Prologue
After the Great War at the end of the Second Age, the histories were written depicting the honourable deeds performed by the mighty elf Lords, the valiant efforts of the (more humble) elves against all that Sauron could possible conjure, and the sacrifice that so many elves had made. Such histories made emphasis of the fate of Isildur, of his weakness, of how he failed to bring a complete end to the wars. They also went into great detail depicting the precise way in which Gil-galad had nearly cut Sauron's finger off, but not quite, leaving Isildur to cut the ring off. This demonstrated beautifully how it was that the elves sacrificed themselves for the good of mankind.
Needless to say, such histories were written by the elves for everyone else to read. As humans are gifted with a somewhat frail and in a word "bad" memory, it was left to the elves (who, after all have perfect recollection of precisely which piece of fruit it was that they ate for breakfast nine centuries previously and its location in the fruit bowl as well as the reason they chose that one instead of the one to the left) to remind them of who it was who actually won the battles, who against all the odds triumphed over evil and whom it was that actually was able to cross the sea to the undying lands. And as elves regard themselves as natural songwriters and storytellers they embellished them, leaving out the boring bits (which no one would have read anyway) and improving the more interesting sections on how swords shattered and fingers fell off.
And so it was that history was distorted. History became legend, legend did indeed pass into myth and for two and a half thousand years the histories of Middle Earth stayed elvish. Men being too wrapped up in building an impossibly white city, dwarves being too busy digging holes and ents working too hard in the search of the entwives, it was left to the 'fairer race' to school everyone else in the 'real' happenings of the battles of the Last Alliance.
Until however, when chance came, deeds that had occurred and had been forgotten were uncovered. Mislaid relations were found, and above all else, the truth about the fairer race was uncovered. All of this was due to the brave adventures and sometimes perilous quests of someone who, had history been kinder (or indeed, had history been written solely by the elves) would have been overlooked completely.
It was due to this historian that the truth of a certain Elf Lord (one of the last Noldorian Princes East of the Sea no less) finally came out. According to the legend, Elrond the half elven had four children. Three sons (Elladan, Elrohir and Aragorn, though Aragorn was adopted) and one daughter. Celebrian, wife of Elrond knew only three of them, as Aragorn had been born after she had departed across the sea. Many said she had left due to the torment she had suffered at the hands of the orcs. However, this was not actually the case. Celebrian had actually left for a much more pressing reason; she had discovered Elrond's secret passion for a certain lady.
The lady in question was so terrified of Celebrian's balrog-like response to her 'relationship' with her husband, she had promptly vanished completely from existence, (although there were rumours that Celeborn had been spotted in the vacinity). In doing this she had solved a lot of problems, but also left one. There was a slight difficulty in that she had inconveniently left behind a two-week-old daughter. Elrond promptly insisted that he had nothing to do with her, after all, his hair was black, and her's was a very dark brown, she had sea grey eyes, where as his were simply grey. When he told his wife this, she had rather rudely in Elrond's opinion told him that the day pigs flew would be the day she believed him. Elrond had been slightly confused by this remark. He had been certain that he had in fact seen a flying pig in the great hall in Imladris one evening. It had been drinking the wine from his own dear wife's glass, whilst being on the ceiling at the same time. Quite how the pig had achieved this, the elf lord could not quite fathom. However, being the dutiful Lord of Imladris that he was, he sent the baby (who for the sake of argument he had named Idril) to live in Lorien with his dear mother in law, telling her that his wife had found another elf, had then run off to the grey havens with him, leaving behind an illegitimate daughter and a distressed and abandoned husband. Being the wise and sensible Queen that she was, Galadriel had not believed a word of it.
Meanwhile, Celebrian had galloped off to the grey havens to tell Cirdan to get a ship ready for her to leave by, had galloped back, shouted at her husband again as she told him to behave and look after the children, said goodbye to her children (all of which hadn't got a clue as to the cause of this manic behaviour) said a few other hasty farewells, and then galloped off to the grey havens singing a nauseous lament about a pair of star crossed elven lovers who died after they broke one anothers' hearts whilst singing mournful love songs.
Once his wife had left, Elrond was forced to tell the residents of Imladris a genuinely conceivable reason as to why their lady had left. On one of her many visits to see her dear parents she had been captured by orcs, and due to the grievous injuries that even he, the most learned and experienced healer of middle earth could not heal, had been forced to depart, lest she die of her wounds. Amidst the wailing, weeping, gnashing of teeth and general merriment, Glorfindel turned to the elf on his left and commented on how well the lady had looked when he had seen her set off for the grey havens a second time, so maybe their lord was not being terribly truthful. However, like all the elves around him, he had forgotten this by mid evening, as the departure of their lady seemed a good excuse for getting totally drunk. Because of this (as Elrond had cunningly planned) no one remembered how their Lord and Lady had failed to partake of lovingly passionate and emotional farewells, something elves of any species will always participate in.