Alas, I foolishly used ‘gil-galad’ as my tag for this character, thus using a dash and making said tag untraceable. Somewhere deep in my blog is my long response to the gil-galad parentage, but I’ll try my best to summarize the points, and basically it all comes down to Finduilas.

Gil-galad has two main contenders for parentage: Fingon and Orodreth. I’ll also entertain a dark horse candidate in claiming the throne via maternal line Lalwen, which does have some appeal in explaining the murkiness and silence on where Gil-galad came from. It also keeps the ‘sent from Hithlim down to Círdan’ journey and establishes a Lalwen and Círdan friendship (Lalwen as Fingolfin’s ambassador to Brithombar). I am especially warming up to this alternative because it adds a wonderful twist conclusion to Fingon ousting Lalwen from political power and influence after Fingolfin’s death in a combination of misogyny, pettiness, and desire to be independent (you will pry this headcanon from my dead fingers because it gives something actually interesting to bland beige wallpaper boy).

But Fingon was the version in the published Silm, and first, most widespread version wins. Plus it gives something for Fingon to do and means he marries a Sindarin lady -Meril of the original ruling family of Hithlum, distantly related via marriage to Thingol, and whose first cousin is the wife of Orodreth. I like the long-running rulers of Noldor-in-Exile to be Fingolfin’s line, and makes Gil-galad follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, complete with Pyrrhic death against a Dark Lord in a duel within his dark kingdom. Nice bookends. And Gil-galad’s sigil is a dark blue with silver stars, which is the colors for Fingolfin, not Finarfin or Finrod’s green.

Now Orodreth already has a canon wife and close allies with Thingol and a more logical and natural explanation for an alliance with Círdan, and the symbolism of the Kigns of the Noldor being both Arafinwë and his (great-)grandson on both sides of the sea are nice. But. Finduilas. I don’t like Finduilas staying while Gil-galad is sent for safety, that there would then be zero mention of him in Children of Húrin (which there is a parallel that should have been explored). And Gil-galad uses a spear as his signature weapon and the only other time a spear is mentioned instead of a sword, ax, or bow is the spear used to kill Finduilas. Making Finduilas and Gil-galad siblings thus unsettles me.

Now, I headcanon Finduilas and Gil-galad being second-cousins via their mothers because it gives an excellent reason in-universe for the conflicting stories and removes Orodreth’s wife/Finduilas’s mother from CoH without killing her off. When Gil-galad is sent to Círdan, he travels through Nargothrond first, and for the final leg of the journey is accompanied by his aunt. She -let’s call her Eregriel- stays with Gil-galad in Brithombar for a few years to get him settled/so he has family/her child is an adult or nearly so but his nephew is very young and thus needs her. But then events of the war happen, Ergriel is stuck unable to return home, then her home is destroyed, she stays in Gil-galad’s court, is treated and respected as if she was his birth mother, and the confusion in the historical records occur.

And not that it really matters. Biological headcanons be whatever. Gil-galad’s father is Círdan. He speaks Sindarin, his culture in more Falathrim than Noldor, and his history is the twilight days of the First Age Beleriand and the Second Age Middle-earth.