thuringwcthil:

it’s common knowledge that the names of the three elven rings match the fates of the three Silmarils, but think about the ring-bearers, too —

• elrond is obvious; he had the ring of air, but he didn’t have his father, who was sailing through the sky with a silmaril on his brow
• galadriel and maglor were the last of the grandchildren of finwë left in middle-earth; she bore the ring of water and longed to go back across the sea all that time, while his fate was to wander the shoreline after he flung his silmaril into the sea
• gandalf, wearing the ring of fire, fell into the deepest parts of moria battling a demon made of flame; maedhros threw himself and his silmaril into a fiery chasm

and i wonder if the wise and knowledgeable ring-bearers could’ve noticed this, and if gandalf’s death would’ve, in a way, completed the last of the parallels

and i wonder, then, if a part of him knew, or perhaps thought he knew, that at some point he would have to die.