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Old 10-03-2009, 06:27 AM   #29
skip spence
shadow of a doubt
 
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skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
If we're talking Arwen as imagined by Peter Jackson, you're probably right.
No! honestly, Liv Tyler, fit though she be, has nothing to do with it. My point was simply that though we never hear of any daring bravado from Arwen, neither is it stated that she spent her entire life gossiping in the beauty-saloon or reading harlequin-novels in her girl's room, as far as I'm aware. We hardly know anything about her life or personality, do we?

She probably lived a quieter life than her brother's though, because since it is written that they did travel widely, taking every opportunity fighting the servants of the Enemy, we might assume she did not. But saying that the evidence points to her living a sheltered life isn't something that would hold in a court of law, is it?

To return to the original question, I don't really think it's that strange that Arwen would fall for Aragorn. Love and attraction are indeed mysterious and hard to explain, as Lush says, but I also think that there are some general factors that often seem to reoccur among men deemed attractive and desirable, and when a woman falls for a certain man. I realise I'm stepping out on perilously thin ice now, but isn't status something the ladies do seem to go for in a man, speaking very generally? Now status could include many things, but always involves having a name in some context or other. It could be worldwide fame or notoriety in a certain field but also more mundane qualities like being well liked, respected or even feared in the eyes of others in the near environment.

Influence
can't be looked past either, can it? Someone with the power to take control of a situation is more attractive than he who is a leaf on the wind. This might involve having lots of money or political power but also being confident, persuasive or physically able. In today's rich western well-fare societies this factor might have become less important, but I imagine it was the number one factor up until quite recently.

Looks is another factor of course. Love is blind they say, and although that's a nice romantic notion, it's not the entire truth, is it?

Being somehow different I think is important too. Maybe a hard-wired evolutionary instinct against in-breeding, who knows? In any case, girls do seem to go for a man who somehow stands out from the crowd, someone who is different from the usual servings. Not too different, god forbid, but exotic enough to give that well needed spice to a relationship.

(Boys, generally, tend to be less complicated. Answering "Is she fit?" is usually enough to explanain)

Aragorn it seems, should have possessed all these qualities in the eyes of Arwen. He was in a sense famous, as the heir of Isildur, and although Arwen would have seen many such, he was prophesied with a high doom unlike his predecessors. He was also a hard man of action, a great leader aspiring to be king of Men, and probably not hard on the eye either, at least not when he'd had a shower and a shave for once, like when they met in Lorien. For obvious reasons he was also different, making him more interesting than some run-of-the-mill nobleman of Lorien or Rivendell. This combined would make rather him rather hunky, don't you think?
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