When someone falls in love, how often have you heard the phrase "it was a magical experience," or the use of the word magic to describe the feeling? In many cases we must look into the full context of the words behind these themes. According to Webster's Dictionary, the definition of love is a strong affection for another through kinship. Magic, however, is defined as the use of means, such (as charms or spells, believed to have supernatural power over natural forces. When reading The King of Elf Land's Daughter, these definitions don't truly hold to Webster's definitions. With each theme evolving through out the entire story, it becomes evident that these two entities, love and magic, are the two greatest powers to their respective lands. The magic of Elf Land was represented mainly by the Elf King and the land itself, whereas the theme of love was much more uniquely represented throughout the land of Erl. From the Men of Erl whom had the love of fame to Alveric, the once king of Erl, and his obsession over his lost wife, Lirazel. One could already deduce there is a great difference between the two themes. Let us take a closer look into their differences, and the eventual evolution to their impending doom to become one.
Lord Dunsany used these two themes throughout the novel as a way of gauging how far the reader is into the tale. The book starts out in Erl, where the Parliament of Erl approached their king and tells him that they would like to be ruled by a magic lord, and while the king was hesitant to grant them what they wanted, it was his love for his people and the laws of his fore fathers that let the future ruler be of magic. In essence, this was the first place that we saw true love from one individual to another, and sadly, it was one of the only the first of few examples that goes to form with the definition of modern love. Yet, we as readers must also look closer towards the men of the parliament's reasons to ask for a magic lord. It was their greedy ambition of wanting their lands name known throughout the great parts of the world. They wanted people to know of Erl, and in a sense they were in love with these ideas. When the people of Erl began to see their dreams come to past, they were ecstatic, and yet their love began to change towards the love of magic and magical things.
While the parliaments love was evolving towards magic, Lord Alveric, the father of the magical lord Orion, began a quest to find love. In the beginning of the novel, Alveric was sent by his father, the king to Elf Land. Alveric was to find Lirazel, and marry her so that the parliament may have their magical lord one day. Alveric went and found Lirazel, but rather than falling in love with her, he fell in love with the differences that she brought to his life. She represented an unchanging beauty, which magic could only produce. The same could be said for Lirazel as well, with the differences of day to night and the concept of time that came with Alveric and his lands. After some time, Alveric found Lirazel's differences to be a form of sacrilege, and tried to force her to forget them. The original love of change was gone and so was their binding force, furthermore Lirazel could no longer hold to the strict standards given to her by the land of Erl. She decided that she should return home, and through her father's magical rune, she did just that. Dunsany places everything into perspective at that moment by saying, "if Alveric's love could have held her he should have trusted alone to that love". When Alveric found out that she had left, the love that he once felt for her returned, but it also changed. Now it was a strong affection for another through kinship, and he found that he truly did love her, but it was his ignorance that made her leave. Accordingly he sought after her, and this new found love, so that he may find Elf Land and his true love.
On the other side of the vale of Erl lies Elf Land, where even the trees are endowed with magic. This is not the first time the reader experiences magic in the novel. That happens when Alveric goes to the witch and asks her to make him a magical sword, where he then is warned that there are three runes that could defeat this blade. With this blade he went into Elf Land, and found Lirazel. This was also the first time that love and magic was brought together in the story. Lirazel found that she too loved the differences and found Alveric magical in a way, and that is why she ran away with him to "the lands that we know." From this point in the novel, love and magic began to merge. When the King of Elf Land found that he could not stop the intruder from taking his daughter, he immediately decided that one of the three runes that the witch warned Alveric of, should be sent to bring back his daughter. Dunsany writes; "And what ever magic there was in that rune of which I cannot tell, the rune was written with love that was stronger than magic, till those mystical characters glowed with the love that the Elf King had for his daughter, and there were blended in that mighty rune two powers, magic and love, the greatest power there is beyond the boundary of twilight with the greatest power there is in the fields that we know." With these two powers united as one, nothing could have kept Lirazel from returning to her father.
As the story's narrative progresses from beginning to end, the reader can tell that something is happening to the worlds, both Elf Land and Erl. This is confirmed when the last rune of the Elf King was used to unite and take away the differences in the two lands, taking Erl and making it apart of Elf Land. And in the end, only Lirazel and Alveric seemed to be happy. The men of Erl got what they wished for, but lost all of the uniqueness of Erl to Elf Land. Dunsany best said it in the last paragraph of the story when Dunsany writes, "And with the last of his world-disturbing runes sent forth, and his daughter happy once more, the elfin King on his tremendous thrones breathed and drew in the calm in which Elf Land basks; and all his realms dreamed on in that ageless repose, of which deep green pools in summer can barely guess; and Erl dreamed too with all the rest of Elf Land and so passed out of all remembrance of men. For the twelve that were of the parliament of Erl looked through the window of that inner room, wherein they planned their plans by the forge of Narl, and, gazing over their familiar lands, perceived that they were no longer the fields we know." Thus ends the story that compels the reader to wonder which is more powerful, that of love or magic?