Arwen

Birth and lineage

Arwen was born in Rivendell in T.A. 241, the third child and only daughter of Elrond Half-elven and Celebrían, and so the granddaughter of Galadriel and Celeborn on her mother's side and, on her father's, the great-granddaughter of Eärendil and Elwing. Her brothers Elladan and Elrohir were a hundred and eleven years older. Through Elwing she descended from Lúthien and Beren, and the Elves, who remembered Lúthien, said that in Arwen the likeness of that beauty had come again into Middle-earth. Her name means noble maiden; Undómiel, the Evenstar, was the name her people gave her, for she was the last and loveliest of the great line of the Eldar in Middle-earth, born as their day drew toward its end. She was dark-haired and grey-eyed, in the likeness of the Noldor rather than of the golden Galadhrim.

Between Rivendell and Lórien

Arwen passed long stretches of her life not in her father's house but in Lothlórien with her mother's kin, and after Celebrían was wounded and sailed West in T.A. 2510 she lived much with Galadriel under the mallorns of Caras Galadhon. Her comings and goings across the mountains were quiet, for she travelled with an escort and the passes were dangerous; it was on one such journey home in T.A. 2951 that she was seen walking in the woods of Rivendell by a young Man who had only that day learned his true name.

Aragorn

Aragorn, fostered by Elrond under the name Estel, had just turned twenty when he came upon Arwen among the birches and took her for Lúthien of the old songs. She was nearly three thousand years old and he was a boy, and at first she thought little of it; but Elrond saw what had happened. He told Aragorn that Arwen was of a lineage too high for him, and that as one of the Half-elven she was bound by the Choice of her house: when Elrond left Middle-earth she must either go with him or stay and die as mortals die. Aragorn went away into the wild for nearly thirty years. In T.A. 2980, when he came to Lórien after his years in Rohan and Gondor, he was a Man in the fullness of his strength, and Galadriel dressed him in silver and white so that he seemed an Elf-lord. Arwen saw him on Cerin Amroth and her choice was made. On that hill, on a midsummer evening, they plighted their troth, and Arwen renounced the Twilight of her kindred for him. Elrond, when he learned it, set the one condition he could: that his daughter should marry no lesser man than the King of both Gondor and Arnor, since only such a cause could justify to him the loss of her.

The years of waiting

For nearly forty years more Arwen waited in Rivendell and Lórien while Aragorn laboured in the North and the South and the Shadow grew. She was in Rivendell when Frodo came in October 3018, and the Hobbit saw her at Elrond's table, the first time he had seen an Elf-woman of the high lineage; he noticed the grey eyes and the resemblance to her father, and understood only later who she was. During the winter of the war she wove a standard for Aragorn in secret, black cloth worked with the White Tree, the Seven Stars and the crown in gems, and sent it south by her brothers with Halbarad and the Grey Company, together with a message: that the days were short, and that either their hope would come or all hope end. Aragorn unfurled it at Pelargir and on the Pelennor Fields, where the Men of Gondor first saw the tokens of Elendil come back to them.

The Queen

After the fall of Sauron, Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn and the Elves of Rivendell and Lórien rode south with Arwen, and on Midsummer's day of T.A. 3019 she came to Minas Tirith in a company that shone under the stars. Elrond gave her hand to the King Elessar, and she and Aragorn were married in the City of Kings. So the long-sundered branches of the Half-elven were joined again in one house: the line of Elros through Elendil and the line of Elrond. Arwen's choice was completed by her marriage. To Frodo, who had been wounded past the healing of Middle-earth, she gave two gifts before he went home: her own place on the ship that would carry Elrond West, so that he might go if he chose; and a white gem on a silver chain, to hold when the memory of the dark returned. Her son Eldarion was born in the Fourth Age, and she bore daughters also. She reigned beside Aragorn for a hundred and twenty years and was the last of the Elves of the great houses to remain in Middle-earth after Elrond and Galadriel had sailed.

Death

In Fo.A. 120 Aragorn, having lived two hundred and ten years, chose to lay down his life as the kings of Númenor had done, and Arwen came to him in the House of the Kings in the Silent Street. She was not yet weary and asked him to stay, and the bitterness of the choice she had made in full knowledge came home to her; he told her that the gift of Ilúvatar was not to be refused and that there was more than memory beyond the world. When he was gone she left Gondor, said farewell to Eldarion and her daughters, and went to Lórien. The Galadhrim had gone; the wood was silent and the mallorns fading. She lived there alone through the winter, and in the spring of Fo.A. 121 she laid herself down on Cerin Amroth, and there she died and was buried. Her grave remained, the tale says, until the world was changed and the memory of her people passed out of it.

Legacy

Arwen chose what Lúthien chose, and for the same reason, but where Lúthien's story is a tale of quest and battle, Arwen's is a story of waiting and of consent. She is the answer to the Choice of the Peredhil in its hardest form, the Elf who gave up the West with open eyes. Through her, the blood of Lúthien, Melian and the kings of the Noldor was carried into the line of the Kings of the Fourth Age, and her name is bound to Aragorn's in the Red Book as the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, the last that the Hobbits recorded of the Elder Days.

Died of her own will on Cerin Amroth in Lothlórien in the spring of Fo.A. 121, a year after the death of Aragorn, and was buried there.