Idril Celebrindal

Idril Celebrindal's footprint in the Tolkien's canon is light and hard to discern beyond the bare bones given in The Silmarillion and The Fall of Gondolin. Yet she exists at the epicenter of the most ancient and shifting ground of Tolkien's entire legendarium, the stories of Eärendel and Gondolin.

It is impossible to tell Idril's story without contextualizing it in the magnificent story Tolkien told about the hidden city of Gondolin. Yet while Idril has agency in and is central to both those stories, she is the focus of neither despite her role as the mother of the earliest, most heroic figure Tolkien ever wrote. One must sift through decades of revisions for elements of her evolving story, look for her at the margins of the stories of male Elves, and be grateful for whatever can be found.