[Formendacil]

Another episode in the smash hit series "Formendacil Resurrects Vigorous Old Threads" (FR.VOR, in case you're wondering how I'd abbreviate that).

Perhaps it's my recent focus on "The Uruk-Hai" in Book III, but this one caught my attention, since that's the first chapter that is Merry- and Pippin-centric, but there's another pairing in that chapter that seems to have been overlooked in this thread, which is think could use mentioning: Uglúk and Grishnákh, which also brings up that other orkish pair: Shagrat and Gorbag.

Tolkien certainly liked to use two-person sets of characters, but I wonder if this thread doesn't go above-and-beyond in trying to find them. Frodo-Gollum, for example, doesn't feel complete to me--it feels like it ought to be Frodo-Sam-Gollum.

There's a whole pile of brother-pairs in The Silmarillion:
Melkor/Manwë
Námo/Irmo
Elwë/Olwë
Fingolfin/Finarfin
Maedhros/Maglor
Celegorm/Curufin
Amrod/Amras
Angrod/Aegnor
Húrin/Húor
Belegund/Baragund
Elrond/Elros

There are other pairs that could be named, but these stand head-and-shoulders (to my mind anyway) above pairings like Fëanor/Fingolfin or Tuor/Maeglin, because parallels between characters exist in all sorts of fiction, but this list is a collection of characters that are, frequently, mentioned in a breath together. From The Lord of the Rings, these are the pairs that give me the same vibe:

Merry/Pippin
Elladan/Elrohir
Legolas/Gimli

...but Gandalf/Saruman does not. In the case of the wizards, I think the balance of power between the two is always definitely weighted: "There can only be One White Wizard!" so that either Gandalf is Saruman's subordinate or Saruman is no longer a member of the Order.

And this makes me think about characters that really have no pairing. The character par excellence where this is concerned is Sauron--even moreso than Morgoth, because at least Morgoth has Manwë, whereas Sauron has no peer (in the Second and Third Ages, anyway--I could hear an argument that Lúthien is his counterbalance in the Lay of Leithien, but though he has many opponents once he becomes THE Dark Lord, even Gandalf is not, alone, his peer).

Elrond kind of feels like this at times too, though sometimes he gets put together with Gandalf as an originator of the Fellowship and sometimes with Galadriel as an Elven-ruler with a ring. Galadriel--despite being part of a married couple!--also really feels like someone peerless (though I am not thinking in the quasi-Marian sense that Tolkien seems to espouse in his latest writings).

As I said: a vigorous thread, worth the rereading.