I’ve known Mariel longer than some of you have been alive.
She first walked into my brain in 2001, the winter of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
My first drawings and fanfics of her are (mercifully?) lost to time but I remember that, for about two weeks, she had black hair and green eyes. By the time the movie came out, she had red hair and grey eyes and that’s stayed the same ever since, although the style has changed from short (shoulder length) straight with bags and a half-ponytail to long (hip length) locs. (This change (2023-2024ish) was to help me distinguish between public Mariel, the Holly King, and private Mariel, who is a secret known only to a handful of people. I will not be talking about her here.)
art by me of Mariel in Middle-earth (2002, 2006)