Aredhel
the White; the princess who wed the Dark Elf
Name and Nature
Aredhel — “the White”, also called Ar-Feiniel, “the White Lady” — the sister of Fingon, Turgon and Argon, the daughter of Fingolfin and Anairë. She was “the fairest and… the wildest of the princes” — she loved the woods and the hunt, and Gondolin, for all its beauty, grew too narrow for her restless will.
The falling to Eöl
Wearying of the hidden city, Aredhel set forth into Beleriand alone, came into the great forest of
Nan Elmoth (the twilight grove where once Melian had caught Elwë), and there she was taken by Eöl, the Dark Elf, the friend of the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains and the most skilled of the smiths who worked the strange black silver of the hills. The account tells that Eöl cast a spell of shadow about her and she was bound; she wed him, and bore their son Maeglin. There she lived long years, estranged from her kin, though the wood and the night were hers by choice; and the tale of her line’s joy and grief turns on the journey back to Gondolin.
The return and the death
At last, for the sake of their son’s goodness, Aredhel defied Eöl and brought the young Maeglin back to the shining city — where she fell again into her brother Turgon’s love and Gondolin’s fair court. But Eöl pursued, entered the hidden city by the dark road, and in the king’s court — enraged, and refusing every mercy, even the offer of kindred and life — he slew Aredhel with a poisoned dart before he was taken. Brought before Turgon, Eöl refused all grace and cursed the king; and by the king’s command he was hurled from the walls of the city to his death. Aredhel’s body was laid in Gondolin, and her tomb was given a place in the city’s gardens.
Significance
Aredhel’s story is the dark hinge of the tale of Gondolin: her wild freedom, the enchanted marriage, and her death — avenged and unresolved — set the mind of Maeglin and open the door through which the city is at last betrayed. She is the “White” whose brightness the shadow claims: one of the Quenta’s tragic women whose choosing brings the doom upon the hidden realm.