potentialities

Pretty sure I read somewhere that Tolkien did intend at first for Aragorn to get together with Éowyn. Then he came up with the idea of Aragorn and Arwen as a parallel of Beren and Lúthien, the other big elf-human marriage in Middle Earth history where the elf gives up her immortality, which Tolkien also considered parallel to his marriage to his childhood crush whom he'd been forbidden to marry. (Incidentally, all the descriptions I've ever read of their marriage sound totally creepy to me. She wasn't interested in anything he did, or vice versa. They had totally separate friends who did not mix. Gives me the shivers, it does.)

And then he thought Arwen's entire backstory was getting out of hand and he dumped it unceremoniously in the appendices, which just goes to show why Tolkien did not have much of a future in writing romance novels. Yeah, we readers sure don't want to know about this Aragorn guy's love life at all. No sir, can't imagine that that would interest anyone ... ;) At least Éowyn and Faramir get their sweet moments together.

Aaaaand I'm a dork. :D