Interview with Maglor by Shadow by maglor-my-beloved, daughterofshadows

Maglor will be presenting at Mereth Aderthad 2025 on the topic "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor." Shadow spoke with Maglor about his paper and, of course, Gil-galad, who is a surprisingly mysterious character for the last High King of the Noldor, and what makes Gil-galad so appealing for both research and fanworks.

Shadow: We're sitting down today to discuss your upcoming Mereth Aderthad presentation, "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor". But before we talk about your upcoming work, are there any previous works—scholarly, fannish or both—you want us to highlight?

Maglor: Well, to stay on topic with my presentation, I think the fact that there is so little canonical information about Gil-galad as a person makes him very fun to play with in transformative fanworks, both in coming up with a personality for him and in exploring that lack of personality—something I've done in several of my fanfiction works, including Though Glory We're Denied and Tend to the Flame.

I would also like to show off my sonnet about him, Oh King Belov'd, mostly because I am proud of it, and—if I may highlight someone else's work—I would like to highlight Sesamenom's art of various Gil-galad origin theories, because it is amazing and truly showcases just how many different interpretations and theories about that character are out there.

Shadow: Having read many of your Gil-galad stories, I can confirm these are excellent! I'll have to check out the art as soon as I get a chance.

Just like there are many origin stories for Gil-galad, there are also many ways fans have found their way into Tolkien. What draws you to Tolkien? Are there any favourite parts you want to share with us?

Maglor: I first found my way to the fandom through fanfiction and fandom events, and that is still the corner of the fandom I feel most at home in.

There is of course a lot that can be said about Tolkien's writing, its quality, its messages, its impact, and a lot has been said by people who are far more qualified than me to talk about these things, but there is something else that has me coming back to this world again and again, that drew me into it and kept me here, and that is how large it is. Entire continents, thousands of years of history, hundreds of named characters, and countless more unnamed ones mean that there is a corner for everyone in the Legendarium—a huge world to explore, filled with fascinating characters and complex history and gripping stories, and yet enough blank spaces to leave room for worldbuilding, for original characters, for different interpretations, and everything that makes transformative fanworks fun.

Shadow: Yes, I think the vastness is what draws a lot of fanwork creators like us in! As the title of your presentation suggests, you have picked one of the many fascinating characters to talk about. Why did you choose Gil-galad as your topic in particular?

Maglor: I have been thinking and writing about Gil-galad for a while now, and over time I noticed how certain motives and themes would come up over and over whenever I thought about him—the child king, the king who cannot be (cannot let himself be) anything else, whose duty supersedes his personhood. I started to wonder why I kept exploring these themes with this character specifically—what it was about Gil-galad that kept me returning to these musings on kingship and identity (or the lack of), and I realised that it was because canonically, he is nothing but an Elven-king—especially when contrasted with the other kings of the Legendarium.

So, I have been chewing on these thoughts for a while, trying to find a way to put them into words and share them with the fandom—and after a venture into the scholarly side of the fandom turned up far less exploration of Gil-galad than I had hoped for, I decided to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on this truly fascinating character and hopefully encourage others to do the same!

Shadow: I am definitely very excited to hear about your thoughts! His nebulous personhood is part of what inspires me to write about him quite often as well. Now, we've already mentioned Gil-Galad's numerous parentage possibilities. Do you think this lack of fixed "roots" is part of the reason why his personality is nonexistent? If so, to what extent?

Maglor: I definitely think there is a connection—his lack of a clear parentage, or any interaction with his parents, ties in with an overall lack of the familial or generally interpersonal relationships that are so important in defining the personality of other Noldorin kings (see Fëanor's relationship with Finwë, or Fingon's with Maedhros). It also adds to a general sense of ... narrative displacement, I'd call it—we get no definite parentage, no backstory, barely a mention of Gil-galad before he becomes king; unlike the other kings, who are well established as characters before taking up the kingship, Gil-galad feels almost like he conveniently sprouted from the ground when the Noldor most needed a new king, which adds to the feeling that, narratively, his purpose and reason for existence in this world is Being King. And of course, his lack of a definite parentage or backstory are part of what make him so fun for transformative fanwork creation!

Shadow: Absolutely! His parents can be whoever is most convenient for the story you are writing at the time. Despite the fact that Gil-galad's narrative purpose seems to boil down to Being King, we actually see him do remarkably little "king-ing". He rules for a very long time, the longest out of all the Noldorin Kings in Middle-earth, but the Second Age is sparsely populated with canon events that relate to the Elves. What do you make of the fact that even during the major events (e.g., War of Wrath, the battle of Last Alliance, the Annatar debacle) that occur during his reign, he rarely is the "main character"?   
Maglor: He does indeed do very little "king-ing," which I feel increases the mystery of his character—in the abstract for this presentation, I described him as "always an accessory to other people’s stories, never the main character," and that holds true even when, in-universe, he is the one making the decisions—the one who should be the main character!

But this holds true for not just Gil-galad—he is King of the Noldor in the Second Age, and by the Second Age, the time of the Noldor has passed. They were the main characters of the First Age, now the focus of the narrative shifts to Númenor, to Men—the Elves are still there, still present in the world and influencing the story, but they begin to fade into the background, and their King with them.

Shadow: The Second Age is such a fascinating era to me. We know quite a lot about the events in Númenor and very little about the rest of Middle-earth, and I hadn't thought about how Gil-galad mirrors his people's fading importance to the story.

We've already briefly touched on the possibilities his character opens for transformative fanworks. Do you have a favourite era or area to explore in your own stories about Gil-galad?

Maglor: Interestingly, my favourite eras for exploring Gil-galad are the very beginning and the aftermath of his kingship—the First Age, before even the War of Wrath, when he is young and inexperienced and shouldering a responsibility far greater than himself, king of a doomed people in a land slowly falling to darkness, versus Gil-galad re-embodied in Valinor, no longer king after defining himself by that role for millennia, without the duties and responsibility, but also without the only purpose he ever knew, finding himself at last.

Shadow: That makes sense, from all you've told me about Gil-galad during this interview. When a character is so heavily defined by a role, often the most interesting time to explore is when they aren't playing that role. And I don't know about you, but I love a good self-discovery journey.

We've learnt quite a bit about Gil-galad today, and I hope our readers are just as excited as I am to hear your presentation in July! What's the one thing you hope the listeners will take away from your talk?

Maglor: All I really want to inspire is love for and interest in Gil-galad as a character! If someone leaves my presentation thinking, he has a point, I should think more about this and maybe write something, be that transformative or scholarly fanwork, that would be awesome! If someone thinks, what was that guy talking about, I should write a thesis explaining why he is totally wrong, that would also be great, because it still means people are thinking and writing about this character who has come to mean so much to me.

Shadow: I hope they will. Gil-galad is a fascinating character and there is much to explore in fanworks of any kind. Thank you so much for sitting down with me and talking about your presentation! Can't wait to listen to it in July!