I’ve been watching the extended version of The Two Towers for the first time and I have some questions inspired by the part where Aragorn flashes back to some kind of a Magical Night he spent with Arwen, after which they were In Love.
From what I remember of Tolkien’s writings (which I admit may be drastically mistaken since I don’t have any at hand), elves were pair-bonded with one partner for life. If two elves had sex, they became engaged forever, or “plighted their troth” as Tolkien put it. (But I don’t think he necessarily meant that was the only way for them to pair-bond.) And I seem to remember a line in the Appendix about how, some time before The Lord Of The Rings takes place, Aragorn and Arwen met, possibly in Caras Galadon, and “plighted their troth.”
Does that mean that as soon as Aragorn met Arwen he jumped on her and fucked her and they were inextricably bonded forever after? On the one hand, the movie sort of implies this because they spent a Magic Night together, after which they were In Love Forever. On the other hand, if that happened, it’s hard to imagine them not marrying right away (how long was their engagement?) and Elrond trying to hurry her across the sea.
So, did they do it in Caras Galadon or did they save themselves for marriage? Either way, assuming an elf never had sex without “plighting her troth,” Arwen must have been centuries old before she lost her virginity (to her baby cousin). Did she have monthly menstrual periods for all those hundreds of years?
If they waited until marriage, does that mean that Aragorn of the Manly Stubble was in his eighties before he lost his virginity? I know that’s romantic, but what would that do to a guy’s self-esteem? Could he really have spent decades wandering Middle Earth, exploring the wild lands of Rhun and Harad, with their exotic, swarthy women, and never have gotten laid? Did Numenoreans have some kind of a special gift for never needing to get their rocks off?
What do all you Tolkien experts think? When did Aragorn finally pop Arwen’s centuries-ripe cherry?
Back to Aragorn and Arwen, it was a standing joke at Merton College, Oxford, where T was Prof of English, that when he wrote in the appendix ‘they looked east to the Shadow and west to the Twilight, and they plighted their troth and were glad’, he was referring, perhaps with desiderium, to mutually achieved orgasm.
Is there any particular reason why Arwen in particular, and Elf-women in general, should have had menstrual cycles anything like as frequent as humans’? They had plenty of time to get knocked up; coming into season once a decade would have been more than adequate. Let’s not forget that Galadriel, one of the most ancient Elves in Arda and mated to Celeborn for millennia, produced exactly one daughter.
Whereas, of course, Hobbits were at it like knives from the day they were married, as a quick glance at the family trees will suggest.
And let’s not forget that Aragorn in his eighties still had well over a century of the prime of life before him; it’s not like he had to get his shagging in quickly before he got too old, say thirty-odd. Also he wasn’t surrounded by a barrage of images constantly telling him he ought to be gettin’ some if he was any kind of a man, and incidentally this brand of beer was just the thing to make him irresistible to the ladies.
Well, assuming Aragorn stayed chaste for Arwen, I’d imagine he could blow off a lot of steam by running about in the woods tracking stuff and running his Numenorians’ Militia. I hear beheading orcs is very good for relieving stress.
Now that I’ve thought about that question a little, I’m sure it doesn’t make sense for creatures that live as long as elves do and reproduce so rarely to have a monthly cycle.
I expect elvish menstruation is probably a bit different to that of humans and probably entails looking windswept for a week or so and having your eyes look even more piercing than usual, whilst having to mop up small quantities of some kind of sparkly, luminescent substance.
Or possibly, when an elven ovum is fertilised, it’s retained in the Fallopian tube for a day or two while the uterus is kick-started, and otherwise there never is any ready-just-in-case-but-didn’t-need-it-after-all matter to be got rid of.
For some reason, Prof. T. never seemed to be in much of a hurry to enlighten us.
Thanks for the link. I think it actually answers my question because it says that when elves have sex they’re married, not just engaged. I think it’s pretty likely that Aragorn and Arwen would have followed this tradition and would have considered each other husband and wife after their first meeting if they had slept together then. So I’m pretty sure they must have saved it for their honeymoon.
