10 great female characters from The Lord of the Rings

Arwen Evenstar

Speaking of Lúthien, let’s spare a moment for her great great granddaughter Arwen, daughter of Elrond Half-elven. Finally, we’re back in the Third Age with characters like Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn, with whom Arwen is in love. She and he represent the third union of man and elf to take place in the history of Middle-earth.

If you’ve watched Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, you’re familiar with Arwen. She’s distant and beautiful like her ancestor Lúthien, but also fierce and brave, as when she faces down the Black Riders at the Ford of Bruinen.

She plays a pretty big part in the movies, although you may be surprised to hear that much of it was made up; in the books, Arwen is mostly relegated to the appendices, appearing only briefly in the actual pages of the book. Jackson noticed the same thing that pretty much everyone who reads The Lord of the Rings notices: it’s mostly a sausage fest. Even with Arwen moved into the foreground, it’s still mostly a sausage fest. I suspect Amazon noticed this too, which is why it’s taking care to include more female characters in The Rings of Power.

It’s also true that, as interesting a character as Arwen is, she does fall into a recognizable type that Tolkien tends to return to: the ethereal elf woman who’s almost too beautiful to bear. But that doesn’t mean he never breaks that up…