Why wasn’t any representative of Rohan present at the Council of Elrond?
Boromir represented the rulers of Gondor (the Stewards).
Aragorn represented the line of kings of Gondor (Isildur’s heir).
Legolas represented the Elves (I guess because the Elves had the Three?).
Gimli and Gloin represented the Dwarves.
Frodo represented the Hobbits (because a Hobbit found the Ring in the first place and Gandalf had a hunch they were important).
Why wasn’t anyone from Rohan present? Were they not invited or did they not send anyone? They were just as much a part of the war as Gondor, and you could say if either Gondor or Rohan fell, the other would not last long.
Which brings up another question. When did Rohan become aware that Sauruman had turned against them? There’s some clues in the Unfinished Tales section on the Battles of the Fords of Isen. According to UT, Sauruman began breeding Orcs at Isengard possibly as early as 2990 (Frodo left the Shire with the ring in 3017). So that’s quite a long build-up, almost 30 years.
Again according to UT, Isengard was pretty much always regarded as the property of Gondor but was largely neglected except for a skeleton garrison. So Sauruman offered to take the keys to Orthanc and dwell there. After a while he locked the ring of Isengard so the few who did come there would have no idea what was going on (it was pretty isolated at the time).
But the Rohirrim had to have some suspicions well before Saruman launched his forces at the Fords of Isen. When did they become suspicious, and when did they know?
When Eomer took his Edoras (household troops) and destroyed the Orcs that were carrying Merry and Pippen, the orcs were bearing the White Hand. Of course Theoden was being controlled by Grima and Sauruman, and exiled Eomer for treason. But did Eomer know before then that Sauruman was behind this, or were those events THE confirmation of his suspicions?
Yes, he was, and I imagine that that, alone, would be a reason for Rohan to have not been there. Even if a messenger had come from Rivendell with an invitation to attend, Grima probably would have sent him away.
Some better Tolkien scholar than me will probably correct me, but I think that Aragorn’s bloodline wasn’t widely known at that point (though he and Elrond both certainly knew it). If he was representing any group at the Council, it probably would have been the Rangers of the North.
I think so. Gandalf was in Rohan before the council (that’s when he befriended Shadowfax). And it’s possible that Gandalf knew about Grima/Saruman’s mind control and told Elrond not to invite the Rohirrim lest they spill the beans to Saruman.
I can’t remember whether Saruman imprisoned Gandalf on Orthanc before or after the council. I want to say it happened while Frodo was still in the Shire, long before the council, but I can’t get the timeline straight.
It’s been a while since I’ve read Fellowship, but I don’t think they’d planned to have a big council meeting with all the Free Peoples. It just so happened that all these folks had come to Rivendell at roughly the same time to get advice or guidance from Elrond.
I don’t remember why Gimli and Gloin were there, but Boromir had come to Imladris (Rivendell) to find an answer to the dream-riddle “seek the Sword that was Broken.” Legolas had come to tell Elrond (and I guess Aragorn) that Gollum had escaped from the Wood-Elves of Mirkwood. The hobbits, of course, were being escorted by Aragorn to bring the Ring to Elrond. And it was almost a miracle that Gandalf was there at all, since Saruman had locked him up and then he’d had to fight some of the Ringwraiths at Weathertop.
Since everybody was there anyway, Elrond said, “Hey, let’s order in pizza and have a talk.”
Nobody was invited. I don’t have my copy of FotR handy, but my recollection is that Legolas, Boromir, Gimli and Gloin simply showed up at Rivendell looking for guidance concerning the assorted threats they faced, or portents they’d seen. Either Elrond or Gandalf says something to the effect that those who were present at Rivendell when Frodo awakened and was well enough to participate in the Council were the ones called to decide what to do about the Ring and the threat of Mordor.
ETA: Beaten to it by the Dark Lord himself! I knew I shouldn’t have assumed the Ring had washed down Anduin to the Sea.
This is my take on it as well. Also, if anyone represented Rohan at the Council it would have been Boromir - Rohan was a vassal state (or at least long-standing subordinate ally) of Gondor.
You’ll have to forgive me. Several traumatic experiences occurred after the Council, and as a result my memory isn’t what it once was.
As for the horseman sent to Dain, I was just trying to return the waistcoat buttons Bilbo lost when he left Moria. They were nice buttons, and I thought he’d want them back. Maybe even set up a trade of sorts – if he had something he’d picked up on his journeys he shouldn’t have, why then, I’d be happy to take it off his hands in exchange for the buttons. Sort of a finder’s fee.
Was the Council something that was officially “called” as such? Boromir was there because of a dream, and the dwarves because someone nasty had been asking after Bilbo in Erebor (and also were after news of Moria), Legolas to relate that Gollum was escaped - all very coincidental, yes, but I don’t recall any mention of invites…
Only in the sense that people who already happened to be on hand were invited to the meeting. No one was summoned to Rivendell by Elrond for the purpose of meeting to discuss the Ring. You could possibly argue that Frodo was “summoned” via Aragorn, but the purpose of that was to get the Ring into the best shelter they could manage, not to attend a meeting.
Attendees at the Council of Elrond:
[ul]
[li]Elrond (duh)–He lives there.[/li][li]Erestor–Also lives there, and is an advisor. Showing up to meetings is basically his job.[/li][li]Glorfindel–He lives there, too, and is the professional badass who tangled with the Nine over Frodo.[/li][li]Galdor–Happened to be there on an errand from Cirdan, so he got dragooned into representing the Grey Havens on important questions like, “What if we just pitch the damn thing back into the sea?”[/li][li]Glóin–Addressed above; he was there to talk to Bilbo and find out about a ring.[/li][li]Gimli–He was traveling with his father.[/li][li]Legolas–He was looking for Aragorn and or Gandalf to tell them about Gollum’s escape, and Rivendell was the best place to get word to the two wanderers.[/li][li]Boromir–He was looking for a dream interpreter, and Freud hadn’t been born yet.[/li][li]Aragorn–Rivendell is his foster home and base of operations, and he escorted the hobbits there.[/li][li]Gandalf–He was there to meet the hobbits and plan what to do about the Ring, but he was not summoned.[/li][li]Bilbo–Another resident, and one with an obvious interest in the Ring.[/li][li]Frodo–Fled to Rivendell for shelter and healing.[/li][li]Sam–He was there to kill anyone who tried anything with Frodo.[/li][/ul]
The movie version made it sound like it was a planned event, with all races being invited.
Also, no mention of messengers from Sauron to the dwarves, or Boromir’s dream.
And in the extended version of Two Towers, Denethor tells Boromir that Elrond has called a meeting, and he wants Boromir to attend, and get the Ring for him.
Balance is right on this point. The movie version is wrong, wrong, wrong. But I understand why they changed it to an official ‘called’ meeting - too much exposition necessary otherwise. (understand does not mean approve, of course).
The movie had to alter the gist of that “chance meeting” to allow for an audience of umpity-millions of people who had never even read the Hobbit, let alone LoTR before.
Therefore, since they don’t know the source material or the history behind the story, they couldn’t be expected to understand or give a shit why all these random-assed people of different races “just happened” to show up all at the same time as the Ring, and subsequently got dragged into it all.
Having Elrond “call a meeting” is much easier, glossier, and quicker to understand than the original version, which **Balance **has been doing a superb job of explicating. Since the “meeting” isn’t the point of the film (the beginnings of the company and their first travels is) there’s no need to get into all the hoary details of the circumstances of the meeting itself.
On the one hand, I sympathize with the need to condense and clarify, but on the other, that “clarity” often leads to questions like this about why some people/countries got snubbed, when in reality there was no grand plan, and therefore no snubbing.
