The Fate of the Elves

 

This is my second post about the Elven Rings, as portrayed in The Silmarillion and the The Fellowship of the Ring. In my first analysis, I explained how the Elven Rings allowed the Elves to preserve their realms.

Elrond and Galadriel, who each wore an Elven Ring, discussed their powerful tools during conversations described in The Fellowship.

  

Elrond and Galadriel

King Elrond shared his thoughts about the Elven Rings during the Council of Elrond.  

Elrond didn’t disclose that he wore one of the Elven Rings. But he told Gloin, a dwarf, that the Elven Rings were being used by those who were working to defeat Sauron.

 

'Ah, alas!' cried Gloin. 'When will the day come of our revenge? But still there are the Three. What of the Three Rings of the Elves? Very mighty Rings, it is said. Do not the Elf-lords keep them? Yet they too were made by the Dark Lord long ago. Are they idle? I see Elf-lords here. Will they not say?'

The Elves returned no answer. 'Did you not hear me, Gloin?' said Elrond. 'The Three were not made by Sauron, nor did he ever touch them. But of them it is not permitted to speak. So much only in this hour of doubt I may now say. They are not idle. But they were not made as weapons of war or conquest: that is not their power.’

‘Those who made them did not desire strength or domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained. These things the Elves of Middle-earth have in some measure gained, though with sorrow.’

‘But all that has been wrought by those who wield the Three will turn to their undoing, and their minds and hearts will become revealed to Sauron, if he regains the One. It would be better if the Three had never been. That is his purpose.'

'But what then would happen, if the Ruling Ring were destroyed as you counsel?' asked Gloin.

'We know not for certain,' answered Elrond sadly. 'Some hope that the Three Rings, which Sauron has never touched, would then become free, and their rulers might heal the hurts of the world that he has wrought. But maybe when the One has gone, the Three will fail, and many fair things will fade and be forgotten. That is my belief.'

'Yet all the Elves are willing to endure this chance,' said Glorfindel, 'if by it the power of Sauron may be broken, and the fear of his dominion be taken away forever.' (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2)

 

Elrond said the Elven Rings were made by elves who valued “understanding, making, and healing” and who wanted to “preserve all things unstained.”

If Sauron regained the Ruling Ring, the Elven Rings would reveal the minds of their users to the Dark Lord, which would thwart their efforts to defeat him, Elrond said.

But if the Ruling Ring was destroyed, as Elrond recommended, he believed the powers of the Elven Rings would also come to an end, and lead the Elven cultures to fade and be forgotten.

Upon the Fellowship’s visit to Lothlorien, Lady Galadriel showed Frodo that she wore one of the Elven Rings.

Galadriel believed Sauron would destroy the elves, if Frodo failed to destroy the Ruling Ring.

But she also believed that if the Ruling Ring were destroyed, Lothlorien would fade and be swept away by the tides of time. In that came to pass, she believed the elves of Lorien would have to become a “rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten” or return to Valinor, the city of the Gods.

When Frodo asked Galadriel what outcome she preferred, Galadriel told him that she hoped Sauron would be defeated.

  

Earendil, the Evening Star, most beloved of the Elves, shone clear above. So bright was it that the figure of the Elven-lady cast a dim shadow on the ground. Its rays glanced upon a ring about her finger; it glittered like polished gold overlaid with silver light, and a white stone in it twinkled as if the Even-star had come down to rest upon her hand. Frodo gazed at the ring with awe; for suddenly it seemed to him that he understood.

'Yes,' she said, divining his thought, 'it is not permitted to speak of it, and Elrond could not do so. But it cannot be hidden from the Ring-bearer, and one who has seen the Eye. Verily it is in the land of Lorien upon the finger of Galadriel that one of the Three remains. This is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, and I am its keeper.

'He suspects, but he does not know — not yet. Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.'

Frodo bent his head. 'And what do you wish?' he said at last.

'That what should be shall be,' she answered. 'The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged.’

‘Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now. For the fate of Lothlorien you are not answerable but only for the doing of your own task. Yet I could wish, were it of any avail, that the One Ring had never been wrought, or had remained for ever lost.' (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7)

  

Interestingly, Elrond said he believed the world would have been better if the Elven Rings had never been made.

Galadriel, on the other hand, said she wished the Ruling Ring would have never been made or that it would have remained lost after Sauron’s earlier defeat.

Either of those events would have allowed the elves to use the Elven Rings without having to fear that Sauron would use the rings against them.

  

The Twilight of the Elves

I read The Fellowship before I reread passages from The Silmarillion that provided additional information about the Elven Rings.  

I initially thought Galadriel must have been mistaken about the power of the Elven Rings. I thought she might have falsely attributed to the ring what the elves had accomplished without the rings’ assistance.  

I didn’t share Galadriel’s certainty that the Elven Kingdoms would decline if the Elven Rings lost their power. And while Elrond believed the rings would likely lose their magic after the Ruling Ring was destroyed, he wasn’t sure.  

But The Silmarillion clearly explained the power of the Elven Rings and definitively stated that the rings  lost their magic after Frodo destroyed the Ring of Power. 

 

Yet many voices were heard among the Elves foreboding that, if Sauron should come again, then either he would find the Ruling Ring that was lost, or at the best his enemies would discover it and destroy it; but in either chance the powers of the Three must then fail and all things maintained by them must fade, and so the Elves should pass into the twilight and the Dominion of Men begin.

And so indeed it has since befallen: the One and the Seven and the Nine are destroyed; and the Three have passed away, and with them the Third Age is ended, and the Tales of the Eldar in Middle-earth draw to then-close.

Those were the Fading Years, and in them the last flowering of the Elves east of the Sea came to its winter. In that time the Noldor walked still in the Hither Lands, mightiest and fairest of the children of the world, and their tongues were still heard by mortal ears.

Many things of beauty and wonder remained on earth in that time, and many things also of evil and dread: Orcs there were and trolls and dragons and fell beasts, and strange creatures old and wise in the woods whose names are forgotten; Dwarves still laboured in the hills and wrought with patient craft works of metal and stone that none now can rival. 

But the Dominion of Men was preparing and all things were changing, until at last the Dark Lord arose in Mirkwood again. (The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age)

 

After the Ring of Power was destroyed, the Elvish cultures faded.

Eventually, the bearers of the Elven Rings — Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf — sailed over the sea and returned to Valinor. Their journey was described in the final passage of The Silmarillion.

 

White was that ship and long was it a-building, and long it awaited the end of which Cirdan had spoken. But when all these things were done, and the Heir of Isildur had taken up the lordship of Men, and the dominion of the West had passed to him, then it was made plain that the power of the Three Rings also was ended, and to the Firstborn the world grew old and grey.

In that time the last of the Noldor set sail from the Havens and left Middle-earth forever.

And latest of all the Keepers of the Three Rings rode to the Sea, and Master Elrond took there the ship that Cirdan had made ready. In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high airs, above the mists of the world, it passed into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song. (The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age)

 

Frodo’s journey to destroy the Ring of Power finally vanquished the Elves’ greatest enemy. But the destruction of the One Ring also ended the power of the Elven Rings, and thus brought the Age of the Elves to a close.