the cold empty void beneath Tolkien's romantic ideal

[Odola]

Odola overthinking matters once again just to invite discussion:

Aragorn's transformation of Minas Tirith appears in The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 5 ("The Steward and the King"):

"In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets were paved with white marble; and the Folk of the Mountain laboured in it, and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there..."

"and its streets were paved with white marble" - This passage establishes not merely a practical restoration but first and foremost aesthetic transformation, a choice of materials that obviously prioritizes beauty over functionality.

From a purely practical standpoint, white marble represents one of the least suitable materials for street paving in a working capital city. Marble is inherently soft, prone to chipping under load, treacherous when wet, and requires constant maintenance to preserve its appearance. Historically, civilizations building for longevity employed granite, basalt, or limestone precisely because these materials withstand the daily wear of commerce, uncounted pedestrians, hoofed animals and wheeled traffic. The choice of marble thus signals something outside of normal paving: as such it represents aesthetic ideology imposed upon a “feigned-real” mortal city.
The Dwarves would find themselves in perpetual service not to productive construction but to cosmetic maintenance. Well, they for sure would be happy about the study inflow of money. But who actually would bear the cost of constantly re-laying and eternally repairing these ornamental streets? The rank Gondorians. Here the Elvish aesthetic idealism clashes heavily with mortal practical necessity.

Imho this very choice of white marble reflects the significant Elvishness on Aragorn's kingship, its influence materialised most significantly through his marriage to Arwen. The Elvish approach to beauty-for-beauty's-sake functions adequately in immortal realms where inhabitants "live lightly" and its concerns span millennia rather than seasons. However, mortals exist within different temporal and material constraints. They must address immediate needs, they have not margins to cater for mere aesthetics of no “real” tangible value.

Yet what practical benefits did Arwen's presence bring to Gondor? The textual evidence suggests remarkably little. She does not govern, advise, or engage in public leadership. She establishes no institutions, fosters no cultural developments, and appears to have no visible relationship with the people she theoretically serves as queen. Unlike queens such as Melian of Doriath or Galadriel of Lothlórien, who wielded real power and provided concrete benefits to their realms, Arwen functions as what might be termed a symbolic ornament: beautiful, costly to maintain, and ultimately peripheral to the actual work of ruling.

From a mortal perspective, Aragorn's choice represents a significant opportunity cost. A mortal queen, perhaps from Gondor's nobility or Rohan's royal house, could have strengthened political alliances, served as regent during absences, provided counsel rooted in mortal experience, and remained to guide their children after the king's death. Instead, Gondor received a queen who, following Aragorn's self-appointed death, abandoned both throne and children, grandchildren and great grandchildren (she ruled for 120 years after all) to die alone in the fading woods of Lothlórien.

This abandonment becomes particularly significant when we consider that Aragorn chose his death date unilaterally, without consulting Arwen or preparing any transition of power through her. Yet Aragorn departs after choosing his time without even as much a bothering to inform her beforehand, leaving Arwen to face mortality without her even being able to influence its timing, as she herself was not yet tired of life, but found herself forced now to force herself to leave the world against her very own inclination. Hardy a deed of love towards her! This suggests that their marriage was structured around his sole agency rather than mutual partnership. It shows her restricted to a mere ornamentality only even in deciding the timing of her own death!

The broader cultural implications become clearer when we consider historical precedents for royal marriages serving state interests. Medieval and ancient royal unions typically functioned as political instruments: cementing alliances, securing succession, and integrating different cultural or regional interests. Arwen's marriage to Aragorn serves none of these functions. It is purely personal, a romantic fulfillment that places aesthetic and emotional satisfaction above practical statecraft.

Moreover, the symbolism of Elvish-mortal union, while poetically satisfying, may actually have been counterproductive to Gondor's actual needs. The kingdom required integration into the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, not nostalgic attachment to the fading Elder Days. By emphasizing his connection to immortal bloodlines and aesthetic values, Aragorn may have inadvertently positioned his reign as a beautiful but ultimately temporary restoration rather than a foundation for mortal civilization's future development.

The white marble streets thus function as a perfect metaphor for this entire approach to governance: stunningly beautiful, symbolically powerful, and fundamentally impractical. Like Arwen herself, they represent the imposition of immortal aesthetic values onto mortal infrastructure. The result is a kingdom that gleams magnificently in the short term but carries within it the seeds of its own maintenance crisis: Every chip in the marble, every stain that requires cleaning, every crack that needs repair represents the ongoing cost of prioritizing beauty over function. The streets become a constant reminder that aesthetic idealism, however noble, must be sustained by practical labor, labor that could have been directed toward more essential civic needs.

Tolkien's portrayal of Aragorn's reign, while intended to represent the triumph of good over evil and the restoration of rightful kingship, inadvertently reveals the tensions inherent in applying romantic idealism to practical governance. The white marble streets of Minas Tirith stand as monuments not merely to beauty, but to the disconnect between aesthetic vision and mortal reality.

Arwen's presence in Gondor, beautiful, tragic, and ultimately ephemeral, mirrors the marble streets: admirable in concept, costly in practice, and unlikely to survive the test of time without constant, expensive maintenance. Both represent the fundamental incompatibility between Elvish immortal aesthetics and mortal governmental needs.

Imho the textual evidence suggests that Tolkien himself, perhaps unconsciously, still embedded within his idealized narrative already an inherent a critique of leadership that prioritizes symbolic beauty over practical service.

So to speak: The white marble cracks under pressure, both literally and figuratively, revealing the cold empty void beneath the romantic ideal. ;-)

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

Honestly, this is one of the issues with reading something absent from the text as being absent from the world it tells us about. It's akin to saying Aragorn wears no arguments because Tolkien never tells us about them. The interpretation you're drawing here surrounding Arwen isn't ... wrong per se. But definitionally empty. Tolkien's descriptions of many things leave us to fill in the details with our own imaginations, provided we are willing to engage them.

 

[Odola]

Honestly, this is one of the issues with reading something absent from the text as being absent from the world it tells us about. It's akin to saying Aragorn wears no arguments because Tolkien never tells us about them. The interpretation you're drawing here surrounding Arwen isn't ... wrong per se. But definitionally empty. Tolkien's descriptions of many things leave us to fill in the details with our own imaginations, provided we are willing to engage them.

Well, if we assume the last conversation of Arwen with Aragorn on his deathbed is not merely a dramatization of Findegil the King's Writer, but to be take on face value, then there is little of substance which could be added without ignoring what actually is stated.

I will admit that "what actually is stated" might have been stated this way mainly to increase or create some artistic effect e.g. "evoking greater fell of tragedy" - but it still has side-effects which come as its narrative costs, and those costs do not vanish by merely admitting them, they have to be paid.

Arwen is depicted as having no rapport with either Eldarion the next king and his already multiple-generational family (he is 119 already if we go by Tolkien's dream birth date for him in FO 1, so his must be already an grand-father or higher himself - we are told Aragorn descendants' lifespans soon decrease to merely 80 years, so some of Eldarion's own descendants might have died of old age already before he even becomes king) or with any of her daughters' also already assumedly multiple-generational families. Arwen leaves everything and everybody, seemingly very short after her husband's death to wander pointlessly in a withering forest. She apparently has no own projects to complete, no own legacy to transfer and divide out. She is depicted as seeing herself as Aragorn's Queen, not Gondor's, as she says to him "your people" - not "our people" - at that after 120 of years of ruling them!
But the most damming is - she is not yet tired of life, she is depicted as desynchronized from Aragorn's felt lifespan, she knew that Aragorn was thinking about dying and preparing for it but neither he nor her have approached each other before to discuss the matter in advance to find a workable solution or even to fail to work out one one - but still to fail at it together. As it is shown his death is alone his decision and she has no real say in it. This makes it seem as if there was no real intimacy, confidence or partnership between them. This appearance is the narrative cost of such a depiction. And it remains, whatever one would choose add to to the story, that established baseline of what was shown would still not vanish.

"As Queen of Elves and Men she dwelt with Aragorn for six-score years in great glory and bliss; yet at last he felt the approach of old age and knew that the span of his life-days was drawing to an end, long though it had been. Then Aragorn said to Arwen: "At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most be-loved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near". Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, Lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said "Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor, and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. "Lady Undَmiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have the wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Numenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift.

[...This all should have been discussed well in advance! Not during the death ceremony itself!]

Now, therefore, I will sleep. I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men." "Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." "So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell" "Estel, Estel!" she cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep. [...] But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lorien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came."

We see that the Gondorians see themselves as "her people" when they look at her, but she is not shown to reciprocate, form her viewpoint they are shown to be merely "Aragorn's people", even after 120 she is shown to have not to have developed an own rapport with them.

Whatever one chooses to add to the text, it will still not remove those passages, and those are... damning.

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

I think the damnation is in the interpretation, rather than what the actual text is saying. Is it contradicting the text? No. But it's certainly not the most imaginative or charitable one. And certainly not well-rooted in the context in which the story is written.

 

[Odola]

I think the damnation is in the interpretation, rather than what the actual text is saying. Is it contradicting the text? No. But it's certainly not the most imaginative or charitable one. And certainly not well-rooted in the context in which the story is written.

I very much appreciate your engagement with the topic.

However, I am a little confused regarding your assertion that my interpretation lacks imagination, charity, or contextual grounding.

Could you please specify which elements of the text or the wider legendarium you believe offer a more fitting or nuanced reading? Without concrete examples or detailed reasoning, such broad dismissals risk seems a little unsubstantiated.

Given the weight of textual evidence, it would be valuable to see how your perspective addresses or reconciles those details rather than simply contesting the interpretation on general grounds.

As for me, well, if it were one or two such passages, I would concede, but the amount of what is there of those with the added weight of was it not there at all - e.g. any of Arwen's own involvements with anything Gondorian... summed up in her ultimate action: preferring spending the remaining time among withering trees instead of with one's own living family and realm... that seems quite damning and there is no real counterweight to it provided in the text.

And would a "charitable interpretation" not imply that Tolkien was not fully aware of what he is doing?
Imho he knew it well.
Imho the ambivalence in the depiction of the ultimate result of the "romantically ideal union" is deliberate and intended.
As is the white marble passage.

Edit: This connects to broader questions about how we read literature. Should we always assume the most optimistic interpretation of events, or should we examine the logical implications of what's actually described? Both is valid, but proper literary analysis requires engaging with what the text actually says rather than what we wish it said.

 

[Nicholas Palazzo]

Could you please specify which elements of the text or the wider legendarium you believe offer a more fitting or nuanced reading? Without concrete examples or detailed reasoning, such broad dismissals risk seems a little unsubstantiated.

Honestly, it seems that the substantiation is lacking in the assertion, which is where the burden of proof lies.

 

[Odola]

Honestly, it seems that the substantiation is lacking in the assertion, which is where the burden of proof lies.

Well, I base my claims on the text itself as shown in my posts above. Whereas what are your assertions exactly based on? Without any backing of those provided, how can their validly be assessed?

If you base it on the same scene that I have cited, then show please how one can read it otherwise without skipping the passages that I have highlighted.

Imho without dismissing the whole scene as Findegil's post factum fabrication, there is no coherent way to do it. Still, even if Findegil were to have "constructed" this scene so as post factum to build up Aragorn's legend even at Arwen's expense, reducing her to a mere ornamental flourish on the great king's image, still it would preserve echoes of how the Gondorians remembered her = distant, uninvolved, detached, aloof, sidelined.

The invocation of "burden of proof" would suggest you want me to prove my interpretation is the only possible one. But this seem a strange demand given how literature is experienced. Multiple valid interpretations can coexist as long as they're supported by textual evidence. The question isn't whether I can prove my reading is is the only possible one, the question is how can you prove your is possible at all given what the text actually states without arbitrarily ignoring big chunks of it.

 

[Haerangil]

This is so sad... but the story of Arwen's end is sad.

 

[Odola]

This is so sad... but the story of Arwen's end is sad.

This is another valid way to engage with the text, and I agree, making Arwen’s end sad was a central part of its intent. But, in my view, it also shows that Tolkien was aware of the contradictions within the ‘romantic ideal’ itself, and included those tensions in the story to keep it emotionally honest.

But we can go even deeper:

Arwen’s aestheticized self-effacement, her gradual withdrawal into sorrow and death, begins to resemble a kind of beautiful self-erasure. It’s not far from how someone might pursue a culturally idealized image of fragility or ethereality to the point of self-destruction. Her arc becomes less about love or legacy, and more about slow dissolution, a chosen vanishing: stylized and tragic, but ultimately non-relational and non-constructive.


Seen this way, her final journey to Lothlórien, alone, silent, to die in a place already abandoned, does not read as noble. It reads as a symbolic implosion of being. She withdraws entirely. She leaves her children. She builds no memory, passes down no lore, and does not even mourn Aragorn in the company of those who loved him. Her mourning becomes a performance without an audience, except for us as readers, and even we are kept at arm’s length.

This depicts Arwen not simply as a figure of sorrow, but as the embodiment of a romanticism so extreme it curdles into self-negation. She does not transform her loss into renewal, like Éowyn does. She does not retire after fulfilling a mission, like Galadriel or even Lúthien. She simply... vanishes, unheeded.

If Tolkien intended this as a critique, perhaps even of high-born women who cultivated passivity or stylized melancholy as a kind of social capital, it’s a devastating one.

If unintentional, it demonstrates what happens when feminine characters become over-idealized in a story: they implode under the weight of their own stylization.

One of the most haunting absences in Arwen’s arc is spiritual agency. Unlike mortal heroes who look beyond the Circles of the World, she chooses mortality without embracing the spiritual destiny that mortality holds in Tolkien’s legendarium.

She does not reject the Shadow in order to pursue the Light, neither the Elvish Undying Lands nor the human hope of the Timeless Halls. She does not seem to hear the Voice that calls mortals beyond the world. What she chooses is love alone, and not a love that elevates or renews, but one that ends. Her choice is not aspirational; it is tethered solely to this world, and once Aragorn is gone, she has nothing left.

Even Aragorn, at his deathbed, tries gently to shift her gaze, to hint at the mystery beyond, and remind her that “in sorrow we must go, but not in despair.” But she has no answer. She doesn’t even hear it.

This is what makes her “sacrifice” fallow. It is not a sacrifice for anything. It doesn’t build or redeem or save. It is simply self-destruction. Her story becomes a quiet descent into grief, without a goal, she seeks no new path, no growth, no truth, no grace.

What remains is a kind of aestheticized victimhood, which becomes meaningful only by its own sadness. But sadness alone, in Tolkien’s cosmology, is never enough. What gives sorrow meaning is what it opens us toward, hope, grace, endurance, or at least memory. Arwen’s sorrow turns inward and... vanishes.

 

[Haerangil]

It is an interestingbstory, but not the kind of sadness i enjoy reading. Yet i agree Tolkien wrote a number of beautiful but very sad stories. Arwen is the Evenstar... the end of her her people, but i don't likebthe idea of such a sad end and of Arwen as such a sad person.If thete is such sadness to her story there should be otherbthings as well, not only sadness. It also makes Aragorn's live a sad live amd i somehow rebel against the idea.

 

[Odola]

It is an interesting story, but not the kind of sadness i enjoy reading. Yet i agree Tolkien wrote a number of beautiful but very sad stories. Arwen is the Evenstar... the end of her her people, but i don't like the idea of such a sad end and of Arwen as such a sad person .If there is such sadness to her story there should be other things as well, not only sadness. It also makes Aragorn's live a sad live amd i somehow rebel against the idea.

well, that "human" logic, not necessary "elvish" logic, and while most Tolkien elves we see balance both deep sadness and almost feral joy, some seem to specify in one area mainly... Over-aestheticized sorrow which usually appears too pointless and excessive to humans to be sustainable seems still withing the (wide) range of elves.

 

[Haerangil]

Within the range, yes, but such elves often go fey and become insame, suffering of deadly depression. So far i am missing the joy with Arwen. I can see she wpuld have many sad moments, it lies in the burden of being the last of her kind, but ONLY sadness? I feel it ruins the end of the lord of the rings i fear...

 

[Odola]

Now, after having examined the fragments from the Appendices above, let us cross-check our findings by looking at the only real Arwen speaking scene from the main narrative: The Return of the King, specifically in Book Six, Chapter 6: "Many Partings," with the addition of the seizure fragment from Chapter 9: "The Grey Havens."

“When the days of rejoicing were over at last the Companions thought of returning to their own homes. And Frodo went to the King as he was sitting with the Queen Arwen by the fountain, and she sang a song of Valinor, while the Tree grew and blossomed. They welcomed Frodo and rose to greet him; and Aragorn said:
'I know what you have come to say, Frodo: you wish to return to your own home. Well, dearest friend, the tree grows best in the land of its sires; but for you in all the lands of the West there will ever be a welcome. And though your people have had little fame in the legends of the great, they will now have more renown than many wide realms that are no more.'
'It is true that I wish to go back to the Shire,' said Frodo. 'But first I must go to Rivendell. For if there could be anything wanting in a time so blessed, I missed Bilbo; and I was grieved when among all the household of Elrond I saw that he was not come.'
'Do you wonder at that, Ring-bearer?' said Arwen. 'For you know the power of that thing which is now destroyed; and all that was done by that power is now passing away. But your kinsman possessed this thing longer than you. He is ancient in years now, according to his kind; and he awaits you, for he will not again make any long journey save one.'
'Then I beg leave to depart soon,' said Frodo.
'In seven days we will go,' said Aragorn. 'For we shall ride with you far on the road, even as far as the country of Rohan. In three days now Éomer will return hither to bear Théoden back to rest in the Mark, and we shall ride with him to honour the fallen. But now before you go I will confirm the words that Faramir spoke to you, and you are made free for ever of the realm of Gondor; and all your companions likewise. And if there were any gifts that I could give to match with your deeds you should have them; but whatever you desire you shall take with you, and you shall ride in honour and arrayed as princes of the land.'
But the Queen Arwen said: 'A gift I will give you. For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him now when he departs to the Havens; for mine is the choice of Lúthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter. But in my stead you shall go, Ring-bearer, when the time comes, and if you then desire it. If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed. But wear this now in memory of Elfstone and Evenstar with whom your life has been woven!'
And she took a white gem like a star that lay upon her breast hanging upon a silver chain, and she set the chain about Frodo's neck. 'When the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you,' she said, 'this will bring you aid.'”
The Return of the King BOOK SIX Chapter 6 MANY PARTINGS

“Sam stayed at first at the Cottons' with Frodo; but when the New Row was ready he went with the Gaffer. In addition to all his other labours he was busy directing the cleaning up and restoring of Bag End; but he was often away in the Shire on his forestry work. So he was not at home in early March and did not know that Frodo had been ill. On the thirteenth of that month Farmer Cotton found Frodo lying on his bed; he was clutching a white gem that hung on a chain about his neck and he seemed half in a dream.
'It is gone for ever,' he said, 'and now all is dark and empty.'
But the fit passed, and when Sam got back on the twenty-fifth, Frodo had recovered, and he said nothing about himself. In the meanwhile Bag End had been set in order, and Merry and Pippin came over from Crickhollow bringing back all the old furniture and gear, so that the old hole soon looked very much as it always had done.”
The Return of the King BOOK SIX Chapter 9 THE GREY HAVENS

What do we see here?
Arwen's words may at first seem kind, but on closer inspection, they reveal a self-centered overlay. She "elfsplains" mortality and aging to a mortal who has lived through it most intimately and the influence of the Ring to the most advanced expert on the planet on the very subject. She claims an intimate connection with and authority over Frodo which she has in no way earned. She appropriates Frodo's trauma to enhance her own narrative of her self-declared "tragic sacrifice." She bestows a repurposed ornament to incorporate Frodo and his well-earned heroic glory into her own legend far more than to assist him. Ultimately, her "gift" proves powerless, leaving Frodo unaided in his darkest relapses. It only hints at Frodo's future sailing, a future help that was not arranged by her, as it was wholly beyond her power or influence to arrange.

 

[Odola]

Let us look at each of the above mentioned element in detail.

When Frodo confides his sorrow over Bilbo's absence, Arwen immediately changes the conversation into an abstract lecture about mortality, the Ring's corruption, and inevitable aging. The tone seems even to reprimand Frodo for his previous hopeful expectation of seeing Bilbo at Aragorn's wedding. Rather than acknowledging Frodo's very human impulse of missing Bilbo, she presents Frodo's wish as almost "naïve," something that needs her enlightened Elvish perspective to explain for him. That is "elfsplaining": posing to possess a greater grasp of cosmic truth while minimizing lived mortal experience.

Also, up until this point, Arwen has barely spoken to Frodo directly in the entire story. She is almost a background presence in Rivendell. Yet here, suddenly, she asserts a deep bond. This is peculiar. She claims a kind of mystical interchangeability with Frodo, presenting herself as if they share realities, suffering, and destiny, yet shows no prior evidence of meaningful closeness to him. It is also remarkable that neither in Rivendell nor in Minas Tirith is she in any way involved in organizing Frodo's and his friends' recovery and healing, nor in simply assuring that the royal hospitality is extended to them. This is a grave oversight on her part, considering she is the Lord's daughter in Rivendell and the current Queen of Gondor. As such, her now declared kinship of fate with Frodo feels to come out of nowhere and very opportunistic; she inserts her personal narrative (the "Lúthien role") into Frodo's hard-won experience, thereby annexing his suffering into her own self-mythologizing. She basically says: "Your suffering, Frodo, it reminds me of... me." She redirects almost immediately away from Frodo's trauma to her own "grand" choice.

Frodo's unimaginable burden, the psychological destruction wrought by the Ring, is not acknowledged by her on its own terms. Instead, Arwen presents her sacrifice, her voluntary mortal fate for Aragorn's love, as parallel or equivalent. Yet that does not add up: Frodo's choice was not voluntary but imposed, grinding and devastating for the sake of others. Her choice, though weighty, is a mere price she pays for her very own romantic fulfillment. She appropriates Frodo's cosmic wound for her own narrative, redefining his suffering as just another entry point into retelling and a now worthy embellishment of her own "great bittersweet tragedy."

Also, Arwen's claim to exchange her place on a ship to Valinor with Frodo is dubious in its legitimacy. Only the Valar can authorize passage to Valinor. By suggesting that she has "conferred" this grace, Arwen inflates her role, as if she herself has agency to bestow what is in fact beyond her remit. This is indeed an act of self-aggrandizement, cloaking Frodo's eventual departure as dependent upon her generosity.
Her physical gift to Frodo is not an object made for him or selected with thought. She literally hands over a part of her own current outfit! This is not an original or thoughtfully crafted boon. It keeps Frodo bound symbolically to her story, rather than giving him something that might genuinely help him recover or honor his unique struggle. Again, the gift is less about Frodo and more about her; it works to entwine him with the narrative she casts of her own renunciation and fate. Did it help him? Not really. He remains traumatized, reliving despair and darkness. The talisman fails to shield him. Its "power" is symbolic at best, merely reminding him of connections to Elves, fading beauty, and Arwen's self-positioning, none of which alleviate his suffering. Its function seems more like branding: embedding Arwen's personal narrative onto Frodo's life story. In effect: Frodo's salvation is made part of the Arwen mythos. His ultimate healing, too, is framed as something stemming from her dramatic act of "giving up" mortality rights.

But Frodo bore the Ring not by preference or romance but by necessity. While Arwen chose mortality for the fulfillment of her own personal desire. Frodo will return to the Shire scarred, fragmented, permanently diminished. His wounds cannot be healed within Middle-earth. He gave up his very own wholeness for others' freedom and future. Now the aftermath is his acute and current suffering, while Arwen's body remains yet untouched by mortal weaknesses. Her "pain" is chronologically deferred. She claims to suffer the "bitter" side of her choice, but this is a projected possible future, not a lived present. For now, her beauty remains intact, uninterrupted, until Aragorn's voluntary choosing death.
When Arwen hands Frodo the white jewel, she presents herself as the mediator of grace, using borrowed capital as though it were hers to dispense. This does not resemble the generosity of Galadriel, whose gifts were tailored, useful, powerful, and their bestowing a communal act. It looks like a mere passing along of Arwen's own accessories. The jewel is lifted from her breast, an emblem of her own self-narration, rather than an item crafted with Frodo in mind. It ties Frodo's memory not to his own deeds but back into Arwen's very own tragedy project. When he later clutches it in despair at Bag End, it offers no healing, no protection, only a shining reminder of promises outside Arwen's actual power... of a mere empty promise.

In conclusion: Arwen presents her "sacrifice" as a romantic parallel to Frodo's. Yet Frodo's burden is one acquired involuntarily, accepted voluntarily, acute in its current impacts, and fulfilled for the good of others. Arwen's "sacrifice" is voluntary, aesthetic, and chosen for her very own romantic fulfillment. Her gift to Frodo should signal solidarity, but when the passage is read closely, it ends up looking far more like an appropriation. She reframes Frodo's trauma to enhance the tragic beauty and grandiose impact of her own narrative, casting herself among the great tragic heroines while standing upon the shoulders of a hobbit already bent double with pain.
If Aragorn's white marble streets expose the cold void beneath his elvish-styled kingship, then Arwen's white jewel reveals the same beneath her idealized Lúthien narrative. Smooth, lustrous, and ornamental, but unable to mitigate the pain of real mortal suffering.
The cracked streets of Minas Tirith and the cracked spirit of Frodo Baggins both demonstrate that mere romantic gestures cannot heal mortal wounds.

Arwen is not underwritten. She is just written as cold and self-centered, but this very effectively.

She depicts how purest elvish artistry become mere artifice when transplanted into a mortal framework without any attempts of "adaptation": Arwen chose mortality for inherently immortal aesthetics reasons that cannot survive her transition to the mortal world. Once she becomes mortal, those very reasons become incomprehensible and irrelevant to the mortal framework she's now trapped in. Arwen's motive of reenacting the perfect tragedy becomes functionally pointless because she's operating on imported logic that doesn't translate. She dies for elvish ideals that the mortal world around her does not normaly perceive as valuable in itself - except maybe for aggrandising the status and manly glory of Aragorn.

 

[Odola]

Having now considered the matter within the work’s broader thematic framework, Arwen’s barren end may indeed be deliberate. The jewel-giving scene compels us to compare her choice with Frodo’s, but the dissonance between them is precisely the point. Frodo bore a burden thrust upon him, undertaken for the good of others and in direct opposition to evil. Arwen, by contrast, chose mortality for wholly personal reasons: to fulfill her own romantic desire. Her sacrifice yielded no lasting renewal of Númenórean lineage (its decline into ordinary mortality was barely delayed), no true legitimization of Aragorn’s kingship (which was won in deed, not marriage), and no enduring uniting of Elf and Man (for the Elves were departing, and Men moved on without them). Whatever meaning her choice held was confined to herself and her lover; beyond them it remained barren, a gesture of form without function, art’s sake only. Thus Frodo’s sacrifice proves inherently selfless while Arwen’s remains purely self-serving. Her final desolation then achieves narrative coherence: a sacrifice so narrowly rooted in personal fulfillment cannot carry the moral weight required to sustain her to the end. Tolkien’s honesty as a storyteller forbids him from granting her an unearned victory, however highly he valued romantic love. His moral universe consistently affirms that only choices connected to larger purposes and self-transcendence bear fruit, and as such, by the very in-story logic, whether Tolkien himself welcomed or regretted it, Arwen’s simply cannot.

 

[Flammifer]

The story in Appendix A of the ends of Arwen and Aragorn does not reflect well on either of them in my opinion. I wonder why JRRT included it? Would it have better been left out?

 

[Odola]

The story in Appendix A of the ends of Arwen and Aragorn does not reflect well on either of them in my opinion. I wonder why JRRT included it? Would it have better been left out?

Do you mean that it makes Aragorn look bad, having fallen only for somebody only because of her looks and no substance? Indeed, it can diminish our respect for him.

Well, if she is only an ornament and an outward insignium of his kingly glory (literally what is usually called a "trophy wife"), then her character is irrelevant for the broader narrative. She is just as "dead" a object and narrative prop as his crown or scepter.

But I personally think far more damage is actually done in the scene where she meets Frodo in Minas Tirith in the main narrative, where she is used as an exposition device to explain Bilbo's absence and is then forced to draw the direct comparison between Frodo's and her own "sacrifices." This cannot end up looking good for her. She has no other way but to come off as extremely entitled, overbearing, cold, and self-centered in that brief scene's context.

It seems to me Tolkien could not help but depict the real-life limitations of romantic love, either out of honesty or to increase Arwen's tragedy, or perhaps he was so focused on tying up all his narrative strands economically that he missed how poorly what he made her do and say, and how he portrayed it, actually made her look as a person?

 

[Flammifer]

Hi Odola, I like your well reasoned poor opinion of Arwen. I think the App. A story also reflects poorly on Aragorn. He does not seem to be acting as a very good husband. He and Arwen do not seem to be in agreement on Aragorn's voluntary death. Arwen "knew well what he intended". Because she "had long forseen it"? (Not because they had discussed and agreed it?) How about either - Let's do this together, or, Let's let nature take its course?

 

[Odola]

Hi Odola, I like your well reasoned poor opinion of Arwen. I think the App. A story also reflects poorly on Aragorn. He does not seem to be acting as a very good husband. He and Arwen do not seem to be in agreement on Aragorn's voluntary death. Arwen "knew well what he intended". Because she "had long forseen it"? (Not because they had discussed and agreed it?) How about either - Let's do this together, or, Let's let nature take its course?

Indeed, as depicted Aragron seems to have not involved Arwen in any of his decissions - whether intimately personal - like the time of his self-appointed death - nor govermental nor political and in addition she seems competely alienated from her further family:
We know Eldarion is 119 at the time of Aragon's death and most likely only 6 years away from his very own death of old age - not "ripe ro rule" but "long past his prime", most likely a widower, so his most likely Gondorian wife never had a chance to have been Queen and also Eldarion's firstborn is probably already dead from old age (as we are told that Eladrion's descendants had their lifespan dwindle to a mere 80-90 years). But still, Eldarion and his sisters had most likely 2-3 generations of younger descendants so that Arwen's Gondorian family is of most likely of some considrable size and included some greant-grandchildren. A lot for a widow to live for, and as Arwen's expected livespan according to Tolkien was still some 30-40 years more at Aragorn's death, it offered quite lot of time, enough to accomplish something subdtantial in an active widowhood. Yet Arwen does not even try... She simply has no blessing, no warning, no prophecy, not legacy to leave. She is depicted as deliberately ... useless.

 

[Flammifer]

Yes, I agree with you about Arwen. But what about Aragorn? And why even include this story in the appendix?