#Morfydd Clark

[fatcatlittlebox]

“Because she knows that, when she feels, she can do a lot. And she doesn't always know whether that will be for good or bad.” — Morfydd Clark.

[martanis]

MORFYDD CLARK as GALADRIEL in The Rings of Power » 2.08 "Shadow and Flame"

[varda-starqueen]

Aw, lovely Sam knows just when to turn on the charm... Adar was his favourite character in season 1...

Except when Galadriel is around, then of course she's his favourite 💗

What a softie he is... and a smoothie (but not the drink 🫦)

[calirph]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐄 𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐀𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐃/𝐒𝐀𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐅𝐘𝐃𝐃 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐀𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐆𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐋

bind yourself to me.

[angel-e-v-a]

Perfection does not exist only in Valinor

[dandexllions]

"You're in the wind, I'm in the water"

[daughterofthesunlands]

The Head Tilt

He literally went:

@ Galadriel and it's been sending me ever since. The amount of ATTITUDE. He's such an evil little Barbie

Gif by @elena-gilbert

[valar-did-me-wrong]

Part: 81/?

[wickedrum]

I know I've done this moment before but I cannot stop!

[highly-flammable]

I love that no matter how others see Galadriel at a moment in time - a legend and hero, a raving lunatic, a dangerous loose cannon, an unnaturally naive little girl - she herself never forgets that she is THEEEEE Lady Galadriel. Whether you respect her or not, she will fucking stand her ground. She can be persuaded to change her opinion if something makes sense to her, but she knows her mind.

[ivycova]

Sauron vs Galadriel & gender cross-dressing

Some of my thoughts inspired by Mercury Natis esse, where she speaks about Tolkien works and Sauron deviant sexuality and female fatal parralel, that you can find here.

She looks at it in the context of the plot of Numenor and its fall, but I noticed some interesting parallels with RoP that I wanted to share.

Keep reading

👇🏼

As Mercury writes, Sauron is a different type of force and evil than Morgoth, being his sorser and left hand:

The devil's right hand is so often in biblical narrative a woman who exerts power through seductive means. She is Eve, Salome, Lilith, Delilah, Jezebel the hore of Babylon lot's daughters and I could go on and on and on and on and on.

...Melchor is our devil figure, Melchor is our Satan figure, Sauron isn't, Sauron is the left hand of the devil and as I said, the left hand of the devil is almost always a woman. And that is a very different position to be in than the figure of worship himself as opposed to the false prophet, who draws the faithful in, and makes them unfaithful, and now you're worshiping the devil. It's a very different power dynamic there.

It is no mistake that Tolkien often uses the word lust as a metaphor for the will to power a drive to dominate. what Tolkien has done on numenor is choose to still use this Trope of the Ishah Zarah/ Femme Fatale, but as he didn't want to apply it to women he chose to apply it to a male character.

In a sense, Mercury confirms Sauron's need to worship a third higher being (Morgoth, Galadriel), but if with Morgoth he did it so to speak naturally, then as for the other characters and victims of his manipulation, it was his tactic for achieving power, not a male but a female strategy, which was rewritten by the authors of the Victorian era of the 19th century in to a concept of Femme Fatale:

Alice Bach book “women's seduction and betrayal and biblical narrative” is a very comprehensive look at biblical narratives, in which women exemplify villainy. These biblical stories, Bach explains, draw on the androcentric Biblical logic that women through Eve thwarted the divine plan. The fall and in turn original sin are Eve's fault, and so that stain continues through her line and through the daughters of Eve. it is in these biblical narratives that women offer deceitful delicacies to men who greedily reach out for them no matter what the dangers.

What we're seeing in Sauron and Ar-Pharazôn relationship is a complex power Dynamic that is usually presented in gendered terms. Women in our patriarchal society have been for most of history in a position of disadvantage in terms of power. So the Femme Fatale is a fear of women using their disadvantaged positions to gain power and take that power away from Men. It is as Maria Alberto notes in her paper on Tolkien's use of Seduction in his legendarium. That ultimately the nature of Seduction is deceit and manipulation. The purpose of Seduction is the attempted increase of power. This is the crux of the spike of the Femme Fatale in the 19th century in their art and literature that poured gallons of this Trope Into the cauldron of story. The way that Sauron enacts his power over Ar-Pharazôn is through the means of the Femme Fatale. He manipulates Farazone into taking him to numenor in the first place where he subjugates and submits himself to Ar-Pharazôn voracious need for hyper masculine dominance. And through honeyed words and a beautiful face through the means of Seduction available to the Femme Fatale takes the position of power. But through the guise of being behind the throne not on it.

It is also interesting that the change in gender roles concerns both Sauron himself and Galadriel. For she, like Eowyn at the beginning of the story in the first and second seasons, embodies the behavior typical of male characters:

- Worrier

- Active

- Powerful

- In control

Whereas Sauron's manner of interaction with Celebrimbor in the second season is purely feminine:

- give counsel

- understand/ empathizes

- passive

To understand the transference of gendered tropes across gender boundaries it is useful to just briefly review the feminine principle in Tolkien's legendarium as Melanie Rawls put it in 1984.

Rawls identifies that Tolkien doesn't limit traditional gender roles to sex bodies. Male characters like Elrond and Faramir can act in feminine ways and female characters like Eovin can act in masculine ways.  She identifies that in Arda the prime feminine characteristic is understanding, and the prime masculine characteristic is power. Feminines give counsel and masculine's act. In the case of feminines a good feminine is merciful and compassionate, bad feminines can be anywhere from wholly passive to devouring in their selfishness. Another way to put it is that feminines influence the world around them through understanding, through words and emotional attention, whereas masculines influence the world around them through action.

What is interesting is that in the first season Sauron plays the role of a secondary, driven character compared to Galadriel, but still a courageous, lost king who possesses all the characteristics of masculinity presented in the legends:

- sacrificial

- brave

- Active

And I am sure that it was these qualities that attracted/tempted Galadriel as a female character. And that power and her ambitions went hand in hand with them, because:

In Rawls his own words the feminine principle shapes individuals the masculine principle shapes events. What Rawls misses that Saluron does both of these things, and in the second age before he loses his body his primary mode of shaping events is through shaping individuals, and making individuals do the acting in his stead, using people, notably all male characters, as pawns towards their own destruction. Sauron's influence on Ar-Pharazôn is a prime example of this, where he uses his feminine characteristics as a tool to shape Numenor's demise.

The way that the seduction mechanism works with Sauron is about giving the other person the illusion of power, so they have to want power to enact that power on him, and then he goes, well actually I had the power the entire time so it's fine.

And yet he does not show his ambitions to dominate Galadrel, at least directly allowing her to think that she is in control of the situation. Supporting her ambitions for power with his service, her power over him, using his"false femininity":

in her assessment of tolkien's use of the word lust, Emma Hawkins notes that Tolkien seems to reject the idea that Evil just happens to people. Rather than being unsuspecting innocent victims evil is made through choices and in terms of a lust man is complicit in his own ruin. Herod and Ar-Pharazôn in being subject to their lusts are seduced But ultimately make the choice to give their seducers exactly what they want.

So when Sauron reveals his identity to her at the end of season one, on top of all the other obstacles to accepting the fact that Halbrant is Sauron, one of the hardest things to deal with was accepting that gender roles themselves had changed and changed forever.

And we see this at the end of the second season in their duel. When Galadriel is finally defeated in a direct confrontation with him.

But it is not the loss itself that is so painful, but the fact that Galadriel did not know herself or did not remember herself in any other role except the role of a warrior (male), which she herself admitted in a conversation with Elrond.

Gal- Who will I be without a sword?

Elrond- My friend

(not exact quote sorry)

So yes, season 3 is in many ways for me an expectation of how they will play out this internal growth of a character who is forced to leave his usual gender role and get to know himself from a completely new side, and reveal new side of a power that go hand by hand with that.

(Which essentially fits perfectly into her arc of transformation into a powerful forest witch and mastery of magic, namely, inner feminine powers).

This opens up an interesting window into their battle in Season 2, where essentially the false femininity of Sauron battles the false masculinity of Galadriel. And ultimately, they both fail to achieve their goals in this battle. Sauron in tempting Galadriel, and Galadriel in defeating Sauron with brute force.

Whether this theme will be further developed in the third season and whether it will become key at all, I don’t know, but the fact that it is present in Tolkien’s legendarium itself and in RoP cannot be completely ruled out.

How Mercury said in here esse, Tolkien was very specific on this topic:

In the feminine principle Rawls notes that where masculine and feminine are in harmony there is good, but evil is a result of insufficiency or disharmony of one or the other. In this case the evil is found in a cacophonous disharmony of the masculine and The Feminine where they are both fighting for control rather than actually working together.

[martanis]

CHARLIE VICKERS and MORFYDD CLARK behind the scenes of The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 8 "Shadow and Flame"

[calirph]

𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐅𝐘𝐃𝐃 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐀𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐆𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐋

green dress with gold in eregion. the rings of power 1.08. requested by anonymous.

[spellofwinter]

— It was just another of your illusions. — Not all of it.

[ceeyoutea]

[bloomsbury]

that's just their foreplay don't worry!! a love language if you will