#amroth

The Family trees of the three brothers Elwë, Olwë and Elmo.

I kind of already did Thingol's tree but I added Arwen's husband and children as well as Amarië on Olwë's tree. The colorful hearts next to a lone parent connect to their cousin/spouse.

Finwë -- Nolofinwë -- Arafinwë -- Feanáro

Notes:

Earwen probably is said to have two or more brothers who were friends with Finarfin.

How Amdir And Oropher are connected to Elmo is not known but I don't think it's a stretch to think that they are related.

Like with Olwe's sons we do not know how many daughters Arwen and Aragorn had only that it was at least two.

The fall of Doriath left three (or two, depending on how old you think Thranduil is, either way he was probably a small child if he had been born yet) Sindarin princes alive. Assuming Elmo, Galadhon, and Galathil died in the dwarven invasion or second kinslaying (which they probably did, we never hear anything about them afterward), that takes total princes of the Sindar from nine (or eight) to three (or two).

During the second age, Oropher and Thranduil bugger off and live in their little isolationist forest kingdom. That leaves Celeborn.

See, Celeborn married Galadriel, a lady of the Noldor (despite being only a quarter Noldor but I digress). Galadriel is one of the few remaining Noldor royals in the east (the rest are Elrond and Gil-galad). So, Celeborn, our final free agent prince of the Sindar, is kind of entangled with the Noldor. And over time, I think it becomes obvious that Celeborn is far more involved with Noldorin politics than anything else.

He’s present for the fall of Eregion (most troops in this conflict were either from Eregion or sent by Gil-galad under Elrond’s command), then the founding and first siege of Rivendell. He lives in areas controlled by the Noldor (Eregion/Rivendell specifically), and theoretically is kind of played about with by Gil-galad, who one hundred percent sees the advantage in what he brings to the table.

And nowhere, I think, is Celeborn’s ancestry more important than during the siege of Barad-dûr. Make up your own mind about whether or not Celeborn was there, but Gil-galad would have been a fucking idiot not to bring him.

Let’s get into it. There are three elven kings commanding troops in the Last Alliance- Oropher, Amdír, Gil-galad. Oropher is characteristically ornery and gets himself and a fuck-ton of other people killed at the Battle of Dagorlad (this is the origin of the Dead Marshes) because he doesn’t listen to Gil-galad (for anti-Noldor reasons). Amdír dies during the siege, theoretically pretty early on.

This leaves Gil-galad with a fuck ton of Sindar and Sylvan soldiers who I cannot see being particularly inclined to listen to him. So what’s the best move? Thranduil and Amroth (who are both stupid AF, ngl- Thranduil is hot-headed and loyal to Oropher and one hundred percent not listening to Gil-galad, and everything to do with Amroth’s life and times is just stupid, I’m sorry, I just can’t get over how dumb it is), are now in charge of their peoples, but how effective are they going to be? Neither of them are super loyal to Gil-galad, and both are grief stricken and likely rather volatile for that reason.

What’s the move? Celeborn. Celeborn is the ace up Gil-galad’s sleeve here. He puts Celeborn in charge of liaisoning with Thranduil and Amroth’s armies. Because they will listen to Celeborn, the last prince of the Sindar. And Celeborn is loyal to Gil-galad as much as he’s loyal to either of them. Because of Eregion, because of Rivendell, because of Elrond and Galadriel.

I find the version where he´s Galadriel and Celeborn´s son charming, so I headcanon him as fostered by them after Amdír´s death, as well as childhood friends with Celebrían, and then only becoming king when Galadriel sails west I am willing to cut in canon if it means my boy can be part of it

6As first written, before most of it was struck through, this concluding sentence (after the colon) read: “The following calculation is probable. Celeborn’s wife [?stole] away and left him with a son, Amroth”. In conjunction with this, it appears that the following footnote was supplied:

The Elves did notnormally marry again, but after the judgement of Míriel they were permitted lawfully to do [so] if one partner deserted the other. This very seldom occurred; but in such a time of divided feelings as [the] end of [the] First Age this could occur.

- The Nature of Middle-earth: Elvish Ages & Númenórean

It is Mothers' Day today and I wanted to post something, so here is a shortish post collecting together my thoughts on this question :)

As with so much re: Galadriel there is a short answer and a long answer, and the short answer is “one, obviously”, and the long answer begins with “Well...” 

In the published LOTR, the only child mentioned is Celebrían. Given that Tolkien only invented Galadriel while writing LOTR this is probably the original idea and it's the one Christopher went with when composing the Silmarillion. But, in Unfinished Tales where you see more of the different ideas for Galadriel's Second Age story that he wrote afterwards(? we presume), Amroth is also the child of Galadriel and Celeborn, and when Galadriel passes through Moria after Annatar and the gwaith-i-mirdain stage a coup she's 'taking with her Amroth and Celebrían'.

Christopher says of this:

The text is much emended, and it is not always possible to see what belongs to the time of composition of the manuscript and what is indefinitely later. This is the case with those references to Amroth that make him the son of Galadriel and Celeborn; but whenever these references were inserted, I think it is virtually certain that this was a new construction, later than the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Had he been supposed to be their son when it was written, the fact would surely have been mentioned.

By the late 1960s JRRT seems to have gone back to considering Amroth the son of Amdír.

But then, when Nature of Middle-earth was published it contained more notes of Tolkien trying to figure out the years of birth of Galadriel, Celeborn, Amroth and Celebrían, and the considerable tangle he was trying to unpick regarding when elves have children and when Amroth (as the first child of Galadriel and Celeborn) could fit into his narrative while leaving room for Celebrían. And this is where we find out he also considered a compromise to this where Amroth was the son of Celeborn from an earlier marriage:

As first written, before most of it was struck through, this concluding sentence (after the colon) read: "The following calculation is probable. Celeborn's wife [?stole] away and left him with a son, Amroth." In conjunction with this, it appears that the following footnote was supplied: The Elves did not normally marry again, but after the judgement of Míriel they were permitted lawfully to do [so] if one partner deserted the other. This very seldom occurred; but in such a time of divided feelings as [the] end of [the] First Age this could occur.

But then Tolkien struck this out, leaving us with nothing more than a lot of intriguing possibilities to explore in fanfic :)

So. The answer to how many children Galadriel has is: One - No, two - No, one - No, one plus a stepchild from her husband's first marriage - No, just one.

But finally! Back to LOTR, and Treebeard's greeting to Galadriel and Celeborn:

A vanimar, vanimálion nostari!

Which Tolkien translates (in Letters) as 'O beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children!'

I was going to treat this as conclusively "she has more than one child, at least as far as Treebeard is concerned", but then Parf Edhellen translates Quenya 'nostari' not simply as 'parents' but also as 'ancestors'. So: back to "one child" or at least "not necessarily any more than one child".

But finally! The whole reason for translating 'nostari' as 'ancestors' there and not simply 'parents' is because:

the couple to which the phrase Q. a vanimar, vanimálion nostari was addressed (Galadriel and Celeborn) had only a single child, and so the phrase only makes sense if it refers to them as ancestors of all of their descendants: their daughter Celebrían and her children Elladan, Elrohir and Arwen. 

Which is a fine and coherent way to reconcile "they only have one child in LOTR" with "Treebeard speaks of them as parents of children, plural, in LOTR" I suppose - but is not the only explanation. And Tolkien translated that greeting of Treebeard's as "parents of beautiful children", not "parents-and-grandparents-and-ancestors of beautiful children".

Maybe Treebeard just forgot. Or maybe they end up having other children post-LOTR and he foresaw it. Or: maybe there are more children, and always were, and Ents know better than we do...