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Much ado about Arwen: Elven Princess

© Michael Martinez

Amazingly I find that people are still reeling in shock over the revelations from New Zealand concerning Elrond's only daughter. Liv Tyler has been photographed with pointed ears (hey, no one expected Tolkien Elves to show up on film). Liv Tyler has been photographed carrying a hobbit-dummy on horseback (okay, rescuing Frodo from the Nazgul is a bit of a stretch). Liv Tyler has been seen at the Helm's Deep set (hm...no rumors about her and Viggo have started up yet). Let's stop and talk about Arwen a little bit. Back in September, 1999 I wondered where all the Aragorn and Arwen sites were. Maybe the ears have put off some of the prospective fans (hey, wait until the special effects have been added in -- they'll be all glittery and glossed over or something). So, since then, Stuart Townsend has moved on to smaller and lesser things and Viggo Mortensen has stepped in to fill the role of Aragorn (Viggo who? nevermind -- he'll be the next Big Thing after the first movie opens). There doesn't seem to be much to say about Arwen at first glance, but then, you have to wonder why she gave it all up for Aragorn. I mean, here she was, the hottest Elf-babe in Middle-earth, and she went and fell for a down-on-his-luck Ranger. Aragorn may have had the right to be king of both Arnor and Gondor, but he wasn't actually king of anything. He was chieftain of the Dunedain of Eriador. Any Hobbit girl marrying into the Took or Brandybuck clans would have ended up with more money, land, and relatives than Arwen figured to receive if she were to go against her father's will. When Elrond discerned Aragorn's love for his daughter, he summoned the young man to him and said: "You shall be betrothed to no man's child as yet. But as for Arwen the Fair, Lady of Imladris and of Lorien, Evenstar of her people, she is of lineage greater than yours, and she has lived in the world already so long that to her you are but as a yearling shoot beside a young birch of many summers. She is too far above you. And so, I think, it may well seem to her...." Elrond certainly tried to let Aragorn down easily, but the plan may have backfired on him. Or perhaps Elrond's doubts were irrelevant. Aragorn had grown up in Elrond's household. He knew Elrond's ancestry. Arwen would not have been the first Elf woman to love a mortal man, if her heart turned toward him. Of course, many people think quickly of Luthien and Beren, and of Idril and Tuor. But there were other Elf women who loved mortal men: Nellas, the mysterious Elf maiden of Doriath who watched over Turin as he grew up in Doriath; and Finduilas, the Elven princess who fell in love with Turin after he settled in Nargothrond. Nimloth married Dior, mortal son of Beren and Luthien. One can only wonder what Elf-man relationships developed in the largely forgotten Second Age. Did young Numenorean men pine for lovely Elven women from Tol Eressea?

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