Elrond
the Half-elven; the Healer; lord of Rivendell (later)
Name and Lineage
Elrond — the twin son of Eärendil and Elwing, the Half-elven brother of Elros; in his veins the blood of the Three Houses of the Edain, of the Noldor (through Idril), of the Sindar and (through Lúthien and Melian) the blood of the Maiar themselves. When the Valar offered the choice, “Elrond chose to be of the Eldar kind, and became an Elf; and Elros… chose the kind of Men”; and so — Tolkien’s phrase —… remained while the world lasted, the greatest of the survivors.
The Child of the Fëanorians Born at the
Havens of Sirion, he and Elros were taken captive by the Sons of Fëanor in the Third Kinslaying — and were fostered by Maglor (whose pity stayed the cruel counsels of the brothers). It is one of the most remarkable of the myth’s reversals: the future lord of the great healing-house grew up in the camps of the Oath-bearers, learning (through that bitter tutelage) mercy — “the foster-son of Maglor”; and the lore of those wardship-days is the seed of his later wisdom.
After the
War of Wrath
Escaping
(or released) at the end of the age, Elrond went in the host of the West — he dwelt in Lindon with the last Noldor and the returning — and, as the second age rose, he carried the lore and the memory: the keeper of the records of the Eldar. In the Last Alliance (the end of the Second Age), Elrond was among the champions, present at the fall of Gil-galad and Elendil and with the host that overthrew Sauron. He took up the shards of Narsil; in one account the fragments of Elendil’s sword were kept by Elrond. His later lordship in Rivendell (Third Age) lies.
Significance
Elrond is, within the Silmarillion’s scope, the proof that the mercy of the mythology survives the age’s cruelty: the orphan fostered by his enemies, the Half-elven who chose to stay, the memory-keeper who will carry the light of the First Age into all later time. His presence in the Quenta’s closing lines (and the Akallabêth) frames the “long defeat” as also the long preservation.