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The day Erebor is reclaimed by the dwarves is the day Legolas realizes that he will never be king. The realization is not as disappointing to him as might be assumed. Elves are long-lived; in fact, his father is only the second of their line, who ascended only after his father fell in battle. Legolas is a good son, and certainly does not wish for his father’s death in battle. But he now understands that war is upon them whether they will participate in it or not, and the wood elves’ participation in Battle of the Five Armies is an aberration. His father means to pursue a policy of isolationism that will mean his death only when the Woodland Realm falls entirely to the enemy, for none will come to their aide when they came to the aid of none. Legolas does not begrudge his father this. The Wood Elves are difficult to govern and still more difficult to send to die, and his father’s life has been marred by violent loss. But it does make him any more interested in the day to day governance of the realm. He will not help kith and kin by languishing here. Legolas will never win honor as a King, but he can still make a name for himself as a great warrior. When Thranduil sends him to gather information on the Ranger in the north, he gladly goes.
The search spans a few years, over which his thoughts of Tauriel gradually diminish. The ripping ache of her betrayal and his sense of loss and loneliness is replaced by a charitable remembrance of her loyalty and sense of honor. Sometimes during the first lonely nights on the road, he thinks of her agile athleticism, and her lithe, natural beauty, but though the images stay sharp, the emotional resonance gradually fades. Other times, an image of her--sometimes standing directly before him, sometimes curled fetal over the body of the dwarf--pops unwelcome into his mind, and the total devastation on her face drains away what lingers of his anger. He thinks of that expression often, for he cannot explain the emotion behind it--that of total incapacitation by loss. Would he have felt it, had she fallen in place of the dwarf? He must admit to himself that he does not think so; instead, he should have been compelled to fight harder, for her memory and for her honor. What kind of love, he wonders, should be so destructive? Not his, it seems. Eventually, he struggles even to remember the expert flick of her wrist as she disemboweled an orc with her curved dagger, something he had seen a thousand times, and had often so admired. He forgets her forever the day he finally meets the Ranger.
Strider--as he insists upon being called while among the other rangers--is young, too young, Legolas thinks, for an equal friendship with an elf of Legolas’ years. But he is valiant, and he is honorable, and he is...charming. Legolas helps him, and in doing so certainly feels less imposed upon than when he was helping Bard of Laketown. He teaches him to track men, orcs and elves, and is only cursorily surprised when Strider becomes more skilled even than he. And when Strider, with all the arrogance and confidence of youth, yanks him close after an orc raid and touches their foreheads together, grinning, Legolas Greenleaf, formerly of the Woodland Realm, lets him.