Amroth

Lineage and kingship

Amroth was the son of Amdír, the Sindarin king who ruled the Silvan Elves of Lothlórien in the Second Age, and he became king when his father fell at the Battle of Dagorlad in S.A. 3434. Unfinished Tales preserves an older version in which Amroth was the son of Galadriel and Celeborn; Tolkien's later account, followed here, makes him Amdír's son and the Lady and Lord of Lórien his successors rather than his parents. He lived, like the Galadhrim after him, on a high flet in the trees, and the hill in the heart of the wood where his house stood was afterwards called Cerin Amroth. Through most of the Third Age he ruled a quiet realm on the east bank of the Silverlode, on good terms with the Dwarves of Moria across the mountains.

Nimrodel

Amroth loved Nimrodel, a maiden of the Silvan folk who lived beside the stream that bears her name in the north of the wood. She loved him too, but she would not marry him, for she belonged to the older, simpler life of the wood-elves and blamed the coming of the Sindar and the Noldor into Lórien for the wars and the troubles that had followed. For long years he wooed her without success.

The flight south

In T.A. 1980 the Dwarves of Moria delved too deep and woke Durin's Bane, and the next year terror spread across the mountains and many of the Elves of Lórien fled south. Nimrodel fled with them, and Amroth, choosing her over his kingdom, went after her. He found her, and she agreed at last to go with him over the Sea if he could bring her to a land of peace; they set out for the old Elven haven of Edhellond near Dol Amroth in Belfalas, where a ship was to sail West. Nimrodel and her companions were lost in the White Mountains, and Amroth reached the haven alone. He waited on board the last ship through the autumn until a great storm out of the north broke the moorings and drove the ship out to sea. When he saw the shore falling away, Amroth leapt overboard to swim back to Nimrodel, and he was drowned in the Bay of Belfalas. The Elves of the haven sailed on without him, and the Silvan folk say that a lonely mariner on the coast, or the wind in the stream of Nimrodel, still carries his cry.

Legacy

Amroth's name survived in two places far apart. In Lórien, Cerin Amroth was the hill on which Aragorn and Arwen plighted their troth and on which Arwen died, and the song of Amroth and Nimrodel that Legolas sang to the Fellowship by the stream was the Company's first sound of the wood. In Gondor the Princes of Dol Amroth held that their line went back to an Elven-lady of Amroth's haven, and their city, the Hill of Amroth, remembered where he had waited. Unfinished Tales also records that in the years after his loss Galadriel and Celeborn took up the rule of Lórien in his place.

Drowned in the Bay of Belfalas in T.A. 1981 after leaping from a ship driven out to sea by a storm.