Tuor Eladar and Idril Celebrindal are fictional characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They are the parents of Eärendil the Mariner and grandparents of Elrond Half-elven: through their progeny, they become the ancestors of the Númenóreans and of the King of the Reunited Kingdom Aragorn Elessar. Both characters play a pivotal role in The Fall of Gondolin, one of Tolkien's earliest stories; it formed the basis for a section in his later work, The Silmarillion, and was expanded as a standalone book in 2018.
Tuor and Idril's marriage was one of only three between Men and High Elves in Tolkien's writings. Scholars have compared Tuor to Odysseus in Greek mythology, and to Aeneas in Roman mythology, while Idril's story has been likened to those of Cassandra and of Helen of Troy.
Fictional history
thumb|upright=2.2|Sketch map of [[Beleriand in the First Age. Tuor's city of Gondolin is top centre.]]
Tuor Eladar, also known as Ulmondil ("The Blessed of Ulmo"), is the central character of The Fall of Gondolin. He is a great hero of the Third House of Men in the First Age of Middle-earth, the only son of Huor and Rían and the cousin of the ill-fated Túrin Turambar. Huor is killed covering the retreat of Turgon, King of Gondolin, in the Battle of Tears Unnumbered, the Nírnaeth Arnoediad. Rían, having received no news of her husband, becomes distraught and wanders into the wild. She is taken care of by the local Grey-elves, and before the end of the year she bears a son and calls him Tuor. But she delivers him to the care of the Elves and departs, dying upon the lonely green grave-mound, the Hill of the Slain, at the site of the Battle of Tears Unnumbered. A very early version, written circa 1916–17, is found in The Book of Lost Tales. The start of a more complete and developed narrative, which Tolkien began after finishing The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s, is included in Unfinished Tales. However, the narrative gets no further than Tuor's first sight of Gondolin.
In the original Fall of Gondolin story, Tuor is said to have carried an axe named Dramborleg, "Thudder-Sharp", that "smote both a heavy dint as of a club and cleft as a sword". Later writings state that the Axe of Tuor is preserved in Númenor as an heirloom of the Kings.
Analysis
Tuor
<!--The theology scholar Lisa Coutras writes-->Scholars have stated that Tuor demonstrated wisdom by listening to his wife, whose wise counsel is her defining trait, whereas a leader of greater stature like Thingol, the Elvenking of Doriath, was brought low by his recklessness and pride. Jennifer Rogers writes in Tolkien Studies that Christopher Tolkien seamlessly introduces the story in his book The Fall of Gondolin by providing short extracts of his father's 1926 "Sketch of the Mythology" and "The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor", thus setting "Tuor's story in the context of the Doom of Mandos and the Oath of Fëanor", in other words within the legendarium. The Tolkien scholar Linda Greenwood notes that Tuor is the only mortal Man in the legendarium permitted to live as an immortal. Tolkien suggests an explanation in a letter, namely that Eru Ilúvatar, the One God, directly intervenes as a unique exception, just as in Lúthien's assumption of a mortal fate.
thumb|Tuor has to flee the wreck of a kingdom, just as [[Aeneas had to escape the wreck of Troy,
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto;"
|+ David Greenman's comparison of Tuor with other heroes Garth states that this means that the Evening Star was not in the western sky that Tuor saw, whereas when Tolkien visited the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall in 1914, the planet had risen and set "due west", an uncommon sight. A few weeks later, Tolkien wrote the first poem of his legendarium, "The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star".
Idril
The Tolkien scholar Melanie Rawls identifies Idril as a female character with agency in Tolkien's works: she is shown to be capable of taking action once she has achieved understanding. In Tor.coms series on the people of Middle-earth, Megan N. Fontenot praises the characterisation of Idril's wisdom and forbearance as told in the story of the Fall of Gondolin. In Fontenot's view, Idril's story represents "a significant milestone in Tolkien's storytelling career", as she saw in it many echoes of several other female characters of Middle-earth.
Greenman compares and contrasts Idril's part in the story to Cassandra and Helen of Troy, two prominent female figures in accounts of the Trojan War: like the prophetess, Idril had a premonition of impending danger and like Helen, her beauty played a major role in instigating Maeglin's betrayal of Gondolin, which ultimately led to its downfall and ruin. Conversely, Greenman notes that Idril's advice to enact a contingency plan for a secret escape route out of Gondolin was heeded by her people, and that she had always rejected Maeglin's advances and remained faithful to Tuor. The epithet Celebrindal means "Silverfoot": according to the early Sketch of the Mythology (the first version of the Silmarillion from 1926), she was so named "for the whiteness of her foot; and she walked and danced ever unshod in the white ways and green lawns of Gondolin." Tolkien describes her thus in this text: "Very fair and tall was she, well nigh of warrior's stature, and her hair was a fountain of gold." Christopher Tolkien comments that this description may be the prototype of that of Galadriel. The account is present in the earliest form of the story The Fall of Gondolin, in which "the people called her Idril of the Silver Feet in that she went ever barefoot and bareheaded, king's daughter as she was, save only at pomps of the Ainur"; then she is called Talceleb or Taltelepta.
In Peter Jackson's film adaptations of Tolkien's Middle-earth, Idril was supposed to be the original owner of the sword Hadhafang, an original invention by the affiliated production company Weta Workshop. It is wielded by Idril's descendants Elrond and Arwen in certain scenes of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series.
References
Primary
Secondary
Sources
de:Figuren in Tolkiens Welt#Tuor