theHigherGeometer on Nostr: Let me make good on my promise/threat to make a #Tolkien post or two. I'm reading my ...

Let me make good on my promise/threat to make a #Tolkien post or two.

I'm reading my way through volumes 6-9 of History of Middle-earth, the part that deals with the writing of The Lord of the Rings (covering 1937-49 or so). I'm just up to the part when Galadriel and Celeborn are invented, at the moment the company is travelling through Lothlórien. It's deeply ironic how much trouble Tolkien later gets into trying to figure out their backstory (see: The History of Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales) when he realises these (and in particular Galadriel) are not just random characters our heroes happened to stop over with before breaking up and going their separate ways.

There was a random note that wondered out loud, what if there is no Lord X there with Galadriel? Maybe make her Elrond's wife? As Arwen is not invented until late in the writing process (hence her relatively non-existent role outside the Appendices), there was no Celebrían existing for Elrond to be already married to—we only had, more or less, Hobbit Elrond, who had recently gained the distinction of having been Gil-galad's herald a few chapters before, but not yet a wife. Only a fleeting thought, but kinda funny how Celeborn turned out to be much less consequential than Galadriel, even in the 1973 notes where he was so heroic as to ... make a boat to sail from Valinor to Middle-earth, for Galadriel to level-up, having learned all she could from the Valar?