Túrin Turambar
Son of Húrin and Morwen, Foster Son of Thingol, brother of Nienor

with sword
without sword

A long time ago, I had figured that the last person from The Silmarillion that I was apt to turn into a Sim was Túrin Turambar, the "master of doom by doom mastered." If any of Tolkien's characters is both unrelentingly depressing and under a black cloud, it's him. Túrin's negative cachet is both the result of curses laid on his family by Morgoth and his own tremendous pride. Morgoth's curse came when his father, Húrin, was captured by Morgoth and refused to beg for mercy or reveal the location of Gondolin, for which Morgoth cursed Húrin's entire family and then forced him to watch the results of the curse play out before him for something like 25 years. Túrin's pride brought him his own curses from his nemesis, the dragon Glaurung, and led him to a number of hot-headed acts with devastating consequences -- killing his best friend, joining with outlaws, and most notably refusing to destroy the bridge that crossed the river into the hidden kingdom of Nargothrond, even though its king, Orodreth, was willing to follow the advice of Ulmo to tear down the bridge so that the minions of Morgoth could not cross the river and find the hidden realm. Nargothrond was destroyed as the result, and many of Túrin's other hasty and prideful decisions led to disaster, and ultimately his own death. The Greek Tragedy finish to his tale -- in which his pregnant wife suddenly regains her long-lost memory, which was taken from her by Glaurung, only to realize that her husband is actually her brother Túrin, who had left home before her birth, compelling her to suicide just before the unconscious Túrin awakes, realizes all the horrible things he has done, and then falls on his own semi-sentient black sword -- is, in my mind, right up there with Michael Moorcock's depressing tales of Elric of Melnibone for bleak and morose. That one of Tolkien's writings says that Túrin will be one of the three great heroes who will face and do battle with Melkor when he is released from the Void at the End of the World seems both fitting and contradictory, because on one hand, Túrin would have considerable grievance with Melkor due to all the evils that befell his family as the result of his curse, but on the other hand, it's tough to call someone as prideful and precipitous as Túrin a hero. Granted, he didn't know the woman he married was his sister, having never met her, but though that was a result of the curse, many of his more stupid acts were the result of his own pride and stubbornness. He couldn't even blame many of his less noble actions on a lust for the Silmarils.

In any case, when designing the Sim for Túrin, I had only a few things to go on: that he had the grey eyes and "dark hair" of his mother, and carried the black sword Anglachel/Gurthang (it was Anglachel when Eol made it from a piece of meteoric iron and gave it to Thingol as payment for being allowed to live in Nan Elmoth, and Melian declared it an evil weapon, for it contained Eol's malice; Túrin's friend Beleg took it when he set out to search for him after Túrin left Doriath; Túrin later killed Beleg with it [no doubt as a result of the curse], and though he had it reforged in Nargothrond, renaming it Gurthang, it seemingly did nothing to remove the malice from the weapon). "Dark" was never specifically described, black or brown, so I decided to go with a dark brown for his hair, rather than have yet another black haired male in my neighborhood. I deliberately made his hair style simple, because an outlaw was unlikely to want elaborate hair interfering with his actions, and I made his clothing black simply because it suited what I found to be a very dark and depressing character. Some of his facial features were also intentionally drawn to resemble Beren, who is a somewhat distant cousin of Túrin, being the son of the brother of Túrin's great-grandfather. His clothing was also designed to have a more Elven flavor, because he spent much of his life among the Elves, first raised as a foster son of Thingol in Doriath, and later among the Elves in the kingdom of Nargothrond.