Maeglin
the dark-eyed; the traitor of Gondolin
Name and Lineage
Maeglin — Lómion, “Child of the Twilight”, son of Eöl the Dark Elf and Aredhel the White — born in the twilight Nan Elmoth, taught by his grim father the arts of mining and smithying (for which, within Gondolin, he became the third power of the hidden city: the master of the deep mines, the greatest of metalworkers of the age of the Noldor save Fëanor). His hair and his mood were of the shadow; his mother called him by the light of her father’s house.
In
Gondolin
When his mother brought him to the hidden city (fleeing Eöl), Maeglin — whose dark heart had already been set burning by the sight of his cousin Idril — swore fealty with a strange, longing loyalty. In Gondolin he rose high and was trusted; but his desire for Idril, whom he could not wed — for kinship barred it, and her love went to the mortal Tuor, curdled into a slow poison. His pride — his “Dark Elf’s” Envy of the brighter court — fanned the envy that Eöl had planted.
The Betrayal
The tragedy: when Maeglin, range-seeking gold from the mountains, was
captured by the orcs of Morgoth near the Encircling Mountains, he was brought before the Dark Lord and, “to save his own life, told all he knew of Gondolin and the king’s secrets”; Morgoth, mocking, promised him dominion and “the hand of Idril” if he betrayed the city and bound her for his master. Maeglin returned and betrayed the hidden city; at the Fall of Gondolin, in the clinging battle, he seized upon Idril — he strove to take her at the siege; Tuor threw him from the walls, and Maeglin, died dashed upon the rocks below.
Significance
Maeglin is the Quenta’s most purely tragic villain: the gifted son of a dark house, whose envy and unrequited love and terror of the Dark Lord bend him to the worst of causes — “the first of the Elves to betray his own people” — his story is a study in how the shadow works from within: the city was not taken from without but “was betrayed by the treason of men” — by one of its own brightest sons.