Let's start at the beginning, with the creation of elves. To make a very long story somewhat shorter, elves happened, monsters ate some of them, said monsters were mostly stopped, shortly after some of the elves decided to go back to Valinor the home of the Valar (basically gods) and chill with them. This is important because one of the elves who went back to Valinor to chill was Finwë, who unsurprisingly is Nelyafinwë's grandfather. (like literally every relative Finwë helped in the creation of is named after him you think I'm exaggerating but I'm not). Finwë married a lovely elf named Míriel, and together they had a son who was called Curufinwë (SEE? SEE?)/Fëanáro, or more commonly Fëanor, which is the Sindarin translation of one of his names.

I am sorry, all of these guys have like 12 names, and most of them are named after Finwë. To save on headaches for all of us, Curufinwë/Fëanáro/Fëanor is just gonna be referred to as Fëanor from now on - it's kinda the most accessible of his names.

SO ANYWAY. Míriel gave birth to Fëanor, but his spirit was so strong or something that doing so drained all of her energy and so a little while after she just died of it, because he'd taken all the strength from her that would have gone to other children (look I don't know, blame the Silmarillion, this is all in there). Finwë spent a while very sad because of this, but then after some time did something that was and is unheard of among elves, and remarried.

Elvish death isn't quite like human death, instead of dying 'out' of the world they die 'into' it, and so when their physical forms die their fëa (aka their soul) relocates to this very specific part of Valinor, the Halls of Mandos, and there they hang for a while until they decide to be reembodied or something. In Valinor though, because as far as we know with one exception (Glorfindel) elves who have died never actually go back to Middle Earth. Between this and elvish marriage involving a literal and very real mingling of the fëar of the participants, remarriage just isn't a thing. Elves are super married, and remain super married whether or not their spouses are dead. Only Finwë didn't for some reason, he met this other elf named Indis and fell for her and married her, and Míriel was so offended by the whole affair that she refused to come back from the dead.

Elves.

Finwë went on to have more children with Indis, two sons and two daughters, and for purposes of our story it's mostly the sons we're concerned with. The first of these is Ñolofinwë (I told you I was not exaggerating)/Aracáno, who is going to hereafter be known by his Sindarin name of Fingolfin, and Arafinwë/Ingoldo, hereafter known as Finarfin.

Fëanor, who was apparently offended on behalf of his mother, really didn't get along with his half siblings, and there was a fair amount of tension, especially between him and Fingolfin. Finarfin, who is literally the only sane member of this dumb family basically spent a lot of time trying to talk the two of them down after one of them went OH YOU WANNA GO? COS I'LL GO and then the other was like OH I'LL GO. I'LL GO.

Fëanor grew up to be a master smith and inventor, who did little things like invent written language because he was bored, and forge the light of the Two Trees - which the moon and the sun later came from - into three marvelous gems that everybody thereafter loses their freakin minds over, called the Silmarils. He married a sculptor named Nerdanel, who somewhat ironically despite being a redhead was a lot calmer and more even-tempered than him, and she sort of managed to rein him in for a while possibly just by dragging him off to bed to distract him every time he got mad or something idek man, they had seven sons. That is a lot for anybody, and that includes elves. Shortly after there was Nelyafinwë, who was followed by six - six - younger brothers (I could go into more detail here but trust me you really don't want me to). There were also lots and lots of cousins, as Fingolfin and Finarfin settled down and had kids as well. Thankfully there's only one of these who is super relevant for purposes of this app, Fingolfin's eldest son, Findekáno (Fingon), who was Nelyafinwë's BFF.

Everybody spent a while more or less getting along in Valinor, and living pretty good lives. The elves in Valinor learned and sang and grew and built cities and made beautiful things and rode and laughed and hunted and swam and basically it was the Good Life.

Enter Melkor.

Let's rewind for a bit of context. Remember those monsters who were hanging around eating elves when elves first happened? Yeah, it was this guy who created them (and lots of other things but suffice it to say that he's basically in-canon Satan). Back in the day, when the other Valar rode off to rescue the elves from said monsters, they also dragged Melkor back to throw him in jail, because no, Melkor, that's bad, you're supposed to play nice with Eru's other creations. After Melkor had served enough of his sentence for a chance at parole, however, Manwë (the Vala in charge) came down for the parole board hearing and asked why they should let him go. Melkor was like "I learned my lesson, I'll behave!" and Manwë was like "how can we know you're being honest?" and Melkor was like "WELL I SAID, DIDN'T I" and so Manwë was like "FAIR ENOUGH so you did okay take care have fun out there."

(Manwë no.)

Melkor was released on condition of good behavior, and so for a while he pretended to play nice. He hung around the elves a lot, taught them cool things, stalked Fëanor because he really liked his jewels, taught the elves some cool things, subtly spread poisonous lies to make everyone hate each other and internal fighting and tension start off to ruin everything, you know, normal stuff. And this is when Nelyafinwë is being pulled. After he's pulled a whole lot more happens.

Tensions between Fëanor and Fingolfin get to be worse than normal as basically there's thoughts going around of them trying to become Dad's Favorite Son, until finally they actually get into a fight and Fëanor draws his sword on Fingolfin. The Valar are like WHOA THERE SLOW DOWN and nobody blames Melkor despite the fact that he's honestly the start of the problems, because he was good at being very sneaky about it. Instead Fëanor is banished for a while, so Finwë is like 'well fine if my son can't come to the parties I won't go either. Melkor tried to trick Fëanor into giving him the Silmarils, which at that point Fëanor was actually so overly possessive about that he didn't want anybody except his dad and his kids to even see the things, and Fëanor told Melkor just where he could stick it. But Melkor still really wanted the jewels. SO HE DECIDED TO TRY ALTERNATIVE METHODS.

One night there was a special party that the Valar decided Fëanor could in fact come to, but he was still banished so Finwë declined to come, instead he decided to stay home. As it turned out this was a mistake, because halfway through the party Melkor busted in, riding on the back of a giant spider. Said spider ate the two trees that the tree goddess had made to be the source of light for the world before the moon and sun happened, whose light was forged into the silmarils, and then drank the pools of light that said trees had created, and also while running around ruining everything robbed Fëanor's house and killed Finwë and then raced across the sea to Middle Earth while Melkor blasted death metal and shouted YOLO.

Yes.

Tree-goddess was like "hey could we please have the silmarils if I had the silmarils I might be able to bring the trees back but there's just no way otherwise :(" and Fëanor was like "CRAI MOAR THEY ARE MINE" (Fëanor stop) and went back home. Which. You know. Actually changed nothing with regards to the trees because Melkor had already stolen them but hey if Fëanor hadn't been so set on nobody else getting them things might have gone better in the long run.