Finduilas

The last princess of Nargothrond

Finduilas was the daughter of Orodreth, King of Nargothrond, and so a granddaughter of Finarfin and a niece of Finrod, Galadriel and their brothers. She had the gold hair of her father's house, and Gwindor son of Guilin, to whom she was betrothed, named her Faelivrin, for the light that lies on the pools of Ivrin in the sun. If the note in Unfinished Tales is followed which makes Gil-galad the son of Orodreth rather than of Fingon, she was sister to the last High King of the Noldor; the published Silmarillion does not say so.

Gwindor and Túrin

Gwindor rode north to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in F.A. 472 and did not return. Long years later he came back out of Angband, so worn and bent by thraldom that his own people barely knew him. Finduilas pitied and honoured him, but the one she had promised herself to was not the one who had come home, and her love died; it settled instead on the tall Man who had come with him and called himself Agarwaen. Túrin she named Thurin, the Secret, and she watched him and said nothing, and Gwindor saw it all.

It was Gwindor who broke the silence, telling her that this was the son of Húrin, that Morgoth's curse lay on all that house, and that she would be broken with him if she loved him. It changed nothing. Túrin would not take his friend's betrothed and was afraid of what followed him; he was gentle with her and gave her nothing, and Nargothrond drifted toward its ruin with the three of them silent in the middle of it.

The sack of the city

In F.A. 495 the army of Nargothrond was broken at Tumhalad and Orodreth and Gwindor were killed. Glaurung came over the great bridge into the halls, and the Orcs herded the women and the young out of the ruin to be driven north as slaves. Túrin came late to the Doors, and the dragon bound him with his eyes and held him rigid on the threshold while the column of captives was marched past behind him. Finduilas called out his name as she was dragged by, and he could not move or answer. Her voice followed him for the rest of his life.

The Crossings of Teiglin

Glaurung then loosed him with a lie about his mother and sister in Dor-lómin, and Túrin turned north after them instead of after the captives. The woodmen of Brethil waylaid the Orc-column at the Crossings of Teiglin and scattered it, but the Orcs killed their prisoners before they fled, and Finduilas they pinned to a tree with a spear. She lived long enough to name herself and to leave word for the Man of the Black Sword that they had been brought that way. The Men of Brethil buried her by the crossings under a mound they called Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf-maid.

Afterwards

Túrin came at last to Brethil, heard what he had failed to prevent, and fell on the mound in a swoon that lasted a day and a night; he stayed in that country afterwards. Years later the woodmen found a woman lying naked and senseless on the same mound, with no name and no memory: Nienor, his sister, bewitched by Glaurung. He took her from the Haudh-en-Elleth and married her, and the last turn of the curse was made on the grave of the woman he had not saved.

Speared to a tree by Orcs at the Crossings of Teiglin in F.A. 495 when the Men of Brethil attacked the column of captives from Nargothrond; buried by them in the mound Haudh-en-Elleth.