🪞 The Trial of Galadriel the Beautiful and Terrible
🪞 The Trial of Galadriel the Beautiful and Terrible
The Tester becomes the Tested
The final night before the Fellowship departs the elven haven of Lórien, Galadriel gives Frodo and Sam the chance to look into a basin filled with water called the Mirror of Galadriel. They accept. What Sam sees is a vision of the Scouring of the Shire. Frodo sees not just one vision but a series of visions that include glimpses of Gandalf the White, Minas Tirith, Aragorn’s banner unveiled from the Corsair ship sailing up the Anduin, and finally the Eye of Sauron itself.
In the ensuing discussion about Sauron and the One Ring with Frodo, Galadriel reveals that one of the reasons she is able to contest Sauron’s efforts to perceive her thoughts as well as protect the realm of Lórien is that she is the wielder of Nenya, one of the three elven Rings of Power.
Praising her as “wise and fearless and fair,”1 Frodo offers to give the One Ring to her.
Thus begins the trial of Galadriel. For though it was originally she who intended to test Frodo, the tester becomes the tested.
“I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer,”2 she admits. The scenario she has imagined countless times before—the One Ring coming into her grasp—has come to pass. In a preview of what would occur should she accept, Galadriel exclaims:
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!
Lifting the hand that bears Nenya and illuminated by a bright light emanating from the Ring, Galadriel “stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.”
The brief moment passes, however. Galadriel lets her hand fall and laughs as the light fades. No longer the towering and terrible figure, she is again simply Galadriel.
“‘I pass the test,’ she says, ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”
If you’re mainly familiar with the film adaptation, this might be all you remember of the scene. Indeed, that’s how I pictured it. But there’s a fascinating callback to this scene in the very next chapter of the book that didn’t explicitly make it into the movie that beautifully illustrates the consequences and outcome of this test that Galadriel faced.
The next morning the Fellowship departs Lórien. On their way out of her realm, Galadriel gives gifts to each of the members of the Fellowship. When it comes to Frodo’s turn, Galadriel gifts him a phial containing the light of Eärendil’s star. “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. Remember Galadriel and her mirror,”3 she says to Frodo.
What happens next leaves Frodo speechless.
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“Frodo took the phial, and for a moment as it shone between them, he saw her again standing like a queen, great and beautiful, but no longer terrible. He bowed, but found no words to say”4 (emphasis mine).
Once again Galadriel is illuminated by the light of a magical object—this time by the phial instead of her Ring of Power—and revealed to be a great and beautiful figure. However, where before her stature and beauty were so great that they were terrifying, now her greatness and beauty are no longer terrible. The change is obvious to Frodo and he is left not knowing how to respond.
What has refusing to take the One Ring revealed or produced in Galadriel? To understand the answer to that question, it helps to know a bit more about Galadriel herself.
Galadriel originally came to Middle-earth from Valinor with a desire in her heart, kindled by the words of Fëanor, “to see the wide unguarded lands [of Middle-earth] and rule there a realm at her own will.”5 After thousands of years and refusing the offer of the Valar to return to Valinor, she finally sees this desire fulfilled when she becomes the Lady of Lórien in the Third Age, only to have her dream threaten to slip away from her no matter what she does.
For the One Ring is revealed to have been found. If Sauron regains the Ring now, Lórien will swiftly fall to his power. And even if the Ring were hidden away, the fading power of the Elves and the declining power of Men would still eventually fall to the ever-growing might of Mordor. Destroying the Ring, the only possible way to defeat Sauron, would still end with Galadriel losing Lórien, the magical realm fading and being swept away by “the tides of Time”6 because the power of the Three would fade with the One Ring destroyed.
But the very doom that threatens to destroy her realm brings the means of its salvation to her doorstep. There is still one choice remaining to her: take the One Ring for herself. With the Ring she would be able not just to protect and preserve Lórien, but to rule all of Middle-earth. And there is the trap. Galadriel is aware of exactly where this road would lead, for Sam tells her after she refuses Frodo’s offer: “I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights. You’d stop them digging up the Gaffer and turning him adrift. You’d make some folk pay for their dirty work.”
“I would,” Galadriel replies. “That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!”7
Much as Gandalf recognized the same reality, Galadriel sees all too clearly how the use of the Ring’s power for what seemed to be good reasons would inevitably lead to the Ring gaining power over the one who would wield it.
So, though it ultimately seals the fate of the land she rules and loves, she refuses the offer of the Ring.
By refusing to claim the Ring and the power that would come along with it to defend what she desired and pursued all her life, Galadriel has finally done what she could not do until faced with the ultimate test: give up the pursuit of power and influence.
In choosing to not use the One Ring to save Lórien, Galadriel ends up saving all of Middle-earth. She passes the test.
“I pass the test,” she said. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.
Freed from the power of the Ring, she also finds herself freed from the power of the desire for power itself. Passing the test, diminishing, going into the West, and remaining Galadriel are all related to each other. By passing the test, she brings about the diminishment of her own power and her realm when Nenya’s power fades. She is then both worthy of returning to Valinor—the West—and finally willing to accept the offer to return, for what will there be for her in Middle-earth? And she will remain herself. Not a Queen who is “beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night” but one “great and beautiful, but no longer terrible.”
To Discuss:
Do you think you would have looked into the Mirror of Galadriel if given the chance? What do you think you might have seen if you did?
Do you like Galadriel’s “in place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen” monologue better in the movie or in the book?
Have you ever had to give up something you’d desired for a long time and worked hard to get for a greater good of some kind? How did that play out?
Appendices
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J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Illustrated By The Author (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), Book II, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel,” 365.
Ibid., 366
Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lórien,” 376.
Ibid., 377.
Tolkien, The Silmarillion Illustrated By The Author, ed. Christopher Tolkien (New York: William Morrow, 2022), 74.
The Lord of the Rings, 376-7.
The Lord of the Rings, 366.