.

What I have in mind is the following:
Use the Wanderings of Húrin as far as it can takes us, and then joined it with the Tale of the Nauglafring.
These are IMO, some of the biggest problems in this reconstruction:

1. The Tale of the Nauglafing is of course very outdated. I would propose to revise it using the Quenta in Home 4.

2. How to deal with Thingol slaying? I would propose that we follow the Quenta to make that Thingol was slained when he was outside of Doriath, when the Dwarvish Army was coming. It solves the problem of the Girdle and leaves Menegroth opens for an assault.

3. Húrin. I think that this is the biggest problem in the whole Ruin of Doriath. Unfortunately we do not have, like in the Fall of Gondolin, a part where Húrin actually reaches Doriath, like Tuor did in Unfinished Tales.
Using the Wanderings of Húrin, if we follow the story, it ends with Húrin leaving Brethil with no company and it is supposed that he will be going to Nargothrond to seek the treasure and then go to Menegroth. As Aiwendil posted, that is the gap that is very troublesome to us, and another little point is that at that point, his companions are leaving him. That is the thing that has kept me thinking in how it should be dealt.

I have already worked on the General changes that are to be applied to the Tale.

I would want to see if there are more persons who wished to be involved in such endeavor.
The problem of not having available the text can be overcome if you really want to participate.

[Beleg]

I am very interested. I have read the Wanderings of Hurin and the Tale of Naughlafrind. I do possess Quenta of HOVE IV but just haven't gotten around to read it. [Although I have free time so I can read it any moment.]

[Maedhros]

That is the interesting thing about it. It is of course better to read the whole Quenta, but it will suffice to read only chapter 14, the one who deals with the Ruin of Doriath. One important part that I forgot to mention was the Tale of Years, in Home 11.

What I'm planning on doing is this: I have already some general changes on the Tale of the Nauglafring (ex: names, locations, etc), and I have been using the Wanderings of Húrin to make a narrative when he leaves Brethil, gains some outlaws that were following him going to Nargothrond.
I have failed to mention that we would need the last parragraphs of The Tale of Turambar, for it is in there where Húrin reaches Menegroth.
Of course, there is a problem if you will with the styles. In the Wanderings of Húrin, the style of narrative is different from that of The Tales.

As soon as a finish with my drafts, which unfortunately because of Forums constraints I won't be able to post here, I would send the persons interested a copy of what I'm working for and try to have here the discussions regarding the changes that we are submitting.

[Maedhros]

From The War of the Jewels: The Tale of Years
Apart from a few matters of detail in texts and notes that have not been published, all that my father ever wrote on the subject of the ruin of Doriath has now been set out: from the original story told in the Tale of Turambar (II.113-15) and the Tale of the Nauglafring (II.221 ff.), through the Sketch of the Mythology (IV.32-3, with commentary 61-3) and the Quenta (IV.132-4, with commentary 187-91), together with what little can be gleaned from The Tale of Years and a very few later references (see especially pp. 352-3). If these materials are compared with the story told in The Silmarillion it is seen at once that this latter is fundamentally changed, to a form for which in certain essential features there is no authority whatever in my father's own writings.
There were very evident problems with the old story. Had he ever turned to it again, my father would undoubtedly have found some solution other than that in the Quenta to the question, How was the treasure of Nargothrond brought to Doriath? There, the curse that Mîm laid upon the gold at his death 'came upon the possessors in this wise. Each one of Húrin's company died or was slain in quarrels upon the road; but Húrin went unto Thingol and sought his aid, and the folk of Thingol bore the treasure to the Thousand Caves.' As I said in IV.188, 'it ruins the gesture, if Húrin must get the king himself to send for the gold with which he is then to be humiliated'. It seems to me most likely (but this is mere speculation) that my father would have reintroduced the outlaws from the old Tales (11.113-15,222-3) as the bearers of the treasure (though not the fierce battle between them and the Elves of the Thousand Caves): in the scrappy writings at the end of The Wanderings of Húrin Asgon and his companions reappear after the disaster in Brethil and go with Húrin to Nargothrond (pp. 306-7).
How he would have treated Thingol's behaviour towards the Dwarves is impossible to say. That story was only once told fully, in the Tale of the Nauglafring, in which the conduct of Tinwelint (precursor of Thingol) was wholly at variance with the later conception of the king (see II.245-6). In the Sketch no more is said of the matter than that the Dwarves were 'driven away without payment', while in the Quenta 'Thingol... scanted his promised reward for their labour; and bitter words grew between them, and there was battle in Thingol's halls'. There seems to be no clue or hint in later writing (in The Tale of Years the same bare phrase is used in all the versions: Thingol quarrels with the Dwarves'), unless one is seen in the words quoted from Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn on p. 353: Celeborn in his view of the destruction of Doriath ignored Morgoth's part in it 'and Thingol's own faults'.
In The Tale of Years my father seems not to have considered the problem of the passage of the Dwarvish host into Doriath despite the Girdle of Melian, but in writing the word 'cannot' against the D version (p. 352) he showed that he regarded the story he had outlined as impossible, for that reason. In another place he sketched a possible solution (ibid.): 'Somehow it must be contrived that Thingol is lured outside or induced to go to war beyond his borders and is there slain by the Dwarves. Then Melian departs, and the girdle being removed Doriath is ravaged by the Dwarves.'
In the story that appears in The Silmarillion the outlaws who went with Húrin to Nargothrond were removed, as also was the curse of Mîm; and the only treasure that Húrin took from Nargothrond was the Nauglamîr - which was here supposed to have been made by Dwarves for Finrod Felagund, and to have been the most prized by him of all the hoard of Nargothrond. Húrin was represented as being at last freed from the delusions inspired by Morgoth in his encounter with Melian in Menegroth. The Dwarves who set the Silmaril in the Nauglamîr were already in Menegroth engaged on other works, and it was they who slew Thingol; at that time Melian's power was with-drawn from Neldoreth and Region, and she vanished out of Middle-earth, leaving Doriath unprotected. The ambush and destruction of the Dwarves at Sarn Athrad was given again to Beren and the Green Elves (following my father's letter of 1963 quoted on p. 353, where however he said that 'Beren had no army'), and from the same source the Ents, 'Shepherds of the Trees', were introduced.
This story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a step was being taken of a different order from any other 'manipulation' of my father's own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of The Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with 'The Silmarillion' as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.