the Valar and the Children of Ilúvatar. In the "Earliest Silmarillion", "the spirit of Túrin" comes back and fights, and "it shall be Túrin who with his black sword will slay Morgoth", elaborated in the 1930 revision of the Quenta Noldorinwa. Line of Túrin and Niënor Analysis Mythological parallels Tolkien noted some of Túrin's mythological parallels in a letter to the publisher Milton Waldman: Túrin, as Tolkien stated, is mainly based on Kullervo, a character from the Finnish folklore poems known as Kalevala. Kullervo similarly committed unwitting incest with his sister, brought ruin upon his family, and slew himself. In Norse mythology, Sigmund, the father of Sigurd in the Völsunga saga, resembles Túrin in the incestuous relationship he has with his sister. In Richard Wagner's opera Die Walküre (drawn in part from the Völsung myths), Siegmund and Sieglinde are parallels of Túrin and Niënor. Further, Túrin is like Sigurd, as both achieve great renown for the slaying of a dragon of immense power: in Sigurd's case Fafnir; in Túrin's, Glaurung. The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger further likens the tale of Túrin to Arthurian Legend, with its complex manuscript history and "overlapping story variants in both poetry and prose", supplemented by Tolkien's pretence that he was translating a lost Narn poem from its original Elvish language. Tolkien mentions the resemblance to the unfortunate Oedipus, prince of Thebes, who unwittingly fulfils a prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. The Tolkien scholar Richard C. West, in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that the tale "is one of almost unrelieved gloom", though a prophecy in Tolkien's mythology holds that Túrin will help in the final defeat of Morgoth, after the end of the world, and that he and his sister will be cleansed of their sin. West writes that as in many other stories of Middle-earth, there is a "delicate balance" between fate, whereby each character inevitably takes certain actions and suffers the consequences, and free will, whereby he makes his own bold or rash choices that determine the outcomes for him. A woman in wartime According to the biographer Charles Moseley, Niënor and Turin are one of only four "couples whose love gets much space" in Tolkien's works; the others are Lúthien and Beren; Eärendil and Elwing; and Aragorn and Arwen. West described the story of Niënor's family as tragic. Elizabeth A. Whittingham wrote in A