#unimportant thing like people are shipping galadriel and sauron

[elvesofnoldor]

after finished watching the finale to r*ngs of power, i honestly was gonna make a post about how i found it very interesting that for a character motivated largely by the need to seek retribution and obtain revenge, Galadriel’s inability to let go of her anger towards the target of her vengeance (sauron) is the very thing that kept her from damnation. Had she been able to forgive sauron for killing her brother, she would have never been able to find peace and make it back home (and eventually back to her brother, who canonically came back to life in Aman, and her family). And despite not being very impressed with any part of the show, I found the way they wrote galadriel’s tale of vengeance to be very interesting. Then i logged on tumblr dot org and found out that apparently everybody was making halbrand!sauron x galadriel friends to enemies to lovers 3k slow burn fics and sitting around in circles singing “sauron and galadriel sitting under the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and i think this is part of the reason why i didn’t log on for almost a month and half. 

[garden-ghoul]

of amroth and nimrodel

“special thanks to douglas adams for coining the phrase ‘long dark teatime of the soul,’ aka what I am trying to stave off by writing this; fuck teatime”

We’re starting out right with the immediate assertion that Amroth is no longer a son of Galadriel. His father is someone unimportant called Amdir, anyway they were both kings of Lorien. Is Lorien different from Lorinand, or not? Because I’m pretty sure Galadriel was the only king Lorinand ever needed. And she did end up in Lorien... at least if it’s the same place as Loth Lorien. (shrugs angrily)

So Amroth likes an elf named Nimrodel. She actually likes him too but she hates the race of Sindar because ever since they came back east we’ve had nothing but wars. She refused to even learn Sindarin, and spoke only Silvan, even after literally everyone else stopped using it. I bet she and Therinde would be great friends. She’s such a cool guy that she even has a river named after her! She lives all alone, with her river, until Moria falls and everywhere is covered with orcs; at that point she flees to Fangorn Forest.

But she can’t go in. The trees don’t like her. This seems pretty unusual to me, given that she is a Silvan elf and also like, the number one most peace-loving Silvan elf. What is ur deal, Fangorn.

Amroth catches up to her at the edge of the forest and they “held a long debate; and at last they plighted their troth.” That is the kind of engagement I like to hear. One based on long debates. So they are engaged! But they will not be married until Amroth finds a land of peace to bring Nimrodel to. He also needs to find an acre of land between the saltwater and the sea strand, no doubt. Is she gonna like, do any of the work or...? No, no, what am I saying, she’ll be busy making cambric shirts without seam or needlework.

Amroth vowed that for her sake he would leave his people, even in their time of need, and with her seek for such a land. "But there is none now in Middle-earth," he said, "and will not be for the Elven-folk ever again. We must seek for a passage over the Great Sea to the ancient West."

It’s just like the Very Wise Frog said, man. Violence is inescapable. Also Amroth don’t be a dick to everyone who depends on you just so you can get some!! You’re a king, act like it! Anyway, Am and Nim travel to Gondor, which is close to some haven or other where people are departing for Aman. Somehow they get separated (Tolkien couldn’t come up with anything good so he just pretended the relevant texts were destroyed) and Amroth ends up waiting on the Last Ship Ever Probably, trying to convince everyone to wait for Nim, who is definitely, definitely coming. This kind of story hurts me. Nothing is worse than knowing the person isn’t going to show up and having to wait for them anyway.

Am and company live on the ship while they wait, because they already packed everything up and they could be leaving any day now, seriously, any second. Before Nim has a chance to show up, though, a huge storm blows them out to sea. Just as expected, Amroth flings himself overboard and tries to swim back to shore. We assume he drowns.

The foregoing narrative was actually composed as an offshoot from an etymological discussion of the names of certain rivers in Middle-earth,  

Oh, thank goodness, I was starting to wonder where the linguistics went. We’d been five entire paragraphs without any, I was getting anxious. One of the legends about Nimrodel is that she ended up in the White Mountains and passed out by a river that reminded her of home, and overslept her scheduled departure date by several months. It’s unclear whether this actually has anything to do with the fact that the river was named Gilrain.

Leaving that aside! (says Chris) why was Amdir king in Lorien? Well, Celeborn had fortified it so Sauron couldn’t get across the Anduin, but after Sauron left he and Galadriel went to Lindon. This is surprising to me, didn’t think I’d catch Galadriel in someone else’s capitol. In any case that left Lorien kind of a ghost town so Amdir picked it up until he and his pittance of a company were killed at the Battle of Dagorlad (I think that’s the one where they chopped Sauron’s finger off). Oh there’s also something interesting--we note that the people who live in Lorien are Silvan, but have long been ruled by Sindarin princes (see: Thranduil). Smacks of colonialism. It actually says later that

Galadriel saw that Lórien would be a stronghold and point of power to prevent the Shadow from crossing the Anduin; but that it needed a rule of greater strength and wisdom than the Silvan folk possessed.

Elves. Are so. fuckn racist.

After visiting Amroth for a little while to learn what the Sorceror was up to and what happenings were happening in Mirkwood, Galadriel and Celeborn went to stay with their son-in-law Elrond in Imladris for a really long time.

After the disaster in Moria and the sorrows of Lórien, which was now left without a ruler (for Amroth was drowned and left no heir), Celeborn and Galadriel returned to Lórien, and were welcomed by the people. There they dwelt while the Third Age lasted, but they took no title of King or Queen; for they said that they were only guardians of this small but fair realm, the last eastward outpost of the Elves.

Galadriel is all right. I kind of am starting to like her as a person, where before I liked her as a walking natural disaster. Like I know that she was never actually that disastrous, but I was attracted to her power-hungriness. So she was a little disastrous, but she couldn’t really hold a candle to Feanor.

We divert our path to learn about a stone called Elessar, which was made by a leaf-loving smith in Gondolin. I think it’s cute how smiths... make... stones? That is really not the point of smiths. Elf-smiths, I suppose, do different things. Anyway this stone was green and had healing powers and if you looked through it you would see through nostalgia goggles. It belonged to Idril and then Earendil, so it ended up in Valinor and everyone was sad... until Olorin brought it back to give to Galadriel, so she could make Lorien pretty again! He prophesies that she will one day meet a guy called Elessar who she should give the stone Elessar to.

The other story about Elessar’s origin is that Galadriel commissioned it of the smiths of Eregion because she was tired of “autumn” “existing” and “remembering that stuff dies” “including all her siblings” but she’s too proud to ask forgiveness of the Valar so she can go back to Valinor; so she wants to solve the problem by magic instead. So Celebrimbor made Elessar II, which was slightly less good than the original because of Sauron’s atmospheric pollution/messing up the ozone layer/what-have-you.

Eventually when she gets the ring of water she’s like “oh wow this is way better, it’s not like it was made by the same guy and also Elessar was specifically made for me to do a specific thing!” So she gives Elessar to her daughter, who gives it to her daughter (Arwen) who gives it to her boyfriend (known by many names, apparently one of which is Elessar). Doesn’t say what they did with it.