Posted: July 25, 2000 at 12:48:05: by Curien
: I've heard something about him designing characters after his wife edith... but two things come to mind How old was she when he wrote this...(perhaps if she were older she had slivery hair.)You'll notice that many of the most attractive people in Tolkien's tales have black hair and "sea-grey" eyes. Not ALL of them do, but MOST of them do. :And the second thing is, I'm sure he didn't base the entire elf race around her looks. Although they probably all had characteristics...there had to be a defining feature so that the Wood elves, Noldar High Elves and Sindarian High elves could be told apart. Otherwise they would all look like his wife and no one would be able to tell which race they were without asking. So in order to separate them wouldn't they have to have a defining characteristic such as different shades of hair color, eye color, and height? YES! Not all the Elves look the same. The Vanyar, all of whom live in the the Blessed Realm, were blond. Most of the cases of blond-haired Elves are because the Elf was a descendent of a Vanya (except for the case of the Woodland King in The Hobbit). (No full-blooded Vanyar live in ME, but some Elves of mixed heritage do.) :And if that would be correct, perhaps was Glorfindel or maybe Galadriel made exactly like his wife, and although other elves may look the same or have some of the same characteristics as Edith, perhaps they, maybe even Legolas had lighter hair so you could tell him apart from the character Glorfindel? I find it interesting that you picked those two examples for "different-looking" Elves. Both of them are blond. We know that Galadriel's grandmother was a Vanya. I'm not sure about Glorfindel (whose name actually means "golden-haired"), but I don't think a Vanyarin descent is out of the question.
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