Would the remaining elvish strongholds help Eomer and his exile riders?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Just one of my poet curmudgeonly peeves, but "Woodland Realm" is a movie-ism like "Fell Beasts."

Whaaaat. No. Whaaaat?

Okay, I went trawling, and the term is used: Aragorn says it in TTT2 "The Riders of Rohan". "One only of us is an Elf, Legolas from the Woodland Realm in distant Mirkwood." I don't have a hardcopy of the books right now, so I can't check if the capitalisation appears in print, but it is in this version.

You may well be right that the movie is responsible for its prominence, though; Northern Mirkwood is also used (at the Council of Elrond), and seems a more obvious country name.

Interestingly, The Hobbit is kind of vague on whether N. Mirkwood is even a country. Thranduil's Halls are introduced with "In a great cave... there lived at this time their greatest king", which implies not only other Kings of the Wood-Elves, but also that Thranduil may move around.

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, Tolkien used the term, as he did "fell beast," but in both cases without capitals and as a mere descriptive phrase. A realm, which was in woodlands, rather like a beast, which was fell (deadly, fearsome). It was the screenwriters who somehow converted them into proper names.

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"Greatest" king is interesting, since it implies there were others. This makes little sense in the developed post-LR history, but did make some more sense when TH was written, and was kinda-sorta-maybe set in First Age Beleriand, and Thingol (whom the Elvenking more or less was) could be considered the "greatest" (given that this was post Beren and Luthien and thus after Fingolfin and Finrod were dead). Remember that at this early stage in the legendarium, the people of Beleriand or Ilkorins were not Eldar; nor were the Wood-elves even after TH was published until their later promotion from Avari to Nandor.