Galadriel

Birth in Valinor

Galadriel was the youngest child and only daughter of Finarfin, son of Finwë, and Eärwen, daughter of Olwë of the Teleri. Born in Tirion in the Years of the Trees, she was the tallest of all Elven-women and had the gold hair of her mother's kindred, shot with a silver light that the Eldar said recalled the mingled radiance of the Two Trees. Her father named her Artanis, noble woman, and her mother Nerwen, man-maiden, for her height and strength. Unfinished Tales records that Fëanor begged three times for a strand of her hair and was three times refused, and that the wish to capture such light was among the thoughts that led him to the Silmarils. She was proud, strong-willed and ambitious, and in her youth she wished for lands of her own to rule.

The rebellion

When Fëanor swayed the Noldor after the Darkening, Galadriel was the only woman among the leaders of the host. She did not swear the Oath and had no love for Fëanor, but she was eager to see the wide lands of Middle-earth and would not be left behind. In The Silmarillion she goes with the host of Fingolfin and fought in defence of her mother's people at Alqualondë, then crossed the grinding ice of the Helcaraxë after her father turned back; a note in Unfinished Tales preserves a later thought of Tolkien's in which she left Aman separately with Celeborn and was never under the Doom, but the published narrative is the former.

Doriath

In Beleriand Galadriel was admitted to Doriath as kin of Thingol and lived there many years. She became a pupil of Melian, who questioned her about the Noldor's departure; Galadriel spoke of the Silmarils and the death of Finwë but would not tell of the Kinslaying, and Melian read the shadow of it in her silence. In Doriath she met Celeborn, a kinsman of Thingol, and they were wed. Through the wars of the First Age she remained in Doriath and had no part in the Nirnaeth or the fall of the hidden cities. After the War of Wrath, when the ban was lifted from the Exiles, Galadriel alone of the surviving leaders of the rebellion refused the pardon and stayed in Middle-earth; her pride would not yet let her go home as a suppliant.

The Second Age

In the early Second Age Galadriel and Celeborn dwelt in Lindon under Gil-galad, and there their daughter Celebrían was born. Unfinished Tales gives several accounts of their later movements, not all reconcilable. In the fullest they crossed the Blue Mountains and founded the Noldorin realm of Eregion by the gates of Moria around S.A. 750, where the Dwarves were friends and the smiths of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain grew great; later Celebrimbor, swayed by Annatar, took the lordship, and Galadriel went east through Khazad-dûm to the woodland realm of Lórinand, later Lothlórien, while Celeborn stayed. In another version they lived long in Belfalas by the sea. What is certain from the published texts is that Galadriel distrusted the fair stranger who called himself Annatar and refused him, and that Celebrimbor, once he understood who Sauron was, gave her Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, one of the Three. She hid it and did not use it while the One was on Sauron's hand.

The Third Age

When Elrond married Celebrían in T.A. 109, Galadriel became the grandmother of Arwen and of Elladan and Elrohir. After the Dwarves of Moria woke Durin's Bane in T.A. 1980 and King Amroth of Lórien was lost at sea a year later, Galadriel and Celeborn took up the rule of the Golden Wood. There, with Nenya no longer hidden after the One was lost, she preserved a piece of the Elder Days: the mallorn trees, the sleepless enchantment of Caras Galadhon, and a realm where time seemed not to pass. She sat on the White Council from its founding and urged that Gandalf, not Saruman, should lead it, and it was her persuasion that finally drove the Council to assault Dol Guldur in T.A. 2941 and expel Sauron from Mirkwood. She was said to see far, to read minds, and to know the thoughts of the Enemy.

The Fellowship and the Mirror

In February of T.A. 3019 the Fellowship of the Ring came to Lórien from the darkness of Moria, and Galadriel received them, silently testing each with an offer of what they most desired. She showed Frodo and Samwise her Mirror, a basin of water in which past, present and possible futures could be seen; Frodo saw the Eye, and understood that Galadriel too bore a Ring. He offered her the One. For a moment she let the temptation show, imagining herself as a queen terrible and beautiful, and then refused it, saying that she would diminish and go West and remain herself. It was the last of the great trials of her long life. She gave the Company cloaks, lembas and boats, and gifts to each: to Aragorn the Elessar and a sheath for Andúril, to Gimli three strands of the hair she had denied Fëanor, to Sam a box of earth from her orchard, and to Frodo the Phial that held the light of Eärendil's star.

The end of the Age

During the War of the Ring Dol Guldur attacked Lórien three times and was beaten off, the Silmarillion and the Appendices say, by the power that dwelt there. After the Ring was destroyed on March 25, Galadriel and Celeborn crossed the Anduin, and she threw down the walls of Dol Guldur and laid its pits bare. She came to Minas Tirith for the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen, parted from Celeborn at last in Eriador, and on September 29 of T.A. 3021 rode with Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo to the Grey Havens, where Círdan had a ship ready. Her ban ended and her pride long since burned away, she sailed over the Sea to the West she had left three Ages before.

Legacy

Galadriel was the last of the leaders of the Noldorin rebellion to leave Middle-earth, and the only one to leave it by choice rather than death. She bore one of the Three for over four thousand years without falling to its power, refused the One when it was in her hand, and in Lórien kept alive a memory of Valinor for those who would never see it. In the Fourth Age her grandsons remained for a time in Rivendell and her granddaughter Arwen died in the fading Lórien, but the Golden Wood went with her.

Sailed West from the Grey Havens with the Ring-bearers on September 29, T.A. 3021, the last of the Noldorin leaders of the Exile to leave Middle-earth.