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Galadriel and I are each wrestling with the best way of Center-earth. In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy, the hero is torn between returning to the West with the remainder of her firm and dwelling out her days in complete peace, and persevering with to hunt Sauron, who she is aware of is alive. For me, effectively, I’m saved up at evening fascinated by the elf maidens.
On the boat to the Timeless Lands (aka Elf Heaven), because the elves granted passage are standing upright on the deck of the ship with swords in hand, there’s a line of elf maidens who file out and begin to put together them for the completion of their voyage. They take their weapons and their cloaks, oozing ceremony with each movement. After which they only… throw them on the bottom. What’s extra, as soon as the ship itself (minus Galadriel) heads to the Timeless Lands, the maidens are simply nonetheless on the ship?
I introduced the query as much as Polygon’s resident Tolkien professional, Susana Polo, casually, anticipating (as there typically is) some deeper lore at play within the scene. She instructed me “I don’t know; Tolkien wasn’t very particular about these items.” I pushed a bit of tougher, anticipating there was absolutely some clarification behind the sleek visuals: Why have been all of them ladies? What occurred to them as soon as the ship went to Elf Heaven? Why did they take the weapons solely to discard them just some toes from the individuals they took them from?
Susana had no solutions for me. As she put it, Tolkien doesn’t actually dig into how elves “determine what to do with their lives.” We have now the broad strokes of the foremost households or ruling events. However past that Tolkien (who, Susana notes, was very Catholic) went lengthy on marriage, getting older, kids, linguistics… however not jobs.
What meaning for the elf maidens, I’m not certain. They might simply be a decrease stage of elf servant, and there may very well be extra to what they do than we’re seeing in Rings of Energy. However earlier than your mind goes too deep down this rabbit gap, let me guarantee you, mine already has. Being on the boat to Valinor is supposedly the very best honor an elf can receive, the possibility to return to Valinor, a pardon from their earlier expulsion. Have been these servants additionally invited in? Is that this akin to the (inflated) notion of pharaohs being buried with their servants? Or have been the handmaidens merely heavenly flight attendants, doing the circuit between Lindon and the Timeless Lands and solely paid when the ship’s doorways have been locked?
These are ideas that can, in case you allow them to, fuck you all the best way up, and can probably make a number of individuals depart the room as you proceed to yell in regards to the implications of the Rings of Energy elf ascension scene. They aren’t the purpose of this divine second in any respect, and but they really feel consultant to me of the cracks in Rings of Energy.
The scene itself is supposed to floor us in Galadriel’s wrestle, turning away from the afterlife so lots of her sort search with a purpose to put herself (presumably) by means of way more battle and ache with a purpose to guarantee a greater world and make good on her promise to her brother. Amid all of it are the ship’s celestial deckhands, serving to (I suppose?) the weary troopers on their means. They’re the kind of factor that feels within the second cool and consistent with the elves’ elegantly stoic aesthetic.
However scratch at it for even a second and all of it comes aside; these maidens appear to exist purely to additional dramatize Galadriel’s reluctance, one thing already pretty effectively established all through the primary hour. Rings of Energy is, reportedly, a billion-dollar collection, and a world as wealthy as Tolkien’s deserves greater than visuals that really feel so thinly drawn. Center-earth is a realm crammed with many mysteries, however the destiny of the elf servants/choir/shiphands on the best way to Elf Heaven shouldn’t be one in all them.
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