tolkiens legendarium - How can Tauriel use athelas if she is not a queen?

It is my understanding in Lord of the Rings most folk dismiss athelas, also called kingsfoil, as a useless weed, while it's actually a healing herb. This is probably because by the time of the book's events, they haven't had a king to use it for a long time.

It's not made clear whether kingsfoil only works in the hands of the king of Gondor (or any king for that matter), or if it can be used by any person with less powerful effects. But it is definitely hinted at that it's only truly effective in the hands of a king.

However, in the second Hobbit movie, Tauriel -- an elf and certainly not a queen -- successfully uses kingsfoil to help someone recover from a pretty serious magical wound.

We know Tauriel was invented by Peter Jackson. Did he mess this up, or is this usage of kingsfoil actually supported by the source material?

Answer

Tauriel's use of kingsfoil in the film is a legitimate extrapolation of known LotR canon.

There's nothing definitive on this, but it seems that while athelas is useful in the hands of any healer (Gondorian healers used it for headaches), the people of Gondor have noticed that it's especially effective in the hands of their royal family. This isn't a universal truth that kingsfoil (a name originating in Gondor) is sensitive to royalty, or to the royal Gondorian lineage in particular; it's just a Gondorian observation that their kings are better at using it than the average Gondorian is. In fact, if athelas responded to general royalty, it would not have been a suitable test for heirs to the Gondor throne: the royalty of any nation would pass.

So what made it a decent test? The Gondorian kings have elven blood. The fact that kingsfoil is more effective when used by Gondorian royalty actually supports the idea that an elf would be able to do especially cool stuff with it. This idea is reinforced by the name athelas, which means roughly "healing leaf" in both Elven tongues.

We can conclude that athelas is a healing herb which is most effective in elven hands. "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer" is a roundabout way of saying that the kings of Gondor are part elven, which athelas responds to. "Kingsfoil" is a folk etymology with roots in this ancient lore.

Comments

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

Blog

Search This Blog