Turgon
King of Gondolin; the Wise; the hidden king
Name and Lineage
Turgon — “the Wise”, the second son of Fingolfin and Anairë, husband of Elenwë, father of Idril. He is the founder and king of Gondolin, the hidden city — the most secret and most beautiful realm of the First Age — and after his brother Fingon's death the third High King of the Noldor.
The Vision and the Building
While still in Aman, Turgon was visited in sleep by the Vala
Ulmo, who showed him a vision of a city by a great sea; and in Beleriand, following the counsel of Ulmo, he built first the watch-town Vinyamar by the coast (thence his warrant, the embassy that was to bring the Messenger), and afterwards — guided to a hidden vale in the Encircling Mountains, discovered by Finrod’s kindred — he led his people on the long, secret migration to Gondolin, the city upon Amon Gwareth in the plain of Tumladen, ringed by the mountains and the Eagle’s watch. There the folk — “and the city was guarded by the Eagles of Thorondor, and no tidings came out or in”. The Tuor fragment and The Fall of Gondolin tell how Ulmo commanded that Turgon leave in Vinyamar the war-gear for a Messenger of the Deeps; the armour remained, and Vinyamar fell to ruin.
The Long Peace
- and the Fall -
For nearly four hundred years, Gondolin lay unseen; Turgon counselled patience and secrecy, and (against the counsel of Maedhros) held the city back from the great alliances — its defenders were the flower of the Noldor (“the most fair, and the most loved”). At the Nirnaeth, against his own wish, Turgon came with his host at the last — he marched to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears at Fingon’s call and stood the day until the betrayal; his city’s wrath then was the reason Morgoth never again sought open war with the hidden realm.
- The foresight of Ulmo: warned by the deep voice of the sea, Turgon would not abandon the city; when Tuor at last came from the waters with the mandate of Ulmo (the allegations:), Turgon — “the wise” — rejected the counsel to destroy the city and make for the sea; and thereafter the city was betrayed by his nephew Maeglin, and in the terrible Fall of Gondolin Turgon, king to the last, perished in the burning of his city — “he cast himself” — he was “slain in the great burningand would not leave… his people” — he fell defending the city, “the last of the great kings of the Noldor of the west”.
Significance
Turgon’s story is the myth of the stronghold: the perfect hidden city, betrayed from within; and his pride — the refusal to abandon the perfection he had made — is the Noldor’s flaw writ large. His legacy passes to Eärendil, his grandson, whose voyage redeems the doom; and the “Gondolin” strand is among the elder heart of Tolkien’s legendarium (the earliest of all the great tales).