Isuldur: What's this shiny thing? It makes me feel all tingly. Sauron: I've been meaning to find out what this ring does anyway.Įlves: Well save you, but this is the last time. (Numenor is destroyed, causing the men to flee to Middle Earth)Įlves: Aw jeez, now we have to share the land with these people? Let's look at it from the elves point of view.Įlves: Oh look, another milennium of peace. Other Elves don't get to choose their fate - only descendants of Earendil like Elros, Elrond and Arwen do. Aragorn is Elros' descendant, making him and Arwen close relatives by the way. Elrond choose to be the Elf while his brother Elros choose to be a Man and founded the Kingdom of Numenor. But Arwen is a descendant of Earendil, a man who for his truly astonishing deeds was made an immortal Elf, while his sons get to choose their fate. Other Elves that stay in Middle-Earth will live there until slain, and even then they will be given new bodies and resurrected in Valinor, because they are truly immortal.

But if he loses and the Ring is destroyed (which is what happens) then the power that resided in places like Rivendell, Lothlorien and Grey Havens goes away as well, that's why the Elven lords sail away at the end of LOTR.Īrwen is a special case here. And this will happen regardless of how the War ends: If Sauron wins, all Middle-Earth falls into eternal darkness and they can only save themselves by fleeing. The Elves cannot stand to see this and as such sail into Valinor (which is located at a different plane of existence) where the beautiful things they love will endure. So, by the time of Sixth or Seventh Age everything magical has passed out, transforming Middle-Earth into the world we live in. And even the magic that Elrond, Gandalf and Galadriel perform during the War of the Ring cannot be replicated once the One Ring is destroyed and the Fourth Age starts. The First Age saw battles that shattered continents, Second Age saw the Rings of Power that cannot be created in the Third. In Tolkien's legendarium, with each new age more magic is passing out of the world.

Would you be a little bored if you wandered the same wood for millennia? Galadriel, for example, is older than the Sun and immortals (even fictional) do not perceive world like we do.īut the real reason they are leaving is because the world they've known for millennia is changing and there is nothing they can do about it.

Why are the elves leaving middle earth