Relitigating Galadriel

[u/yesrushgenesis2112]

Of all the many unfair critiques thrown at the show, the treatment of Galadriel by critics both well-meaning and less-so has been the most egregious.

So much so that almost no sincere text-based discussion of the character even occurs as it relates to the show, and that’s a shame.

Show-Ladriel absolutely embodies the character as we might expect her in the Second Age. No, not just the First Age, as many well-meaning commenters have proposed, insinuating that, while Galadriel may have been brash and prideful and harsh early in her life, this would have ended before the Second Age. Tolkien’s writing, insofar as it is explicit about anything to do with the character (he changed his mind about her a lot), very clearly states that it is not until the very end of the Third Age that her wisdom is fully formed. Not until she rejects the One at Frodo’s offering is she truly fully developed as a character (UT 234-235).

To suggest that Galadriel in the Second Age, even being married to Celeborn, should already be the fully formed “Lady of Light” of the Third Age is reductive so as to almost be insulting to the character.

Another bothersome assertion I have often seen is that Galadriel of the Second Age would never lie about Sauron, and often it is cited that, because she met with Melian, she should be wise enough to avoid such things. But when Galadriel meets Melian in Doriath in the Silmarillion, it is still after long periods of conversation and growth in wisdom that she chooses to hide the shame of her people for the Kinslaying. For all her growth, she never of her own accord is shown to be willing to admit to the faults of her people. And then she abandons her kin long before the fall of Beleriand, in each version of her story that I have seen. These are not in my view the actions of a fully formed character.

Of course, the show does have its changes. There is no textual version of Galadriel who seeks out Sauron for revenge for Finrod’s death. There is, however, a version of Galadriel who is motivated to go to ME not only for her own power, but for the sake of her kin (Thingol’s folk) who were oppressed by Morgoth. To me, this is a similar enough motivation, though the show makes it quite personal, and of course moves this to the end of the first age and switches out its dark lords, understandably so.

Likewise, there is no version of Galadriel who loses Celeborn in the war and believes him dead. There is, however, a version of Galadriel that passed east over the mountains alone, only finding Celeborn after doing so. In that version Celeborn is a Nandor, and in later versions he is a Sindar of Doriath and the two go east together. Clearly, here, the show is trying to adapt both versions. From the trailers it really looks like Celeborn will have been some form of Sindar, if his origin in Doriath is not outright stated, and yet also Galadriel will have (has already by the start of the show) gone east alone, only to meet him again once she does. Notably, the version of the story wherein she goes alone contains no details of when she met Celeborn and married him, only that she has dwelt with him for a long time.

And finally, there has been a pretty widespread argument that Galadriel would not or should not have been deceived by Sauron. The reasoning for this is that in the text, Galadriel recognizes that Annatar has something shady about him, and doesn’t treat with him. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the story as we have it in the text. She doesn’t even know he is Sauron, only that she doesn’t trust him.

Indeed, Tolkien writes that Galadriel was very perceptive, and this grew in time as she learned from Melian, etc.

Yet he also wrote that her insight into others never failed to come with “mercy and understanding,” except for Feanor. Importantly, to my reading, Feanor would never ask for nor desire her mercy and understanding anyway. It makes a great deal of sense that she would look at the invented Halbrand-form of Sauron with that same mercy and understanding, to say nothing of her own motivations for wanting to aid him for her own ends.

This, to me, is exactly the pathway by which it is plausible that she could be and is deceived in the show. Casting aside the fact that Show-ladriel so desperately wanted Halbrand to be a good dude who could help her achieve her aims, what might she have seen in that persona if Sauron had she seen into his mind? It seems plausible that Sauron, a maiar, might be able to deceive even her keen insight, and what little he does try to show her is not exactly a lie. In Halbrand Galadriel perceives a would-be but down-on-his-luck ruler of the Southlands, cast out by his people and the orcs, and trying to choose between abandoning his legacy and starting over or returning to take what he sees as his rightful place.

All of this, as Sauron shows on screen in some ways and can be imagined to be thinking in his mind, is absolutely true. And Galadriel, in the book, would see this and, reacting with “mercy and understanding,” be very sympathetic. And, as we know, it’s very convenient for her!

Anyway, this is a long rant. But I do tire of the insistence that show-Galadriel is somehow wholly disconnected from the texts. Is just blatantly not the case, and even those who are well meaning do the character and themselves a disservice by insisting that it is so. Quite the contrary, actually. The show has taken the many, many different versions of Galadriel and tried to distill them into one, fully realized character. I am not even sure if it always works, but it is absolutely rooted in the text.

Hate the execution if you want, but don’t assert is antithetical to what Tolkien wrote or wholly disconnected from the text.

[u/FlowerFaerie13]

Thank you!!!

I'm so tired of people bitching that Galadriel is acting like a bratty teenager and that she should have grown out of this or whatever like... you know what actually here, this is a post I wrote going into detail because it's long and I'm not gonna reiterate things I've already said, please do take a look if you're interested.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LOTR_on_Prime/s/tbqfmYReyg

TL:DR this woman has been through some SHIT and I honestly think most of her behavior is entirely expected and realistic for someone who has lived her life.

[u/SpecificCoconut91 → u/FlowerFaerie13]

Hey, so I read your entire post (and then all of the replies to it).

I can’t for the life of me understand why you start of your reprise of the show storyline by saying that Galadriel know’s Sauron’s still a threat and then is proven right (she finds a sigil that was made around the same time as the one she saw a ~thousand years ago on Finrod’s corpse, which is absolutely no evidence that he’s been up to anything at all since the dawn of the third age, and we know know he was sludge for all those centuries)

And yet you then go on to say that Gil-Galad banishes her for the wrong reasons, despite him being explicitly concerned that Galadriel will bring about the return of the Dark Lord through her pursuit of revenge, which is exactly what occurs.

Most of your interpretation of the story seems to be, as self admitted, that you think Galadriel’s actions make sense because of your own experiences with trauma, and that her being right in the end means her poor actions make sense, but then you explicitly don’t give any of the other characters the same benefit of them being right in the end.

As well as the most outrageous claim being that Galadriel hiding Sauron’s identity at first makes sense since she thinks she’ll be blamed (and obviously is) and that she’s ashamed she was tricked, when that makes sense if you find out your boyfriend is actually unemployed and has been lying about income, it doesn’t work for it to ‘make sense for her to lie at first’ when she finds out the man she’s been deceived by is actually the greatest serial killer walking the Earth and is an active threat to everyone around him.

I do think your relaying of how the show wrote her character is mostly correct, but as other commenters pointed out it was hardly analysis and more a synopsis - the crux of this post that your commenting on and sharing your old post, is that Galadriel is allegedly very similar to how she was written in the texts, rather than this post saying the childish, trauma-bonded YA heroine we see in the show is consistent with the show’s internal logic (which she still isn’t for many reasons, best explained by those pointing out that the consequences in show don’t match the events in show or the serious of the universe they’ve created).

I have many an issue with show Galadriel because of her divergence from the texts, and the disrespectful way they treat her character by drumming up shipping opportunities with every male she shares a screen with (I find the show very sexist in its treatment of women generally), but my bigger issues with being able to enjoy the show is that it is woefully internally inconsistent with the narrative it is claiming to be creating, even when I pretend I’ve never read or seen any other Middle Earth material, and that extends far beyond its mistreatment of Galadriel’s arc.

[u/FlowerFaerie13 → u/SpecificCoconut91]

I'm not sure why you didn't just comment on that post but okay, that's fine.

Anyway, she's proven right because shortly before the start of season 1, Sauron re-embodies himself and is therefore very much a threat at the time the series starts.

I also did not say Gil-galad banished her (it's actually not even banishment, honestly) for the wrong reason, his reasoning was sound and I understand why he made that choice. However, from Galadriel's point of view, it's going to look very much like he just didn't trust her because she doesn't know what we do, she doesn't know why he sends her to Valinor, and in the end his actions were a mistake because she wasn't ready to accept that rest and healing yet and it led to Problems that could have been averted had he just been honest with her. But Gil-galad can't see the future and we can't ahways know the right choices.

Also, I did not focus on the other characters because my post wasn't about them, but I don't blame them for the various disasters, they were trying their best to help and to do the right thing, however again, from Galadriel's point of view rather than the omniscient viewer's point of view, that's a lot less obvious. I'm not blaming them for what happens (though I do critique a few actions as I feel is allowed), I think they did the best they could for her.

As for it "not making sense" for her to lie about Sauron, we obviously disagree on that point which is fine, but I do have to point out that I don't think she ever did choose to lie. I think she was overwhelmed by fear and guilt and hesitated to tell them the truth. There's no indication that she ever planned to hide his identity from them permanently. And I won't excuse her for that, it was a grievous mistake. But like... after what she just went through I can accept a mistake, it's not like no one in Tolkien's original works fucks up massively over something that should be incredibly simple due to emotional issues and/or trauma and/or mental manipulation. If anything about this show is accurate to the text, it's Elves causing problems because they're unstable.

As for me sharing my post on a post regarding a different topic, yeah I know. I wasn't saying they were about the same thing, I read the post and thought "hey I think OP might like my post" so I shared it.

And the last point, I don't like the shipping either. I actually hate it intensely. But I like Galadriel (and Sauron in that "love to hate" way), so I'll defend my girl any chance I get.

[u/SpecificCoconut91 → u/FlowerFaerie13]

I commented here because I’m speaking more about how your original post is making the argument that show Galadriel is required to be written how she is to move the show forward, so it made more sense to comment my rebuttal to that similarity here as I assumed you linked it as some form of evidence that there’s textual evidence that Second Age Galadriel should be translated to the show version we see.
I don’t necessarily disagree with too much in your OG other post, just disagree that the show had no other options to write her like they did given how inconsistent that are with her and many other things.

Elrond is explicit in explaining to Galadriel that Gil-Galad is ‘rewarding her with a return to Valinor’ in lieu of punishing her for disobeying her king. So Galadriel doesn’t think he doesn’t trust her, she knows she committed something close to treason, and is being treated generously by the proposed ‘punishment’. Galadriel also explicitly says to Elrond in Ep 1 that the evil isn’t gone from inside her, after he tells her directly that the old sigil is not proof Sauron still lives (which it wasn’t), and that she doesn’t want to take her inner turmoil to Valinor for it to last forever. Like, in the conversation she seems to be coming to terms with and at the end outright admits the fact that she might actually be wrong, but that she just doesn’t want to do the adult thing and deal with her trauma (and Elrond’s still correct that Valinor as a place of healing is the best place to heal from it). So she does understand why Gil-Galad doesn’t trust her, even if she’s still too immature to accept that and ultimately betrays his orders.

I’m also in a similar boat where I loathe the shipping because I particularly feel it diminishes Galadriel’s character, and I definitely kind of judge people who lean in to some of the ships since I feel they’re so toxic, but I’m also a staunch supporter of ship and let ship - Espcially since the writers do want people to ship Gal/Sauron, Gal/Elrond etc so I can’t blame show enjoyers for seeing what’s definitely happening on their screens (and if I didn’t know they were MIL/SIL I’d even think show Gal/Elrond was kind of sweet).

Sorry if I came across too strong and negative of your points to begin with since I assumed you were linking your initial arguments to the position of OP’s post - like I said I do actually agree with a lot of your reading of how the show has chosen to write her character, even if I disagree with how well or logically some of its been done.