#ainedubh

Elrond, for example, hosts the dwarves and finds the moon-letters on the map; but he has no children (Elladan and Elrohir and Arwen), he has no wife (Celebrian, who went to Valinor for solace), he has no parents (Earendil and Elwing), he has no in-laws (Galadriel and Celeborn) -- he just is, merely Elrond master of Rivendell, “noble and fair and wise”, who “comes into many tales”, but only has a small part in Bilbo’s. And that’s because, (a) The Hobbit is a children’s book, with a first-person narrator telling the story, far less complex and developed than the later Lord of the Rings, and (b) The Hobbit was written fairly early on in Tolkien’s works, before he’d even created most of Middle Earth and its characters. (And the information Tolkien had developed already, he wisely left out of The Hobbit for simplicity’s sake, except for the occasional tantalizing reference to the legendarium here and there.)

So it was with Bard and the Elvenking in the book. Bard is a “grim-voiced” descendant of the last king of Dale, he doesn’t think the dwarves’ adventure will bring gold to Laketown, he can understand the speech of thrushes, he has a lucky black arrow that he uses to slay Smaug, he helps lead the people of Laketown after its destruction and during the Battle of Five Armies, and becomes king of the rebuilt Dale at the end. That’s it. The king of the elves of northern Mirkwood hosts feasts in the forest, gets ticked off when the dwarves keep flailing into them (because they’re lost and starving) and disturb the giant spiders, gets further annoyed when the captured dwarves won’t explain what their mission is, has another feast during which Bilbo helps the dwarves escape, helps the people of Laketown after its destruction, loves jewels and has an old grudge against dwarves (not the dwarves of Erebor, probably related to the Elf-Dwarf enmity of the First Age), leads the Elves in the Battle of Five Armies, etc. But both these men are just simple characters, with no connection to any other characters other than being a member of a race and their leadership, they have no families, barely any background.

However, because Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Hobbit became three movies, putting a 300-page kids’ book on the same epic level of the 1200-page LOTR, the simplicity of those characters was no longer enough. Legolas becomes a major character in the story, as does Thranduil, and their relationship is prominent. Thranduil gains a deeply personal motivation for his enmity with Thorin’s people and his desire for the Arkenstone (he contracted a necklace from Thorin’s grandfather for his wife, and was cheated out of it), a reason to keep Legolas out of the fighting (his wife was kidnapped by orcs and tortured to death), an angsty thing about love, and much more. Thus the fact that his wife isn’t even named makes her very much a Dead Mother trope and Dead Ladies Club member (LOTR edition). Bard’s example is much less egregious -- however, he too was far more developed with a much greater heroic role, and given three children who also play roles in the story (the daughters are wholly inventions of the movies, as is the son’s personality and actions), and a prominently nonexistent dead unnamed wife. 

So to be quite honest, these Dead Ladies of the Hobbit movies are Peter Jackson’s fault, not Tolkien’s. (Or Guillermo del Toro, or whoever wrote those parts of the scripts, but I’m going to assume PJ.) Yes, it is Tolkien’s fault that by LOTR Legolas is introduced and we know that he’s the son of Thranduil son of Oropher but his mother isn’t mentioned at all -- but hell, if PJ could invent Tauriel, could invent so much about movie-Thranduil (elk riding! dragonfire burns on his face that he hides by magic!), the fact that he made Thranduil’s wife a huge part of his backstory but didn’t bother giving her a name... that’s all on him, sorry. As for Bard’s son Bain, he’s only mentioned in LOTR because humans aren’t as long-lived as dwarves and hobbits and therefore the king of Dale by that point had to be Bard’s grandson, and Brand barely exists but to be in Gimli’s reports that the Black Riders had asked him questions, and to fall in battle in the northern front of the War of the Ring. (Alongside Dain; and that story is only briefly mentioned in the ROTK appendix.) That is to say, yes Tolkien didn’t create Bard’s wife either, but lbr he barely created her son. The fact that in the Hobbit movies Bard’s a widower with 3 kids with no mention of his wife’s personality or name or what happened to her is, again, all on Peter Jackson.

Now, I’m not excusing Tolkien for his severe lack of female characters, especially in the Hobbit. (I think Tauriel’s a great addition to the movies, and only wish they’d gone further with more.) But to reiterate, when Tolkien does have female characters, they all get stories, or close to it in the case of very minor background characters. In the Hobbit consider the “remarkable” Belladonna Took, Bilbo’s mother (who should have been developed in the movies more since they were adding so much already I’m just saying). In LOTR, besides Gilraen, even dead mothers such as Finduilas, Theodwyn, and Morwen get personality sketches. And the Silm goes much much further with women, there’s a huge variety there, minor and major.

Aaaanyway, yes. I do think that if asked, Tolkien would have given tons of details about Legolas’s mother, her history and lineage. (And whether she was still living at the time of the Hobbit and LOTR -- I very much doubt that whole captured by orcs thing would have been part of it, as that’s pretty much a copy of poor Celebrian’s story.) Maybe not so much detail in the case of Bard’s wife (I’d imagine she was also a descendant of the men of Dale), but probably a name at least. But I really don’t think that Tolkien would have ever done the GRRM sort of answer of “Lady Stark. She died.”, or a “I don’t know, probably dead by that time” (re Sandor’s mother’s whereabouts at his burning).