Lord of the Rings

Guy Kay does have a somewhat similar writing style as Tolkien. The Fionavar Tapestry reminded me again and again of Tolkien's work. But maybe that was because it was a series about a group of companions working to defeat a Dark Lord with lots of world building info dumps.

Found someone's LotR movie headcanon that I thought I'd share.

Bahaha oh my god. Thanks for that.

That could be pretty close to the truth, actually, what with him being an elf and all. Tolkien's elves do have a tendency to regard themselves as the wisest, most intelligent person in the room. Add to that their immortality, and it would not be far fetched at all that they would have a distorted sense of the intelligence of other species.

Almost everyone who were willing to act on such sentiments died out back in the First Age, though.

And IIRC, Legolas was a relatively young elf.

I'm not sure I buy that. Legolas seems to respect Gandalf and Aragorn at the very least.

And the whole course of the narrative is Legolas frequently falling on his face as he underestimates Gimli and is proven wrong at every turn until he realizes he's his equal.

He does believe he is superior to Gimli at first, at the very least. He respects Gandalf because he knows exactly what he is, and Aragorn because he is of a royal bloodline.

But Gimli? Gimli is just a dwarf. Why would Legolas, high and mighty elf, ever consider a dwarf an equal?

A few books later...

It's not a one-way thing, though - Dwarves look down on Elves as much as Elves on Dwarves. Both Gimli and Legolas learn a lot as the story goes on.

The fact that Legolas' father imprisoned Gimli's father some time ago makes things a bit more personal for both of them.

I'm sure the movies would've played that up if they'd been made in reverse order (Hobbit first, then LotR). But IIRC there's nothing personal about it in the books - just the long-standing grudges on either side which kept being reinforced by stuff like the balrog and the misunderstanding in Mirkwood. Progress had been made in Eregion, but then... well... balrog.

From what I understood, it was more dwarf-elf relations in general than that one incident between their families. The two races just despise each other as a rule.

Not all dwarves and elves, and not as a rule - the Noldor generally got along very well with the dwarves, as both were highly interested in (and highly skilled in) craftsmanship. This was especially true with the elves of Eregion and the dwarves of Khazad-dum. Galadriel is Noldor, which is one of the reasons she has more empathy for Gimli than the other elves of Lothlorien do.

But the wood-elves, Legolas' people, are, I think, partially descended from the grey-elves (Sindar) of Doriath, and the king of Doriath was killed by dwarves in the conflict over the Silmarils, several thousand years before the events of The Lord Of The Rings. Before that, the grey-elves and the dwarves got along fairly well, but since then there has been hostility. This is a large part of the reason for the hostility between the wood-elves and the dwaves in The Hobbit, and the mistrust for dwarves shown by the elves of Lothlorien (who I think are also mainly grey-elves) and the dwarves.

(I'm not clear on whether the wood-elves are mainly Sindar, or whether it's just the royal family that are Sindar and most of the rest are Avari.)

Edited by Galadriel on Jan 1st 2019 at 6:09:06 AM

The Silvan elf populations are mostly a mix of Avari and Nandor but their rulers are Sindarin. Thranduil's father Oropher lived in Doriath and was a lord serving under Elu Thingol. Galadriel's husband Celeborn was also a lord in Thingol's household(in one version of the story).

Thank you! I've wondered about that for a while.

You're welcome. The Celeborn thing is pretty murky though. Tolkien never did make up his mind about what his background was and the circumstances behind Galadriel meeting him. The Lord of the Rings implies he was living in Lothlorien during the First Age and Galadriel met him there. Presumably in that story he's a Nandorin elf. The published Silmarillion uses a version of the story where he was living in Doriath and met Galadriel after the Noldor returned to Middle-earth. He's Sindarin in that one. However, there's a very late version of the story in Unfinished Tales that has him meet Galadriel in the Undying Lands. The two leave for Beleriand in a boat independent of the Noldor. In this story he was a Teleri.

Edited by Kostya on Jan 1st 2019 at 6:25:31 AM

The other thing I've wondered about is how long Galadriel and Celeborn remained in Doriath. Did they remain in Beleriand until the War of Wrath, did they leave after the fall of Doriath, or did they leave before that?

We'll never know. Because Tolkien was constantly revising the history of Galadriel and Celeborn he never did set out a proper timeline for what they did when. That's why Galadriel barely does anything in the published Silmarillion.

Personally, my head canon is that the two of them smuggled Elwing and the Nauglamir out of Doriath during the attack by Feanor's sons.

I operate on that assumption, as well.

Tolkien teaches us not to underestimate a Wacky Wayside Tribe, they're probably the Big Damn Heroes of another age

Happy birthday to the father of fantasy, J.R.R Tolkien, who was born this day in 1892.

That's a long time ago. Happy birthday, Tolkien.

Happy birthday Tolkien. I'll take a moment to think about you and your amazing contribution that helped shape fantasy as a genre today.

Edited by Aaymeirah on Jan 3rd 2019 at 9:04:18 AM

I don't get the Silmarils, they just seem like things that exist to cause conflict. At least the One Ring did something.