"All shall love me and despair"

Posted by TheFallen on March 21, 2003

In Reply to: "All shall love me and despair" posted by Marina on March 21, 2003

: Does anyone know where the phrase "All shall love me and despair" ORIGINALLY come from? I've seen it in many different contexts, and in recent years it's been all over the Internet because of the Lord of the Rings, but where is it from originally?

It's from the original trilogy itself.

"And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!"

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

"I pass the test," she said. "I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel."

J. R. R. Tolkien - The Fellowship Of The Ring (first published in 1954).

Although Peter Jackson's recent movies may have given the world in general a far greater exposure to good old JRR, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy has been around now for nearly 50 years, thus happily pre-dating the Internet. Galadriel's dialogue in the film was largely lifted straight from the original text, as you'll see from the above.