All Good Things...

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

And then my thoughts drifted to the fact of how unlikely it was for me to ever find that elusive state that we commonly call "true love", and that really set me off. I didn't bawl, but I was pensive and morose nonetheless.

Some things are easier to write into fiction than to experience in real life. Romantic love, unalloyed by security impulses, desparation, too much alcohol or the single interest that men are supposed to have, is a rare privilege that a lot of films and novels portray as both common and vital to existence. It's neither: a lot of people get by without it. Still, whether or not real life can live up to the Aragorn and Arwen story, I have to admit to a bit of the old misty-eyed pensiveness when the time comes for them to pay the piper. I sometimes wonder who had it hardest: Aragorn, having to choose his time in the full knowledge of what that would mean for those he left behind, or Arwen, bereft and facing a fading world alone.
Whichever is the case, the image of Arwen wandering through the deserted woods of Lothlorien and lying down to die is worthy of a Waterhouse. Perhaps she'd be on gallery walls next to the Lady of Shalott, Ophelia and La Belle Dame Sans Merci if the story had been published a century earlier (oh dear, he's off on another speculative odyssey; who'll save the thread?).

All of which goes to show why they call it "the bitter end".