The Fading of the Elves and the Forging of the Three Rings of Power

I debated for a long time on how I wanted to write this post before finally coming to the conclusion that it only felt appropriate to talk about ‘fading’ during the second age if it was in conjunction with the forging of the elven rings of power and vice-versa. Something felt missing when I tried to talk about one without the other. Not only is Elven ‘fading’ inherently tied up with the larger trajectory of fading, or decline, that the entirety of Middle-earth is on, but their fading and their reaction to their fading during the second age is central to understanding the themes surrounding Tolkien’s story of the forging of the rings of power.

So what is ‘fading’? There are two slightly different uses of the term that appear throughout the legendarium which are tightly connected but worth acknowledging separately. There is the generic fading of the world, and there is the ‘fading’ of the Elves. 

The former is a thematic (but also literal) force which conveys the general sentiment that things which were once greater have now since fallen. The entire world of Middle-earth is in a process of slow and inevitable decline from its initial state of bliss. This decline is an inherent and immutable feature of Tolkien’s world.

The latter term describes the physical process that is affecting the Elven race as a result of the more generic fading. The physical bodies of the Elves are subject to the same decline that the rest of Middle-earth experiences, and yet their spirits are fated to live forever, or more specifically, for as long as the world itself. Elves are able to escape the decline of Middle-earth by returning to Valinor (The West), where the grandeur of the Valar (and/or the beauty of that realm) keeps them out of decline. But for an elf in Middle-earth, far from the divine land of the Gods, their physical body slowly withers away (over the course of many thousands of years) and their eventual fate would be to wander as a lost disembodied spirit unable to find their way back to their true home in Valinor.

When people say that the Elves are ‘fading’, there is a twofold meaning here. On the one hand, there are less and less elves left in Middle-earth over time, as more are returning to Valinor over the years after the First Age ends. Their cities, palaces, and influences over the world are dwindling and pulling back, until they eventually all depart. On the other hand however, they are actually literally ‘fading’ in the sense that their bodies are slowly dwindling and are unable to be sustained by a declining Middle-earth which is becoming less and less ‘divine’ or ‘magical’. It is precisely their obsession with stopping this process that leads to the forging of the rings of power:

"In the first [account of the Second Age (The Rings of Power)] we see a sort of second fall or at least ‘error’ of the Elves. There was nothing wrong essentially in their lingering against counsel, still sadly with the mortal lands of their old heroic deeds. But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted peace and bliss and perfect memory of 'The West’, and yet remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people, above wild Elves, dwarves, and Men, was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy of Valinor. They thus became obsessed with 'fading’, the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the sun) was perceived by them. They became sad, and their art (shall we say) antiquarian, and their efforts all really a kind of embalming–even though they also retained the old motive of their kind, the adornment of earth, and the healing of its hurts." - Letter 131

Here we get Tolkien talking about ‘fading’ as it exists as a law of his world - an inevitable and immutable force of slow decline, and how the Elves react to it during the second age. They are caught up in it just as much as everything else is, but a key difference is that their long lifespans allow them to actually perceive the change over the long years. During the second age, the Elves (particularly those in Eregion who forged the rings of power with Sauron) became ‘obsessed’ with this decline and viewed it increasingly as a negative. They wanted to remain in Middle-earth, but did not want to accept the mortality that was inherent there. So they turned to means of power and control in order to force their will upon the world and hold it in a state that they deemed more desirable: a state of perpetual beauty and life, which doesn’t seem at all that bad, but the important thing to realize here is how they went about pursuing that world: through use of ‘magic’ and control. It’s not their motive, but their means which are the issue, and this is where Sauron finds his lever.

“many of the Elves listened to Sauron. He was still fair in that early time, and his motives and those of the Elves seemed to go partly together: the healing of the desolate lands. Sauron found their weak point in suggesting that, helping one another, they could make Western Middle-earth as beautiful as Valinor.” - Letter 131

It is the Elves’ fear of decline, their sadness because of the slow decay of the world, and their desire and impulse to attempt to make things better (in their own desired image) that Sauron capitalizes on to get what he wants. None of these things are ‘evil’ or even ‘wrong’ reactions to the state of the world, in fact I’d argue the opposite: it’s a display of the Elves’ extreme empathy for the world around them which does not share their same state of immortality. It is their natural reaction to the ‘Elven condition’ so to speak. The problem, as Tolkien seems to think, is that the elves of Eregion attempted to play ‘God’ and hold the world in a state of their choosing. For Tolkien, control through means of power is never the answer - no matter how right you might think your worldview and motives are.

The lands held by the rings of power after their forging are lands frozen in time. They are places where the Elves are able to remain free of fading, living eternally in a land of active nostalgia (so long as the rings are still empowered and so long as Sauron does not hold The One). The problem with this is that these lands remain stuck. The Elves are unwilling to let go and are unwilling to accept the natural course that the world must take - which is a course defined by mortality. It’s a central tenant that rears its head throughout Tolkien’s stories that death and loss are necessary - and that no matter how hard you might fight against that downward current, you ultimately can’t change it without even more drastic repercussions than the ones you were trying to avoid in the first place. It’s for this reason that I say the Elven story during the second age is about mortality, despite their perceived immortality. Their mistakes are all tied up with an inability to swallow this mortal truth about the world that Tolkien felt was so important to acknowledge: the only constant is change. Ultimately, the Elves forged the rings of power in an attempt to stop change, and in order to do so, turned to the corrupting magic of Sauron.

This is where I believe Amazon’s The Rings of Power has made a significant thematic blunder. They have correctly connected the forging of the elven rings of power to the Elves’ perception of and relationship with mortality, but they’ve done so by having the elves in the show fear for their own mortality. 

In the show, the forging of the elven rings is done so that they will be able to stop a physical corruption that has appeared in Middle-earth, therefore allowing them to stay in the lands that they feel attached to. The cause of the fading of the Elves in the show: a physical corruption of the world that is linked to their own ability to be sustained in Middle-earth is actually not the problem here. It’s entirely in line with the source material for the cause of the fading of the Elves to be a “corruption” or decline present in Middle-earth. It seems entirely reasonable to me that they could learn about this through the corruption of their “spiritual” tree, and that they would be unsure of the exact cause and nature of their fading. In the “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”, Tolkien states:

“Now the Eldar learned that, according to the lore of the Edain, Men believed that their hröar were not by right nature short lived, but had been made so by the malice of Melkor. It was not clear to the Eldar whether Men meant: by the general marring of Arda (which they themselves held to be the cause of the waning of their own hröar)” - HoME, Morgoth’s Ring

In this quote hröar roughly translates to “body”, as opposed to the fëa, or “soul”. Arda is our physical world as we know it. So essentially the latter half of the quote is saying: “Elves believe that their own fading (the process by which their physical body is waning) is linked to the marring of the physical world by the corruption of Melkor.” Sure the show may have been a bit ham-fisted in their treatment of the fading of Middle-earth by having it be represented by black goop on a pretty tree, but there’s really nothing wrong with this thematically, and they have to show the fading in some way. This is not the hill to die on.

The major difference that I have an issue with is in the reaction that this causes in the Elves. In the show, the corruption of the tree and presence of their fading is perceived as an active and time-sensitive threat. Sure, in the source material the Elves don’t know the exact cause of their fading either. Sure there is still a possibility that there is a bit of deception by Sauron at play with the tree goop and "Mithril curing tree goop" plot. But that does not erase the fact that the elves act and make the rings of power in the first season under the assumption that their fading poses an imminent threat to their “souls”. 

One of my biggest gripes with this change is that it reduces the role of Celebrimbor’s hubris significantly. Rather than being driven by his pride to attempt to create objects of power which will hold the entire world around him in stasis and allow the Elves to stay past their allotted time in Middle-earth, Celebrimbor is instead convinced by his pride that he can create objects of power that will save the Elves from an imminent threat to their spiritual well-being. This is a very different story now, particularly when it comes to the culpability of the elves of Eregion. Their mistake is not nearly of the same magnitude given the threat they thought they were facing, and it’s certainly not nearly as deliberate. 

In the show, Celebrimbor seems to just be this unknowing tool of Sauron, whose excitement in his own work, and desire to be “the famous Celebrimbor who saves the Elves from fading” blinds him to the trickery at play. In the source material, he comes off as an incredibly powerful and slightly corrupted craftsman in his own right, and I see him and Sauron more as genuine friends who have a lot more in common than just talking about alloys.

"But Sauron had better fortune with the Noldor of Eregion and especially with Celebrimbor, who desired in his heart to rival the skill and fame of Fëanor" - Unfinished Tales

Both Celebrimbor and Sauron want to rival Valinor (though for different reasons). They’re both following in the footsteps of greater beings who came before them, and they are both driven by an incredibly powerful hubris. The elven rings of power are often spun as “objects designed for healing”, but we need to remember that ultimately, they were objects of power designed to hold the world in a state of stasis that the Elves wanted to keep for themselves. If done right, the forging of the elven rings of power should be portrayed as a decision by Celebrimbor and the elves of Eregion that they made in their pride (with more than a little of the classic Noldor superiority complex) - and that we as the audience find morally questionable.

The show’s version of the forging of the rings of power instead significantly increases the role of Sauron’s deception (especially if the whole tree-goop ends up being part of a ruse crafted by him as I suspect) and has the Elves make a simple and obvious choice to forge the rings without any real controversy. Their only other option (as far as they know at the time) is to just leave Middle-earth immediately, and the rings are a way for them to stay and heal the corrupted lands instead of abandoning them. From their limited perspective, the decision to forge the rings doesn’t seem morally gray at all.

The only elf who will need to face similar consequences as the Elves in the source material is now Galadriel, who let the ring-forging continue despite knowing Sauron’s identity. It remains to be seen why she did this in the show, but based on the source material, I would expect her to have been driven by her stubborn pride to attempt to spite Sauron using the power of the Elven rings, thinking that she would be wise and powerful enough to oppose him using these newly crafted objects of power. And in a way she is powerful enough, and does use the rings to defy Sauron (along with Elrond in Rivendell) but it’s only after he loses The One.

A lot of the elements of the fading of the Elves are in the right place, it's just how that leads into the decision to craft the rings of power that has been altered and that will affect the story that can be told moving forward. The show also certainly tried to sneak in as much as it could related to Celebrimbor’s prideful characterization (and Charles Edwards did a great job with the acting), it just feels like too little, too late, and doesn’t have the same emphasis and importance as it does in the source material. It seems to me that the Elves have a much bigger excuse for their work with Sauron in Eregion, and that their fault was not driven by their own hubris, but by their lack of knowledge surrounding their fading. It feels like a slightly weak cop-out for an event in the history of middle-earth that should be surrounded by more complex controversy. Instead, all of the controversy and hubris surrounding the Elves is being shouldered so far by Galadriel.