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Old 07-05-2007, 11:56 PM   #58
Man-of-the-Wold
Wight
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: With Tux, dread poodle of Pinnath Galin
Posts: 239
Man-of-the-Wold has just left Hobbiton.
In response to Findegil, Legolas' Sindarin ancestry is "undeniable" and would still be true even his mother were of the Nandor, like presumably Nimrodel.

Nevertheless, until one gets to the appendices of LotR, Legolas comes across as very much the wood elf, chosen as the representative of the Elfin race, and not as one of the great and wise to possibly bring special abilities to aid the ringbearer, as Elrond considers in the context of possibly selecting one from among his own household.

I cannot tell what of my other conclusions is unaccepted.

Judgment and impression is all one has sometimes. Facts and hard evidence are hard to come by.

But the fact that Legolas talks about hardly ever having ventured beyond Mirkwood, and that his father (though a elven lord) is not even a member of the White Council or necessarily accounted among the Wise at the time of the Necromancer's expulsion from Dol Guldor might suggest that Legolas was not present during the Goblin Wars. If he had been around for the Last Alliance, it seems strange that such great lore and experience does not arise in the narrative of the LotR.

Yes, one must keep in mind that other possibilities exist when conclusons are based on supposition and circumstantial or partial evidence, but still the perponderance of evidence and intuition suggest that the Legolas of the published and finished work is a character of the Third Age, which by the time of the WotR had had a long and rich history, already.

But if voting, I'd vote for a variant name for the personage of Gondolin.
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The hoes unrecked in the fields were flung, __ and fallen ladders in the long grass lay __ of the lush orchards; every tree there turned __ its tangled head and eyed them secretly, __ and the ears listened of the nodding grasses; __ though noontide glowed on land and leaf, __ their limbs were chilled.
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