[Formendacil]

Look out for the newbie!!!

(But only new on this forum... Well-experienced Tolkien freak er.. fan... coming through).

My favourite romance, such as it is, would probably be Thingol and Melian.

Why?

It's stately, it's successful, it didn't involve crazy dangers or insane lunacy. It lasted QUITE a while too...

And unless you think that the Valar would never give Thingol rebirth, which I think is VERY unlikely, then it's still going on today.

Another interesting thing about it, to my mind, is that is shows the ELF as the one reaching up to a "higher" being, namely a Maia. In all the other mixed-race romances, it's the Men reaching up to the Elves. It's kind of nice to see the Elf as the one reaching up for a change (if the first recorded romance can be called a "change").

Of course, all the successful love stories have their place in my heart. And the unsuccessful ones make the best reading, sadly enough.

I mean, face it. Which would you rather read: Aldarion and Erendis, or Aragorn and Arwen?

Reading only what Tolkien wrote, that is. Tolkien tends to treat the good romances with very little detail. It's the sad stories that we know a lot about.