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04-09-2003, 05:20 AM | #1 |
Blithe Spirit
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The Dior Dilemma
Ok, we've all been talking about the half-elven problem. People have said that Dior wasn't an issue because he died before he had to make the choice.
But where did he go when died? Did he go to the Halls of Mandos or did he suffer the unknown fate of men? I'd always assumed he'd been counted as an elf, he was married to one, ruled over them and so on. But maybe some of our half-elven experts have other ideas. Oh, and what about the sons of Dior who were left to die in the wilderness? Would they have gone to Mandos too? Poor little things... [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img]
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04-09-2003, 06:33 AM | #2 |
King's Writer
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Dior was was a Man, and his mother already sheared the Doom of Man when he was recieved and born. So I assume he was a Man and sheared the Doom of Man.
His children were Half-Elven. Elwing had the choice granted by Manwe. Her brethern died eraly in childhood. And were never again mentioned. So we do not know what happend to thier fear. Since at the ende of the Frist Age Manwe decleared that hence forward any child that had a share of human blood how ever small should recive the gift of man, if not granted other wiese, I think that Elured and Elurin where counted among mankind. Respectfully Findegil |
04-09-2003, 06:49 AM | #3 |
Wight
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I havent read the Sil. for a while, but i was wondering, dont ALL beings, men and elves go to the halls of Mandos? Or just elves?
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04-09-2003, 10:07 AM | #4 |
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According to the Silm - Men go there briefly, before in some manner unknown to Elves, pass to some place of Eru's choosing beyond the confines of the Circles of the World.
Whether obscure aspects of HoME offer a different view I do not off-hand recall. The Athrabeth (HoM-E X) would be a likely place to look, as would the MT chapters at the end of the Book. [ April 09, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]
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04-09-2003, 03:26 PM | #5 |
Animated Skeleton
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Is really Dior 100% man? In that case the marriage Dior-Nimloth (or Lindis) would be the fourth union between elves and men. Where is it mentioned that he is a man? Arwen parents were elves and she became mortal.
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04-10-2003, 12:01 AM | #6 |
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The way to label Dior, Elured, Elurin, Elwing and Earendil, as well as Elrond and Elros is as Peredhil. They were half-elven, and in a sense, perhaps, half-elven humans, and pending some pronouncement of fate by Manwe to the contrary, they were bound by the fate of mortality within the World.
Presumably, they were immune to sickness and common decay, and would be exceptionally long-lived and vigorous to the end. Dior might have lived a thousand years, conceivably, seeing as Elros lasted 500. But the presence of mortal blood (in the non-genetic sense) would mean that their spirits were not bound to this World and could not sustain the corpus indefinitely from the ravages of Time, hence age and death, and the departure of that spirit from the Circles of the World, after a period of waiting in the Halls of Mandos. For the first three listed above, the question of a choice from Manwe never happened, and sadly, there was no such chance. Even Dior had a short life by the measure of Men. So, we can really never know. So, Dior & Nimloth was thus a pairing of Peredhil and Elf. For the others, who had a choice, they still remained Peredhil, and could choose, and in three cases, chose to have the life and fate of the Firstborn. Arguably, Arwen and Aragorn was technically not a pairing of Elf and Man. Aragorn's non-human ancestry was so remote as to be meaningless, but Arwen (and her brothers) were still half-elven. But for all intents and purposes she was a Elf when they married. Her human ancestry was only 3/16, and she had lived nearly three thousand years, already, as a Quendi.
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04-10-2003, 07:30 AM | #7 | |||
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Dior was mortal, though. Before the family of Earendil/Elwing, all beings with any amount of mortal blood were mortal. This also remained true for any beings afterwards (aside from Earendil/Elwing's descendants). [ April 10, 2003: Message edited by: Legolas ]
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04-11-2003, 06:49 PM | #8 |
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The sons (and daughter) of Elrond were given the same choice Elrond and Elros were given. His sons chose to be elves and went with their father, but Arwen chose to be mortal and stayed with Aragorn.
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04-11-2003, 08:27 PM | #9 | |
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04-12-2003, 09:40 AM | #10 |
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[img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Very!
We know that the twins did not accompany their father oversea at the end of the Third Age but continued to live in Rivendell for many years thereafter, joined eventually by their grandfather Celeborn. There is some controversy over their final choice, they may have eventually followed their father into the West but I personally am inclined to believe they chose to be accounted as Men and died in Middle Earth. The question is however quite open as Tolkien never actually says what their choice was. |
04-13-2003, 11:41 AM | #11 |
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I agree with Morwen T about the twins. (I think BD-"Legolas" needs a surname like Morwen T to avoid confusion with references to Legolas, the character).
A few posts above, Lindil quotes me out of context. Shame. I had just said that technically Arwen was a Peredhil and not an Elf per se. But with the qualification of "for all intents and purposes" is to say that she was indeed like an Elf at the point of her marriage, which one must accept in order to make sense of JRRT's listing of Aragorn and Arwen as one of the three pairings of Man and Eldar.
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The hoes unrecked in the fields were flung, __ and fallen ladders in the long grass lay __ of the lush orchards; every tree there turned __ its tangled head and eyed them secretly, __ and the ears listened of the nodding grasses; __ though noontide glowed on land and leaf, __ their limbs were chilled. |
02-26-2007, 01:49 PM | #12 |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
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Do you really think Tolkien, a devoted family man, would have Nimloth forever separated from her baby children in the after life forever?
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02-26-2007, 04:44 PM | #13 | |
Blithe Spirit
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Ah, thanks for digging up this old thing, hewhoarisesinmight...(what do they call you for short, btw?)
Now you've got me worritting about those poor babies again. I found this on Wikipedia... Quote:
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02-27-2007, 07:13 AM | #14 | |
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02-27-2007, 09:39 AM | #15 | ||||
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Well, I've looked through the thread and noticed nobody gave any quotes on this so I will:
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In later writings this becomes unclear. The quote from Letter #153 shows that Dior was given this choice. The question remaining is which choice did he make. Considering what we know about him, I personally see him as an Elf. We know he was named "Thingol's Heir", and he was King of Doriath. I doubt the Elves would have accepted a Man as their ruler, even if he was the rightful heir to the throne. Also, there is one other example of a Half-Elf that rules over Elves - Elrond - and it is well known which choice he made.
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02-27-2007, 09:44 AM | #16 | |
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02-27-2007, 10:01 AM | #17 |
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The quote from the Letters is telling. That means Tolkien thought of Dior as an Half-Elf.
The quotes from the Lost Tales do not really count for anything here, since at that time Beren Dior's father was an Elf himself, so there was no question of Dior being anything else then an Elf. The choices for the Half-Elves were granted to them by the Manwë after a long discussion of the council of the Valar after the journey of Eärendil to Valinor. At this time Dior had been killed already. I imaging that he was held in waiting in the Halls of Mandos for that time and that he was granted the choice after that decision by Manwë: Either he could stay in Mandos until the time Namo jugde him fit for a return to incarnated live or he could leave the world for ever. But how can anybody in Middel-Earth be expected to know what choise he made? Respectfully Findegil |
02-27-2007, 10:47 AM | #18 |
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If that is true Dior would have gone with his wife...
What choice could the children have had, would they have automatically gone with their parents? I certainly hope so.
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02-27-2007, 10:49 AM | #19 | |
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Just to quibble.
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02-27-2007, 11:08 AM | #20 | ||
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Furthermore, even if his body would maintain some Mannish features from the parent, it would definitely undergo a radical transformation, seeing that the bodies of elves have to endure life until the end of the world (if we don't count Melkor's marring). In conclusion, I don't think he would have something that would set him aside from other elves visibly, while biologically he would be like them as much as any other elf.
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02-27-2007, 12:06 PM | #21 |
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Good point made Findegil, I had forgotten this.
Still, his deeds in life seem to hint he was favorising his Elf side over his Man side, and that's what leads me to think he chose to be an Elf.
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02-28-2007, 04:56 PM | #22 | |||
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What if all of Dior's dominant genes, physically, came from Beren? Tolkien says that Elves and Men were capable of producing offspring in the normal way, which assumes two sets of genes and the subsequent physical products from the two parents. I would agree that there may not have been any body parts exclusive to one race or the other, as I don't hold with the ears-different theory. Quote:
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02-28-2007, 05:21 PM | #23 | ||
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03-01-2007, 10:58 AM | #24 |
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Fair points, I suppose...
But I would still quibble that Elrond et al were not merely "Half-Elves by title only", but, simply, Half-Elves. We could just as easily call him Half-Man, though that is not the convention. I'm willing to accept that the Half-Elven-who-chooses-Elvenkind is in all respects a full, regular, Elf, but that is biologically. In terms of culture and self-perception, the Mannish influence cannot but affect the mind. Obviously, it affected Elrond less than Elros, since he chose his Elven heritage-- but there is ample evidence shown in his fondness for his Arnorian cousins in the Third Age that Elrond remembered and honoured his kinship with Men, and consequently his descent from them.
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03-01-2007, 03:27 PM | #25 | ||
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03-01-2007, 07:37 PM | #26 | ||||
A Northern Soul
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Dior was mortal.
All Peredhil would've been mortal until Earendil and Elwing. Manwe made a proclamation: Quote:
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Likewise, Tuor does not 'become an elf.' He is still a Man; he is simply granted the same grace.
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03-02-2007, 03:35 AM | #27 | |||
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03-02-2007, 04:21 AM | #28 |
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"There is no reason to now call him an elf just because he shares their fate"
He lived the life of one, therefore accepted in his community as a full Elf.
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03-02-2007, 10:56 AM | #29 |
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See, here's what I'm trying to get at...
I do not deny any aspect of Elrond's Elvishness. I would agree that, in pretty much all respects, he is an Elf's Elf. He seems more Elven than Galadriel, Fëanor, and Finrod at times. Possibly, however, this is because as a Half-elf, he has, consciously or unconsciously, molded himself to be as Elven as possible, moreso than a full-blooded Elf, who would just BE an Elf, and not worry about being LIKE one. I also have a mindset wherein the phrase "blood is thicker than water" holds some validity. Deny it or embrace it, your family history, where you come from, affects who and what you are. A really good analogy is Spock, off of the original Star Trek-- the Vulcan of Vulcans, who nonetheless is half-human and cannot be anything but half-human. It's not an exact analogy, but it gets at where I'm coming from. Or, look at it from the point of view of citizenship. Elrond can be said to be a citizen of both (using random countries for demonstrative effect) Uzbekistan and Uganda. Then the United Nations (ie. Valar) comes along and says that you can only be a citizen of one country. Elrond, born in Uganda, would be by default a Ugandian. However, the United Nations are not without their Niënna, and so all the dual citizens are given a choice of which nation they wanted to belong to. Elrond, raised Uzbeks and preferring that side of the family tree, chooses to be an Uzbek citizen. Does this mean that Elrond is no longer a Ugandian at all? He may not be OFFICIALLY a Ugandian, but he still has Ugandian heritage, and he still has Ugandian family ties, and his genetic heritage is still part Ugandian (and as an aside, I would say that if Ugandians and Uzbeks can both be biologically human and reproduce, and yet have different typical characteristics it stands to reason that humans and Elves might have similar, though different, differences).
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03-02-2007, 11:43 AM | #30 | |||
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Well said, Formendacil.
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Likewise, Gimli "lived the life of one" on Tol Eressëa, but that does not change his fundamental kind. He is a dwarf, and accepted as a dwarf. Quote:
Which actually brings me to a better description. Elrond's phenotypes are all, or at least more often, Elven where there is a difference between Men and Elves. However, that does not change his genotype. He is still Half-elven. It may be even logical to presume that this is why he chose to be immortal - he was more Elven in manner, felt more connected to that aspect of his ancestry, etc. * genotype - an organism's genome, or genetic makeup † phenotype - the actual characteristics expressed as a result of genotype and environment
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03-02-2007, 12:30 PM | #31 | |||||||
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03-02-2007, 03:36 PM | #32 | |||||
A Northern Soul
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As dilute as Imrahil's Elvish strain was, Legolas still recognizes it instantly: Quote:
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03-03-2007, 06:05 AM | #33 | |
Eagle of the Star
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I have overlook the importance of your statement, since, frankly, our whole debate hinges on this:
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03-03-2007, 12:00 PM | #34 |
A Northern Soul
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Tuor did not become an elf. He was "numbered among the elder race" - dwelt with them, was part of their population in Aman, shared their fate, etc.
Likewise, "Elrond chose to be among the Elves" (L. 153). Not to be an Elf, but to be among them. I said all because I had no immediate recollection of a human trait observed in him, but added or at least more often as a simple disclaimer because he appears so little in the books - more than Elros, for example, but still nowhere near the amount of exposure that one of the Fellowship had. The entire question is proven with this. If Elrond became a "full elf" after he made his decision, then his children would not require a "renewed elvish strain from their mother" to be granted the choice. If Elrond was a "full elf," they would be simply elves as well, and immortal, no questions asked. But they are not. "His children - with a renewed Elvish strain, since their mother was Celebrían dtr. of Galadriel - have to make their choices" (L. 153).
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03-03-2007, 12:18 PM | #35 | |
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But Earendil and Elwing were both born around 500 FA. The voyage was around 573, was it not? They don't strike me as a couple of old dears - Elwing flying around in bird's shape and so on...so they clearly did not age like mortal men and women did. And does no-one have the answer to my query about the twins and the Nandor?
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03-03-2007, 02:18 PM | #36 |
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This gives no reason to expect that they were living immortal lives. I would expect that Dior, his children, and Earendil would've lived very long lives. Earendil and Elwing's mortal son Elros lived 500 years. I can't find any figures to give an idea of a Man's lifespan in the First Age - each date of death seems to be because the person was killed.
Still, later Elendil and Isildur lived in excess of 200 years and only died at their respective ages because they were slain. They do not appear to be withering of old age - Elendil is slain in combat with Sauron as he is leading an army of men while Isildur is murdered in the Disaster of Gladden Fields. Aragorn lived 210 years, though that is very long for someone at that time. Even Theoden, with no immortal ancestors whatsoever, is still leading an army and fighting at age 71 when he is slain at Pelennor Fields. Éomer goes on to live to 93. As for the twins and Nandor question, I'll look into it.
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03-04-2007, 02:39 AM | #37 | |||
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In letter #131, Tolkien states that the nature of Men "could not endure" immortality, and it is apparent that this quote is in refference to letter #156, where it is said: Quote:
IIRC, Tolkien comments in the letters that the view of Man that they were or can, or should be immortals is a lie induced by Melkor. Concerning this subject, Tolkien notes in his comments on the Atrabeth that (emphasis added): Quote:
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03-04-2007, 04:27 PM | #38 | |
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What I am arguing--and what I think Legolas is arguing--that there are further differences, just as there are between different ethnic groups of humans.
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03-04-2007, 04:31 PM | #39 |
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But the Edain were granted their long lifespan three times that of ordinary men, by the Valar, when they left for Numenor. Elros got 500 years, but again, all the references I find have him getting that lifespan at the time he made his choice, not before. So Aragorn, as his descendant, was getting the grace of the Valar that had been granted at the end of the First Age.
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03-04-2007, 04:35 PM | #40 | |
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