For her, he won two kingdoms and helped vanquish the Shadow; for him, she forsook the immortal life of her people. J. R. R. Tolkien declared their relationship, “really essential to the story.” And yet, “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” is only found in the Appendix to The Lord of the Rings.
Among the conceits of The Lord of the Rings is that it was derived from the hobbits’ account of the War of the Ring begun by Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. Since no hobbits were present for much of Aragorn and Arwen’s history together, and since that history was not immediately concerned with the journeys of Bilbo, Frodo, and the others, it couldn’t have been part of the main text. In this framework, “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” is assumed to have been added to a copy preserved in Gondor.
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The result was that Aragorn’s driving motivation is only hinted at until the end of Return of the King, while Arwen hardly appears at all. It’s hard to imagine any author electing to do this, whatever their frame story, and harder still to imagine it working. Yet “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” works beautifully where it’s placed in the book. It provides a last burst of understanding, reads nicely as a short story, and reinforces Tolkien’s concern with “Death as a part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees.” This sentiment, expressed in his letters, is why he regarded the tale so indispensable for The Lord of the Rings.
But if placing a central romance in an elaborate epilogue is hard for a novel to pull off, it would be impossible for a film. Can you picture any audience staying after the credits for the full history of a love affair between a mortal Man and an immortal Elf, a love affair that informed the three movies you just watched but had only been hinted at throughout those nine hours? Small wonder, then, that director Peter Jackson and writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens chose to weave Aragorn and Arwen’s love throughout their adaptation.
Arwen Undomiel (Liv Tyler) appears in all three films of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with all the pivotal developments in her relationship with Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) from “The Tale” represented in some fashion. Besides being a savvy screenwriting choice, this change did provide some genuinely exciting and beautiful moments for each individual film. Arwen comes alive in a way that wasn’t possible in the novel. But how best to expand her role posed a difficult set of choices to the filmmakers, who made major adjustments to their plans during filming. Twenty years since the release of The Fellowship of the Ring, one can look back and see the rough patches and uncomfortable fixes as well as the stirring highlights.
Let’s start with the good: Arwen’s first appearance. She takes the place of the Elf-lord Glorfindel in aiding Aragorn and the hobbits after their encounter with the Ringwraiths on Weathertop. Arwen carries Frodo across the Bruinen river and summons the flood that washes the Ringwraiths away. The sequence is one of the leanest and best action beats in the trilogy. It also offers Arwen a chance to play a role in the story beyond a love interest. I’m sure Glorfindel has his fans, and one could argue that taking away Frodo’s moment of self-defense during this chase from the book diminished him, but it is very satisfying to have as pivotal a character as Arwen involved at the point of action.
In the books, there is no question about Aragorn’s pursuing the throne of Gondor; indeed, his marrying Arwen is dependent upon his becoming king. The movie Aragorn is given no such condition by Elrond and passes much of the trilogy in doubt that he wants or deserves such power. It’s Arwen, after the action on Weathertop, who rejects these doubts and encourages Aragorn to meet his destiny. Her steadfast faith in him is present in the books but broadened on film. Their long history together is alluded to when Arwen vows anew to Aragorn that she would choose a mortal life with him over the immortality of the Elves. The Evenstar necklace she gives him in this scene incorporates aspects of two jewels tied to Arwen from the novel.
Beyond all the ways it incorporates strands of “The Tale” appropriately, their interlude before the Council of Elrond is just a gorgeous scene. The image of Aragorn and Arwen standing together on a small stone bridge, lit only by shafts of morning light breaking through the trees, is the most visually enchanting moment of the trilogy, a feeling reinforced by the ethereal quality of Enya’s “Aníron.” Mortensen and Tyler are wonderful here. A similarly lovely moment occurs in The Two Towers, an invented flashback of Aragorn’s to the days immediately before the fellowship’s departure. There were apparently more flashbacks intended and shot showing the earliest days of Aragorn and Arwen’s courtship, but these never made the film or any home video release. With those days alluded to in the bridge scene, memories reaching that far back may have felt redundant, and the flashback to Rivendell that is in The Two Towers does quite well on its own.
But The Two Towers is where a massive shift in Arwen’s role within the trilogy was made during filming. Originally, she and Elrond were meant to travel to Lothlórien, and Arwen would accompany the battalion of Elves sent to Helm’s Deep. She would have fought alongside Aragorn in the battle and brought to him the sword Andúril, Flame of the West.
There is a precedent for this in the books. Arwen’s brothers rode with the Dúnedain to Aragorn’s aid in Return of the King and fought with his forces before the Black Gate. Had Arwen come to Aragorn and fought by his side, it would have been another parallel between their romance and that of Beren and Lúthien, the first union of Elves and Men recounted in The Silmarillion. This didn’t stop a contingent of online fans from objecting to “Arwen, Warrior Princess,” or the filmmakers and Liv Tyler from reconsidering whether this was an appropriate role for Arwen.
Instead, Elrond lays before Arwen the full consequences of her choice to remain in Middle-earth, even in the event of victory. He foretells her grief upon Aragorn’s passing and the emptiness of her days thereafter, ultimately persuading his daughter to follow the other Elves to the Grey Havens. Extending into Return of the King, this storyline gives Arwen her own moment of foresight when she sees her son by Aragorn. This calls her back to Rivendell and to her pledge, to the point where the immortality of the Elves leaves her. In Rivendell she remains, her fate uncertain until the downfall of Sauron, though she does convince Elrond to reforge the sword that was broken into Andúril.
It's that extension into Return of the King that is the most obviously rough patch in Arwen’s story for the films. It comes with a dream of Aragorn’s of a dying Arwen. Immediately after, Elrond tells Aragorn that her life is tied to the fate of the Ring. So presented, several viewers had the impression that Arwen was ill due to some literal connection to the Ring that went unexplained.
I don’t believe that was the intention. The point of this story beat seems to be that having chosen mortality, Arwen’s life is tied to the Ring only so much as every mortal being’s life in Middle-earth depends on the Ring’s destruction. I can’t blame anyone for being confused, though; the wording is melodramatic and awkward, and I thought it implied a more literal illness myself the first few times I saw it. It’s one of several instances in the trilogy where the quest for dramatic tension was more of a hindrance than a help to a given scene.
Dramatic tension was certainly one of the aims behind Elrond’s attempts to send Arwen away. The prospect of being parted from his daughter is a great sorrow to Elrond in “The Tale,” but he also acts as foster-father to Aragorn, whom he loves deeply. He also accepts that in his loss, Middle-earth and Men may have new hope; his stipulation that Aragorn become king of Gondor and Arnor is in part to ensure that his daughter’s surrender of immortality is for such a cause. You’ll find very little trace of that hope in The Two Towers. The films treat Elrond, and nearly every Elf who isn’t Arwen, as more grim and emotionally remote than the books. Just how Elrond regards Aragorn, Man’s worth, and the chances of Sauron’s defeat shifts as “dramatic tension” demands, at the price of consistency. His opposition to Arwen remaining in Middle-earth at least is consistent, but his going so far as to withhold his own vision of Arwen’s child when manipulating her to leave rings false.
Arwen wavering even a little from her commitment does have some basis in the book. The future Elrond confronts his daughter with is taken straight from the ending of “The Tale,” where Arwen fully comprehends the price of mortality only at Aragorn’s passing. In bitter grief she goes away to Lothlórien, long emptied of the Elves, and dies alone. To be faced with that future and choose it anyway, one could argue, makes Arwen even stronger as a character. But turned into a prediction, with Elrond holding back key pieces, makes this future seem only possible, not inevitable, something that could be overcome by her turning back.
And the image of Arwen grieving over Aragorn lacks a key piece of context from “The Tale.” Aragorn chooses the time of his own death, when he is advanced in years but still sound of mind and body. He accepts death as the Gift of Men from the One (God) and trusts in Tolkien’s hope without guarantees. “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair,” Aragorn tells Arwen before peacefully going to his final sleep. “We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” This stands in contrast to Arwen’s cold sorrow and lonely passing, and to the noble fate of Beren and Lúthien. It’s that key theme of Death as part of Man’s nature, presented with point and counterpoint.
Except in a film that was only an adaptation of “The Tale,” however, I can’t imagine Aragorn and Arwen’s deaths as capable of expressing that idea. Making what use of that ending they could as a moment of temptation for Arwen seems a prudent call by the filmmakers. I’m tempted myself to imagine her responding by fleeing to Lothlórien with Andúril, or Galadriel being the one to pose the temptation to her through her Mirror before Arwen rides to Helm’s Deep. Without having seen it, that concept does seem a tantalizing adaptation option - and a more consistent one.
But how it would pay off in Return of the King is hard to imagine, and the cost it would demand of that beautiful moment of reuniting at the coronation argues against the idea. It’s easy to sit here in a rather uncomfortable chair and imagine alternatives after having seen the films and read the books myriad times, without the pressure of trying to make three movies at once while heavily revising a key storyline. And in the end, the tale of Aragorn and Arwen on film is still more full of highs than lows.
