Oropher

From Doriath to the Greenwood

Oropher was one of the Sindar, a lord of Doriath in the First Age who survived its ruin. When Beleriand sank he did not remain in Lindon with Gil-galad and the Noldor, for like many of the Grey-elves he wanted no more of the exiles and their quarrels; he crossed the Blue Mountains and, with a following of Sindar, went east across Eriador, over the Misty Mountains and the Anduin, into the vast forest that was then Greenwood the Great. The Silvan Elves who lived there, a people of Nandorin origin without kings or cities, received the newcomers and took Oropher as their lord. Unfinished Tales records that he and his people went native: they gave up much of their Sindarin lore and adopted the speech and the simple life of the wood-folk, so that in later ages the Elves of Mirkwood were Silvan in everything but their ruling house. His son Thranduil grew up in this kingdom.

The northward retreat

Oropher's realm first lay in the south of the wood near the hills later called Emyn Duir. Twice or more he moved it northward, according to Unfinished Tales, for two reasons: he disliked the nearness of the Dwarves of Moria, whose power was then at its height, and he mistrusted Galadriel and Celeborn, whose settlement in Lothlórien across the river seemed to him a Noldorin intrusion. He wanted his people beyond the reach of both, and by the end of the Second Age the Woodland Realm was centred north of the Mountains of Mirkwood.

The Last Alliance and Dagorlad

When Sauron's power grew again in Mordor, Oropher joined the Last Alliance, marching south in S.A. 3434 with a great host of Silvan Elves and in company with Amdír, King of Lórien. The Woodland Elves were lightly armed and unused to war on the scale the Noldor and Númenóreans practised, and Oropher, proud and independent, refused to place himself under Gil-galad's command. At the Battle of Dagorlad he charged before the High King gave the signal, and he and the greater part of his people were cut down; Amdír's host, driven into the marshes, suffered likewise. Thranduil survived, and at the end of the war led home barely a third of the army that had set out.

Legacy

Oropher is known chiefly from Unfinished Tales and from a single line of the Appendices naming Thranduil as his son, but he stands behind the whole character of the Woodland Realm: a Sindarin kingship over a Silvan people, wary of Dwarves, of the Noldor and of the wider world. His losses at Dagorlad explain the caution with which Thranduil kept his kingdom apart for the next three thousand years.

Slain at the Battle of Dagorlad in S.A. 3434, having charged before Gil-galad's signal.