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A token given in LórienAn object with alternative historiesPrimary referencesRelated encyclopedia entries
A token given in Lórien
Galadriel presents the jewel on behalf of Arwen. The occasion brings Aragorn’s private relationship and his future public identity together without making them the same thing. The name Elessar, commonly rendered “Elfstone”, can therefore refer to the object or to Aragorn’s royal name, and a reference should make clear which is intended.
Within the novel, the jewel’s immediate significance does not depend on a complete account of its making. It is a gift with a remembered relationship and a future resonance, received during a journey whose political outcome remains uncertain.
An object with alternative histories
Unfinished Tales preserves variants involving Enerdhil, Celebrimbor, Idril, Eärendil and Galadriel. They include the possibility of a stone carried into the West and the making of a later stone in memory of an earlier one. The accounts should not be combined as though every named maker and transfer necessarily belong to one uninterrupted chain.
The jewel’s associations with healing and the preservation of unmarred beauty connect it with larger Elven desires, but those associations still require a named textual setting. A simple claim that every Elessar mentioned is demonstrably the same physical object would erase a question Tolkien’s surviving versions leave open.
This is a useful small example of the encyclopedia’s method: begin with the coherent scene in the novel, identify the supplementary text, then retain alternatives where the documents diverge. Uncertainty can be explained precisely without leaving a reader with the impression that nothing reliable is known.
Primary references
The Lord of the Rings, Book II, “Farewell to Lórien”, and Book VI, “The Steward and the King”; Unfinished Tales, “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn”, section “The Elessar”.
