Galadriel is among the most powerful and mysterious characters in The Lord of the
Rings - and her long history stretches back to the earliest days of Middle-Earth itself.
From her blessed beginnings to her final journey, here is Galadriel's entire backstory explained.
Galadriel's life began back in the earliest recorded days of elven history. When the elves
first awake in Middle-earth, they're initially led by the god-like beings known as the Valar,
who live far across the sea, in a westerly realm known as Valinor. The elves first come to Valinor
to help protect them from the Dark Lord Morgoth, a fallen Vala who's hell-bent on wiping out both the
elves and pretty much the rest of creation, too. In fact, one of the origin stories for
the orcs suggests that Morgoth caught some of these young elves before they migrated west,
torturing them half to death and slowly turning them into the first generation of orcs.
"Do you know how the orcs first came into being? They were elves, once."
Over time, many of the elves that aren't captured or killed make their way across Middle-earth
until they arrive at their new home, and it's here, roughly 3,000 years later,
that Galadriel is born. For the record, that makes the Lady of Lórien over 8,000
years old when the events of The Lord of the Rings take place.
In her youth, Galadriel maintains a stellar reputation in the heavenly kingdom.
She's born into royalty and is both an impressive loremaster and a gifted athlete. According to
Tolkien's Unfinished Tales, she's said to be the tallest of all the women of the Eldar,
and is recorded to be around 6'4" in height. While her beauty is brought up on multiple occasions,
however, it's her hair that is most frequently mentioned; In The Silmarillion, it's stated that:
"Her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin."
Laurelin, as it happens, was one of the two magic trees that lit Valinor, before the sun and moon
were created. In his book Unfinished Tales, Tolkien even suggests that Galadriel's hair is
like the light of both trees mixed together, and that it inspires the great elven craftsman Fëanor
to create the Silmarils, the titular jewels of The Silmarillion. The Silmarils eventually
attract the attention of Morgoth, who had previously destroyed the two trees and sets
himself on stealing the jewels - sparking a devastating war with the elves in the process.
Galadriel's royal pedigree makes it difficult for the elven princess to avoid the limelight,
and eventually, her lofty position drags her into one of the most
infamous events in Middle-Earth's early history.
When Morgoth destroys the Two Trees and steals the Silmarils, it sparks a rebellion in Valinor.
Feeling betrayed by their Valar guardians,
a large faction of elves decides to reject their protection in Valinor,
opting to take things into their own hands instead — by chasing the enemy back to Middle-earth
where he's fled with their priceless gems. One group of these elves seizes a fleet of ships by
killing their elven guards, and sail back across the sea to the western shores of Middle-earth.
The larger host, with Galadriel in their midst, doesn't participate in this battle.
But they're nonetheless unsettled by the coming of Morgoth and feel
a powerful calling to return to the lands that they came from,
so they too decide to leave Valinor. With no ships left behind by Feanor's elves, however,
they're forced to travel northwards - across a stretch of land known as the Helcaraxë.
The Helcaraxë is where Valinor and Middle-earth come closest together.
In The Silmarillion, Tolkien describes the Helcaraxë as a place filled with:
"Vast fogs and mists of deathly cold, and the sea-streams [are] filled with
clashing hills of ice and the grinding of ice deep-sunken."
Needless to say, many elves perish in the crossing,
but the survivors do eventually reach the shores of Middle-earth.
Once Galadriel arrives back in Middle-earth, she spends the next several hundred years lying low.
By this point, the First Age of Middle-Earth has begun,
and the land is ravaged by war - as the elves and their allies
are slowly ground down by Morgoth and his armies. Eventually, after over 500 years of conflict,
the Valar themselves arrive to take on Morgoth, and cast the Dark Lord into the void of space.
Notably, during this time, Galadriel visits the elven kingdom of Doriath - and it's
here that she meets an elven prince named Celeborn The two fall in love,
and eventually marry. Soon, Galadriel and Celeborn pack up and head further eastwards,
leaving all the politics behind in search of a peaceful existence deeper within the continent.
When the First Age ends with the defeat of Morgoth, many of the exiled elves return to
Valinor. Some of them, however, head further east, where they find Galadriel and Celeborn
already settled down. At this point, Middle-Earth has entered the Second Age, still over 6,000 years
from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which take place at the end of the Third Age.
With the world changed immeasurably since the dark days of Morgoth,
Galadriel and Celeborn begin to dabble with the idea of taking on legitimate political leadership.
Just what happened next is kind of up in the air, however, partly because
Tolkien mentions contradictory details in each version of the story that he wrote.
What is known is that, during this time, Galadriel and Celeborn lead two separate elven
communities in northwestern Middle-earth. Roughly 750 years into the Second Age,
they move on and head southeast to Eregion, an area ruled by a distant cousin of Galadriel's,
named Celebrimbor [kell-uh-BRIM-bore]. This is the same region where the Fellowship of the Ring
is later tracked by birds and finds the doors of Moria.
From there, Galadriel eventually makes a trip with her daughter,
Celebrían, through the dwarven mines, and pays her first visit to the elves that live in Lothlorien.
Celeborn, who isn't all that fond of dwarves, remains behind for the time being.
By this point, a new foe has set himself up in Middle-Earth:
Morgoth's chief necromancer and second-in-command, Sauron. You probably know what happens next.
In disguise, Sauron visits the elven kingdoms of Middle-Earth,
charming them with his knowledge and teaching them how to forge rings of power.
"One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
After Celebrimbor forges the three elven rings, one is given to Galadriel - but
when Sauron creates his master ring, he's unable to use it to control the elves,
because he didn't physically have a hand in their creation. Realizing what has happened,
the elves take off their rings and decide to keep them hidden from the new Dark Lord.
When Sauron forges the One Ring and reveals his true identity to Middle-Earth, it begins the War
of the Elves and Sauron, which ends roughly 300 years after Galadriel first arrived in Lothlorien.
After the war wraps up, she leaves Lorien and heads back east to find Celeborn. Eventually,
the two meet again in Rivendell, and decide to wander Middle-Earth. During this period,
they spent a good amount of time in Rivendell itself, as well as the area that eventually
becomes Western Gondor. A lot happens in Middle-Earth over the next few thousand years, to
say the least - but it doesn't seem like Galadriel or Celeborn have much impact on these events.
In fact, it's not until the Third Age that everything changes for the couple. In the
1,981st year of this era, long after Sauron's defeat at the hands of the Last Alliance,
the king of Lothlorien dies. Celeborn and Galadriel then return to the woodland kingdom,
where they officially become the Lord and Lady of the Galadhrim. Tolkien goes to great pains on
multiple occasions to point out that Celeborn and Galadriel aren't the straight-up rulers of Lorien,
but there's no doubt that, at this point, they're the top dogs in the Golden Wood.
After she takes up the leadership of Lothlorien with her husband, Galadriel spends the next
few centuries using her knowledge and her ring to help the land blossom, preparing it
for the inevitable conflict that she knows is coming. Then, 2,463 years into the Third Age,
Galadriel calls the White Council for the first time. This was a group of
wise leaders in Middle-Earth that included - among others - Saruman, Elrond, and Gandalf.
Initially, Galadriel attempts to make Gandalf the head of this Council of the Wise,
but the wizard turns down the honor, and Saruman ends up getting the nod instead.
By now, the White Wizard is already starting to turn away from the light,
and he intentionally steers the council in the wrong direction on more than one occasion.
Nevertheless, over the next five centuries, the White Council gets to work. They identify
the Necromancer in Mirkwood as Sauron, keep tabs on his ever-growing power,
and eventually take action and drive him out of his fortress of Dol Guldur.
"Beware the Necromancer. He is not what he seems."
Throughout all of this drama, Galadriel remains intimately
connected to the activities of the council, frequently participating in its sessions
and standing shoulder to shoulder with wizards and warriors alike - as they
rally together to take on the greatest threat to Middle-Earth since the fall of Morgoth.
For Tolkien movie fans, this will all begin to seem like more familiar territory.
Having been revealed to the world by the White Council, Sauron retreats to Mordor. Galadriel,
meanwhile, prepares Lorien for war. She plays her first critical role in the War of the Ring
when she is visited by the Fellowship of the Ring after they escape from the mines of Moria.
After she harbors the Fellowship, Galadriel gives them a number of
important gifts and sends them on their way. She also welcomes a newly resurrected Gandalf,
who's recovering from his epic mountaintop battle with the Balrog.
Galadriel plays a crucial role in helping Gandalf to remember who he was,
bringing him up to speed and equipping him with the knowledge he needs for the rest of the war.
Even after these two important events, Galadriel's role in the war continues. In the books, she sends
a cryptic message to Aragorn, warning him that he must take the Paths of the Dead to help defeat
Sauron's forces in Gondor. In addition, Lothlorien is attacked by orcs three times during the war,
but Galadriel, her ring, and her elven armies repel all three attacks. After this,
Galadriel and Celeborn lead their warriors into Mirkwood, where they capture Dol Guldur - and
the Lady of the Wood uses her ring to utterly destroy its walls and cleanse the forest for good.
At the end of the War of the Ring, Galadriel finally grows weary of the mortal lands of
Middle-earth. She attends Arwen's wedding to Aragorn, and then, a couple of years later,
decides to finally take a ship back to Valinor. Joining Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo, and Bilbo,
Galadriel boards a ship and sails into the West. Celeborn, however, is unwilling to leave quite
yet, and temporarily relocates to Rivendell, where Elrond's two sons still live. It's even said that
Meriadoc Brandybuck travelled to the fading elvish stronghold to speak with Celeborn, and ask for
his help in compiling the history of the wars of Middle-Earth. Eventually, though, the longing for
both the West and his wife win out, and Celeborn joins Galadriel in their new home across the sea.
While Galadriel's recorded life ends on this bittersweet note,
there's one more part of her story that's worth mentioning. Gimli the dwarf is famous for his
admiration of Galadriel, to the point that he even asks for a strand of her hair to remember her by.
"I asked her for one hair from her golden head. She gave me three."
Interestingly, Tolkien also says that Galadriel manages to get permission from the Valar
for Gimli to join her in retirement in Valinor itself - making him the only dwarf to ever set
foot on the shores of the Undying Lands. This benevolent act is a fitting final
footnote for the illustrious story of the most famous woman in Middle-earth's entire history.
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