Arwen
Undómiel; the Evenstar; daughter of Elrond and wife of Aragorn
Names and Lineage
Arwen — called Undómiel, “Evenstar” — was the youngest child of Elrond and Celebrían (daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn), and “the most beautiful of the last generation of the High Elves” — her beauty compared to that of Lúthien, whose blood she carried through Elrond’s line. She was of the Half-elven, with the choice of the kindreds lying before her.
The Choice of Love
- In Rivendell she met and loved Aragorn, the mortal heir of Isildur; for his sake (and in the likeness of old Lúthien’s choosing) she took the Doom of Men — renouncing the Elves’ undying life to live and die with him. The choice was made under the great trees of Lothlórien upon Cerin Amroth, where Aragorn pledged himself; their union (told in Appendix A, “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”) bound the line of the Evenstar to the kingship of Men.
- At the end of the War of the Ring she wed Aragorn, King Elessar, and became Queen of the Reunited Kingdom; she was queen for 122 years of his reign.
The End
When Aragorn, at the end of his long life (F.A. 120), chose to die in the manner of the Númenorean kings, Arwen — having given up her immortality — hastened to the mound of Cerin Amroth in Lórien, “and there she fell… to her long sleep”, her beauty and her memory passing from the world. Her death ended the Last of the Half-elven’s union with mortal history.
Significance
Arwen is the living echo, in the Third Age, of Lúthien — the Elf who chooses mortality for love — and the instrument by which the hope of the earlier ages (Beren and Lúthien, Elwing and Eärendil) is finally consummated in the restored kingship of Men.