Elrond: A Tragic Tale - Tolkien Lore Video

you know when you really stop and think about it the life of lord elrond is actually a pretty sad one allah tulia mel donya aharamari essay my name is rainbow dave and welcome to another tolkien fun fact video so picture that moment on the shores of the grey havens at the end of the return of the king picture frodo and bilbo and galadriel and gandalf and elrond standing on that white ship and picture them departing middle earth in the final minutes of the third age now i've already done a fun fact video about sailing west from the perspective of galadriel and bilbo and there'll be one about gandalf coming very soon but today's video is going to focus on elrond and i hope to try and untangle what this moment truly means from his perspective now i have to be honest in my opinion elrond's character is a little short changed in peter jackson's movies now that's not to say i don't enjoy hugo weaving's performance but i feel that by the power of the butterfly effect changing aragorn into a more reluctant king changed elrond into a more stern and somewhat less sympathetic version of himself like he does come across a little bit as a sort of just a grumpy old dad who doesn't particularly appreciate his daughter's choice in a boyfriend but my favorite quotation of tolkiens about lord elrond comes from the hobbit and it goes like this he was as noble and fair as an elf lord as strong as a warrior as wise as a wizard as venerable as a king of dwarves and as kind as summer now i'm just not sure that hugo weaving's aileron is quite as kind as summer in fact i can't think of any elf in the movies who truly embodies tolkien's idea of elven kindness and compassion they all seemed a little bit too severe anyway the reason that i flag this up is because in tolkien's tales elrond is strong and wise and noble but he's also warm and loving and kind and these traits lie at the very center of his character now the reason that i think elron's kindness is so significant is because it's not something that we should automatically take for granted after all elrond's long life is not a particularly happy one when we think of immortals in the middle earth i guess we tend to think of timelessness and of preservation but to an extent in elleron's case he's defined more by the abundance of things that he loses and yet he's also defined by those things that he does not lose and he never loses his kindness so in order to fully understand this we are going to have to go back back to the very beginning of elrond's life right at the end of the first age now ellarond and his twin brother ella ross were both born to two very important characters in the legendarium and yet neither of these two characters were particularly attentive parents when elrond was only two years old his father erendil went off to sea and aerendil never saw either of his sons again and only four years later when elrond was just six his home came under attack and he and his brother were carried off by their attackers and elrond's mother who was called el wing threw herself into the ocean to avoid the same fate now technically both aerendil and elwing did survive this ellewing turned into a bird and a oren deal turned into a celestial object he turned into tolkien's equivalent of the planet venus and no i'm not making this up things got really weird at the end of the first age but neither of them ever returned to their children and so for all intents and purposes elrond was orphaned when he was only six years old but it wasn't entirely a case of doom and gloom for young elrond and ella ross as both twins were eventually adopted by the brother of the guy who attacked their home in the first place but as with many of elron's familial relationships this one didn't last you see only 49 years later elrond's adoptive father an elf called maglor simply disappeared from the annals of history his fate remains one of the great mysteries of tolkien's legendarium but we can be fairly sure that he never saw elwand again and so for the second time in his still relatively short life elrond endured the loss of another beloved family member which if you think about it that must be especially traumatic for an immortal it's just not something they'd expect to have to deal with anyway after the loss of maglor a new age began for elrond the second age and this was the age in which elrond would truly make a name for himself as one of the key players in the fate of middle earth and his twin brother l ross would do the same but despite the fact that elrond and elros came into the world together they would not leave it together so due to a very complex web of elves and men making babies throughout elleron's family tree both he and elderos were given the choice to either live as elves or to live as men now obviously we know elrond chose to be counted as an elf and thus he was given an immortal life but his brother el ross made the opposite choice he lived as a man he lived a very long life as a man and he ruled as the mightiest king of men that ida had ever seen but he did not live forever and in his 500th year of life alleros gave up the scepter of the king and he allowed himself to die now elrond certainly isn't the only elf in the legendarium to lose a brother you know galagia loses all three of her brothers in the space of 10 years but they're not gone forever usually when an elf dies their soul their fear departs to valinor where it will be held and judged and eventually re-housed and set free to live an afterlife in the undying lands so when galadriel sails west she is sailing to be reunited with her long-lost brothers but this isn't the case for elrond el ross chose the fate of men his fear does not depart to valinor to be re-housed like an elfs instead it eventually departs arda entirely the soul of eloros simply disappears from the world and his fate is a mystery to all such is the gift of men and so even in death elrond and el ross will never be reunited just like ayorendiel and maglor and possibly elwing and of course are when elros is lost to elrond forever but elrond kept on going he has responsibilities after all and throughout the second age he became a close advisor and an even closer friend to the noldor's high king gilgalad in fact throughout all the drama of the forging of the rings and the first war against sauron elrond became gilgalad's vice regent in the north he became the founder of imladris and eventually gil galad even bestowed upon elerand his own ring of power vilia the ring of air but once again it did not last gilgalad was slain in the war of the last alliance and elrond was forced to enter the third age without him however elrond wasn't entirely alone and his story is not entirely tragic you see in the 109th year of the third age elrond finally married the love of his life the lady calebrian the daughter of galadriel and kellerbourne and just a side note just think about what this wedding would have looked like like the combined aesthetic of rivendell and lothlorien it must be one of the nicest weddings you could possibly attend in middle earth anyway elrond and calabrian represent one of the happiest elven unions in the entire legendarium well at least for a while calabrian inherited from her mother the elisa that's the elf stone the same stone that will eventually be given to aragorn and this is a beautiful little detail because the original lsr was first given to elrond's father by his grandmother so it really is a lovely little family heirloom and together in this period of peace elrond and calebrian build a really lovely family first calebrian gave birth to the twin hunters ella dan and ella roger and then 111 years later she gave birth to elrond's beloved daughter aroen undomiel and for the next two and a half thousand years everything was wonderful well i mean the witch king did his thing in angma and there was a terrible plague and also urukkai were invented at this time but in rivendell between elirand and calabrian all was good until it wasn't so in the year 2509 of the third age tragedy struck elrond once again in this year calabrian made the journey from her home in rivendell to her parents home in lothlorien which was a journey she'd done many many times before but on this occasion something terrible happened you see whilst crossing the misty mountains calebrian was way laid and captured by orcs of the red horn pass and calabrians suffered misery and torture at their hands which forever changed her she was tormented and she was poisoned by the orcs but they did not allow her to die instead they kept her prisoner in their dens and her spirit was broken now from the orcs perspective this was probably the most foolish thing they could possibly have done because by torturing calabrian they had brought upon themselves the unbridled wrath of not only elrond but of his sons ella dan and ellu here and so with a magnificent fury the twins rode up into the mountains and we can only assume that they would have slaughtered every single orc in that pass and when lord elrond found his wife he freed her and he held her and he healed her body but he could not heal her spirit or her mind the torment she had endured was simply too great and the following year calabrian's despair of life had grown so great that she departed middle-earth and she sailed away leaving her husband and her children behind her and for calabrian and her daughter are when this would mark the final time that they would ever meet even though neither one could have known it so let's fast forward now back to that moment on that ship at the end of the third age where elrond and the other ring bearers prepared for their own departure now we know that this was a bittersweet moment for elrond after all he was not only leaving his realm of him largest behind him but also all three of his children even at the very end elrond had one more great loss to endure so as we all know irwin faced the same choice that elrond and elros faced all those years before and just like her uncle ella ross arrowin chose a mortal life she was blessed with love and with happiness but she was doomed to be parted from her father forever just like with elros even in death elrond would never see his daughter again nor would he ever meet his grandson and this is made even more poignant because not only does elwand lose his daughter but he loses aragorn an orphan not unlike himself who he had adopted and raised just as maglor had adopted and raised him and we don't know the fates of elron's sons but we know that for a long while they too remained in middle-earth sundered from their father and perhaps they too chose a mortal life and perhaps they too were lost to elrond forever so picture yourself in elrond's position picture yourself looking back towards the east as the white ship sails into the west imagine all the things that elrond is losing and all the people that he will never see again but now imagine elrond turning around and looking forward looking west imagine that bittersweet emotion as the lands of his children disappear behind him and he faces the direction of his wife the direction of calabria for although elrond had so much to lose by leaving middle earth there was someone waiting for him on the other side after more than 500 years apart into the west elrond would find calabrian and after a lifetime of losing that which he'd loved he'd finally be reunited with that love which he'd lost now from the perspective of a more prideful character this may seem like a bit of a sad ending but from elrond's perspective i don't think it is i find that from this perspective elrond is an incredibly optimistic character more so than most elves he had experienced permanent loss many many times over and yet he never loses his kindness perhaps at the end of all things elrond is not defined by who he lost in middle earth but by who he found again in the undying lands so thank you very much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video and as always dear friends until next time much love stay groovy and nevia melanine [Music] you

Channel: Tolkien Untangled

Views: 66,611

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Id: ocIllUCkTec

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020