Arwen
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Arwen Undómiel is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. She appears in his best-known novel, The Lord of the Rings. Arwen is one of the Half-elven who lived during the Third Age.
In Quenya Arwen's name signifies noble woman (Q. 'ar'=noble, 'wen'=maiden). Her second name or epessë, Undómiel means Evenstar (Evening star) (Q. 'undómë'=dusk, 'él'=star) Therefore she is also called Arwen Evenstar.
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[edit] Appearances
[edit] Literature
Arwen is the youngest child of Elrond and CelebrÃan; her elder brothers are the twins Elladan and Elrohir. Through her father, she is the granddaughter of Eärendil the Mariner (the second of the Half-elven), great-granddaughter of Tuor of Gondolin, and therefore a direct descendant of the ancient House of Hador. Arwen is also a descendant of King Turgon of the Noldor through her great-grandmother, Idril. Through her mother, she is the granddaughter of Lady Galadriel and the great-granddaughter of Finarfin. Through both of her parents she is a direct descendant of the ancient Elven House of Finwë. Furthermore, Arwen is a descendant of Beren and Lúthien Tinúviel, whose story resembles hers. Indeed, Arwen is held to be the reappearance in likeness of her ancestress Lúthien, most fair of all the Elves, who is called Nightingale (Tinúviel).
Arwen is a very distant relative of her (future) husband Aragorn, being his first cousin 63 times removed. Aragorn's ancestor, Elros, the first King of Númenor, was Elrond's brother and thus her uncle.
She eventually becomes Queen of the Reunited Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor when she marries Aragorn, who is of the line of the Kings of Arnor.
Throughout the War of the Ring, Elrond begs her to accompany her kin to the Undying Lands to escape the approaching forces of Sauron, but she refuses, as she does not want to leave Aragorn. She ultimately rejects her Elvish immortality (which she, as one of the Half-elven, was free to do) to marry and die with Aragorn.
After the War of the Ring ends, she and Aragorn produce the future heir of the throne, Eldarion, and at least two unnamed daughters.
By Arwen and Aragorn's marriage, the long-sundered lines of the Half-elven are joined. Their union also serves to unite and preserve the bloodlines of the Three Kings of the High Elves (Ingwë, Finwë, and the brothers Olwë and Elwë) as well as the only line with Maiar blood through Arwen's great-great-great grandmother, Melian, Queen of Doriath.
As told in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen", found in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings (after the third volume, The Return of the King), during Aragorn's twentieth year he met Arwen for the first time in Rivendell, where he lived under Elrond's protection. Arwen, then over 2700 years old, had recently returned to her father's home after living for a while with her grandmother Galadriel in Lórien. Aragorn fell in love with Arwen at first sight. About thirty years later, the two were reunited in Lórien; at that time, Arwen reciprocated Aragorn's love; then they "plighted their troth" on the mound of Cerin Amroth.
Arwen's first appearance in The Lord of the Rings proper is at Rivendell, when the Hobbits arrive there, and Aragorn is seen with her—the first hint of their relationship. Later, when the Fellowship of the Ring come to Lothlórien, he remembers their earlier meeting and pauses in reverence to Cerin Amroth.
She enters the story again when, before taking to the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn is met by a group consisting of Dúnedain (his people, from the North), and Arwen's brothers, Elladan and Elrohir. They bring to him a banner on black cloth: a gift made by Arwen, and a sign that encourages him to take the difficult path. When it is unfurled at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields to reveal the emblem of Elendil in mithril, gems, and gold, it is the first triumphant announcement of the King's return.
Finally, she arrives at Minas Tirith after Aragorn has become king of Gondor and Arnor, and they are married.
The four mentions described above are her only appearances in the story as it stands, not counting The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. Judging by visibility, Arwen is mostly a minor character in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but she nevertheless appears in detail in the Appendices. Also, she plays a role in the plot which is disproportionate to the number of scenes in which she appears. When Éowyn falls in love with Aragorn it is his fidelity to Arwen that forbids him from reciprocating. This motivates Éowyn's subsequent heroism during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, which has major repercussions for the defence of Middle-earth. Arwen serves as inspiration and motivation for Aragorn, who must become King before he may wed her.
Arwen gives up her life in 121 of the Fourth Age, at Cerin Amroth in Lórien, after the death of Aragorn. At the time, she is 2,901 years old.
[edit] Adaptations
Arwen does not appear in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, nor in the 1980 Rankin-Bass adaptation of The Return of the King.
In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Arwen is played by Liv Tyler. Various additional scenes pertaining to Arwen are inserted, some of which deviate from the books and some of which seem inspired by the Tale.
In the first film, Arwen sneaks up to find Aragorn and single-handedly rescues Frodo Baggins from the Black Riders at Bruinen, thwarting them with a sudden flood, summoned by an incantation. In the book, it was Glorfindel who put Frodo on horseback and sent him alone to flee the Nazgûl, and Elrond and Gandalf who arranged the flood. In the book, Frodo makes his own stand against the Ringwraiths; in the movie Arwen defends him. During this flight, Arwen wields the sword Hadhafang, stated to have once been wielded by her father in film merchandise. This sword, however, does not appear in the books at all; in fact, in the books, Arwen is never mentioned as armed (but she could have armed and defended herself at need; see below).
Following the aforementioned scenes, the deviations include a scene in which Aragorn is injured and has a dream about Arwen (who kisses him), a scene where Arwen has a fight with her father about leaving for Valinor, and a scene where she (with Figwit) actually departs for Valinor and then suddenly returns when she sees an image of her future son, Eldarion. (In the books, it can hardly have been surprising to Arwen that she and Aragorn might have children together, since they are both descended of two similar unions.)
Also, and perhaps most importantly, she apparently becomes sick with grief in the film version of The Return of the King — possibly over Aragorn's seemingly hopeless cause and his impending death — soon after she rides back from the road to the Grey Havens. Elrond takes the reforged Narsil, now Andúril, to Aragorn at Dunharrow, and tells him that her fate has become bound with the One Ring, and that she is dying.
[edit] Reaction
Arwen had a very small role in the books outside of the Appendix (Tolkien conceived the character late in the writing; Aragorn was originally supposed to marry Éowyn, as related in The History of Middle-earth). In addition to making Arwen a more visible character, the change employs the principle of "economy of characters". Characters like Glorfindel (the Elf who, in the book, helps Frodo by lending him his horse and later aiding his companions in driving the Nazgûl into the water), who appear once and perform only a few tasks, are often excised from film interpretations.
In earlier copies of the script (when the movies were supposed to be filmed in two parts under a different production company), Arwen actually fought in the Battle of Helm's Deep and personally brought the sword Andúril to Aragorn. Some attribute the elimination of her character from the sequence to an early script leak. Another story is that Liv Tyler herself felt that the character's involvement in Helm's Deep was inappropriate, and convinced Jackson and his team to leave her out of the sequence.
These changes have met with mixed reactions. Many fans were upset because they seemed to pander to the lowest common denominator — that in order to make Arwen a "worthwhile" or "strong" character, she had to be a warrior — while in the books, her strength stems from her brave choice to forsake immortality and live a mortal life with Aragorn, which did not involve martial skill. Furthermore, there is already a skilled female warrior present in the story — namely Éowyn, but she first appears in the second part of the film trilogy. Some fans felt it odd to make it a point to insert a female warrior into a story which already had a prominent one, because this detracts from Éowyn's bravery in riding to battle. However, in the second and third films in which Éowyn appears, Arwen's martial abilities are toned down.
Some criticize The Lord of the Rings for including few named female characters and thus accuse Tolkien of sexism. However, in the essay Laws and Customs among the Eldar, which appears in Morgoth's Ring, Tolkien writes that male and female Elves are in fact viewed in Elven society as equals, save for the fact that only the females are capable of childbearing and are thus viewed as literally holding the future of their people in their hands. It is for this reason that they traditionally refrain from going to war (although they are still trained in all the aspects of combat taught to male Elves), usually occupying themselves during wartime as healers. As the text itself states:
- In all such things, not concerned with the bringing forth of children, the neri and nissi (that is, the men and women) of the Eldar are equal – unless it be in this (as they themselves say) that for the nissi the making of things new is for the most part shown in the forming of their children, so that invention and change is otherwise mostly brought about by the neri. There are, however, no matters which among the Eldar only a nér can think or do, or others with which only a nÃs is concerned. There are indeed some differences between the natural inclinations of neri and nissi, and other differences that have been established by custom (varying in place and in time, and in the several races of the Eldar). For instance, the arts of healing, and all that touches on the care of the body, are among the Eldar most practised by the nissi; whereas it was the elven-men who bore arms at need. And the Eldar deemed that the dealing of death, even when lawful or under necessity, diminished the power of healing, and that the virtue of the nissi in this matter was due rather to their abstaining from hunting or war than to any special power that went with their womanhood. Indeed in dire straits or desperate defence, the nissi fought valiantly, and there was less difference in strength or speed between elven-men and elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals. On the other hand many elven-men were great healers and skilled in the lore of living bodies, though such men abstained from hunting, and went not to war until the last need.(Morgoth's Ring, "The Second Phase", Laws and Customs Among the Eldar).
[edit] External links
- Arwen at The Thain's Book