Also known as: Elu Thingol, Elwe Singollo, King Of Doriath
Elwe Singollo -- Thingol, "Greymantle" -- was one of the three ambassadors who journeyed to Valinor and beheld the light of the Two Trees, and who returned to lead his people, the Teleri, upon the Great Journey into the West. But in the woods of Nan Elmoth he met Melian the Maia, and falling into an enchantment of love he stood spellbound while the long years drew on, so that his people sought him in vain and many were left behind. Awaking at last, he took Melian to wife and became the mightiest of the Sindar, the Grey-elves of Beleriand, ruling the wide forest realm of Doriath from the caverns of Menegroth, the Thousand Caves.
Guarded by the Girdle of Melian, Doriath endured through the long wars while greater realms fell, and within it Thingol gathered wealth and craft unrivalled in the Hither Lands. Proud and imperious, he scorned Beren, a mortal Man, when he sought the hand of his daughter Luthien, and set him the impossible bride-price of a Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown -- a demand that bound the fate of Doriath to the doom of the Oath of Feanor. When at the last a Silmaril came into his hands, set by the Dwarves in the great necklace called the Nauglamir, Thingol quarrelled with its makers over the ownership of the work, and was slain by them in his own halls -- the first blow in the long ruin of his kingdom.