Interview with Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch by Quente by Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch, Quente

Quente: I am excited to be interviewing Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch, who writes under the pen name LadySternchen, today to preview her talk, entitled "Cherished antagonist, despised protagonist – a defence of Elu Thingol," for Mereth Aderthad 2025. 

I’ll begin by mentioning that I absolutely wanted to interview you because of your topic. Elu Thingol is such a rich and complex character: abandoning his people out of love for a Maia, locking his daughter up out of a certain sense of caring and responsibility, setting Beren an unachievable goal only to admit his wrongdoing and welcome Beren into his family. What gives with this guy!

We’ll start with the questions that we’re asking every presenter, but then I hope to loop back and interrogate your topic a little more closely.

What draws you to Tolkien and/or what is your favorite part of the legendarium?

Stella: Oh, that’s actually a super difficult question to answer. I’d first come into contact with Tolkien in my early teens and have been obsessed with his world ever since. It always touched me in a way I can’t describe; it always felt more like the account of a long-forgotten story than a book to me. That’s also the reason why I don’t really have a favourite part or passage or scene, because it all feels so real to me. But my favourite time period will always be the Years of the Trees in Ennor. Who would have guessed? 

No, but in all earnest, these early years of the Elves really fascinate me, and I wish we knew more about their day-to-day life. 

Quente: Why did you choose your topic?

Stella: I have felt a very deep connection with Elu Thingol ever since reading The Silmarillion. It’s like with Tolkien’s works in general, he feels to me less like a favourite character than a real person, and I found from the start that I read him very differently than most of the fandom did, and saw motives behind his actions that others did not see. 

Now, I’m not aiming to make anyone like Elu Thingol; I just find that fandom really treats him unfairly. I get that and why he is not the most likeable character, I don’t deny that he did much wrong, but so did most characters in The Silmarillion we get into contact with. They are not some kind of supreme heroes, but behave like real people who err and make mistakes and have undesirable character traits. But while fandom seems to very easily forgive the wrongs of certain Elves (e.g., Maedhros or Maglor), people actually invent new ‘crimes’ for Elu Thingol so that they have more reason to hate him. Which, apart from somewhat hurting me, just baffles me, and I really want to know why this is so—hence the topic. 

Quente: I love that you are so fascinated by the Years of the Trees—is that in part why you feel so connected to Thingol?

Stella: My connection to Elu Thingol is on a very personal level, and it was definitely there first, so I’d say it’s the other way round. He is an Elf that belongs with the stars (how couldn’t he be, with that name?), so it’s very much a case of I’m happy where my Elf is happy. Though my interest in the Years of the Trees is broader than just him, of course.

Quente: Without giving away too much of your presentation, what specifically connected you and drew you to him? 

Stella: So what connects me to Elu? I just identify with him so much. I’m a single child, but as long as I can remember, I had the feeling I was missing an older brother. I used to imagine one (you know, like kids sometimes have imaginary friends). And somehow, when I read The Silmarillion, Elu was just that. With all the traits I disliked about him, and all the things that annoyed me. But I just understand him so much. That said, I am autistic but wasn’t diagnosed until I was thirty. I never fit in, and I can relate so much to this hatred of change, the pre-meltdown situation that makes you incredibly unreasonable, the not being able to communicate well. I know all the behaviour of his that I’m referring to here can be read totally different, as arrogance and pride and whatnot, but deep down I just know that was not what it was. I can’t explain it. 

Quente: When I was in dialogue with Shadow for my own interview, I characterized Tolkien's books as more Magical Realism than High Fantasy, because the world seemed so real to me, right down to the very understated magic. I see that you also find it realistic—more like history. What elements of this history do you see in the modern world, to add more layers of believability to his tales?

Stella: As you say, the world seems so very real, and for me, it’s so real because the people behave like … people. They have flaws, they make mistakes, all that. Really there are elements in Tolkien’s history that are universally present in ‘our world’—wars always repeat themselves, people keep falling into the same traps. Peace never truly lasts, because the hunger for power and sense of superiority keeps creeping back into peoples’ minds even though they’ve sworn they would never let such things happen again. It is just so fundamentally human (or humanoid, when we’re talking about Elves and Dwarves as well). 

Also, Tolkien’s stories, especially The Silmarillion and the fragments in the Histories of Middle-earth don’t have the usual agenda of a book. These are not stories told to entertain but to record something that happened (even if it only happened in Tolkien’s head, but one can just sense how real it was to him).

Quente: Regarding this part of your response, "These are not stories told to entertain, but to record something that happened (even if it only happened in Tolkien’s head, but one can just sense how real it was to him)"—what do you think of Dawn Felagund's explorations of the "writer" of The Silmarillion, the person we extrapolate as Pengolodh? Was he Tolkien's self-insertion character for The Silmarillion? And do you think he's fair to Thingol or unfair?

Stella: Regarding Pengolodh, I must say, I totally disregarded Pengolodh until I first read about him from Dawn, so that idea is still fairly new to me. I don’t think I would call him the self-insert of J.R.R. Tolkien, but the (self-)insert of Christopher. Like Christopher, Pengolodh meticulously collected and retold information from many different sources, and like Christopher, I think he did a fairly good job in staying impartial. 

I know that many people claim that The Silmarillion has been written with a strong bias against the Fëanorians, but I really find that I disagree. Murder and kidnap isn’t really something one can gloss over, but I never found The Silmarillion to be unsympathetic towards Maedhros and Maglor. The Cs are probably another story, but then, given that Pengolodh lived in Gondolin under a king who heartily disliked his cousins (not entirely without reason), this is perhaps not all too surprising, just as it isn’t surprising that neither Eöl nor Maeglin get much sympathy from him. 

But regarding Elu Thingol, yes, I do feel that he treats him fairly. Though I will say, this is the point where I have trouble with the concept of Pengolodh as a whole. Because Elu is one of the few characters that we get some insight into his thoughts from, and Pengolodh couldn’t have known that, having never met him (even less what he said to the Dwarven smiths he was alone with at his death). And even if he got much of his information from someone who was very very close to the royal couple of Doriath, that is still information that he hardly could have had. 

So if we stick with the concept of Pengolodh, then either the surviving Iathrim claimed to know a lot about what went on in their king’s thoughts, or Pengolodh liked poetic license. And though I am aware of the fandom opinion that Pengolodh was quite biased in favour of Elu Thingol and his house, I can’t really agree with it any more than I agree with the bias against the house of Fëanor. For even if the Iathrim were prone to gloss over Elu’s wrongs, you do that for a dead (!) king only if that king has been a good one on the whole. So yeah, while Pengolodh’s portrait of Elu Thingol might have been somewhat enriched by imagination, it is still fairly accurate, I think.

Quente: That is a fascinating answer and I'm looking forward to hearing you elaborate more on your ideas about Thingol and how he is written. 

One final question: What are you most excited about for our Mereth Aderthad?

Stella: I’m really looking forward to ‘meeting’ (even if it’s only online) so many other Silmarillion fanwork creators, and listening to what they have to say. I’m super excited already!