The Lord of the Rings Meme | ten scenes (2/10)
Farewell to Lórien.
This is my favorite fucking scene.
If you’ve read the Silmarillion, you know who Fëanor was. If you don’t, Fëanor was the dickhead who created the Silmarils: three indescribably beautiful and magical jewels that contained the light and essence of the world before it became flawed. They were the catalyst for basically every important thing that happened in the First Age of Middle Earth.
It is thought that the inspiration for the Silmarils came to Fëanor from the sight of Galadriel’s shining, silver-gold hair.
He begged her three times for single strand of her beautiful hair. And every time, Galadriel refused him. Even when she was young, Galadriel’s ability to see into other’s hearts was very strong, and she knew that Fëanor was filled with nothing but fire and greed.
Fast forward to the end of the Third Age.
Gimli, visiting Lorien, is also struck by Galadriel’s beauty. During the scene where she’s passing out her parting gifts to the Fellowship, Galadriel stops empty-handed in front of Gimli, because she doesn’t know what to offer a Dwarf. Gimli tells her: no gold, no treasure… just a single strand of hair to remember her beauty by.
She gives him three. Three.
And this is why Gimli gets to be an Elf Friend, people. Because Galadriel looks at him and thinks he deserves what she refused the greatest Elf who ever lived—- and then twice that. And because he has no idea of the significance of what she’s just given him, but he’s going to treasure it the rest of his life anyway.
Just look at that smile on Legolas’s face in the last panel. He gets it. He knows the backstory. And I’m pretty sure this is the moment he reconsiders whether Elves and Dwarves can’t be friends after all.
Every once and awhile I’ll read an excerpt like this and it hits me all over again how astonishing it is that such a wounded man still retained within him a small spark of goodness and honor. And that it was a young girl who believed in that sort of goodness who was brave enough to question his nihilistic outlook and tap into something within him that he might not have even realized was there.
It’s secondary, really, that I’m an endgame shipper of these two. What makes it truly extraordinary is the ages-old tale of how powerful it can be to find someone who is accepting of you, who can see the humanity in you and who cares about you, despite any outward appearances. It reminds me how important it is to treat people with kindness. I think that’s the greatest gift we can bestow on our fellow human beings.
AND THEN I DIED BECAUSE MY HEART FELL OUT OF MY CHEST.
wow its like
sansa
and arya
are two
different
people
with different beliefs and ways of dealing with things
Don: The only person in the world who really knew me.
Peggy: That’s not true.
