The drafts are, let’s say, chaotic, on the question of how many elf/human pairings there have been, and what offspring get to choose.
The inconsistentcy arises because only the descendants of those who choose to be elves get to choose. Thus, Elros’ kids and descendants (and Aragorn’s) are all human and get no choice; Elrond chose elf and it seems that the choice continues for his kids (perhaps only as long as Elrond remains in ME). One would think though that at some point of dilution beyond the “half” mark the choice would be lost. This may be the case for Arwen, per the following.
Luthien gets a one-off special choice to become human (based on direct divine action) because she’s just so brave and cute and enchanting and all.
Arwen is seen as a second Luthien. Let’s say, therefore, that Arwen gets a one-off special choice to become human because she’s marrying the King and therefore agreeing to stay in ME and to live in the Age of Men. Yes, this discounts the published language in LOTR which discusses her remaining behind while Elrond sails and her giving her seat in the ship to Frodo, but is in some ways less problematic than the alternative. For instance, ya’d think that Elrond might otherwise be willing to stick around for a couple of centuries to allow Arwen to cross the sea with him after Aragorn’s death if the only issue was her choice expiring when he left ME.
So, there’s not a wholly-satisfactory answer. I like the one-off choice for Arwen myself–which also addresses the issue that death is supposed to be Eru’s gift which no one else can to interfere with.
Actually the Valar decided the fate of the Peredhil back in Valinor. The choice to decide which kindred to belong to was given to Earendil, Elwing, their kids Elrond and Elros. Once Elros picked mortality, his kids didn’t have the option anymore. Elrond’s kids were extended the option, but had to exercise it one way or the other by the time Elrond left Middle-Earth. And since Elladan and Elrohir didn’t leave Middle-Earth with dad, I expect they opted for mortality, tho it isn’t explicitly stated.
Opting for mortality among the Peredhil always resulted in those descendants not having that option. Luthien was not Peredhil, and Dior was accounted fully elvish, despite having mortal parents.
Is it explicitly stated that they didn’t leave with 'Rond? They’re not mentioned as being on the ship, but I would find it hard to believe that Galadriel, Gandalf, Elrond, Bilbo, and Frodo were the only folks on board.
And I’ve always wondered about why choosing mortality would close the option for your decendants, but not choosing Elvishness. That seems to suggest that Elves and their gifts are somehow “greater” or “higher” than Men and our gift, contradictory to what Tolkien wrote on the matter. I still maintain that Elrond is fallible, and was incorrect in stating that Arwen had a choice. Remember, while she stayed with Aragorn, she didn’t age, and when she did die, it was through grief, one of the two causes of “death” possible for Elves (and interestingly, one which is not normally possible for humans). But Qadgop and I have been over this before, and didn’t come to an agreement then, so I doubt that we will now, either.
Well, it is stated in LOTR that they dwelt in Rivendell along with Celeborn after Elrond left. So yes.
Because JRRT said so? He designed that universe. And he was known to be a bit quirky.
Again, JRRT himself said that Arwen was definitely mortal. I can’t find the thread now, but I know I cited the specific source, probably from “Letters”, in the past.
And that’s what makes posting here with Chronos fun! I have to re-examine my own prejudices. Note that in this very thread, I had to recant one of my LOTR assertions!! :eek: :eek:
As long as we’re (once again) discussing Arwen’s Choice…I was watching Two Towers again while channel surfing, and landed on the scene where Elrond foresees Arwen’s fate and Aragorn’s death. This scene always puzzled me, and I finally :smack: figured it out: (this is something probably every other fan in the world saw immediately…it took me a while): Elrond is assuming the status quo. His vision assumes that Arwen remains immortal, so he paints a picture of her wandering around the world for thousands of years after Aragorn has departed (made clear by the way his tomb has fallen into ruins). So the idea that Arwen might choose to become mortal hadn’t occurred to him.
This is, of course, the movie version. The movies never go into the choice that the peredhil have; they never mention that Elrond has a human ancestor and chose elvishness himself.
OK, gotcha. I didn’t remember that part. The argument, then, that they didn’t leave later (say, with Legolas and Gimli, or hypothetically with Sam) would be that the assumption that their choice expired when dad left? I don’t think that assumption is necessary to explain Arwen’s situation, which could simply be that once she’s firmly in love, she’s not going to fall back out of love (actually, it was probably too late for that at the beginning of LotR, but nobody but Arwen herself could be sure of that). And given that we don’t see any tearful last parting between Elrond and the boys, nor any strong motive for them to choose mortality, I would still suspect that they did leave, just later.
JRRT wrote in 1954 (from “Letters” #153) “When she weds Aragorn she ‘makes the choice of Luthien’, so the grief at her parting from Elrond is specially poignant. Elrond passes Over Sea.”
And from “Letters” #154 written 1954: " The Half-elven, such as Elrond and Arwen, can choose to which kind and fate they shall belong: choose once and for all".
From “Letters” #345 written late 1972: “Arwen was not an elf, but one of the half-elven who abandoned her elvish rights.”
But JRRT had more to say on the topic in the ‘Canonical works’ too. Appendix A, I, THE NÚMENOREAN KINGS (i) Númenor’ reads:
JRRT seems to make it pretty clear that she chose mortality when she wed Aragorn, and that the choice was irrevocable. How much doubt can there be, after reading statements like those above?
As for the boys, well, that never was resolved. From the same letter, #153, where JRRT writes about Arwen making the choice of Luthien, he also writes that “The end of his sons is not told: They delay their choice, and remain for a while”.
I agree Arwen chose to become mortal; Elros also lived many lifetimes longer than regular humans when he made his choice–it is not surprising that the half-elven who choose to be mortal would live as long as high Numenorean/uncorrupted men. (She is, however, a morally troubled figure since the ability of the Numenoreans to choose the time of their deaths did not necessarily encompass a right to suicide by grief before it is time–that could be seen as an attempt to reclaim an elvish right which she has supposedly renounced.)
Here are some of the reasons it is tempting to question JRRT on the point and think of Arwen as a special case (besides the obvious attempts to make her a counterpart/parallel/contrast of Luthien):
The choice did not seem to be offered/applied consistently in earlier situations. I don’t have the books here, but IIRC (my problem currently is that I have read HOMES more recently than the Silmarillion and therefore may be confusing published works with abandoned drafts; another problem is that the names of Luthien’s descendants changed a lot), Dior had 2 young sons (at one point, again IIRC, named Elrond and Elros) who were (at least originally) left in the woods to die of exposure by the plundering remnant of Feanor’s sons. Ignoring that elves would not typically die of exposure, what “choice” could they have? Do they lose the possibility of choosing the gift of Eru by dying young?
The idea of making the time to choose last only as long as the parent (which one, if the half-elven lines were joined in the union?) remained in ME is sorta hard to work out in practice. (Would the Valar have made a rule applicable onlyto Elrond’s kids? Why?) Again, what if your parent died while you were still a child? (Aside: I assume Earendel never chose.)
Why is elven the “default mode?” Until they choose, they are pretty clearly not “half-elven” at all but elven, living long elven lives of wisdom, skill and beauty. And why don’t you get to choose to be Maiar if you are Luthien?
Back to Arwen’s case specifically, she chose when she agreed to marry Aragorn; she didn’t wait until Elrond left (which is one reason why the choice seems a one-off–she chose for Luthien’s reason; though on reflection the mechanism for choosing might already have been there). (Note that she didn’t have to make this choice–Melian married Thingol without becoming elven and Luthien married Beren without becoming human–she must have made it in anticipation of feeling that she would not want to be separated from Aragorn after his death, as Luthien felt about Beren. Thus, if she had not chosen specially, Elrond could have waited in ME for Aragorn to die.)
Absent the appendix language, Elrond’s departure could have been just the “choice” date, not also a departure date, for his sons, so they may have stayed on in ME either elven or human. If not, how exactly could they have “delayed their choice?”
Well, that was disjointed, but it’s what I’ve been thinking. (Geez, on preview it sound like I’m carping–let it be known that I wouldn’t bother carping over piddly stuff if I wasn’t a big fangirl over all:))
Which is why the Silmarillion is so inferior. Tolkien never finished it, it was published by Christopher Tolkien after JRR’s death. Christopher Tolkien will publish anything, even his father’s old shopping lists.
On the choice of Arwen, I always assumed that the choice was having sex. It’s always an elf female who marries a human male, and having sex with a mortal male (being penetrated?) somehow confers mortality. I’m not sure how elves reproduce, perhaps it’s an asexual process, or at least a process that doesn’t involve intercourse.
I’ll let the real experts tear this apart, but it always seemed to me that Tolkien goes out of his way to avoid mentioning sex. That’s not just him, of course, he was writing for children in an era when sex wasn’t mentioned in polite books. So “marriage” is a euphemism.
Respectfully disagreeing, C.K.: I really don’t think sex has anything to do with the choice. As Tolkien wrote it Arwen (like Luthien) consciously chose to become mortal to stay with the human they loved, thus hoping they would once again be together beyond the circles of the world, finding the destiny that is reserved by Eru only for humans, not elves. Whether Tolkien chose to write about sex or not is irrelevant in this case. Choice and free will are important themes throughout LOTR; thus the conscious choice was enough to grant the mortality, not “penetration”.
I do agree with you about Christopher Tolkien though.
Final side-thought: Another reason it took Tolkien so long & so many drafts was not just perfectionism. He did have a full time job and a busy family life after all.
Elured and Elurin. They were mentioned in Sil. And they apparently died before the Valar had their big pow-wow to decide what to do about the Peredhil, anyway. That occurred after Earendil and Elwing showed up in Valinor.
Well, JRRT did seem to contradict himself, as i noted in my previous post, where he wrote that Elladan and Elrohir stayed in ME and delayed their choice, even after Pops had left. And the Valar did end up making the choices applicable only to Elrond’s kids, because once Elros opted out, they were the only Peredhil left. BTW, Earendil chose elvenkind, because Elwing wanted to be of elvenkind, tho he’d have preferred to be mortal (per the Sil).
Because the powers are Tricksy? Tho I’d guess that it’s easier to fit someone into fate and later cut them loose from it (elven opting for mortality) than to have someone not subject to the Music of the Ainur being forced into the scheme of things. As for the Maiar question, I think the criteria for being a Maiar was that you had to spring fully formed from the mind of Eru. IMHO.
JRRT never worked all the bugs out of his mythos. Which is excellent, as it gives us great debate fodder.
Why, then, what of the Children of the Gods? (I actually know the answer to this–they were downsized as the drafts went on.)
Last question: why isn’t Dior mortal? In the final formulation, didn’t Luthien give birth to him after she returned from Mandos as a mortal? Is he an exception to the “no choice for those whose parents choose human” rule?
I figured the Powers got blindsided on this one. Wasn’t in their plans, must’ve come out of the Third Theme of Iluvatar. Besides, Grandpa and Grandma (Elf and Maiar) seem to think he’s an elf, he seems to think he’s an elf, I guess the Powers decided to sit back and see what happened. By the time they got around to making some rules about this Peredhil stuff, Dior had been offed. Oops, gosh, let’s see where his spirt ends up. Hey, he’s staying in Mandos! Guess he’s an elf then. Hey, we need some rules 'bout this stuff!
What’s strange is that Tuor, Idril’s mortal husband, was allowed to sail with her to the Undying Lands and presumably has lived happily ever after with her, without dying. Why the Valar didn’t allow this for any other mortal/elf couples is unclear. Maybe it’s just too easy of a solution?
I used to be annoyed that all the elf/mortal couples were between a mortal man and a female elf, but I read one of the HoME books (can’t remember which volume) which discussed the relationship between Aegnor, brother of Finrod and Galadriel, and Andreth, a mortal woman of the house of Beor. They fell in love, but never married, since Aegnor was afraid of her getting old and dying, plus elves didn’t customarily get married in times of war, and he knew he was going to die fairly soon. It was brought up as a platform for Finrod and Andreth to discuss the spiritual differences between Elves and Men. Probably the saddest love story Tolkien wrote about. (Interestingly enough, Aegnor apparently had spikey hair.)
Well, JRRT was pretty vague about Tuor being accepted as an Eldar, writing mostly about it as a second-hand story, passed down among the remnants of their people along the shores of Beleriand. There were no confirmatory sitings of him in Valinor. However, in one place in his background notes, he did mention it as if it were fact. So, who knows?
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