Odola
Well-Known Member
After listening to this week's NoME session I cannot disgree more strongly at the attempts to measure his behaviour on our "post-christian" scale. His behaviour id actually less immoral by ancient elvish standards than Feanor letting one of his youngest twin sons burn in one of the ships.
Eol is excerting his patriarchal parental rights over Maeglin, as he is about to be claimed by his brother-in-law kin. Eol is an original anarchist, he does not accept kingship, but the far more basic clan hierarchy where the "pater familias" decides feely over his subordinates life or death. He cannot claim Aredhel, as he has not married her with her clan's official consent as such she did not changed her allegiance offically to him and as such remains still under her paternal clans jurisdiction (see. e.g. the original Roman laws on the different kind of marriages where the right to judge the bride/wife does or does not pass from her father to her husband). He has to aknowledge that. But his child is his own and he exerts his jurisdiction over him as a traitor to him. Maeglin deserts, betrays and abandonds his father and with it his own clan first and as such Eol condems him to death as a traitor to his own blood. Makes perfect sense from Eols point of view and is completely moral in his eyes. From a Christian view point we are all "siblings in faith before God" first and parent-children-etc. later, as such we are all "equal before the law". But this is not the case in clan organised societies where "the clan elder is the law".
Eol is excerting his patriarchal parental rights over Maeglin, as he is about to be claimed by his brother-in-law kin. Eol is an original anarchist, he does not accept kingship, but the far more basic clan hierarchy where the "pater familias" decides feely over his subordinates life or death. He cannot claim Aredhel, as he has not married her with her clan's official consent as such she did not changed her allegiance offically to him and as such remains still under her paternal clans jurisdiction (see. e.g. the original Roman laws on the different kind of marriages where the right to judge the bride/wife does or does not pass from her father to her husband). He has to aknowledge that. But his child is his own and he exerts his jurisdiction over him as a traitor to him. Maeglin deserts, betrays and abandonds his father and with it his own clan first and as such Eol condems him to death as a traitor to his own blood. Makes perfect sense from Eols point of view and is completely moral in his eyes. From a Christian view point we are all "siblings in faith before God" first and parent-children-etc. later, as such we are all "equal before the law". But this is not the case in clan organised societies where "the clan elder is the law".