Legolas

"Legolas Greenleaf long under tree: In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea! If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more."

- Galadriel

Legolas Greenleaf was a Sindarin Elf who became a part of the Fellowship of the Ring. With his keen eyesight, sensitive hearing, and excellent bowmanship, Legolas was a valuable resource to the other eight members of the Fellowship. He is 2,931 years old (according to the Lord of the Rings Official Movie Guide).

Role in the story
Legolas was Prince of Mirkwood, the son of King Thranduil, a descendant from the royal line of Sindarin elves. Legolas was considered young by Elven standards, but was at least five centuries old. He first came to prominance at the council of Elrond, where he came as a messenger from his father to discuss the escape of Gollum. Elrond picked Legolas 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's 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 (Gimli won by one, but the real result was mutual respect). Also, the same contest was carried out in the Battle of Pelennor Fields.They also seem to share a relationship that would remind people of 2 step brothers, friendly but wanting to beat the other off. After the destruction of the One Ring and of Sauron, the two went off travelling together through Fangorn Forest. 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 Gimli's love for his friend, and the desire to see Galadriel once again, prompts him to go with Legolas; the first and only Dwarf to do so.

The Character
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.

While Legolas' age is never given in Tolkien's writings, Tolkien scholars have estimated he is at the most 800–900 years old by the time of the War of the Ring, and possibly no less than 500. To see their reasoning, see the articles referred to below.

Tolkien himself states that Legolas accomplishes the least of the nine members of the Fellowship.

Although Tolkien elves are a diverse group, fantasy and gaming enthusiasts tend to cite Legolas as the archetypical basis for the majority of modern elf stereotypes, in particular archery.

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 two of these, and uses them both with deadly precision. Legolas prefers to use his bows over his knives, and only uses them when he is forced into close combat or runs out of arrows, such as in Amon Hen or at the Deeping Wall of Helm's Deep. However, when he does use them, though they do not match Aragorn's masterful swordsplay or Gimli's power with the axe, they are quite deadly and can easily kill Orcs or Uruk-hai.

Bow
Though Legolas is quite skilled with his Elvish long-knives, his true prowess obviously 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). His archery skills have earned him the respect of the Fellowship of the Ring and many others, as he is clearly the best archer in the entire Fellowship. If there are any targets within range, Legolas can shoot them down easily and without hesitation, especially to save his friends.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (video game), Legolas's bow has particularly special powers. His final bow upgrades, the Mithril Arrows and Elven Bow Mastery, making him an arrow-shooting machine. Mithril Arrows can make even the most powerful units like Trolls and Ringwraiths 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 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. There are in fact various reasons to believe that Legolas was in fact only a few centuries old, and possibly not much older than 500.

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 Adaptations
Legolas has also been portrayed by Anthony Daniels in the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings and by David Collings in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation.

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 LOTR, 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 (Qenya) words laica, green, and lassë, leaf. The names are very similar, but the characters were different: Legolas of Gondolin was a Ñoldorin Exile, 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.