Glorfindel as the son of Finarfin and Earwen

 In Tolkien's Legendarium, the parentage of Glorfindel is left uncertain.

Tolkien himself suggests that Glorfindel was both born in Valinor during the Years of the Trees, and that he was also one of the exiled Noldor.  His later association with Turgon in Gongolin (as one of the Chiefs of the Twelve Houses there) would seem consistent with this.

Interestingly, in looking into Glorfindel, I found that this character occupied quite a lot of Tolkien's thinking during the last year of his life.  In the final book of the History of Middle-earth, which Tolkien's son Christopher arranged and commented on, titled "The Peoples of Middle-earth", the last section of that book is called "Last Writings:  of Glorfindel, Cirdan, and other matters".  I haven't looked through the entire thing yet, but there are interesting little nuggets in there, such as Tolkien's guess that Glorfindel may have returned to Middle-earth from Valinor in his reincarnated form aboard a Numenorean Ship, which has interesting implications.

Also of interest for our story here is Tolkien's efforts to connect Glorfindel with Gandalf, in terms of making Glorfindel his friend and follower.  This is potentially relevant due to my placing both Gandalf and Glorfindel among these parties and their activities in my 2020 words.  Tolkien even went so far as to consider whether Glorfindel was one of the Five Wizards, so closely did he view this connection  (But Christopher notes that in the last year of his life Tolkien admitted to suffering from memory problems, and Tolkien would ultimately conclude that the Five must have all been in the form of Maia at that time, and not Eldar no matter how powerful).

Anyway, even with all of that late thinking on Tolkien's part, the question of Glorfindel's parents remained unanswered.

I am going to give my guess here in this post that Glorfindel is the son of Finarfin and Earwen.  This makes sense for elements of my story, but it also opens up or supports some interesting thoughts and implications that I have had for a bit but haven't put down.  Maybe I will need to walk down that line of thinking and see how it looks in future posts.

This would make Glorfindel a brother of Galadriel.  Both are known for their Golden Hair, with Glorfindel's name being all about his hair (Glorfindel seeming to mean, literally, "Golden Hair").  The question would be did they know this in LOTR?  There isn't any indication that this is acknowledged by either of them, or anyone who knows them, so I am not sure.  The fact that no acknowledgement or reference exists in the story might be evidence this guess is wrong, but there may be reasons why this state of affairs was as it was, with the most obvious reason that Glorfindel's parentage was meant to be obscure and unknown.

In any case, if this is correct, Glorfindel, like Galadriel, is unique in that in him is represented all 3 of the major Houses of the Eldar of Valinor.  Finarfin, as the son of Finwe, was Noldor, but also Vanyar through his mother Indis.  It is through Indis that the Golden Hair entered into the Noldorian line through Finarfin, and thus another reason to suspect that if Glorfindel was Noldor, it would be as part of Finarfin's House.   His mother Earwen was Telerin, rounding out the 3rd house.

Anyway, this guess is new (as of this morning), but some of the implications and story elements it supports, as I said, are not.  In a future post, I will explore why this guess, if correct, gives additional meaning to Glorfindel's role as Chief of the House of the Golden Flower, why he was a natural steward of the Anor Stone, and why him ushering Faramir-Eonwe home as part of a gathering effort makes complete sense.  It involves some strange story elements that I had been exploring for quite some time, and that I couldn't quite see to make them work (and still can't fully in some instances), but in which the existence and role of Glorfindel in my tale here seems to support.