Legolas: A Character Study

who is Legolas is he more than just the stereotypical elf or most see him as what was Tolkien's purpose in having this character hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep geek this video is brought to you with the support of Skillshare the online learning platform and I have a special offer view from them at the end of this video so please stick around for that Legolas was one of the most popular characters in the movie adaptations of the Lord of the Rings partly I'm sure due to Orlando Bloom's performance so successful was he that they brought him back for the Hobbit movies even though he doesn't technically appear in the book so what was it about the character who is Legolas let's start with some background Legolas Greenleaf to give him his full name is a cinder in elf although we might think of all elves as being quite similar in Tolkien's world there are subtle differences and groupings and as you would expect from a philologist quite a few different elvish languages I'll do a video on that at some point but as far as Legolas is concerned he is a cinder but lived among predominantly silver elves in the woodland realm what we would now call Mirkwood exactly how long he has lived there is a matter of some conjecture because elves don't age like humans do Tolkien doesn't tell us exactly but we do know that he is very old by human standards he refers to the other members of the fellowship Gandalf aside as children talks about having seen trees grow from seeds to death and so on the official movie guide to the Lord of the Rings has him down as 2931 years old although the writers freely admit that they made this number up what we can say is that by human standards he has lived a very very long time although elves still consider him youthful in all likelihood he has lived through a large portion of the third age of middle-earth what this means is that for most if not all of his life Legolas will have lived in northern Mirkwood with limited contact with the outside world the woodland realm had once covered all of that great forest but when Sauron installed himself in Dumbledore disguised as the necromancer the elves abandoned the southern part of the forest their new home was a cave system under a wooded hill on the eastern end of the forest those elves mostly kept themselves to themselves being distrustful of dwarves but trading amicably with the humans living around Dale and the Lonely Mountain they still spent some time out in the forest but even the northern parts were slowly coming under the influence of Sauron orcs and giant spiders were spreading their nests through the woodland the once mighty woodland kingdom was looking less and less mighty by the year we first encountered this enclave of elves in The Hobbit the dwarves and Bilbo head off along the forest path through Mirkwood they see the fires and sounds of the counts and of elves stray off the path and get themselves caught Legolas will almost certainly have been there at the time even if he isn't mentioned so although the movies took some liberties in making Legolas such a central character in The Hobbit movies they weren't completely making it up the elf king we see there isn't named in The Hobbit but he is thrown duel and he is Legolas E's father yes Legolas is effectively although it's not his actual title Prince of the elves of the woodland realm Legolas is not just a random elf he is the son of a king after the dwarves escaped and after Smaug was killed by Bard the elves presumably again with a Legolas among them came to the aid of the humans of Dale their trading partners they demanded a share of the wealth of Erebor from the dwarves who were once their prisoners and now were residents of the mountain it was only the arrival of Gandalf and then a common foe in the goblins and wargs that prevented the two sides going to war with one another I say this not just to remind you of what happened in The Hobbit but to point out that when Legolas and Gimli meet and don't get on initially this is more than just an ancient grudge between two races Legolas is father imprisoned Gimli father and the two of them were very nearly at war with one another the elves of Mirkwood reappear in the story before the main events of The Lord of the Rings you'll remember that Gandalf and Aragorn in tracking the history of the Ring captured Gollum and questioned him before leaving him in the care of the elves the elves in question were the elves of Mirkwood column however escapes with the help of an orc raid those elves are clearly not very good at keeping their prisoners actually in prison and that is why Legolas is at the Council of Elrond in the first place to report in that they have lost Gollum of course after that Legolas becomes a part of the Fellowship and from then on Tolkien largely uses him as what he is a representative of the elves he does all the things you would expect an elf to do he sees things from afar odorous birds in flight and so on he's light on his feet remembers things from long ago is good with his bow all the things that have become a part of every elf rope in countless epic fantasy series ever since Tolkien does put his own twist on it of course although when you think about it as the father of modern high fantasy perhaps it's all his own twist but Legolas changes through this story which for someone as many centuries old as he is is pretty impressive first there is his fate when Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White he doesn't just reappear in Fangorn forest he starts up on the mountaintop then is taken by gwaihir the great eagle to Galadriel and then to Fangorn to meet Aragorn Gimli and Legolas and he brought with him messages for the three of them this is what she had to say to Legolas Legolas Greenleaf long under tree enjoy thou hast lived beware of the sea if thou hearest decry of the gull on the shore the heart shall then rest in the forest no more mysterious but then Legolas does hear the cry of a seagull at Pelagia and this happens and now Legolas fell silent while the others talked he looked out against the Sun and as he gazed he saw white seabirds beating up the river look he cried gulls they are flying far inland a wonder they are to me and a trouble to my heart never in all my life had I met them until we came to Pelagia and there I heard them crying in the air as we rode to the battle of the ships then I stood still forgetting war in middle earth for their wailing voices spoke to me of the sea the sea alas I have not yet beheld it but deep in the hearts of all of my kindred lies the sea longing which it is perilous to stir alas for the gulls no peace shall I have again under beach or under elm as Legolas says this is the fate of all elves to feel that longing to head west leave middle-earth favela nor the second twist Tolkien brings to Legolas the elf is that the thing that keeps him in middle-earth for a while longer after the end of the war of the ring is his friendship with a dwarf Gimli their original distrust came from both racial and family enmities but Gimli 'he's clear admiration for the lady Galadriel brought him closer and they really bonded over a shared mutual interest killing orcs at Helm's Deep for the record Gimli did win their little competition there sorry Nicholas fence after the War of the Ring the two of them traveled together as they had agreed through Fangorn forest and the glittering caves of Eggland's each showing each other what they loved and inspired them later Legolas brought elves with him and Gimli brought dwarves with him and together they helped repair and approve ministereth for Humanity the friendship of an elf and a dwarf helped repair a millennia old grudge between two races and legend has it when Aragorn died the two of them traveled together westwards to Valinor so in typical Tolkien fashion he uses Legolas to both create and live up to the stereotype of an elf and then subvert it elves keep to themselves and the forests we know Legolas did but then he traveled to the caves and spent years helping build a home for Humanity elves hate and distrust dwarves Legolas did but his greatest friend was a dwarf Legolas is both a platonic template of an elf and he isn't he's an example of how elves can be amazing immortal running across snowdrifts and shooting down nazgul on their flying fel beasts in one shot and yet the end of his life in middle-earth was heralded by that most humble of birds the seagull yes Legolas is a trope of an elf but Tolkien invented that trope and subverted it within the space of one book every elf we see in every fantasy story after The Lord of the Rings is an homage to Legolas one way or another rarely has a character some decry as two-dimensional had such an impact on so many other stories when you think of an elf in fantasy fiction you think of Legolas but I told you I'd say a bit more about Skillshare who's sponsored this video Skillshare is an online learning community with 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Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 492,366

Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, lotr, tolien, legolas, legolas greenleaf, lord of the rings legolas and gimli, lord of the rings legolas, how old is legolas, the woodland realm, the hobbit, legolas in the, legolas in the lord of the rings, legolas in the end, legolas in the hobbit

Id: 8iE1lo4i0hg

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020