Love at first sight does show up often in Tolkien's writings, amyrlis - it will be interesting to look and see if it is a characteristic for successful marriages only or can also precede unsuccessful ones!
Lush, I've noticed the tendency to unequal marriages too, especially the inter-racial ones. It does seem to be the women who are marrying "down". I know of no example of an elven male marrying a human woman. We do have one example of an human-elven marriage that does not result in the elven woman losing her immortality, however - Tuor, human, marries Idril, elven, and sails to the West with her at the end of his life, after the Fall of Gondolin. He alone of mortal men becomes one of the Eldar. Was it because of their marriage or would he have been rewarded for his friendship with the Noldor even without his elven wife? I wonder...
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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