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Tear Jerker / Beren and Lúthien

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  • Beren's parents are forced to part ways when Sauron invades Dorthonion and starts ruining the land. Barahir wants to stay and fight to the bitter end, and Emeldir would rather prefer to stay and fight alongside her husband and son, but she must lead the refugees of Dorthonion to safety. Emeldir and the refugees manage to reach the forests of Brethil after many hardships, but Beren will never see his mother again (or his sister Hiril, a late addition to the mythos. See The War of the Jewels).
  • Barahir and his band become outlaws and fight Sauron's forces until there are only twelve left. One of the outlaws, Gorlim, secretly returns to his house every so often to look for his wife Eilinel, who went missing during the war. Sauron uses an illusion resembling his wife to capture and trick Gorlim into revealing information about the outlaws in exchange for being reunited with Eilinel. After Gorlim betrays the location of Barahir's hideout, Sauron reveals Eilinel is dead, and upholds his end of the bargain by executing Gorlim.
  • The outlaws are ambushed and put to death. Beren survives, but he is left completely alone and will never talk with another human being again. Beren spends the next four years living in the woods and waging a one-man guerrilla against the evil army occupying Dorthonion. Eventually, though, he is pressured to flee from his homeland. He will never return.
  • Beren crosses the hellish regions known as the Mountains of Terror and the Valley of Dreadful Death, and stumbles into the woods of Doriath, where he happens upon the love of his life. Beren is starting to heal thanks to Lúthien, when Thingol finds out about the stranger living in the woods and wooing his daughter. Since he has promised to not kill him, Thingol looks for another way to get him killed or at any rate gone.
  • Beren heads towards Nargothrond, in hopes of being assisted by its ruler Finrod Felagund. Finrod, who vowed to help Barahir and his kin, tries to rally the people of Nargothrond together for retrieving the Silmarils, but his cousins Celegorm and Curufin turn Nargothrond against him, and only ten warriors stay faithful to Finrod.
  • Finrod, Beren and their companions head towards Angband, but they are spotted by Sauron, captured and thrown into one dungeon. Sauron tries to torture information out of the group, but Finrod's warriors choose to become wolf's chow over betraying their good king.
  • Lúthien finds out about her lover and her cousin's predicament and tries to persuade her parents to send assistance. Since Thingol refuses, Lúthien decides to go and rescue them personally. Her father responds by locking her up in a house tree.
  • Finrod's companions are tortured and devoured until only Beren is left. When a wolf is about to eat Beren, Finrod goes berserk, rips his chains off the wall, and slays the wolf with his bare hands. Unfortunately, it is a mutual kill.
  • The Hunt for Carcharoth ends with Beren mauled to death by the giant wolf, and Huan fullfilling his Doom.
  • Lúthien asks Beren to wait for her as he is dying. Later she dies of grief and her soul travels to the Halls of Mandos, where Beren's soul is still lingering in defiance of the universe's laws. Lúthien meets Námo the Doomsman, and sings to him the saddest song ever made about the sorrows of both Elves and Men.
    The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall ever hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and the listening the Valar grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.''


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