20 Things You Didn't Know About The Lord Of The Rings
14. Aragorn And Arwen Are Cousins (Kind Of)
Middle-earths sweetest love story takes on an unfortunately incestuous spin when one takes into consideration Aragorn and Arwens genealogy thankfully, due to the life expectancies of Aragorns line versus Arwens, they are very, very, very, very, very, very, distantly related (sixty-three times removed!), so its all good. As everyone knows, Aragorn is the rightful king of Gondor, but whats less common knowledge is that Elros, the first High King of Numenor and Aragorns sixty-first great-grandfather, was Elronds twin brother. Arwen being Elronds daughter, its little wonder that Elrond was a bit opposed to her union with his long-lost nephew, albeit one with 6500 years of family catch-up to do. In all seriousness, this is an interesting way to gain perspective on the sheer difference between Elves and Men: whereas 65 generations separate Aragorn from Earendil (Elronds father), Arwen is just two away.
13. The Lord Of The Rings Isnt A Trilogy
Though published as such, and adapted into a trilogy of films, the actual work was intended to be a single novel, separated into six books, and is erroneously referred to as a trilogy. According to Tolkien, the three volumes that the work was separated into shouldnt be considered stand-alones, a concept that would contribute to a sense of shapelessness in the work. He singled out The Two Towers particularly, saying that Book II and III have little to do with each other, contributing to the split narrative of that volume. One might be wondering why exactly it was published in three instead of one, then. The reason seems ridiculous today now that Rings is as firmly implanted in our collective unconscious, being a centerpiece in recent popular culture, but it was because the publishers thought it would lose money by being too dark to appeal to the fans of The Hobbit. Due to that and post-WWII paper shortages, the publishers broke it up so that it would not lose too much money if sales were not as high as hoped needless to say, this was hardly a necessary concern.
Canadian student. Spends probably an unhealthy amount of time enthusing over musicals, unpopular TV shows, and Harry Potter. Main life goal: to become fluent in Elvish.
