Túrin
Turambar; the Children of Húrin's doom-bearer; the Black Sword
Name and Titles
Túrin — the son of Húrin and Morwen, the eldest child of the doomed house — is “the most tragic of all the Children of Húrin” — the Quenta: " the Edain, his fate was the most terrible". He bears a league of names as his epitaph, each marking a stage of the doom the curse of Morgoth laid on his line:
- Túrin — “the born”; Neithan, “the Wronged” (by his own choice);
- Gorthol, “the Dread Helm”, in Doriath;
- Agarwaen, “the Blood-stained” (by self-blood in Nargothrond);
- Mormegil, “the Black Sword”; - and in the end Turambar, “the Master of Fate” — the name that mocks doom, and is itself the doom’s last turn.
The Curse and the Career
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The sending: Sent by his mother to Doriath as a child (when the Easterlings came to Dor-lómin), Túrin grew up a ward of Thingol — hasty, proud, of the Hador line’s fire.
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The wandering: He slew the counsellor Saeros and fled; dwelt among outlaws; returned; and ever the doom drove him: the dragon Glaurung hunted him through his kindred, and in his anger he slew — the first great sorrow: the death of his friend Beleg at his own hand (the great bowman who came to rescue him and died by the point of Túrin’s black sword) — the pattern of the blind blows that the curse deals.
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Nargothrond: He rose to war-leader at Nargothrond under Orodreth, built the fatal bridge, and so was the unwitting road of the dragon’s ruin — and when Glaurung came, Túrin (and the realm) fell; he was enchanted, and slew unwittingly — he hastened to the Caverns, and came upon the curse’s worst stroke: the slaying of his friend and the loss of Finduilas.
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The last doom: In the woods of Brethil, wandering under the name Turambar, he dwelt with the woodsfolk; Nienor, his hidden sister, came under the dragon’s spell (losing her memory) and — unknowing — they wed; when Glaurung, dying, revealed the horror, Nienor slew herself; and Túrin, in the utter despair, fell upon his blade Gurthang — the sword, “which was… iron that rejoiced to drink the blood of its master”, murdered its own lord. He is buried in the cairn beside his mother, by the waters of the brook, and the prophecy says he shall arise at the Dagor Dagorath to slay Morgoth.
Significance
Túrin is Tolkien’s central study of doom and free will: the hero, brave and gifted, “master of fate”, whose every choice — however good — the Curse of Morgoth twists to ruin; the mythic fore-type (in the author’s own note) of all tragic heroes, and the figure whose story (the Narn) is the bedrock of the mythology’s darkest vein. His death acknowledges that no valour nor name could break.