Does anyone share my opinion that Legolas was present during the events of The Hobbit? He is the prince of Mirkwood after all, and the dwarves and Bilbo are in Mirkwood....albeit in the dungeon, but still they were there.

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

It is possible that he could have been, but since Bilbo was never introduced to him, that he didn't get a mention.

I always thought that was kinda strange, how he was the prince of Mirkwood, but never mentioned at all, until the meeting in Fellowship of the Ring.

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♥ Married to Thranduil, 22 April 2014 ♥

♦ Lónannûniel, Queen of the Woodland Realm ♦

I know right? I didn't realize that Legolas was the prince of Mirkwood until i read the books for the second time.
(btw, I'm Legolas in my RP.)

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

Because I've only watched the films all the way through and read The Hobbit, when I read one of the LotR books (and never finished it), when I saw that Legolas was the prince, I was like "Since when?!"

I hope that he's in the film, just so it's obvious of his prince status.

I think the reason that he wasn't mentioned in The Hobbit, might have been that he was created after The Hobbit was published or something. We will never know.

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♥ Married to Thranduil, 22 April 2014 ♥

♦ Lónannûniel, Queen of the Woodland Realm ♦

Yeah, that might be it. I suggest reading the books, it takes a while but it's well worth it.

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

I've tried. I read The Hobbit, love that. Tried reading Fellowship of the Ring, got to the part where the hobbits meet Aragorn. I couldn't read any more. Haven't picked it up since.

I suppose there could be lots of reasons why Legolas wasn't mentioned. Like, if he was created during the back story of Mirkwood, that Legolas was on his travels somewhere or something.

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♥ Married to Thranduil, 22 April 2014 ♥

♦ Lónannûniel, Queen of the Woodland Realm ♦

LotR are my favorite books that i have ever read, and i read a lot....my copies have been read several times... and all of my favorite parts are highlighted. I have seen all the movies so many times i can talk along with them.....

Anyhoo, maybe he was, or then again, maybe he was in a diffrent part of the underground castle/fortress thingy that Thranduil rules from. Thranduil is the Elvenking of Mirkwood, btw. His name isn't mentioned in the Hobbit, but it is in LotR, both the books and the extended editions of the movies.

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

I'm only just beginning to read the books (I'm a few chapters into the Fellowship) but this question perplexes me. The Prince of Mirkwood bits I can get over because somehow or another I was clued into that fact? I probably read it on the wiki at some point or another. What bothers me is that I've seen from movie interviews and such that Bloom apparently has a cameo in the upcoming Hobbit movie, and I'm very confused why he would be there if his character is not mentioned at all in the book. I'm going to chalk that up to marketing and drawing in the fans of the old movies as well as Bloom's newer crop of fans from subsequent work.

As for how Legolas could be prince of the place but escape mention, I find the idea that Legolas was not yet created to be both plausible and improbable at the same time. Perhaps I have too much stock in Tolkien's 'thinking ahead' and the general scale of his mythologies, but I find it difficult to imagine that Tolkien didn't have even the slightest notion that somewhere there was a Prince of Mirkwood lurking about. Perhaps he wasn't a fully fleshed out character, or perhaps there was just no suitable way to inject Legolas or a forerunner of Legolas' character into the storyline at that time.

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I'm pretty sure that I've read in many different places that Legolas wasn't thought of until Tolkien began to write the Lord of the Rings, and that was why he wasn't mentioned. I mean, though he did love to think ahead, he didn't really plan to write a sequel until after The Hobbit was published, because his writers asked him too- and even then he wasn't sure he would do it, until he got the urge later. He had to go back and rewrite the scenes with Gollum and the Ring later on, because in the first edition of the story it was just a magical ring that turned people invisible, nothing more. And that was only just after he thought of the Ring as a device for LotR. I think rewriting Legolas into Mirkwood after he thought of him would have made it seem a little disjointed, tbh, but that doesn't mean he wasn't there because he wasn't mentioned.
So I don't really find it hard to imagine Legolas standing as a silent onlooker somewhere during their time in Mirkwood, really. I don't know if Orlando will have a silent cameo or a few lines, but I'm really glad he'll be there.

Yes early on The Hobbit was an oral tale for JRRT's children, and the Elven-king wasn't 'Thranduil' father of Legolas -- even Legolas wasn't originally named Legolas in the drafts for The Lord of the Rings -- if memory serves the messenger from Mirkwood was called Galdor at some point. While writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien ultimately borrowed the name Legolas from a very early version of The Fall of Gondolin.


If we look at the tale internally, Legolas was certainly alive during Bilbo's adventure of course, but what he was doing or where he was at the time is unknown.

hey, Galadriel's gonna be in the movie too, and she's not in the book. I really like Legolas,(mainly because I have a thing for Elves and because he's such a minor character that I can imagin all kinds of awesome things that he could have done in the past...) and I'm pretty happy he's gonna be in the movie at all. And I do kinda think he was there during the events of the Hobbit, even though he's not mentioned.

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

I second this! It doesn't make much sense that Legolas wouldn't be in his palace, at least sitting quietly next to his father.

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Yeah. He should be like fighting those giant spiders or something.

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Married the Tenth Doctor 2/26/12

I think that PJ decided to include Legolas in the Hobbit movie for several reasons. I do think that marketing is a big part of this: Legolas already has a large, established fan-base from the LotR movies, and knowing that Legolas will make an appearance in The Hobbit will likely make these fans more excited to see this movie than they would otherwise have been.

I also agree with krtr that although Tolkien probably did have rough character sketches of Legolas among his many notebooks of Middle-Earth info, but perhaps he thought this story was not a good place to introduce him. Maybe he thought that introducing a new Elven character would draw away from the story-line of the dwarves and their quest, which is, after all, the main tale of importance in The Hobbit.

But as to Nesselde's original question, I certainly think that Legolas was in Mirkwood at the time of The Hobbit, and therefore I am not up in arms at PJ for giving Orlando a role in the movie. The way I see it, PJ is not completely departing from the book, but rather adding a new dimension to our understanding (and making a profit, to boot). Purists can say what they will, but I'm going to hold off judgement until I actually see the movie (can't wait!!!).

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The History of The Hobbit (by John Rateliff) reveals no such notes however, that I recall anyway. The Hobbit began as an oral tale for Tolkien's children, and the only 'Legolas' that arguably existed in Tolkien's head at the time was a Gnome from Gondolin (The Book of Lost Tales, The Fall of Gondolin).

And I realise that no one can know what JRRT was thinking of course, but based on the textual evidence I would say that Legolas of Mirkwood son of 'Thranduil' (no longer simply the 'Elven-king') was ultimately imagined during the writing of The Lord of the Rings, with the name borrowed from The Book of Lost Tales.

I think he probably was there. But during the Hobbit, elves only come in so much, that it didn't seem like something to mention.

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