Transcription
We all saw Galadriel tempted by the power of the One Ring, but how close was she to giving in? And what if she did turn evil?
Hi everyone, this is Robert. Welcome to InDeep Geek. On this channel, we cover the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien legendarium in nerdy detail, as well as the worlds of A Song of Ice and Fire, The Witcher, and more.
Welcome. When Frodo and the rest of the fellowship are in Lothlórien, Frodo offers Galadriel the One Ring. We read this:
"Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh, and now at last it comes. You will give me the ring freely. In place of the Dark Lord, you will set up a queen, and I shall not be dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night, fair as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain, dreadful as the storm and the lightning, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair."
She lifted up her hand, and from the ring that she wore, there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo, seeming now tall beyond measurement and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded. Suddenly, she laughed again, and she was shrunken, a slender elf woman clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.
"I pass the test," she said. "I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel."
It's a wonderful and terrible moment in both the book and the film. But how close was she to succumbing to the power of the Ring?
Well, to answer that, we need to go back into her history, for that moment was, in many ways, an end to a millennia-long character arc rather than just a standalone moment of temptation. In Unfinished Tales, we read about Galadriel as a younger woman in the Undying Lands. Although she is, in many ways, the same Galadriel we meet in The Lord of the Rings—wise, powerful, and compassionate—it's clear that there is another side to her too.
Tolkien tells us that she was proud, strong, and self-willed, as were all the descendants of Finwë, save Fëanor. Like her brother Finrod, of all her kin, the nearest to her heart, she had dreams of far lands and dominions that might be her own to order as she would, without tutelage. There was a darkness upon her soul. In Fëanor, she perceived a darkness that she hated and feared, though she did not perceive that the shadow of the same evil had fallen upon the minds of all the Noldor and upon her own.
We're told again and again that she was proud, and that was why she joined the Exodus to Middle-earth and did not heed the Valar's entreaties to stay. She stayed in Middle-earth when she might perhaps have returned at the end of the First Age. She was proud and wanted to rule lands under no one else's command. In simple terms, she was proud and wanted power.
Not good things. In Tolkien's world, the story of her time in Middle-earth, which lasted thousands of years and I've covered in another video, is at a meta level a story of her growing wiser and less proud. Though she did get to rule a land, Lothlórien, losing her lust for more power meant that when she finally got offered the key to potentially power over all Middle-earth, when Frodo offered her the One Ring, it was a test of that character growth.
As we read on in Unfinished Tales, it was not until two long ages more had passed when at last all that she had desired in her youth came to her hand: the Ring of Power and the dominion of Middle-earth of which she had dreamed. But her wisdom was full grown, and she rejected it. Passing the last test, she departed from Middle-earth forever.
Another example of how Tolkien rewards a deeper understanding of his legendarium. The testing of Galadriel is a startling moment for all readers and viewers, but those who know how long the buildup was to that moment for Galadriel gain an even greater appreciation for it.
Indeed, some have come away from the films thinking that it is partly an act by Galadriel. She is surely too ethereal and good to be truly tested like that. Perhaps it was partly a show to impress on Frodo how he really shouldn't go about offering the Ring to anyone else, no matter how wise and good they seem.
But I think a deeper reading of the legendarium shows the truth of the matter. It was a real test, as she claims. Indeed, the Valar only allowed her to sail west because she passed. Tolkien mentions this a few times in his letters, incidentally, for example, saying that her personal ban was lifted in reward for her services against Sauron and, above all, for her rejection of the temptation to take the Ring when offered to her.
She was pardoned because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself. So taking the Ring was an overwhelming temptation, or at least she was nearly overwhelmed.
How did she resist that temptation? Well, we've already noted her character journey, but Tolkien certainly didn't see this as an obvious point. She was a good person with a changed character who, of course, resisted the Ring. As he wrote in yet another letter, in the Mirror of Galadriel, it appears that Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring and supplanting the Dark Lord.
If so, so also were the other guardians of the three, especially Elrond. But this is another matter. It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power. But this the great had well considered and had rejected, as is seen in Elrond's words at the council.
Galadriel's rejection of the temptation was founded upon previous thought and resolve. Galadriel's ability to resist temptation was therefore due to her having firmed her resolve against it over time. The temptation did not catch her by surprise. She knew it would be there, and she resisted it, at least in part, because she was ready for it.
Tolkien doesn't really do direct moral teaching in his stories, but it's hard not to see a lesson for us all there.
Anyway, all that does seem to imply that she might have given in to the temptation of the One Ring had she been offered it earlier or if she were caught in an unguarded moment. As she admitted, she greatly desired the Ring in the past.
What would have happened then? Well, we obviously get a taste of it in that wonderful speech she gives Frodo:
"In place of the Dark Lord, you will set up a queen, and I shall not be dark but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night, as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain, dreadful as the storm and the lightning, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair."
And so on. She would have become immeasurably more powerful than she already was. I imagine that, like Gandalf said when Frodo first offered him the Ring, she would start off meaning to use it for good. At some point, she would have recognized that, or the Ring would have tempted her, that she must supplant Sauron to have true power and end his reign of horror.
How would she have done that? Well, wonderfully, Tolkien talked about this too in his letters. There really is a wealth of information in there if you've never explored them.
When discussing the possibility of others using the Ring against Sauron, he says this:
"In any case, Elrond or Galadriel would have proceeded in the policy now adopted by Sauron. They would have built up an empire with great and absolutely subservient generals and armies and engines of war until they could challenge Sauron and destroy him by force. Confrontation of Sauron alone, unaided, self to self, was not contemplated."
So we would have had a long buildup of Galadriel's forces, then a war. Tolkien is very clear that one-on-one, Gandalf would be the one person on the good side with the Ring to potentially successfully challenge Sauron.
Although let's not spoil that idea too much; I suspect there's a whole other video there we could do in the future.
But Galadriel? Well, she would certainly think she could beat him. Tolkien notes that it appears Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring and supplanting the Dark Lord. But in the same breath, he also says that it was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power.
So perhaps not. Indeed, it is precisely this fact that the wise Galadriel, Elrond, and so on realized and used to steel themselves against the temptation of the Ring should it ever come close enough to tempt them.
Not that fundamentally it matters, really. If Galadriel challenged Sauron and lost, he would have had the Ring back. If she challenged him and won, there would have been a terrible and beautiful dark queen instead.
As Tolkien notes, the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end.
So taking a step back, that moment when Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring takes on a jeopardy that perhaps isn't apparent on a first read. If it had happened earlier in Galadriel's life, when she was still proud and wanting power and rule of her own, or if she hadn't, with Elrond, steeled herself against the possibility of the Ring temptation, she would have almost certainly given in to that temptation and become that dark queen.
If she had taken the One Ring, she definitely would have thought that she could master it and ultimately challenge Sauron. She would very probably lose. Even if she had won, it would have been the One Ring that ultimately still ruled her.
Character growth and preparation for the test and resisting temptation were, in fact, the only way that Middle-earth could survive that moment. If we think otherwise, we are guilty of the same misconception that Frodo had—that her being wise and fair meant that she was automatically better placed than him to have that power and responsibility.
In truth, even the fairest and wisest can become the most terrible and dark of queens in the face of overwhelming temptation.
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That's all for this time. Thanks for watching. I'll see you again soon.