32 Who was Gil-galad's father? (Tolkien)
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This article is from the Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ, by Steuard Jensen sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu with numerous contributions by others.
32 Who was Gil-galad's father? (Tolkien)
_The Silmarillion_ states many times that Gil-galad was the son of
Fingon, son of Fingolfin. However, in _The Peoples of Middle-earth_
(in comments on the essay "The Shibboleth of Feanor"), Christopher
Tolkien explains that this was an editorial error due to the complexity
of the source material: "Gil-galad as the son of Fingon... was an
ephemeral idea."
Tolkien changed his mind about Gil-galad's ancestry several times,
but it seems that his latest decision was to make Gil-galad the son of
Orodreth, son of Angrod, son of Finarfin (making him the brother of
Finduilas and nephew of Finrod). Christopher says that "There can be
no doubt that this was my father's last word on the subject", but that
because the change was never incorporated into other texts,
"it was obviously impossible to introduce it into the published
_Silmarillion_. It would nonetheless have been very much better to
have left Gil-galad's parentage obscure."
Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it is at least clear
that _The Silmarillion_ is not entirely trustworthy here.
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