Arwen

• 1. Introduction

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  Arwen Undómiel was already more than 2,700 years old the first time Aragorn saw her. She is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, appearing in the novel The Lord of the Rings. Her father was Elrond, lord of the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell. Her mother was Celebrían, daughter of the Elf-queen Galadriel of Lothlórien. Her name, "Ar-wen," means "noble maiden" in Sindarin. She held the title Evenstar as the most beautiful of the last generation of High Elves still in Middle-earth. Her elder brothers were the twins Elladan and Elrohir. Her story raises one question: what does it mean to give up everything you have always been, for someone you love?

• 2. A Bloodline Like No Other

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  Eärendil the Mariner was Arwen's grandfather on her father's side, making her the great-granddaughter of Tuor of Gondolin. Through her great-grandmother Idril, she was a descendant of King Turgon of the Noldor. Through both parents, Arwen was a direct descendant of the ancient Elven House of Finwë. She descended from Beren and Lúthien, whose love story followed the same impossible pattern as her own. Tolkien considered Arwen the reappearance in likeness of Lúthien herself, fairest of all Elves, called Tinúviel, the Nightingale. Aragorn himself shared this extraordinary web of descent. His distant ancestor Elros Tar-Minyatur, the first King of Númenor, was Elrond's own brother. Elros had chosen mortal life rather than the immortal way of the Eldar.

• 3. The Pledge on Cerin Amroth

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  "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" is an appendix to The Lord of the Rings that opens with Aragorn's twentieth year. That year, he encountered Arwen for the first time in Rivendell, where he lived under Elrond's protection. Arwen had recently returned from staying with her grandmother Galadriel in Lothlórien. Aragorn fell in love at first sight. Thirty years would pass before they were reunited, again in Lothlórien. On the mound of Cerin Amroth, they committed to marrying each other. Arwen agreed to remain in Middle-earth, setting aside the passage to the Undying Lands. In the main narrative of the novel, Arwen first appears at a feast in Rivendell. She sits beside her father shortly after Frodo Baggins wakes in the House of Elrond. When the Fellowship later visits Lothlórien, Aragorn pauses in reverence at the memory of her.

  Elrond placed one condition on the marriage: Aragorn had to become King of both Arnor and Gondor. The path ran through war. Before Aragorn took the Paths of the Dead, Elladan and Elrohir arrived carrying a gift Arwen had made. It was a banner of black cloth. At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the banner was unfurled to reveal the emblem of Elendil, worked in mithril, gems, and gold. That moment served as the first public announcement of the king's return. Aragorn was crowned, and Arwen came to Minas Tirith. They were married and had a son named Eldarion, as well as at least two unnamed daughters. Their union preserved the bloodlines of three kings of the high Elves: Ingwë, Finwë, and the brothers Olwë and Elwë. It also preserved the only line with Maiarin blood, which ran through Arwen's great-great-great-grandmother Melian, Queen of Doriath. Before Frodo departed, Arwen gave him the Evenstar, her necklace bearing a white stone. Her words to him were: "When the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you...this will bring you aid." One year after Aragorn's death, Arwen died at the age of 2,901.

• 4. Critical Reception

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  As recorded in The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien did not have Arwen in his early plans for the story. He conceived the character of "Elrond's daughter" late in the writing. Before that point, he had considered giving Aragorn a different bride: Éowyn of the royal family of Rohan. Scholars reading the finished novel have arrived at varied assessments. Melissa Hatcher, writing in Mythlore, called Arwen "a symbol of the unattainable." She argued this made Arwen a perfect counterpart for the unattainable Aragorn, as seen through Éowyn's eyes. Carol Leibiger, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, tied Arwen's limited presence to a broader pattern in Tolkien's world. Elves, as established in The Silmarillion and continued in The Lord of the Rings, tend to retreat to protected sanctuaries. Nancy Enright, a scholar of English literature, compared Arwen's voluntary choice of mortality to the choice Christ makes in Christian theology. She acknowledged that Arwen does not ride into battle. But she argued that Arwen's inner power is "subtly conveyed" and present throughout the novel.

• 5. Arwen on Screen

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  Peter Jackson cast Liv Tyler as Arwen in his Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In the first film, Arwen rides out alone to find Aragorn and then rescues Frodo from the Black Riders at the Fords of Bruinen. She summons a flood with an incantation. During that scene she carries the sword Hadhafang. Film merchandise described the weapon as once wielded by her father and, before him, by his grandmother Idril Celebrindal. In an earlier version of the script, Arwen also fought at the Battle of Helm's Deep. She was to deliver the sword Andúril to Aragorn. Scenes of her at Helm's Deep were filmed before the film's writers reconsidered the change. They deleted her from the sequence, with Liv Tyler's approval. The critic John D. Rateliff approved of the deletion. He described the trade-off as Arwen reduced to a "sort of Lady of Shallott languishing for most of the final two films."

  In the film adaptation of The Two Towers, an injured Aragorn is revived by a dream or vision of Arwen. She kisses him and asks the Valar to protect him. In the Return of the King, Elrond brings the sword Narsil, reforged as Andúril, to Aragorn at Dunharrow. He tells Aragorn that Arwen's fate has become bound to the One Ring and that she is dying. Sauron uses the Palantír to show Aragorn a vision of a dying Arwen, hoping to weaken his resolve. The Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft argued that these changes make Arwen passive in ways the book does not. Rather than a steady support, she becomes a distraction for Aragorn. In the extended version, a scene is titled "Arwen's vision." The Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi noted that it drew visually from John Duncan's 1911 Pre-Raphaelite painting Riders of the Sidhe.

  The films introduce a jewelled pendant called the Evenstar, which Arwen gives to Aragorn as a token of their love. In the novel, Arwen gives that necklace to Frodo rather than to Aragorn. A similar pendant appears in Marion Zimmer Bradley's short story The Jewel of Arwen. In that story, Arwen gives it to "the Ring-Bearer" rather than to Aragorn. In the Mythopoeic Society's Tolkien on Film, four scholars examined the portrayal of Arwen across the films. Cathy Akers-Jordan, Victoria Gaydosik, Jane Chance, and Maureen Thum each contended that the Jackson films remain thematically compatible with Tolkien's writings.

• 6. Other Voices and Stages

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  Sonia Fraser voiced Arwen in the 1981 BBC radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings. In the 2007 London musical adaptation, Rosalie Craig took the role. She sang the Prologue and three additional songs. These were "The Song of Hope," "Star of Eärendil" with the Elven chorus, and "The Song of Hope Duet" with Aragorn. A 2009 fan film, The Hunt for Gollum, cast Rita Ramnani as Arwen. The Lord of the Rings board game used a portrait of Arwen by John Howe, Jackson's conceptual designer and illustrator. Howe drew that image with the French actress Isabelle Adjani as his inspiration.