The Kind of Love We Rarely Talk About
What a story about elves and kings reveals about time, sacrifice, and commitment.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, I found myself thinking about how stories shape our understanding of love. Even stories set in imagined worlds often reveal something very real.
I recently made a short video about love in The Lord of the Rings on my new Booktok channel. When I mentioned Aragorn and Arwen, someone commented that theirs is “one of the worst love stories in fantasy”. Too few scenes. Not dramatic enough.
And I realized: the very reasons some people dismiss their story may be the point Tolkien is making.
If you only watch the films, or even if you only read the main body of the novel, their relationship can feel thin. They share only a handful of scenes. Very little dialogue. No banter. None of the familiar tropes that dominate today’s fantasy, enemies to lovers, slow burn, forbidden love.
Compared to the sweeping romances many readers expect, their love seems almost… absent.
But that absence is deliberate.
The Story Tolkien Hid in the Back
Tolkien places the full account of their relationship not in the main narrative, but in the Appendices, under “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen.”
And that may have been delibarate.
J. R. R. Tolkien doesn’t want to not interrupt the central movement of the War of the Ring to focus on their romance. Instead, he lets us discover it afterward, almost like a recovered memory. When you read their full story, the shape of their love changes.
Their relationship isn’t built on shared adventures. It grows and deepens through waiting.
Arwen’s Choice
Arwen is not swept up by a sudden passion. She makes a decision with far-reaching consequences: she chooses mortality.
To understand how radical that is within Tolkien’s legendarium, remember that Elves are bound to the life of the world. Their lives stretch across ages. To step away from that is to step into uncertainty and loss.
Arwen is 2,710 years old when she meets 20-year old Aragorn in Rivendell. She knows that his life will be relatively short compared to hers. An yet, she gives up centuries of existence for a finite number of years with him.
She chooses a smaller span of time, because of who she chooses to share it with.
Aragorn’s Waiting
Aragorn’s sacrifice looks different.
He meets Arwen in his youth. He loves her then. But he refuses to claim her hand until he has become the king he is meant to be.
He waits.
Not weeks. Not months. Decades.
He gives himself first to a broken world. He walks in obscurity, he serves in hidden wars. He carries the weight of exile and the long defeat of his people.
He does not ask Arwen to bind herself to a man who has not yet fulfilled his calling.
In that waiting, Tolkien suggests something uncomfortable: love is not merely about desire. It is about readiness. About becoming who you are meant to be before you claim the life you desire.
Time as the Measure of Love
We often measure love stories by intensity or chemistry. By the number of scenes the lovers spend together.
Tolkien measures love not by how long it lasts on the page, but by how much time it asks you to give.
What are you willing to give up?
What years are you willing to surrender?
What calling are you willing to fulfill before you reach for happiness?
Arwen gives up immortality.
Aragorn postpones the life he longs to share with Arwen.
Both understand something we often forget: time is the most precious thing we possess. It is the one resource we can never reclaim.
And love, in Tolkien’s world, is proven by how we choose to spend it, even when it asks us to serve before we receive.
The Quiet Ending
Their story does not end in eternal bliss.
Aragorn dies as a mortal king. Arwen remains behind for a time, and eventually walks alone into Lórien, where she dies on the hill of Cerin Amroth.
It is one of the most restrained and devastating passages Tolkien ever wrote.
Their love did not protect them from loss. On the contrary: it is marked by it.
And yet Tolkien does not frame this as tragedy alone. He frames it as dignity. As a love freely chosen, fully lived, and completed within the boundaries of mortality.
A Different Kind of Question
Perhaps their relationship feels different than other love stories because it asks us to go for something deeper.
It’s not about how intense your feelings are, but about what you are willing to commit your life to.
That question is harder to dramatize. It unfolds across years. It requires patience. It assumes that love is not proven by fireworks but by endurance.
In our culture, that often equates love with constant emotional affirmation, Tolkien’s vision can feel almost austere. And yet, it is also deeply hopeful.
Because it suggests that love is not something that happens to you. It is something you shape with your choices. With your time. With your sacrifices.
And perhaps that is why the story of Aragorn and Arwen has such a lasting impact, even if their scenes are few.
Their love is not loud.
It is faithful.
If you’re interested in exploring this theme further, I’ve written more about love in Tolkien’s world in my new book Love and Little Folk. Subscribers to my Substack receive it for free, you can sign up here or via the form below:
That was beautifully written and explained. I really enjoyed it.
I just finished reading Jane Eyre, and it had a similar message. Mr. Rochester and Jane were not ready to come together yet. She had to let go of the idol she made of him and turn back to God, and he had to go through a conversion and find his true love for her. Once they came to that conclusion, they were finally ready to live out their vocation. I thought that was really beautiful.
Too much of fantasy is just trying to build in romance now. If the fate of the world is in the balance I think sensible people can be practical enough to do what is needed first. Throughout the book, The gentle undercurrents between them was enough to pull at the readers and I think that was just spot on!!