imakemywings
To me, Legolas–cheerful, optimistic, courageous, gregarious–comes across as someone who had a happy childhood. And that hits hard, especially knowing that by his birth, the Greenwood was already declining into Mirkwood, the shadow of Sauron’s spirit spreading and poisoning the land. Already Greenwood was far diminished from what it was–Thranduil led home less than a third of the forces Oropher had marched to Mordor in the War of the Last Alliance. Thranduil himself, whether you take for canon the movie interpretation of his injuries in the War of Wrath and the death of his beloved wife, is someone who is almost certainly carrying considerable trauma. He is canonically Doriathrim which suggests that at the least he survived two kinslayings against his people. Given that he lived in Beleriand at the time it feels safe to assume he fought in the WoW. We know he accompanied Oropher to Mordor during WLA and watched his father’s early charge lead to his death–and early in the fight, too. Thranduil was crowned king on the battlefield and had to finish the war before leading the Greenwood’s tattered army home.
And yet.
And yet Legolas seems emotionally healthy, well-adjusted, comfortable in himself and his surroundings, willing and able to make quick friends, admires his father, and speaks only ever with the greatest fondness of his home. Legolas is happy. Despite having grown up in the shadow of Mirkwood, despite his father’s trauma, despite the decline of his home realm–he, to my eye, shouts of someone who was raised in a happy home, by people who loved him. In LotR, Gandalf says of Legolas that he has lived “in joy” in the Woodland Realm.
Which means that Thranduil–and likely many others in Mirkwood–put in real effort to make Legolas’ childhood as safe and happy as they possibly could. I think for Thranduil, having experienced the trauma that he did–and possibly being scarred by the deaths of Elured and Elurin, and the kidnapping of Elrond and Elros–it was of heightened importance that he do everything within his power to raise his own child in as much joy and security as he could.
It just makes me emotional, thinking that despite the despair threatening them and the dangers facing the Woodland Realm and the fact that the time of the Elves in Middle-earth was waning, Legolas was raised in such love that it comes through so clearly in his character, even centuries after he was grown.
