When I was writing up my recent Second Age Primer article, I kept wanting to say more about Galadriel. But here’s the thing. Her role in the events of the Second Age is nebulous. Even in The Silmarillion, which is mostly about the First Age, we don’t have very much. We’re introduced to her in Valinor, where she is already grown. She is one of the children of Finarfin and Eärwen. As such, she is royalty, the granddaughter of Finwë, High King of the Noldor. She is also there at the Darkening of Valinor, when Melkor and his gal-pal Ungoliant murdered the Two Trees that gave power and light to the Blessed Realm—before there was even a Sun and Moon.
I have written about Galadriel before—five years ago in “The Trial of Galadriel,” with an emphasis on her long-term arc—but here I’d like to focus on her actions in the Second Age. You know, just like Amazon’s The Rings of Power is doing. The new series is taking liberties with the character, as will become quickly apparent. In fact, they have to. But it’s still worth knowing what Tolkien had in mind in his “continual refashionings” of Galadriel’s narrative, if only because the showrunners are well aware even of material they cannot use.
It could be asked, who has it in for Sauron the most? Where? And with what? Was it the Lady of the Golden Wood, in the Lórinand Conservatory, with the Lead Pipe?
First, it must be understood that there is very little solid lore that tracks Galadriel’s movements in the Second Age. I say solid because when it comes to Tolkien’s legendarium, everything he wrote can be considered canon (“the authentic works of a writer”) and yet it doesn’t all agree. This is just a fact that all fans have to square with. Most of his stories, histories, and characters were in a constant state of revision—and none more than Galadriel. Keep this in mind when you’re watching The Rings of Power.
In fact, in 1980’s Unfinished Tales, his son Christopher Tolkien even writes this right up front in the chapter specifically about her:
There is no part of the history of Middle-earth more full of problems than the story of Galadriel and Celeborn, and it must be admitted that there are several inconsistencies ’embedded in the traditions’
None of Tolkien’s pre-LotR works included Galadriel. He hadn’t invented her at all until he was writing about the Fellowship’s arrival in the woods of Lórien. But after The Lord of the Rings? Well, now she was there, staring him in the face, demanding to be placed in all that ancient history he’d been laboring over for years. She was like a golden wrench thrown into the works—valuable but complicating. Tolkien had obviously made her important. So he began to retcon her into the Elder Days. Retconning is something writers do. It’s fine. They get to. It’s not even weird, it’s normal. And he was generally very good at it. Still, what he was devising for Galadriel was, ultimately, not only unfinished but also wildly varied.
Speaking of varied, have you ever seen the 1985 film Clue? It’s a brilliant mystery comedy and also the best film based on a board game ever. And who doesn’t love Tim Curry?
If you’d caught the actual original theatric release, you’d have seen one of three different endings, depending on which theater you saw it. But if you watch the film on DVD or stream it somewhere, you’ll see that it has multiple endings built right in, presented as alternatives. Just when the killer is revealed and apprehended—Ending Possibility #1—and it seems like the end credits are about to roll, we get a bit of cheery music with a black title card filling the screen, saying:
That’s how it could have happened.
Ah-hah. This implies that this is not what happened, just one way it could have gone. All right. Then we immediately get a second card:
But how about this?
Then we watch as a bit of the previous segment of the movie plays out but this time a different person is revealed as the killer—Ending Possibility #2! And when that finishes, we get one more card:
But here’s what really happened.
This is the more surprising, hilariously convoluted, and better Ending Possibility #3. And it’s even been presented as the real one.
Well, this is sort of how one must regard the story of Galadriel outside the bounds of The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices. Except it’s not about endings but beginnings. And we never get a definitive “here’s what really happened” message from Tolkien. We get a series of parallel-dimension Galadriels, each with her own primary objective, methods, and uncertain routes. Even though her place of birth remains the same—Valinor, in the Undying Lands—her husband’s Elf-brand and place of origin keeps changing. He’s a wood-elf, like those in Mirkwood. No, he’s a Sindarin prince from Doriath! No! He’s a Telerin Elf from Alqualondë! Whoa!
Each Galadriel may differ significantly from the next, but each is still compatible, in her own way, with the one that Frodo meets and tempts with the One Ring, the one who chooses to diminish and go into the West and remain just Galadriel. She is never a Queen, “beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night,” “whom all shall love and despair” …if she chooses it.
The closest thing we might get to a “final” Galadriel from Tolkien’s later writings is one that he summarized—as Christopher explains—in the last month of his life. That one’s actually the most surprising of them all, actually; one that makes her not merely a participant in major events but an exalted mover and shaker. Yet even that Galadriel remain suspect, because if Tolkien successfully had retconned that version of her story into The Silmarillion, he’d have had to change so much more. And it would, on the whole, be a very different book than the one we know.
But before we talk about any of these versions, let’s just work backwards with what we know about her movements in the Second Age from The Lord of the Rings. This was the launching point for Rings of Power’s Galadriel as led by showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay. That is to say, it’s this late-Third-Age Galadriel from which they’ve reverse-engineered a new past for their series. An alternative one, yes. The history and motives of Galadriel in the show are new, and we’ll each get to decide how true to the spirit of Tolkien she is.
What We Know from The Lord of the Rings
Just after Galadriel charms Gimli by listing travel-guide landmarks in the Dwarven tongue, she points out that she wasn’t always in Lothlórien. She brings this up not by talking about herself, but her husband. I always find this poignant. For all that we make fun of Celeborn (who can blame us?), one person who never does is his wife. She speaks of his wisdom and power, and then…
He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.
Look at Galadriel namedropping Silmarillion locations like her son-in-law, Elrond! If you don’t know those two long-lost Elf-realms, it’s fine. We don’t need to know them for her story. The mountains she speaks of are the Blue Mountains, and those do matter. They once separated the regions of Beleriand (a vast section of the continent now sunken beneath the waves) and Eriador. Later, from the words of Galadriel’s song at the company’s departure from Lothlórien, it’s clear she once lived in Valinor and yearns for it again. So she was born there, in the Undying Lands across the Great Sea Belegaer, and Celeborn was born on Middle-earth. Yet the Sea clearly calls to her… the Sea that could carry her back to her homeland.
But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?
Much later, in Appendix B, we’re told that Celeborn and Galadriel were already married by the start of the Second Age. Back then, both of them lived “south of the Lune” (the river that feeds the Gulf of Lhûn) in the realm of Lindon in the Second Age (which the High King Gil-galad ruled). But they were only there for a few hundred years, a mere vacation for Elves. Galadriel has a daughter, Celebrían (who became Elrond’s wife and the mother of Arwen), but we don’t know how old she was or when she was born—at least not from this book; outside sources place Celebrían’s birth around 300 of the Second Age. Which further reinforces the idea that Galadriel’s been married to Celeborn for quite a long time even at the start of the Second Age.
Yet, in The Rings of Power show, Celeborn himself is simply not in the picture. So they’ve obviously altered that timeline as well.
Buy the Book
Into the Riverlands
The Appendices tell us that Sauron’s servants and allies do eventually attack Lothlórien during the War of the Ring, even though we don’t get a hobbit’s-eye-view of that, and that his army is repelled each time by the “valour of the elven people” and the “power that dwelt there” (i.e. Galadriel and her ring). Sometime afterward, Celeborn leads Galadhrim forces out to Dol Guldur, the stronghold the enemy had been attacking from, and they mop the floor with Sauron’s Mirkwood minions. And then comes that wonderful but tantalizingly brief sentence that, I wish, was its own full tale:
They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.
I mean, she’s not doing that with swords and battering rams. She’s got to be using some old-school, Calaquendi, she-saw-the-Light-of-the-Two-Trees-with-her-own-eyes Elven arts. Maybe even with the power of song, as Lúthien had once done, as many Noldor had done in ancient times. What would Samwise say to witnessing that kind of “Elf-magic”? I wonder.
Anyway, when the War of the Ring is over and Frodo’s quest is achieved, Lothlórien’s power begins to fade (because Galadriel’s ring loses its own power), and she finally has no reasons left to remain in Middle-earth. Galadriel is able to heed the call of the Sea at last. Thus she sails into the West with some other noteworthy passengers.
So now let’s look elsewhere, and further back in time. But remember, the information that follows comes from sources outside what The Rings of Power can do with Galadriel. That is to say, the show will not be able to adapt any of these variations directly. (The Tolkien Estate did not, or would not, give Amazon the full rights to it.) But did they take inspiration from this other stuff? Does this material exist as a spiritual or moral basis for the decisions the showrunners, the writers, and the actress Morfydd Clark are making about the character of Galadriel? Almost certainly. Just read on. Or better still, read Tolkien’s text.
In all iterations of Galadriel—the “maiden crowned with a garland of bright radiance”—she is fighting the long defeat. How she is doing so, it would seem, is a matter of a reader’s imagination or a showrunner’s adaptation.
What We Know From The Silmarillion
In the published Silmarillion, we know Galadriel was present in Valinor when her half-uncle Fëanor made his ill-advised Oath and fanned the flames of rebellion. She was no Fëanor fan but she, too, desired to go to Middle-earth and govern a realm of her own. She had big ideas. Galadriel had no personal grudge against the Valar (like Fëanor does) or inherent desire to revolt against them, but she did want to leave very much, thank you. It’s a matter of opportunity and pride. So she was counted as one of the actors of that rebellion.
During the tragic Kinslaying in Alqualondë that follows, Galadriel was in the back of the second host of the Noldor and in the company of her father, Finarfin. Therefore she took no part in the bloodshed against the Teleri (her own mom’s people!) and the stealing of their famous swan-ships. She probably wasn’t even aware of its happening until it was over. But she did join her four brothers, anyway, in the great exodus of the Noldor that followed. She, too, braved the long and frozen hellscape called the Helcaraxë that led to Middle-earth. Galadriel’s parents ended up staying behind, so it would be thousands upon thousands of years before she would see them again. Every time the subject of Galadriel’s chance of going home comes up—to return to Valinor, where she would be able to be with them again—I think of Finarfin and Eärwen. Maybe it was worse for them.
The Noldor who chose to press on even after the Kinslaying, which was most of them, were given a last warning. Because of the bloodshed, woe now awaited them in their future; this was called the Prophecy of the North or the Doom of Mandos. Galadriel and a whole bunch of her friends and family may have shed no Elf-blood like Fëanor and his followers had, but theirs was still guilt by association. She might not have robbed the bank and shot the security guard, but when the Elf who did commit the crime ran out with the money and blood on his hands, she followed him. She didn’t turn herself in.
Therefore when the Noldor—even the “innocent” ones—press on, and follow in the wake of Fëanor, their self-imposed exile becomes a proper ban.
There’s no mention of Galadriel taking part in most of the First Age events thereafter, certainly not in the great battles. Which doesn’t mean she didn’t learn how to fight or even have cause to fight at some point. The First Age is a centuries-spanning, war-torn period of time. And I would argue that every royal in the house of Finwë would have learned to take up arms at need. Especially since swords and armor became a thing specifically because Melkor himself (aka Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World) once moved among them with a fair face and a silver tongue and encouraged them to arm up (specifically in order to sow dissent). Galadriel’s own uncle, Fingolfin, would later take on Morgoth himself in single combat. Fëanor would take on Balrogs. Both held their own (even if they lost). Even her dear brother Finrod, after all his own adventures and defiance of the Enemy, would personally wrestle a werewolf with his bare hands and win a pyrrhic victory. My point being, Galadriel needs no fainting couch. But we’ll learn that not so much in this book as in Unfinished Tales.
We’re told that Galadriel ended up living in the kingdom of Doriath, in the court of King Thingol and Queen Melian. In fact, the Maia queen became a kind of mentor to her. Galadriel also met and married Celeborn there in that well-guarded forest realm. Here, Celeborn was a “kinsman” of Thingol himself. Thingol being the brother of Galadriel’s grandfather in Alqualondë. So yeah, Galadriel and Celeborn were actually relatives, but rather distant ones. It’s… fine.
There’s no more talk of her actions or location until after the War of Wrath that ended the First Age. We’re only told that she chose to remain in Middle-earth, that she was unwilling to “forsake the Hither Lands where they had suffered and long dwelt” when the other surviving Noldor were finally allowed to return to Valinor. They’ve all been pardoned.
This, at least, maps to The Lord of the Rings, where she and Celeborn lived in the kingdom of Lune under the rule of Gil-galad. As far as the rest of the Second Age, through the events of the making and fighting over the Rings of Power, we’re only told that one of the Three Rings, the Ring of Adamant (Nenya), is given to Galadriel who already by this time has been governing Lórien alongside Celeborn. She may have played no part in the founding of Eregion but soon moved along to the realm of Lórinand, what would be known as Lóthlorien later on.
Then for the Third Age, she comes up again. Tolkien points out that she was involved in the forming of the White Council and had wanted Gandalf to be its head. But Saruman was chosen instead. And oh yeah, about Gandalf: Only Círdan, Elrond, and Galadriel knew where he came from, so while it might not have been explained thoroughly to them that he was a Maia (like Melian, like Sauron), he at least came from Valinor. So they know he’s obviously part of some secret ops. And Elves are good at keeping secrets.
What We Know from Unfinished Tales
Unfinished Tales is where all the good stuff is, most of it under Part Two, Chapter IV: “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn.”
Not only does it give us the Clue-ish what-ifs for Galadriel’s past, it also comes with a whole lot more about the goings-on in Eregion when Sauron was doing his whole hey-what-if-we-all-made-rings-together project. It’s got more to say about Celebrimbor and the Rings of Power than the actual “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” section of The Silmarillion. BUT: Very little of this, if any, will be making it into The Rings of Power show, because rights. And it’s a shame, as it’s all excellent (and sometimes zany) stuff.
Christopher Tolkien, who was directly responsible for publishing his father’s work from The Silmarillion onward, used that book as a point of reference for the various takes on Galadriel. So in all versions of her, she was from Valinor first and foremost. She was one of the Calaquendi, the Elves of Light, who saw the Two Trees with her own eyes before they were destroyed.
And with all that in mind…
Galadriel was “the greatest of the Noldor,” second only to Fëanor (the one who made the Silmarils). But she was the wiser. Her mom named her Nerwen, which meant “man-maiden.” An unflattering name to contemporary modern ears, no doubt, but it was about her physicality and her height. She was likely 6’4″ and was a “match for both the loremasters and the athletes” among Elves in the early days of their race.” Her dad named her Artanis, which meant “noble woman.” She was “accounted beautiful even among the Eldar.”
Her lustrous golden hair, touched with silver, was “held a marvel unmatched,” as if the mingled lights of golden Laurelin and silver Telperion “had been snared in her tresses.” Some claim that this is what inspired Fëanor to create the Silmarils in the first place, this idea of imprisoning the light of the Two Trees. He asked her on three occasions for a lock of her hair, but she always denied him. Which, of course, makes her later gift to Gimli all the sweeter.
When the Two Trees of Valinor were destroyed and the Blessed Realm became darkened by the actions of Morgoth, she “had no peace within” ever after. She was already proud, strong, self-willed, and had dreams of faraway places—sharing some of these traits with her brother Finrod especially. But unlike him, she was just itching to go. So Galadriel joined in the rebellion of the Noldor against the Valar. She willfully set down the road to exile and was a participant of the tragic Kinslaying. But in that horrible conflict, she “fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin.”
Meaning… what?… she fought other Noldorin Elves, the ones who were loyal to Fëanor? Yeah, probably! Given how new bloodshed was to all the Elves in Valinor, though, I personally imagine her doing lots of parrying and shoving, not so much slaying. And look, she’s going to be using a sword and wearing armor. These are Noldor we’re talking about. Don’t think she’s walking around barefoot in white robes and just waving her arms around in combat.
Galadriel was basically the president of the We Hate Fëanor club, especially after crossing this line. She was resolved to following him into Middle-earth just to thwart him. This is called out as one of her chief motivators, or at least, that’s what she was telling herself. Remember, she wanted to go anyway. She is hot with pride. Then, when the Valar issued their warning against their going, especially under such bloody circumstances, and they went on anyway, Galadriel fell under the Doom of Mandos as all the rest did. She did not repent and turn back, as did her father and a few others.
There is no mention of Doriath and Melian this time around, so who knows where she was for most of the First Age? Hundreds of years later, when Morgoth was finally defeated, Galadriel refused the pardon of the Valar when it was offered to all the surviving Noldor. She was still too proud to go back. So then the Second Age went by and she was… somewhere else? Largely uninvolved again, in this account.
Finally, in the year 3019 of the Third Age, all that she ever dreamed of was within her grasp: The One Ring itself was before her and “the dominion of Middle-earth” could have been hers! All right there for the taking, in the quiet offering of Frodo of the Shire. But she wasn’t the same Elf she was in Valinor. No longer as proud, Galadriel rejects Sauron’s Ring. She’d clearly been thinking about this for a long time. She passed the test. Now she could return to Valinor, yay!
The end.
In a letter written less than a year before his death (#348 from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien), Tolkien wrote the following of Galadriel when explaining her name:
It is a secondary name given to her in her youth in the far past because she had long hair which glistened like gold but was also shot with silver. She was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats.
Given the timing, he may have had the following version of Galadriel in mind.
She was powerful and upstanding in Valinor, right from the get-go, “equal if unlike in endowments of Fëanor.” She was “brilliant in mind and swift in action,” and she seemed to have been some kind of valedictorian among her people. Galadriel eventually “absorbed all of what she was capable” of learning from the Valar and ended up feeling “confined in the tutelage of Aman.” She was all potential energy, a coiled spring desperate to go kinetic. Here, her desire to go to Middle-earth and govern a realm of her own had less to do with the heart-stirring words of Uncle Fëanor and more to do with her innate desire to teach others and be an authority in her own right. Manwë, the King of the Valar himself, is mentioned as being aware of this desire in her. He neither forbade her to leave Valinor nor gave her “formal leave to depart.”
You might say the matter was up… in the air.
So she was actually planning on leaving Valinor anyway. Independently from the Noldor. A very forward-thinking Galadriel, this one. (Maybe a little excessively so.) She thought about the ships of her mother’s people (the Teleri), which sure would be a good way to make her way in the wider world, so she went to live in Alqualondë where it sat by the Sea. There she met and married Celeborn—in this version he’s straight-up a Telerin prince—and together they made plans to sail to Middle-earth. Maybe it was meant to be their honeymoon voyage? Just guessing.
No scofflaw in this version, Galadriel planned to seek permission from the Valar to sail off.
But her timing was awful.
Morgoth then went and destroyed the Trees, with Ungoliant’s help, then stole the Silmarils. Then Fëanor made things worse, spouted his terrible oath, and whipped the Noldor into a rebellious frenzy. All this while Galadriel had been preparing to leave. GAH! Now it’s going to look like she was part of this mess! When Fëanor came for the ships of the Teleri in Alqualondë, intending to use them to cross the Sea, Galadriel was already there. She and Celeborn stepped up and “heroically” fought back, defending her mother’s people in the Kinslaying. I’d like to think they managed to at least minimize the body count.
They definitely were able to spare Celeborn’s ship from Fëanor and his goons. That’s right, Celeborn had his own personal ship! Who saw that coming?
Galadriel and Celeborn hopped in and sailed off into the darkness. Horrified by what had become of Valinor and the violence of her uncle, they determined to voyage across the Sea ahead of Fëanor. So here we have Galadriel leaving Valinor quite a bit earlier than the rest of the Noldor, and again, had planned to do so anyway. Yet under the circumstances, and because she never did get around to asking permission from the Valar in all the confusion, the two of them fell under the same ban as all the departing Noldor. That is, they could leave, but they weren’t allowed to come back if even if they tried. Bad Noldor!
When they reached Middle-earth, they met Círdan the Shipwright at the coastline of Middle-earth. (Doesn’t everybody?) They judged that Morgoth (who by this time would be firmly ensconced in his fortress of Angband) would never be overthrown without the help of the Valar. Somehow they just… knew. They’re very wise, maybe a little too conveniently so? This, though, is why they never joined in the fruitless wars against the OG Dark Lord. It’s also why this version of Galadriel never settled in Doriath in the court of King Thingol (as she does in the published Silmarillion), and never becomes besties with Queen Melian. Instead, she and Celeborn took their honeymoon further eastward, clear out of Beleriand altogether, with the intent to establish defenses against evil on the other side of the Ered Luin (Blue Mountains). They figured east was the direction from which Morgoth would be pulling reinforcements in his wars with the Elves of Beleriand (which was true). But they were doing this on their own; none of the elves of Beleriand would follow.
The First Age thus proceeded as we read elsewhere, and Galadriel and Celeborn were simply not present for the big events. They had, well, exited stage left. One wonders if, when Morgoth was drawing in his armies of Men in the latter half of the First Age (the Easterlings and such), Galadriel was actually able to erode his forces somehow. Might things would have gone worse for Beleriand had she not been there? Whatever the truth, when Morgoth was finally defeated at the end of the First Age, the happy couple were then officially allowed to return to Valinor. But they declined. No particulars given.
This is all drawn from the summary Tolkien wrote “in the last month of his life,” according to Christopher. Of course, this version is drastically at odds with The Lord of the Rings and the published Silmarillion. Christopher explains that this account had more to do with his father’s “‘philosophical’ (rather than ‘historical’) considerations” of Galadriel’s character. Even so, all signs pointed to Tolkien wishing to put in the work to realize this version of Galadriel.
Even if so much else would have had to change because of it.
And this one’s much more thorough, too.
Her First Age involvement is essentially that which we read in The Silmarillion. In this version, Celeborn is back to being a Sindarin prince from Doriath, a kinsman of King Thingol. He was never in Valinor, had lived his whole life thus far in Middle-earth. Then, when Morgoth was defeated and the surviving Noldor were pardoned and allowed to sail back to Valinor, she chose to remain. Yes, her pride still likely played a part, but it’s primarily for “love of Celeborn, who would not leave Middle-earth,” that she didn’t go West. See that? She had the chance to go back right then and there, to walk again in the bliss of the Undying Lands and reunite with her parents and all four of her brothers (who had been slain one by one in the wars with Morgoth). But Galadriel doesn’t go, because Celeborn wasn’t ready. This is true love. You think this happens everyday?
So they went into Eriador at this point, and lived among three different groups of Elves: the Noldor who had also chosen to remain (fewer though they are); the Sindar, the Grey-elves; and Green-elves who had formerly lived in the land called Ossiriand (what was now Lindon). Together they lived for a few hundred years around Lake Nenuial (aka Evendim, the Lake of Twilight), north of where the Shire will one day be. Here, Celeborn and Galadriel were regarded as the Lord and Lady of all the Elves of Eriador. Even a bunch of Nandor—another subgroup of Elves who originally gave up the journey to Valinor—flock to their leadership. They’re Elf-magnets, top of the hierarchy.
Interestingly, in this version, Galadriel and Celeborn also have a son: Amroth. Remember him? We first learn about him from that song that Legolas sings when the company reaches the river Nimrodel. ♩ “An Elven-maid there was of old…” ♫ Well, Amroth, in this version of Galadriel’s story, was their firstborn, and Celebrían would be his kid sister. (This doesn’t quite feel right, and the fact is, Tolkien makes no mention of Amroth as Galadriel’s child in The Lord of the Rings, anyway. You’d think that would come up.)
Now, Galadriel is also the one who first perceived that Sauron was a problem in the Second Age, though not in such words. Keep this in mind when watching The Rings of Power.
In some ways, this steals a bit of thunder from Gil-galad, who in most other places is the character most perceptive about the lurking Shadow. In any case, no one could really see that there was a singular being behind the “residue evil” that remained in the world after Morgoth’s removal. But it was Galadriel who felt that there was an “evil controlling purpose abroad,” and that it seemed to stem from the east, beyond the Misty Mountains. Because of this, Galadriel and Celeborn were the ones to move eastward and establish the realm of Eregion. This is around the year 700, long before Sauron comes nosing around the place. This even tracks with the Appendix B timeline from The Lord of the Rings.
It’s even suggested that Galadriel might have chosen Eregion’s location because Khazad-dûm was its next-door neighbor—and who better to borrow a cup of sugar or a lawn mower from than the Dwarves? She was “far-sighted” in this, more so than her husband, and understood that the peoples of Middle-earth would need to work together against this new threat. It’s even said that Galadriel “looked upon the Dwarves also with the eye of a commander, seeing in them the finest warriors to pit against the Orcs.”
With the eye of a commander. I love that. Does that mean she was some kind of military captain, or is this just metaphorical? Either way, it works. No matter how you approach Galadriel, she is a leader to the core.
All right, so when does she actually cross the Misty Mountains and start putting down roots in the woods of Lórinand (future Lothlórien)? She’s got to end up there somehow, right? Those mallorn-trees aren’t going to plant themselves!
Right, right, but I’m not done with the Dwarves yet. In her kinship with the bearded folk of Khazad-dûm, Galadriel shared their love of crafts, in the making of things with her hands. She was of the Noldor, after all, and Noldor make things. We know she’ll be good at crafting cool stuff. Stuff like—oh, I don’t know—phials filled with starry water or fortune-telling birdbaths. In this way, Galadriel had greater sympathy for Dwarven passions than Celeborn. Tolkien even points out that back in Valinor, she (like many Noldor) had even been a pupil of both Aulë and Yavanna. Sauron himself was once a Maia of Aulë, the maker of all things earthen, and Yavanna is the essentially the nature goddess herself, who designed everything that grows, and it was she who sang the Ents into the Music before the universe was made.
Anyway, all this talk of arts and crafts means it’s time for Celebrimbor to show up—he who became the “chief artificer of Eregion.” He, too, became close with the Dwarves, especially his good friend Narvi! It was Narvi and Celebrimbor who together etched the inscription into the West-gate of Moria, set an easy password everyone would remember, then probably high-fived (low-fived?) and shared a drink.
Those were happier times indeed, as Gimli says. Because of this relationship between Elves and Dwarves…
Eregion became far stronger, and Khazad-dûm far more beautiful, than either would have done alone.
Well! These bonds of fellowship, and the subsequent building of Eregion’s capital city of Ost-in-Edhil around 750 of the Second Age, is what prompted Sauron to get his act together and work on a plan to deal with the Elves and their allies. Not just the Dwarves, but those far-off Númenóreans who’d already begun to make landfall on the coasts of Middle-earth. So Sauron picked a bit of prime real estate southeast across the plains from the vast forest of Greenwood. Down there were some imposing mountains fencing the land on three sides. A good place to set up shop. Mordor, he’ll eventually call his new digs, the Land of Shadow. It has a nice ring to it.
So Sauron quietly got to work and centuries went by. Eventually, when his plan was ready to roll, he sent emissaries to Eregion. I wish I knew what kind of folk they were (Men, one supposes?) but they can’t have seemed too sinister; he had some smart Elves to fool. Sauron himself eventually followed in person, adopting the “fairest form he could contrive.” Enter Annatar, the Lord of Gifts.
By this time, Galadriel had already made friends with the realm of Lórinand across the mountains. With the help of the Dwarves, I might add. How cool is that? Dwarves helping Elves make contact with other Elves. Happier times. Now, the Elves of Lórinand were Nandor Elves, of the sort who’d never ventured west of the Misty Mountains. Wood-elves and such. Through Galadriel’s superior managerial skills, and the aid of Dwarven passages through Khazad-dûm, Lórinand became more organized and its population saw an influx of Sindar and Noldor. A right little Elven cultural melting pot.
Gil-galad, back in Lindon, turned away all of Annatar’s emissaries and Lórinand certainly rejected them because of Galadriel’s influence, but Sauron did make inroads in Eregion itself and with Celebrimbor in particular. Annatar wasn’t just some posh, silver-tongued Elf. He was posing as an emissary of the Valar themselves! That’s no small claim. He was really counting on no one being able to gainsay him or see through his disguise. And it’s not like Celebrimbor could pick up the phone and call his old friends in Valinor. Anyone who wished to sail to the West could, but it was a one-way trip.
One of the best parts of this account is how much of a thorn in Sauron’s backside Galadriel was in the Second Age. Tolkien wrote that he saw her as his “chief adversary.” For one, she wasn’t deceived by what he pretended to be, but that doesn’t mean she could see through him entirely. She might not even have guessed that he was that “evil controlling purpose” mentioned earlier. Certainly she didn’t know his real name. But she was a good judge of character, so he had to be careful. This whole set-up—that Tolkien imagined her as Sauron’s obstacle—feels important. And, if I had to guess, I would say this is one of the keystones in the minds of The Rings of Power’s showrunners. Even if they couldn’t use these Unfinished Tales directly, pitting Galadriel as a leader against Sauron is very much compatible with Tolkien’s retcon ideas.
So Galadriel “scorned” this so-called Lord of Gifts, but Sauron’s hold on Celebrimbor and his Elven-smiths was strong. He eventually convinced them to seize power, to “revolt against Galadriel and Celeborn.” So she got out, took her daughter (and son) with her through the passages of Khazad-dûm, and became the lady of Lórinand. Celeborn stuck around in Eregion, though; he wasn’t a fan of the Dwarves and their halls, but was left powerless. Now Celebrimbor was in charge, with Annatar behind him.
In any case, when Sauron’s identity was finally unmasked—when he finished his own magnum opus in Mount Doom—the Elves freaked out and removed those Rings of Power they’d made under his guidance. Celebrimbor himself headed right out of Eregion and visited Galadriel in Lórinand to seek her advice. Presumably with some egg on his face and words of apology.
Although the Elves didn’t destroy all the rings they’d made (as they should have), it was Galadriel who insisted they hide the last Three that Celebrimbor had made, the ones without Sauron’s direct involvement. They definitely needed to keep them out of Eregion, which is the first place Sauron would look when he came for them. But this was also the moment Celebrimbor gave her Nenya, the White Ring, the Ring of Adamant. She would eventually use it to make Lórien powerful, beautiful, and preserved in time—the way we see it in The Fellowship of the Ring. Yet there’s a side effect:
but its power upon her was great also and unforeseen, for it increased her latent desire for the Sea and for return into the West, so that her joy in Middle-earth was diminished.
Now, Tolkien’s writings don’t make it clear when she upgraded Lórien in this way. It couldn’t have been right then and there, after Celebrimbor gave her Nenya, because so long as Sauron held the One, even the Three could not be safely used. She knew that. So this might be a reference to Third Age activity. Still, this mention reminds us again of the long-term longing Galadriel bears for returning to Valinor.
It’s surely no accident, either, that the ring had this effect on her. After all, Sauron had lured the Elven-smiths of Eregion into forging the rings in the first place because “they desired both to stay in Middle-earth, which indeed they loved, and yet to enjoy the bliss of those that had departed.” He’d fed their desire, with lies, to let them think they could have their Valinorean cake and eat it. That Galadriel’s ring, though “unsullied” by Sauron’s touch, could fuel her longing for the sea is no surprise.
When Sauron brought war into Eregion, Galadriel’s name fades into the background. She seems to be more of an arranger or strategist than a general who leads armies into battle. Tolkien wrote of the advance of Mordor’s overwhelming forces, of Celeborn’s “sortie” that drove them back only for a while, of Elrond leading a force ahead of Gil-galad’s own, of Celebrimbor’s fall and gruesome fate, and of the Dwarves who assisted (at first). By the time we get back to Galadriel, the war is done. The Dwarves have called it quits and shut their gates, Sauron’s forces were wiped out by the aid of the Númenóreans, and Eriador was free of enemies but “largely in ruins.”
By this point, Galadriel’s longing for the sea had reached a new level. She couldn’t stay where she was, so far from the water, so she left Amroth in charge of Lórinand and traveled to the newly founded Imladris (aka Rivendell), to meet up with her husband again in the aftermath of the war. She brought Celebrían with her, and this is where Elrond first saw his future wife. Being Tolkien, this was love at first sight, but Elrond was too shy to say anything to her. It’s fine. He’s got time.
A capital-c Council was held, and they all decided that Imladris would be the Elvish stronghold of eastern Eriador (with Lindon being in the west). The other two of the Three Rings made by Celebrimbor were properly placed: one with Elrond, one with Gil-galad (who would later give it to Círdan). Things are looking like they might be peaceful again for a long while, at least. Sauron had been driven out. Of course, none of them realized that in that war…
the Númenóreans had tasted power in Middle-earth, and from that time forward they began to make permanent settlements on the western coasts, becoming too powerful for Sauron to attempt to move west out of Mordor for a long time.
Galadriel’s story in this tale wraps up a bit suddenly. At some point later, and because of her sea-longing, Galadriel and Celeborn took their daughter and traveled far to the south into the coastlands known as Belfalas. This region would later become known as Dol Amroth, one of the principalities of Gondor. Here she dwelled with her family until well into the Third Age when new dangers to Lórinand required their return.
Now we come back to The Rings of Power show, and the version of Galadriel we’re going to see. We’re getting a Lord of the Rings and Appendices Galadriel. She’ll still come from Valinor, but we will not have rebelled-against-the-Valar Galadriel, or a friend and protégé of Melian Galadriel, or even grieving-for-the-loss-of-four-brothers Galadriel. We will have an angry and vengeful Galadriel, whose brother, Finrod (the only named sibling in the Appendices), “gave his life” at some point in battle. (I will have more to say about Finrod another day.) They’ve remade him into a hunter of evil, so with his death, she will now become the hunter. The motivation, the chronology, the particulars—it will be different because, again, Amazon does not have the rights to The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, or really, anything else.
But if you read Tolkien’s own ideas, of the many hats and faces Galadriel has worn in his imagination—sister, daughter, commander, fighter, leader, organizer, facilitator—you will come away with a character who is restless, passionate, and powerful. And a little bit flawed; she may be overly proud and imperious. That would track. From all they’ve said so far, JD Payne and Patrick McKay seem to be familiar with most of this material, even if they can’t talk about it directly. And so they, along with Morfydd Clark herself, may have found ways to portray her character in keeping with Tolkien’s ideas. I believe they are at least trying. We can all decide individually if they meet our expectations.
So who’s most out to get Sauron in this new series?
Why, Lady Galadriel, in Middle-earth, with the Dagger. Of course.
Jeff LaSala is responsible for The Silmarillion Primer, the Deep Delvings series, and a few other assorted articles on this site. Tolkien nerdom aside, Jeff wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel, produced some cyberpunk stories, and works in production for Macmillan and the Tor Publishing Group. He is sometimes on Twitter.
