If This Is Lore, It's Bad Lore

I think I've read somewhere that the two Rings on Prime showrunners really know their Middle-earth lore. Every once in a while, something flashes through in the show that supports this claim; the problem is that the lore is used so badly that it makes no sense. In addition to the rough and pointless explanation of the Silmarils and the invention of an elf fighting a Balrog on the Misty Mountains instead of near Gondolin, there was something else that gave me pause.

I'm not saying it's unreasonable, per se, but in the context of the show...

To set the scene, The Main Character is in an elven graveyard, looking at the images of dead elves carved into living trees. The scene flashes by a few dead elves, and this one grave caught my eye:

At no point does the show give a name for this dead elf, but upon my first viewing, I saw this glimpse and immediately thought, I know who that is! In the Silmarillion, there is one infamous elf-dog duo, and I can't think of another one. 

Then I decided that my knee-jerk reaction might be wrong, so I did some digging just to verify. 

What do we have in the picture? An elf that we know is dead and a big shaggy dog. That star on his shoulder is worn by all the elves in this show, and I remember fans arguing over whether that was the star of Feanor or the star of Finarfin (this article explains why it's really neither). One of Feanor's sons was Celegorm, and because he was a renowned hunter, the Valar Orome gave him a mighty hound dog named Huan. 

That dog in the picture first gave me pause, because that is not a hound dog. My brother has a hound-shepherd mix, and she has short hair and enormous eyes, which is about the opposite of that dog. Then I remembered that while Huan is called Huan the Hound, he's actually a wolfhound, not a hound... and a wolfhound looks pretty much like that carving! He's also too small to be Huan--if you've ever seen the Silmarillion cover that has the woman riding on the dog, that's Huan:

Image source, ironically, from Amazon.

Regardless, I think it's reasonable to assume this grave is Celegorm and Huan, yes? If it's not, and the show just invented another wolfhound-elf duo purely to be in a tomb, then I don't think that's my fault for guessing wrong. 

Having said all that... why was Celegorm buried with honor when he was so evil that Huan abandoned him? 

Most of Feanor's family had severe moral shortcomings, but a serious argument can be made for Celegorm being the worst of them. His primary role involved manipulating the people of Nargothrond (the city of Finrod, Galadriel's beloved brother) away from their true king (which was Finrod); lying to Luthien and then imprisoning her to force her to marry him; and then egging on his brothers to the Second Kinslaying (where he died fighting Luthien's son). 

Hang on, hang on, hang on... the show wants me to believe that The Main Character is Galadriel. The Main Character--in that very scene the screenshot is taken from--is mourning her brother Finrod. Celegorm undermined Finrod and tried to take his city and his people from him. Why, why, is he buried next to Finrod? Why would The Main Character allow that? 

I could be wrong (I don't have the book with me at this moment), but... but didn't Celegorm specifically mean for Finrod to die in Sauron's dungeons? As much as The Main Character hates Sauron for murdering her brother, shouldn't she also despise Celegorm for abandoning her brother to die? And yet, here we have his statue next to Finrod's, and even a line about how The Main Character thought she'd be buried next to all the dead elves there, including Celegorm? 

By the by, after it was revealed that Celegorm and one of Feanor's other sons had lied to Luthien and... possibly abandoned Finrod to die, on purpose? I can't remember... the people of Nargothrond turned them out, and even Celegorm's nephew was so disgusted that he refused to go along with him. That nephew was Celebrimbor, also a character in the show. 

Furthermore, in that second Kinslaying, Celegorm's servants captured Luthien's grandsons and deliberately abandoned them to die in the forest. Maedhros and Maglor, two of Feanor's less objectionable sons, heard about this and were horrified, so they searched for the two boys but never found them. I... won't say that's as severe a rejection as Celebrimbor's, but that's certainly not an honorable memory. 

All of this is to say that it makes no sense for these two to be memorialized next to each other, and given how soundly Celegorm was rejected by even the other Noldor, I don't know who would have built his memorial in the Noldor capital. 

It also makes no sense for Huan to be memorialized with Celegorm, because he abandoned Celegorm and devoted himself to Beren and Luthien instead. 

It is not impossible for Gil-galad to have built this as some peace memorial between the elves, or for some other powerful Noldor lord to want to honor both of them, or for someone to have decided that every Noldor who fought against Morgoth should be honored, and that that was more important than any of their infighting. All of this is possible. I would love for that to have been explained. 

But really, what was the point? What was the point of hinting at Celegorm and Huan, but doing it so perfunctorily and badly?