Legolas

"He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship."

- J.R.R. Tolkien on Legolas (Book of Lost Tales 2, p. 333)

Legolas Thranduilion is a Sindarin Elf who became a part of the Fellowship of the Ring. Legolas, son of the King Thranduil of Mirkwood, is the Prince of Mirkwood, and also a messenger, and a master Bowman. With his keen eyesight, sensitive hearing, and excellent bowmanship, Legolas was a valuable resource to the other eight members of the Fellowship. His age is never stated by Tolkien but is estimated by some to be between 500 and 3,000 years old.

History
Legolas was first seen in the book at the Council of Elrond, where he came as a messenger from his father to discuss the escape of Gollum. During the meeting held by the elf lord Elrond, Legolas volunteered to become one of the members of the Fellowship that set out to destroy the One Ring.

Within the Fellowship, Legolas and the dwarf, Gimli, clashed because of the ancient quarrel between Elves and Dwarves after the destruction of Doriath, and also because Legolas' father Thranduil once imprisoned Gimli's father, Glóin, (during Bilbo's Quest to the Lonely Mountain). They became friends, however, when they entered Lothlórien and Gimli greeted the Lady of the Golden Wood with gentle words. In the Battle of the Hornburg, he and Gimli engaged in Orc-slaying contests with Gimli winning by one, though Legolas was not jealous stating "You have passed my score by one but I do not grudge you the game, so glad am I to see you on your legs". In the movie adaptations the same contest was carried out in the Battle of Pelennor Fields. The contest apparently counted the number of kills only, with no extra points being gained for killing larger or more dangerous foes, as at Pelennor Fields Legolas single-handedly brought down a Mumakil, and Gimli, begrudging such a ridiculous feat, states that "it still only counts as one."

After the destruction of the One Ring and of Sauron, the two went off travelling together through Fangorn Forest and then later travelled to the Glittering Caves at Aglarond as he and Gimli had agreed. Eventually, Legolas came to Ithilien with some of his people, with his father's leave, to live out his remaining time in Middle-earth helping to restore the devastated forests of that war-ravaged land. After the death of King Elessar, Legolas left Middle-earth to go over the Sea, and Legolas' love for his friend Gimli prompted him to invite Gimli to go to the Undying Lands; he was the first and only Dwarf to do so.

Character and Personality
Although he lived among them and in their culture, Legolas was not one of the Silvan Elves. As a son of the Elven-king Thranduil, who had originally come from Doriath, Legolas was actually a Sindarin Elf. This is complicated by the fact that a small minority of Sindarin Elves ruled the predominantly Silvan Woodland Realm of Northern Mirkwood, a minority to which Legolas belonged. The Sindarin minority in that realm, who should have been more noble and wise than the Silvan Elves, can be seen as having "gone native" at the end of the First Age: after Morgoth was defeated and all of the grand Elf-kingdoms of Beleriand were destroyed, they can be seen as going back to "a simpler time" in their culture. Legolas can shoot a target through the head from point-blank range, and participated in the Battle of the Hornburg and the Battle of the Morannon and The Battle of Pelennor Fields.

Like all elves, Legolas has a great respect and appreciation for nature. While in Fangorn forest he longed to return once more in order to explore its wonders more thoroughly. He is kind, and cares greatly for his friends.

Legolas' name
The name Legolas is a Silvan dialect form of pure Sindarin Laegolas, Greenleaf. It consists of the Sindarin words laeg, green; and golas, a collection of leaves, foliage (being a prefixed collective form of las(s), leaf). The Quenya form (mentioned in the Book of Lost Tales in the context of another character of that name) is Laiqualassë.

There might, however, be a certain meaning to his name: laeg is a very rare, archaic word for green, which is normally replaced by calen (cf. Calenhad, mutated Parth Galen and plural Pinnath Gelin) and is otherwise almost only preserved in Laegrim, Laegel(d)rim (Sindarin form of Quenya Laiquendi), the Green Elves of the First Age. It may be that Thranduil named his son Legolas to at least in part refer to this people, who were remote kin and ancestors of the later Silvan Elves, the people Thranduil ruled and to whom - very likely - Thranduil's wife belonged.

Elvish long-Knives
Legolas primarily uses two weapons when engaged in combat with the forces of evil. The first of these are his Elvish long-knives. Legolas carries one in the book and two of them in the movie adaptation, and uses them with deadly precision. Legolas uses them when he is forced into close combat or runs out of arrows, such as at the Deeping Wall of Helm's Deep.

In the hands of Legolas, though not as deadly as Aragorn's sword or Gimli's axe, they prove lethal against any Orc or Uruk-hai. He can stab through the thick plate armor of Saruman's elite shock troops, the Uruk-hai Berserkers, with no greater difficulty than a hot knife through butter. His twin blades helped to fell the mumakil on the Pelennor Fields, and dozens of Haradrim with it. His blades were feared almost as much as his vaunted longbow by the minions of Sauron and Saruman.



Bow
Though Legolas is very skilled with his Elvish long-knife (dual knives in the live-action movie series), his specialty lies in archery. Using his longbow, Legolas is able to shoot anything with deadly accuracy, even from a very far distance, which is demonstrated in the ambush of the Warg riders of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (film). Before departing Lothlórien, Galadriel gifted him with a specially made longbow, with a bowstring that is strands of elvish hair. His archery skills with this bow have earned him the respect of the Fellowship, notably by striking down a Nazgul on a winged Fell Beast while sailing down the Anduin river. His bow felled many dozens, possibly even thousands, of every manner of Sauron's servants during the War of the Ring.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (video game), Legolas' bow has particularly special powers. His final bow upgrades, the Mithril Arrows and Elven Bow Mastery, make Legolas almost ludicrously powerful capable of taking on entire armies by himself. Thriller Arrows can make even the most powerful units like Trolls and Ringmaster fall with just two (charged) shots, while Elven Bow Mastery allows him to shoot two of these arrows at a time. Together, he is an unstoppable archer.

In "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King" video games, Legolas' missile weapon is his bow and arrows. In each case Legolas' bow has 60 arrows. Double the number given to Aragorn and at least triple the number of missiles given to Gimli.

Age
Tolkien does not specifically give Legolas' age but many have used what details Tolkien does give to hazard a guess. It's safe to say that, most likely, Legolas was born after Orophor, his grandfather, moved his people across the Misty Mountains, since in the book, he referred to the Noldor elves as a "strange race". That would mean he's less than 6400 years old, his birthdate in the latter part of the Second Age, at the earliest. But Legolas is never mentioned in any account of the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, so most assume he was born in the Third Age, after Isildur took the Ring of power. Legolas has never been to Lorien before he travels there with the Fellowship. Therefore, we can assume that he was not with his grandfather's people when they left Lorien for Northern Mirkwood. Before the Shadow of Dol Guldur fell on Mirkwood in T.A. 1000, Legolas' people spent time amongst their Lorien neighbors. But when the Shadow fell, they "retreated before it as it spread ever northward, until at last Thranduil established his realm in the north-east of the forest and delved there a fortress and great halls underground. So, we can safely assume that Legolas' birthdate was after T.A. 1000, when the Kingdom of Northern Mirkwood was created. This would make him younger than any other elf character in the series, including Arwen. In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Legolas refers to his travelling companions many times as "children". Yet when he arrives at Fangorn, he claims to feel young compared to the forest. Legolas says, "It is old, very old. So old that almost I feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children."

In the books

 * The Fellowship of the Ring
 * The Two Towers
 * The Return of the King

In the movies

 * The Fellowship of the Ring
 * The Two Towers
 * The Return of the King

Peter Jackson versions
In the 'official movie guide' for The Lord of the Rings, a birthdate for Legolas is set to TA 87. This would make him 2931 years old at the time of the War of the Ring. This date for Legolas' birth was made up by the movie writers, as in the books there are no known dates concerning Legolas before TA 3018. His age is never specified by Tolkien, but he is believed by most to have been born during the Third Age.

Due to a technical mishap involving Orlando Bloom's contact lenses, in the films Legolas' eye colour sometimes changes between brown and purple.

Peter Jackson also filmed, but never used, footage of Legolas in his new home.

Previous Film Adaptations
Legolas has also been portrayed by Anthony Daniels in the 1978 Ralph Bakshi animated version of The Lord of the Rings.

Radio versions
Legolas was voiced by Frank Duncan in the The Lord of the Rings (1956 radio series), by John Vickery in the The Lord of the Rings (1979 radio series), and by David Collings in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation.

Video games
In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Legolas was voiced by Michael Reisz.

Legolas appears as a hero in The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II.

Legolas appears as a hero in Lord of the Rings: Conquest, in the Xbox 360 version there is a specific achievement called "That still only counts as one", which is earned by using a scout or warrior to kill an Oliphaunt single handedly, just like Legolas did in the third of Peter Jackson's movies and is named after what Gimli said to him immediately afterwards.

Legolas of Gondolin
The name Legolas Greenleaf first appeared in The Fall of Gondolin, one of the "Lost Tales". The character is mentioned only once and is unrelated to the character discussed above. Because Tolkien had reused the name in the Lord Of The Rings, this Legolas was not included in the published Silmarillion.

The Legolas of Gondolin, who Tolkien would have likely renamed, has a different etymology. His name (Laiqalassë in its pure form) comes from the primitive Quenya (Quenya) words laica, green, and lassë, leaf. The names are very similar, but the characters were different: Legolas of Gondolin was a Ñoldorin exiles, head of the House of the Tree.


 * But the others, led by one Legolas Greenleaf of the house of the Tree, who knew all that plain by day or by dark, and was night-sighted, made much speed over the vale for all their weariness, and halted only after a great march.


 * "The Fall of Gondolin", Book of Lost Tales.