Maglor

Lineage

Maglor was the second of the seven sons of Fëanor and Nerdanel, named Kanafinwë by his father and Makalaurë, gold-cleaver, by his mother, for the sound of his harp. He was the great musician of the Noldor, reckoned with Daeron of Doriath among the two greatest singers the Elves ever produced. He swore the Oath with his father and brothers in Tirion and went into exile, and he later composed the Noldolantë, the lament for the fall of the Noldor, out of his own share in that fall.

Maglor's Gap

When Maedhros took the house of Fëanor east, Maglor was given the hardest post: the wide open plain between the hills of Himring and the Blue Mountains, where no hills or rivers gave shelter and the horsemen of Angband could pour through. He held Maglor's Gap for nearly four hundred years of the Siege with cavalry and vigilance. When the Dagor Bragollach broke the Siege in F.A. 455, Glaurung came through the Gap with a host of Orcs, and Maglor's defence collapsed; he fled to Himring and joined Maedhros in holding the hill. He fought in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad seven years later, where he slew Uldor the Accursed, son of Ulfang, whose treachery destroyed the eastern host, and escaped with Maedhros to the south.

The Kinslayings

Maglor followed his brother in the sack of Doriath in F.A. 506 and in the assault on the Mouths of Sirion in 538, though the Silmarillion records that by the time of the second he and Maedhros were weary and sick of the Oath and had held back from it for years. At Sirion the young Elrond and Elros, sons of Eärendil and Elwing, fell into Maglor's hands. He did not harm them; he pitied them, took them in, and fostered them, and a strange love grew between the kinslayer and the children of the people he had attacked. Elrond's later gentleness and lore owe something to him.

The last Silmaril

After the War of Wrath the two remaining Silmarils were in the keeping of Eönwë. Maglor argued that the brothers should submit to the judgement of the Valar and hope for pardon, since the Oath had said they must not fail to pursue the jewels but had not said they could not wait; Maedhros answered that the Oath would bind them in the Everlasting Dark if they failed. Maglor gave way. The two stole into the camp, slew the guards, and took one jewel each. The Silmaril burned Maglor's hand unbearably and he understood that his claim was void. Maedhros threw himself into a chasm of fire; Maglor, unable to bear the pain, cast his Silmaril into the Sea. He did not follow his brother into death. Instead he wandered along the shores of Middle-earth singing his grief beside the waves, and he never returned to the Elves. He is the only son of Fëanor whose death is not recorded.

Legacy

Maglor is remembered for two things: the music that gave the Noldor their lament, and the mercy he showed to Elrond and Elros, which passed into the line of the Half-elven and, through Elros, into the kings of Númenor. He is the gentlest of the sons of Fëanor and the last, and his fate is left open, walking the shore between the land he had helped to ruin and the Sea that held his father's jewel.

Threw his Silmaril into the Sea and wandered the coasts of Middle-earth in grief; his end is not told.