"Haladriel" As An Exploration Of Trauma And The Severance Of Self
I was really hesitant to make a post about Haladriel (okay, yes, it's technically Saurondriel but it doesn't roll as well off the tongue bear with me) because of all the ship wars going on but I assume that's not going away any time soon and I have sooooo many opinions.
To be clear, the last thing I want to do is yuck someone else's yum. I have absolutely nothing against Haladriel shippers and I'll always be more inclined to defend them even if I disagree with some of their content because the rest of the fandom gets enough hate from trop antis as it is without throwing in-fighting in the mix. They're lovely people. Stop being mean to shippers.
@mai-komagata made this post about the scene where Galadriel confronts Halbrand about his true identity and you can see the exact moment when Sauron drops the facade. I know a lot of people were critical of the show for focusing too much on the "Who is Sauron?" guessing game and I agree to an extent but Charlie's acting in that scene made it so unbelievably worth it in my eyes. Even if a lot of people had already put it together by the finale, the concept of introducing Sauron as someone so blatantly Un-Sauronish (in his humanness, his mannerisms, his appearance, his accent) really heightened the feeling of unease when we see his entire face just fall completely, inhumanly flat as he seamlessly sheds the false identity that is all we've known of him. It helps the viewers to relate more to how horrifying the sudden transition is to Galadriel.
This is—as mai-komagata also points out in their post—where the popular perception of this scene for Haladriel as a "ship" splinters from my own. I think Sauron's offer in the following vision sequence can definitely be interpreted as romantic, but I truly don't believe his intentions were as clear-cut as I see some people hype them up to be. In an interview, Charlie said something along the lines of "If she'd accepted, he wouldn't have treated Galadriel as an equal but as a pet" and "He didn't want to crown her so much as collar her" which I also interpret his later treatment of Mirdania to be a reflection of—a near carbon-copy of Galadriel that Sauron successfully fools and seduces who is unceremoniously tossed aside as soon as her death proved more valuable than her loyalty.
"Is Sauron capable of love?" is a question for a different post altogether, but I think the closest he can get to it is summarised in his conversation with Celebrimbor where he talks about his treatment under Morgoth. If he can deceive himself into correlating tyranny with peace and still genuinely believe his intentions are pure, then, well... it says a lot about his idea of love.
Again, this is where I lose all interest in Haladriel as a traditional romance. I guess you could argue that their dynamic would be just as fascinating as Silvergifting's was in terms of exploring Sauron's psyche and messed up perception of love, but that only works as a character exploration for Sauron. Where Galadriel's characterisation truly benefits is in her refusal of him—their dynamic only makes sense if they are equal pillars of willpower, a constant push and a constant pull. It makes perfect sense that some fans would imbue that with longing and romance, even if it isn't everyone's interpretation. That's what shipping is.
The show's decision to portray Galadriel as a war-worn, veteran soldier with PTSD adds such an agonising depth to the Halbrand = Sauron reveal. As I said before, the viewer is meant to feel weirded out by the face drop, but can we take a second to really grasp how utterly horrifying it must be for Galadriel in that moment?
Imagine you're thousands of years old before your species is even introduced to the concept of dying. It is so foreign to you that the very name for it isn't even invented until after your mother's relations—people you grew up with and around, people you probably cared for—fall in an unforgiving slaughter. The world is plunged into darkness, literally and metaphorically. Over the course of centuries, more and more people start to drop around you like flies. Your brothers, your cousins, countless of your species, your husband. Kingdoms fall overnight. All sense of stability is lost.
In the same vein as Sauron being unable to differentiate devotion and ownership, I think she has an enormous empty cavern within herself where Galadriel just stops being Galadriel. It was a necessary instinct to survive because she couldn't stand to live with her grief without that severance of self. She dedicated so much of herself into hunting Sauron that his name became a permanent afterthought to her identity. So, yes, obviously she was going to bond with Halbrand! She was isolated and vulnerable and she sensed something in him that felt like a fractured mirror of herself.
But while there is a lot of delicious meta to explore there, their union simply cannot be the end goal unless you're willing to sacrifice coherent, thematically relevant characterisations on both sides. Morfydd has said that after Celeborn died, the part of Galadriel that knows softness and light closed up, but I think the emphasis in season 1 is on Finrod's loss as a carrier of this grief. The version we see of her in is a result of centuries of emotional repression—the only way she can hold onto her will to live is by channelling all that rage and despair into one singular goal (hunt and kill Sauron) to the point that she has completely lost sight of who she truly is. By the finale, we see her come to terms with her brother's death and by "sacrificing" his dagger to create the rings she finally opens herself up to healing. That is the arc her character must follow—any remnant of herself that Sauron found relatable was the product of grief, because if she continued down her original path of "fighting fire with fire" then she would end up the same as him. It's only when she realises this that she begins to let go, for her best interests as well as others'.
(I've seen a lot of takes saying this is anti-feminist because she shouldn't be expected to give up her power which feels like a very bad-faith reading of the text. Galadriel is the Lady of Lothlórien, widely respected and loved and feared. She isn't giving any of that up. She's giving up the urge to become an all-powerful controlling tyrant. A foil to Sauron? Absolutely! His twin soul? Ehhhh.... I'd say their differences speak more than their similarities but I suppose that's delving into "Do Our Decisions Make Us Or Do Our Desires?" territory and this post is already 3x longer than I intended it to be.)
I think ultimately ROP!Galadriel's arc is about overcoming grief and reclaiming the parts of herself that were lost, despite how much easier it would be to give in to that gnawing pit of despair and let it guide her actions. For her, Sauron is the personification of that temptation in the same way I am nearly seduced into bedrotting all day when I'm overwhelmed and craving the sweet euphoric high of blue light to avoid my problems. In the words of Diarmid: she makes the choice to be good every day.
