Thranduil
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King Thranduil was a character in the fictitious world of Middle-earth created by J. R. R. Tolkien. He was a Sindarin Elf who had travelled eastward from Lindon before the building of Barad-dur, and king of the Silvan Elves in the northern part of Greenwood the Great (Mirkwood), which lay just east of the Misty Mountains. In The Hobbit he is said to have blond hair, which is unusual for a Sinda.
In The Hobbit he is simply called the Elvenking. When Thorin Oakenshield and his party of Dwarves enter northern Mirkwood they are captured by Thranduil's elves and locked up when they refuse to divulge their intentions, before being freed by Bilbo Baggins. After the death of the dragon Smaug, who had brutalized the Grey Elves for years, Thranduil demanded a share of the treasure the Dwarves recovered from Erebor, Smaug's hideout. Thorin refused until Bilbo gave the Arkenstone (which meant more than a river of gold to Thorin) to Thranduil.
Thranduil was son of Oropher and father of Legolas Greenleaf. In The Lord of the Rings, the gradually-established friendship between Legolas and the Dwarf Gimli, the son of Glóin of Thorin's band, helps to reconcile Thranduil's people and the Dwarves.
It is debatable whether Thranduil himself or his father Oropher founded the kingdom of elves in Greenwood the Great. Thranduil did not become king until his father, Oropher, was killed in Dagorlad during the War of the Last Alliance in the Second Age. It may be presumed then that Oropher was the first king of the elves in Greenwood.
One of the dwarves imprisoned by Thranduil was Glóin, Gimli's father, and both Legolas and Gimili ended up on a quest together, where they developed an unprecedented friendship between Elf and Dwarf.
The appendices to The Return of the King note that Legolas and the Silvan Elves later worked together with Gimli and the Dwarves to rebuild and improve Minas Tirith, capital city of Gondor, the realm of their mutual friend King Elessar. The last time Thranduil is mentioned is soon after the Dark Tower's overthrow. On April 6, 3019 T.A., he met with Celeborn in Mirkwood. Since they met to determine the kingdoms of the two lords, we can assume that he would have ruled afterwards from the renamed Eryn Lasgalen.
In the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, Thranduil is voiced by Otto Preminger.
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