MovieChat Forums > The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) Discussion > How did Thranduil become King?

How did Thranduil become King?

posted 10 years ago by tfilm78
6 replies | jump to latest

In any stable monarchy, a man usually becomes King because his father, who was king before him, dies. But Elves are immortal, so that natural course of events doesn't apply. So how does it happen?

[–] cmargerum 10 years ago

I'm not sure Tolkien ever listed the family tree for these elves. But elves do die and are succeeded by their sons. Or they leave middle earth and leave the kingdom to a son.

[–] tfilm78 10 years ago

On the latter remark you may be right. But full-blooded elves are, by their very nature, immortal. So short of being killed, they do not in fact die.

[–] Otaku-sempai 10 years ago

Oropher was the first Sinda King of the Wood-elves of the Greenwood. In the Second Age, Oropher led his folk as part of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, but he was slain in the Battle of Dagorlad, leaving Thranduil to become King.

"There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." - Gandalf

[–] tfilm78 10 years ago

Now that's the kind of answer I was looking for.

[–] Lupin-III 10 years ago

To add to this... the battlefield of the battle of Dagorlad is what became the dead marshes, and Oropher and his army are many of the corpses in it.

[–] magolding-94772 9 years ago

Elves are not totally immortal.

Their spirits are guaranteed to survive for as many thousands or millions of years as the world exists,though apparently they have no guarantee about their fates after the end of the world.

When an elf's body is killed by accident, disease (very rare), psychological depression, or violence, his or her spirit goes to the Halls of Mandos in the Blessed Realm. If the elf was good he will be given a new living body to inhabit pretty soon (by elf standards).

When Tolkien noticed that Glorfindel in LOTR had the same name as Glofindeal of Gondolin, who was killed in the fall of Gondolin (a balrog ambushed the refugees from the fallen city, Glorfindel fought the balrog, and they fell off a cliff together), he could have decided they were two separate elves with the same name. But instead Tolkien discussed why the Valar would send or permit the resurrected Glorfindel to return to Middle-earth.

The Valar believe that the Blessed Realm is the proper place for Elves, so when an Elf dies in Middle-earth and is given a new body, he usually never returns to Middle-earth. Thus Elves in Middle-earth that was full of dangers had inheritance and succession rules for many thousands of years before LOTR.

And so for Elf kings in Middle-earth the usual answer to how they became king is the same as for kings of men - they inherited the throne from their fathers.