[Formendacil]

Esty makes a good point about "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" having a strong similarity to "The History of Middle-earth," but while the resemblance is there, I feel that there are distinct differences. Perhaps the best way of thinking about it is that "Galadriel and Celeborn" (and, indeed, all Unfinished Tales) is the test version, the prototype. For one thing, Christopher Tolkien is a lot more comfortable here with abridging things, rather than giving the full text--there are a lot of out-of-context citations here. Some of the full texts made it into the HoME, some never did.

Tolkien's "deification" of Galadriel, if I may call it that, as she went from Last Noldorin Rebel to Generic Noldorin Rebel to Practically Not a Rebel at All, and the parallel process of Celeborn from Silvan/Nandorin Elf to Sindarin to Telerin, absolutely fascinates me. I like Christopher Tolkien's comment that these changes (I believe he's referring only to their last stage) were made for "philosophical rather than historical reasons" (I'm paraphrasing, but the phrasing should be close). Perhaps I should say "canonisation" rather than "deification," since late-stage Galadriel has been called a parallel to the Virgin Mary. Personally, I'm not sure that I *like* this saintly Galadriel as much as I like Galadriel the proud rebel who mellows with age. I think it's a better story if one prince of the Noldor, out of all the House of Finwë, actually lives long enough to change her pride than having one who was arrogantly innocent from the beginning.

That being said, I still like the idea that Gimli's request for strands of Galadriel's hair had a significant precedent in Fëanor asking for the same--but give me a break: if there's one chapter in Unfinished Tales that I'm allowed to cherry-pick preferences from, this is it.

Indeed, within the framework of Unfinished Tales, although this is the most unfinished and least tale-like of the collection, it's the lynchpin that holds the whole thing together as the story of Middle-earth. It contains most of the in-depth material we have that follows the Elves as they left a crumbling Beleriand and established the realms of Lindon and Eregion--and send princes into Lorinand and Greenwood--and possibly three ships to Dol Amroth. It's the only tale we really get of the Elven kingdoms of the Second Age, other than the fall of Eregion in the context of the Rings. With the Appendices to this chapter, we also get direct connections to the other 2nd Age tale, "Aldarion and Erendis" and prefigured connections to the Third Age tales via the excerpted histories of Gondor's rivers and the hazy boundary between Gondor/Rohan and Lórien.