CELEBRÍAN IN VALINOR

had outrageous amounts of fun painting this for the excellent @mnimeresponding, who wanted a Celebrían who had grown her hair out in full after sailing to Valinor. thank you for trusting me with this and letting me go a bit wild with the iridescent dress and general renaissance outfitting here…

It’s one of those things where you look in history and are like ‘cool.’ But you know if you saw these guys irl you’d punch them in the face.

Like these elves of the Third Age, especially those who stuck around at the beginning of the Fourth, are so done with all the drama, prejudices, and feuds. They were never meant to fight this war, it should’ve been over long before their time. The last generations born in ME can’t believe the First Age elves were so self-centred that they put personal feuds over banding together and taking out Morgoth.

This ties into another hc I have of Thranduil and Elrond being the ones to essentially say ‘that’s enough.’ They actively send elves to each other’s realms to end the division as much as they can. Internally Thranduil bridges the Sindar and Silvan etc, whilst Elrond deals with the ten factions of Noldor and ensures their kids get to play together as they grow up, stopping these 6000 year old arguments leaking into the next generation.

They’ve all lost too much to it.

It really starts with Elladan, Elrohir, and Legolas at the beginning of the Third Age being taught together as often as they can, groups of Sindar and Noldor being sent with them in an exchange of skills and knowledge. And the focus is forever on:

One day Sauron will return. Are we going to make the same mistake our parents did and let him use our divisions against us?

Galadriel gets involved too. She’s grown in wisdom, has lost more than anyone else. She lies as the final authority on the most problematic of elves who bring up the past for no reason but to go back to the ‘old ways.’ She’s older than most, or close enough in age that even those who refuse to listen to these ‘naive young leaders’ (Elrond and Thranduil) have to listen to her.

By the end of the Third Age it’s common for Sindar, Noldor, Silvan, whatever Cirdan’s lot are, and *insert elf kind here*, to have friends amongst each other’s races. To even have friends amongst men or dwarves, or at least respect and civil relations with them. It’s this mindset that brings Sauron to his knees in the end. He has no one to manipulate. No one to cause internal strife. No one to distract from him.

But back to the arrival in Valinor.

These young elves who have friends crossing cultures and races, have mortal friends they’ve lost over the years to orcs and to Sauron and darkness, find themselves *furious* at the First Age elves.

They lived in so much decadence and luxury that this is what they turned to? Wars and Political Drama for the sake of what. Ambition? What ambition is it to drag your people to the slaughterhouse, unprepared with ideas of glory that will never come to pass?

They lived a life of peace and plenty and never appreciated an ounce of it. Doused themselves in gold paint and heavy embroidered silk and jewellery for the sake of a beauty you couldn’t afford to wear in Middle Earth, no matter how much you wanted to. What if something went wrong? How could you outrun orcs if you were restricted by unwieldy fabric and shone like the sun in the dark. Even children knew better.

These elves of the Third Age would have sacrificed lives and limbs to let their families grow up in such safety.

The worst part is finding out there were older elves who made the Great Journey who warned these veritable children for their lack of life experience, of the horrors that awaited. The foolishness of their decisions. But they were ignored and labelled cowards.

To make matters worse, these glory seeking elves couldn’t even finish the job. Instead it fell to elves and men and dwarves and Hobbits, all of whom had no choice in their circumstances, to fix their ancestors mistakes. All because they’d chosen pride over working together to defeat the evil steadily encroaching and covering their safe havens. 600 years of war, and they learned nothing.

Elwë is not except from this. Aside from his own pride and arrogance, Lady Galadriel and Lord Elrond kept their realms safe, but they never turned away a weary traveller. Never hesitated to give aid and shelter to those who crossed their paths even in the darkest of times. Galadriel knows this best of all. She once lived in Doriath, and is right alongside the younger elves, scorning the King’s false shroud of safety, clinging to a past long gone in his heavy cloak and gilded crown.

How easily it all came crumbling down.

So yes. The elves of the Third Age can appreciate the growth and how their elders learned to adapt to the worsening situation. But they will never lose that flame of anger that so many of their friends, so many mortal friends above all who already had firefly lives, were spent and lost to a force they’d never had a choice but to fight to the end.

They will never respect them.

(They do however hold great respect and sympathy for Celebrimbor. It’s easy to be deceived by Sauron. And between him, Gil Galad, and Oropher, they got the closest to unity that they could with their factions of traditional First Agers and the early next generation learning to see past their history.

Celebrimbor and Idril were born in the golden peace of Aman, but grew up in the harsh lands of Middle Earth. They understand the younger elves’ anger more than anyone ever could, and find themselves sharing it. But now they have a voice for that simmering anger. And the Second and Third Age elves have protectors and allies in the older generations.

Clichéd

Unconvincing

Forces you to keep making excuses why they can’t just take a trip and visit

Telling a kid their dead pet “sailed west to the Undying Lands:”

Exudes mystery and wonder

Implies the pet was one of the Ring-bearers who aided in Sauron’s ultimate defeat

The tapestry in Lindon depicting the Undying Lands.

To Elvenhome the green and fair

where keen the air, where pale as glass

beneath the hill of Ilmarin

a-glimmer in a valley sheer

the lamplit towers of Tirion

are mirrored on the Shadowmere.

"Song of Earendil"

“And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree….In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion."