We do not get many details about Finwë and Indis’ youngest son but the ones we do get paint a very interesting picture and I’ve wanted to write for a while about why.
There are two details that set me off on that quest. The first one is this line, from the Silmarillion:
High princes were Fëanor and Fingolfin, the elder sons of Finwë, honoured by all in Aman.
The phrasing there strongly seems to suggest to me that Finarfin wasn’t a high prince. Why not? Because Fëanor and Nolofinwë are elder, the text offers, but seriously? If you have three sons, and you arbitrarily announce that your oldest two sons will have a position ‘honored by all in Aman’, that seriously begs the question of why only the two of them.
The second detail is from the Shibboleth:
[Findis] did not go into exile, but went with her mother after the slaying of Finwë and they abode among the Vanyar in grief until such time as it seemed good to Manwë to restore Finwë to life.
So after Finwë’s murder Fëanor and Fingolfin and Lalwen go off into exile. Finarfin goes with them but then returns after the Kinslaying, eventually taking up the crown in Tirion. And Findis and Indis…leave Tirion to live in Valimar until Finwë comes back? There’s another version of this in LACE, and in that one they go to the Halls of Ingwë.
I’m sure they are grieving. I’m sure it is terrible. But do you know who just suffered a grief significanly more terrible than yours? Arafinwë just watched all of his children leave for an exile they were doomed to mostly die in, immediately after his brother’s army committed a kinslaying in his wife’s city (also the city far dearer to his own heart than Tirion). What started me thinking about Arafinwë’s relationship with his family was increasingly realizing I could not imagine there was any meaningful relationship between Indis or Findis and Arafinwë, because if there were they wouldn’t have left him alone under those circumstances.
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