Galadriel

Is there a thread explaining the technical details of how to do that, for computer illiterates?

I haven't even caught up listening to Season 1 yet. One of the eps mentioned the chicken run and now I'm distracted by all the LotRO videos.

'Tis frustrating sometimes listening to him answering lore questions and getting them incorrect, though.
 
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Haha I actually had better luck listening live while I was working than now at home (it's an 8am start in my time zone, which overlaps with school bus pickup).
 
Back toGaladriel.

So Feanor is dead and gone from the world, but he still is alive and well in one place - between Galadriel's ears.

She's a crafter, prominent among a family of crafters. So, what do we know of what she has crafted? Not minor stuff like rope or bread or cloth, but real Noldo-craft?

Mirror - a poor-man's palantir, and Phial - a poor-man's silmaril. Both are great, but both are also kind of sad pale imitations of Feanor-craft.

Millennia later, she's just copying Feanor. Or, now that I think of it, anywhere she's not copying Feanor, she's copying Melian.
Just who is Galadriel anyway, nameless and alone?
 
amysrevenge said:
She's a crafter, prominent among a family of crafters. So, what do we know of what she has crafted? Not minor stuff like rope or bread or cloth, but real Noldo-craft?
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Not just her. I've pondered making a thread asking what are the favorite crafts/hobbies of all the Noldorin princes and princesses. Tolkien recorded some, but not all. I don't know whether it would come up, but it might provide ideas for a nice script or scenery touch now and again.

amysrevenge said:
Millennia later, she's just copying Feanor. Or, now that I think of it, anywhere she's not copying Feanor, she's copying Melian.
Just who is Galadriel anyway, nameless and alone?
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She's not satisfied with herself or her life, is she? Aside from missing Valinor and her family but being too proud to go back, and wanting to take over the world.

But I think she must have crafted or done other things that were more original.
 
amysrevenge said:
She's a crafter, prominent among a family of crafters. So, what do we know of what she has crafted? Not minor stuff like rope or bread or cloth, but real Noldo-craft?
Click to expand...
My quick, slightly cheeky answer would be Lothlorien. She sang the trees, and formed the place as she wished. We do also see evidence she inherited her Vanya grandmother's (assumed) skill in poetry and song. But beyond that...
We gave her aunt Irime the craft of glassblowing. Could we do the same with Galadriel, and have the Phial be hers more than just from her Mirror? Or perhaps she is a gemcrafter? We could have her weaving, too -- a traditional queenly occupation (see, The Odyssey), and a skill we know her granddaughter has...

I'm not sure, however, that we need to give every Noldo or dwarf a specific "craft", like we're assigning D&D skills. Yes, they're all makers, but if someone is really obviously involved in another form of Subcreation, like song or, you know, Lothlorien, we probably could be a little vague on other crafts they might have.
 
I would say she planted the trees, rather than literally sing them into existence. In UT the seeds were specifically from Numenor. But the landscaping and gardens would be partly her work as well -- though some of it goes back to Amroth's reign. The timeless atmosphere is all her work, certainly.

You're right that not every Noldo character has to have a specific craft, of course. Not all of them focus enough on crafting. Yet I imagine they all have a hobby of some kind of art or sub-creation.

I think gemcrafting runs the risk of looking like yet another Feanor imitation*. But glassblowing and weaving are good suggestions. I had forgotten that she did actually participate in weaving the cloaks she gave to the Fellowship. Also tending and harvesting Yavanna's corn and especially baking and giving the lembas is reserved for queens and high ladies, and their maidservants. So it is a significant craft after all.

*That said, the Mirror was at least half about predicting the future, which Palantiri don't do as far as I know.
 
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The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Galadriel being a gardener, in essence, appeals to me. It plays to both sides of her personality: her care and concern for living things, and her wish to rule and be obeyed. Treebeard, for example, might critique Lothlorien in ways not dissimilar to his words on the Entwives and their gardens. But he's not completely right -- or, at least, his view is not the only way of looking at it -- and their and her work is also good, healthy, and beautiful.
 
Gardening from an immortal would be interesting. Simultaneously focused on the short term (a season, a single plant) and the long term (a whole garden, strains and breeding).
 
Exactly. Look at Cerin Amroth: somebody probably built that whole mound. Then planted the central mallorn, waited several decades, planted the ring of mellyrn, waited more decades, planted the ring of birches, then built the flets. It probably took centuries before it was mature, and the Elves may view it as still unfinished as long as the trees keep growing.

The word cerin recalls korin, a word used in Tolkien's much earlier writing for any circular landscape made by Elves: essentially Eldar had a tradition of building henges of living trees, or stone, or maybe wood. So there may be many cerins (*cirin?) made of living trees arranged in rings that took decades to grow. I could even imagine Elves making huge geoglyphs out of living trees planted in "constellations". Although, part of the point of geoglyphs is to be visible from the sky, and I don't know who the Elves would be making them for, unless they were visible from a nearby height.
 
Well... I'm not so sure about that last. I seem to recall an example of massive, can-only-be-seen-properly-from-the-sky earth drawings being carved into the desert by people who would never be able to see it (I think it might have been in Peru?). I think the current theory -- other than UFO's, of course -- is that it was some form of offerings or worship? Meant for those above, not below? Obviously, that exact motivation doesn't quite work for the elves, since the Valar are to the West, not in the Sky, and there's not really any sense of where Eru is other than "outside Arda", but after the First Age we do have Earendil in the sky, and Arien and Tillon before that, so maybe... there's an idea or tradition of living "drawings" designed for their viewing pleasure/benefit? Just a random thought.
 
OK, so geoglyphs don't make much sense for Elves. But they could make large garden and tree arrangements more complex than a cerin, but still small enough for one person to get a sense of its shape by going in, or looking at it from a nearby tower/hill/mountain.
 
Back to Galadriel herself.

Why didn't she become High Queen of the Noldor, after Gil-galad was slain? It's possible that she was deemed inelligible for being a woman, not being a warrior, or being a woman married to a non-Noldo. It's possible that the Noldor decided they were too broken and scattered to have a Kingship anymore.

Is it at all possible that Galadriel was offered the crown, and turned it down? That seems difficult to justify, but if that is how people want to go, or imagine it going, then it will be necessary to decide why she turned it down.

When did she start to desire the One Ring and world domination? If she didn't ponder that until some years afer Sauron was overthrown, then maybe she actually didn't want the Crown at the time Gil-galad died. But she was already an ambitious woman.


Whether Galadriel is or isn't considered elligible for the crown, and the reasons, will also have bearing on whether or not Elrond was asked to become King of the Noldor. If so, then turning it down must become part of his characterization -- although in Elrond's case I think declining is more in-character.
 
I had always assumed that no one becaming High King/Queen after Gil-galad had more to do with the waning of the Firstborn -- their fading and the general dearth of Noldor left -- than any reflection upon the eligible candidates. I don't know if Galadriel would have taken the crown, or if even then her better instincts were to reject her desire for power, but it surely would have been a grave temptation. If we go that path, it needs to set up the final test with the Ring. I suspect it was never offered, though, not to her or anyone else.

Actually, I'd rather we tie in the fall of the High Kingship of the Noldor more to the Dominion of Men than anything else. I know the published LotR text suggests that the Fourth Age is the proper beginning of the Age of Men, but most of the Third Age action is in Gondor and Arnor, too. The elves left in ME are tarrying, and in a rather holding pattern -- at least, so far as we see. Even Rivendell and Lothlorien are depicted as bubbles outside of the influences of the time, not integrated communities within the larger world.

As to when Galadriel first desired the Ring... I actually suspect the conscious temptation is rather fresh. That is, I don't think she was sitting around, in her darker moments, longing for or wishing for the Ring while it was assumed lost at the bottom of the Sea (I see no reason to believe she wasn't fooled by Saruman's words on the subject). But when word reached her that it was found, and on its way to cross paths with her... then, I think, her old temptation for power took a new and dangerous form.
 
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