Is there a character you're obsessed with?

[mindil]

I forgot that piece of authorial chronology.
So Legolas as written wasn't a prince at all. And JRRT didn't retcon any royalty into his behavior.
Was he originally from Mirkwood?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by mindil

I forgot that piece of authorial chronology.
So Legolas as written wasn't a prince at all. And JRRT didn't retcon any royalty into his behavior.
Was he originally from Mirkwood?

Originally he was called Galdor (a name Tolkien used for several Elves at various times), and for a long time Galdor/Legolas* was simply a messenger from Mirkwood, not the king's son (in the same way that Galdor in the final version was simply a messenger from the Havens). The Mirkwood connection was there from the start, because it was he who brought word of Gollum's escape.

*Both names were borrowed from the original Fall of Gondolin, where Galdor, Legolas and Glorfindel were all heads of Houses.

[mindil]

Thanks for saving me a re-read. (I'm reviewing other things toward a better treatment of Reality Theory.)

So Legolas was originally a junior undersecretary at best, a low-status runner at worst. That explains everything - why Lorien treated him exactly in that status, and why he was so unfamiliar with Lorien - the royals must have had contact often enough (by elf-standards, at least every hundred-odd years?) so that a Thranduilion would not be as wide-eyed as Legolas was, not only at Lorien but at the wide world in general.

So the fault isn't his Avari mother, but his originally ignorant author, who wasn't up to a rewrite after he realized who Legolas "really" was.

Now the puzzles (according to Reality Theory) are - first, was Legolas really a prince or not? And second, was his treatment in Lorien something JRRT observed "really happening" because Legolas was a common elf or despite Legolas being a prince - or was it something JRRT invented assuming Legolas was a common elf?

To resolve these, I would do a close reading of anything HoME says about T's realization that L was a prince, and then a close reading of the Lorien chapters to see if they have the characteristics of observation, detailed hearsay or invention. IIRC, when I was doing this back in the day, the Lorien chapters seemed most unreliable - T seems not to have observed anything personally and only heard second-(or further)-hand stories about it.

Apropos L being prince, the denouement of LotR also seemed to me to include more invention than the earlier chapters - the opposite may be true of the appendices - so Legolas's epilogue behavior (his princely leadership in Ithilien, possible evidence for true princely status), may also be in doubt. But I'd have to go back and check.

Anyway, this resolves the original question of Mrs. Thranduil. If Legolas is prince, there is no evidence she is Avari. And if he is not prince, there is even less evidence who she might have been! JRRT's pattern has always been to pair higher status women with lower status men. So we can assume that she was at least a Sindar.

If she was Nellas, that would then pose the question of why Nellas was so attached to the woods (Silvan style). But if she was a Sindar Nellas who yet avoided caves, it would at least explain why the Hobbit dwarves and Bilbo never saw her.

[Andsigil]

Not obsessed, no.

I wish Tolkien would have written more about Cirdan; maybe as the central figure in a few stories of the Silmarillion. I keep hoping that someone uncovers an old shipping trunk, under some clutter in an overgrown garden shed in Tolkien's old home, and finds an original, 300 page manuscript by JRR, entitled, The Adventures of Cirdan.

Unfortunately, I think the window for such a discovery has closed.

[Mithadan]

Andsigil, you may want to keep an eye on our slowly developing fan fiction forum...

[Urwen]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Andsigil, you may want to keep an eye on our slowly developing fan fiction forum...

I think we'd all be dead before we are even allowed to post new fanfictions...

[mindil]

Originally Posted by Andsigil

I wish Tolkien would have written more about Cirdan

I wish there was more about the whole elven community of Lune. We know they exist, but zero else. We have a glimpse of all the other elven communities, but nothing about this one.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by mindil

I wish there was more about the whole elven community of Lune. We know they exist, but zero else. We have a glimpse of all the other elven communities, but nothing about this one.

I agree. The statement in LOTR Appendix A that it was "Elvish country, green and quiet, where no Men went" has always been tantalizing.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by mindil

I wish there was more about the whole elven community of Lune. We know they exist, but zero else. We have a glimpse of all the other elven communities, but nothing about this one.

Perhaps everyone was apprehensive to go near there. After all, the folks in Lune were known as Lunatics.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Why should we believe Nellas even survived the First Age? Most of Doriath's population was eradicated, given the Dwarven sack and the 2nd and 3rd Kinslayings. The Silmarillion says that the community at the Mouths of Sirion was "a mere gleaning" of the people of Doriath and Gondolin- the implication is that only a bare handful survived, like Elendil's refugees from Numenor - and that was before the Sons of Feanor rolled through.