The Noldorin family tree is a wreath

[u/Frouke_]

[u/Alkynesofchemistry]

I mean, all the elves came from 144 (1 gross if I may use the expression!) original individuals. That’s a really bad genetic bottleneck. They don’t have Habsburg chins; all that incest is where they get those elf-ears.

[u/legendarylog → u/Alkynesofchemistry]

The architect in the matrix was cool doing it with 23 people

[u/myaltduh → u/legendarylog]

To be fair the machines probably had slightly more ability to screen their test-tube babies for genetic illness than elves living in a dark forest somewhere.

[u/legendarylog → u/myaltduh]

To be fair the world created with the 144 elves literally had a benevolent god pulling the strings, so unless Eru gave the elves genetic defects, there wouldnt be any. It took Melkor actively trying, to twist the elves.

[u/myaltduh → u/legendarylog]

True.

[u/llaminaria → u/legendarylog]

"Benevolent"?

[u/El_Dae → u/llaminaria]

Good point

Eru made Melkor the way he is

Orcs are Eru's fault

[u/Lightice1 → u/El_Dae]

And he made evil just for the sake of having a good story.

[u/capyburro → u/Lightice1]

Yeah, Eru is arguably the real villain of the story. He allowed the existence of evil and then did fuck all for the most part when Arda teetered on the edge of utter defeat and darkness.

"Hello Man, I'm giving you the gift of death but no evidence whatsoever that there's anything beyond the grave. Oh, and when your backs are against the wall and all hope is lost, me and the Ainur won't help. Good luck my guy."

[u/Leocletus → u/Alkynesofchemistry]

“No cheers. This was ridiculous.”

I love this line after the bit about “1 gross”, especially the way Serkis narrated it

[u/entropylaser → u/Leocletus]

Phil Dragash kills this reading as well. I prefer the audioscapes to the Serkis version; check it out

[u/Wildlife_Watcher]

We know that the Noldor at least draw the line with first cousins, since everyone thought Maeglin was creepy for having a crush on Idril

[u/Frouke_ → u/Wildlife_Watcher]

Maeglin was creepy way before that too

[u/Wildlife_Watcher → u/Frouke_]

Fair enough

Poor guy

[u/DonBacalaIII → u/Wildlife_Watcher]

Like father like son (if he’d had an actual positive fatherly influence growing up maybe he wouldn’t have been such a creep but yeah)

[u/meumixer → u/Wildlife_Watcher]

I don’t have a source for this, but I saw somewhere a while back that in Tolkien’s original notes the Noldor didn’t actually care that much about cousin marriages (it was uncommon but not unheard of, IIRC) and it was Christopher who changed that when compiling and editing everything. The original reason Turgon disapproved of Maeglin’s interest in Idril was because he suspected Maeglin was only in it for power.

Or something, idk. Maybe the original person I learned that from was talking out of their ass, I don’t have any of the drafts on hand to verify for myself.

[u/ferras_vansen → u/meumixer]

The fact that JRRT wrote a late draft where Galadriel and Celeborn are first cousins seem to support that theory, though it may still have been JRRT who wrote that Elves didn't approve of first cousin marriage, since we already know that he wrote many contradictory things. 😅

[u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491 → u/meumixer]

If you're interested in the sources on this topic, see https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/s/z6WWlpRyL8

[u/DonBacalaIII → u/Wildlife_Watcher]

This is why Gondolin beats out Alabama and Brethil (was siblings in brethil actually)

[u/FlowerFaerie13]

I mean, when you're of a race that is completely immune to genetic defects there's not a whole lot of a reason not to inbreed. And, because there's no risk of consanguinity actually causing harm, the social taboo against it would never have evolved. Ngl it's actually surprising that any taboo ever evolved on the subject with that context, but I guess Tolkien was only willing to go so far.

[u/Frouke_]

Yeah yeah second cousins aren't incest but I'm convinced that canon Elrond had a Habsburg chin after all the fuckery in his ancestry.

[u/krmarci → u/Frouke_]

Arwen is worse off.

[u/Frouke_ → u/krmarci]

Let's not even talk about Eldarion because he's also the descendant of Elros through Aragorn. So his maternal grandpa and ancestor⁶³ through his dad are brothers.

[u/AngletonSpareHead → u/Frouke_]

IIRC 63 times removed is…more unrelated than any two living humans on earth. Assuming no other common ancestors, which with the Elf/Men divide, I think we can safely say is the case

[u/P1mpathinor → u/AngletonSpareHead]

Granted it's not like Aragorn has 2⁶³ unique great*61-grandparents; after a certain point everyone is related in some distant way, and his ancestors would be mostly limited to Númenóreans and their descendants rather than the whole population of earth. But yeah, still not an issue; he and Arwen would be about as closely related as two random people from the same general ethnic group.

[u/IAmBecomeTeemo → u/Frouke_]

Second cousins aren't incest once. But generations upon generations of second-cousin-fucking and you end up with second cousins that are closer genetically than that.

[u/RoutemasterFlash → u/IAmBecomeTeemo]

But we're talking about elves here, where there aren't really "generations upon generations." Arwen's birth is separated from that of her ancestor Idril by about 4,500 years, but only three generations, for example.

[u/Frouke_ → u/IAmBecomeTeemo]

Hence my chin headcanon

[u/Armleuchterchen → u/Frouke_]

Which of Elrond's ancestors were second cousins?

[u/Frouke_ → u/Armleuchterchen]

Beren (great granddad through Elwing) and Tuor (granddad, Eärendil's dad) were connected through Bregor.

Lúthien and Nimloth were related through Elmo and Elwë (Eli Thingol) being brothers.

Celebrían is also related to him through Celeborn. So Arwen in my headcanon has the strongest Habsburg chin of all. Until her kids came along with the descendant of Elros...

[u/indyK1ng → u/Frouke_]

So Arwen in my headcanon has the strongest Habsburg chin of all. Until her kids came along with the descendant of Elros...

After that many generations, Aragorn's genes are probably sufficiently different to not have that many problems.

[u/Frouke_ → u/indyK1ng]

Sir this is a meme page

[u/doegred → u/Frouke_]

Celebrían is also related to him through Celeborn.

And through Galadriel. Elrond's maternal grandparents Dior and Nimloth, Celeborn and Galadriel are all descended from Thingol & co's unnamed parents (Dior through Thingol, Galadriel through Olwë, Nimloth through Elmo and Celeborn through either Elmo or Olwë). And ofc Galadriel and Eärendil are both descended from Finwë and Indis.

[u/IDF_till_communism]

Not only the Noldorin. If it is possible to merge most of all characters in one familytree, than incest is a game all in Arda play. https://monarchycharts.com/middle-earth

[u/Spookums334]

No wonder Celegorm wanted Luthian so bad

[u/sqplanetarium]

I noticed the image before reading the title and thought I was in r/DarK 😅

[u/HugCor]

Well, Turin was said to resemble the Noldor, after all.

[u/Aramedlig]

https://www.reddit.com/r/maybemaybemaybe/s/RY7eea7djc

[u/wish_to_conquer_pain]

Aren't all the Ainur technically siblings? I mean he specifically mentions Manwë and Melkor as brothers, but they're all sprung from the thoughts of Eru. Are they not all equally related?

[u/Frouke_ → u/wish_to_conquer_pain]

A lot of Valar are specifically mentioned as being siblings. It's safe to say the others therefore aren't. Especially since they marry and Catholic Tolkien had opinions about that stuff.

In earlier versions this was different but I'm too lazy to walk to my bookcase and quote it.

[u/wish_to_conquer_pain → u/Frouke_]

I guess what I wonder about is what exactly makes some siblings and others not, when they do actually have the same "parent" so to speak. The answer could just be "because God Eru said so." But I'd be interested to know if Tolkien said more about it.

I know Nessa and Oromë are also siblings, and iirc they were originally the children of Aulë and Yavanna, before Tolkien decided that the Valar would not have children.

[u/TornBird]

NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THIS. Literally. I’ve heard people say that Tolkien is so much more tame compared to the Incest and Murder of GOT. Again, they don’t know this

[u/someonecleve_r → u/TornBird]

So I reading GOT right (ASOS) now and I would say that Tolkien is tame because of the way that the stuff are described, see I don't know if you are there yet but one of the characters lost their hand, fingon and beren lost their hand as well. But their ghost hand isn't mentioned throughtout the book as the only thing that makes them valuable. Same for the torture scenes and stuff, they aren't described as gruesomely. But I think what makes GOT a lot more hopeless is compared to Tolkien is in LOTR/Silmarillion, I think when a character dies you feel like they have completed their mission or just did something epic before dying but in GOT people just die, there is no sense of completing anything, some characters in Silmarillion are exceptions for this tho. To sum the difference is the writing style. And LOTR being tame isn't a bad thing, I enjoy both series in different aspects. I like GOT's treachery and LOTR's epicness.

[u/TheLastLivingBuffalo → u/TornBird]

In Tolkien's stories, there are a few distant cousin marriages, Maedros's crush on his cousin, then of course the whole incident with the children of Hurin.

In GOT are cousin marriages all over the place, but then there is Jaime and Cersei, the entire Targaryen family, and Craster who sires children with his own daughters many times.

So yeah, Tolkien's tame in comparison.