NPC:Sackville-Baggins Family
From LOTRO Lorebook
Otho Sackville-Baggins is the first cousin of the famous burglar Bilbo Baggins. He and his wife Lobelia were never on good terms with Bilbo, always bitter that Bag End, the beautiful hole of the Baggins family upon the Hill in Hobbiton, had not come to them. When Bilbo was presumed dead after leaving on the Quest of Erebor with Thorin Oakenshield and Company, Otho and Lobelia moved into Bag End and started auctioning off Bilbo’s belongings; unfortunately for them, Bilbo returned just in time to stop them.
Bilbo foiled the Sackville-Bagginses once again when he adopted Frodo, his young cousin who had been living with his Brandybuck relatives at Brandy Hall. It appeared that the Sackville-Bagginses would never again see the inside of Bag End, for the hole would go to Frodo when Bilbo left. Their luck changed, however, when Frodo made the strange decision to move away from Hobbiton to Crickhollow in Buckland, there to live with his friends Merry Brandybuck, Pippin Took, and Fatty Bolger. Otho had died by that time, but Lobelia and their son, Lotho, took ownership of Bag End.
The Sackville-Bagginses appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which they play a pivotal role behind the scenes...a role which can be seen in The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ by players who know what to look for....
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins (née Bracegirdle)
Quick Facts
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| Dates: | III 2918 - spring III 3020 (1318 - 1420 by the Shire-reckoning, lived 102 years) | ||||||||||||||
| Race: | Hobbits | ||||||||||||||
| Culture: | Shire-hobbits | ||||||||||||||
| Family: | Born a Bracegirdle; married into the Sackville-Baggins family | ||||||||||||||
| Settlements: | Originally from Hardbottle in the Northfarthing, but lived in Hobbiton for much of her life | ||||||||||||||
| Meaning: | A lobelia is type of flower1 | ||||||||||||||
The widow of Otho Sackville-Baggins
Lobelia was born in the year III 2918 (or 1318 by the Shire-reckoning), making her some twenty-eight years younger than Bilbo Baggins. She married Otho Sackville-Baggins, a cousin of Bilbo's and his natural heir, and she seems to have shared her husband's keen desire to inherit Bag End. She seems never to have been without an umbrella, for which she found various uncoventional uses (she used it as a hiding place for valuables, and in one extreme case as a weapon).
In III 2941, it seemed that Otho's inheritance was at hand when Bilbo disappeared from the Shire. The following year, he was presumed legally dead, and Lobelia and Otho were preparing to move into Bag End when Bilbo reappeared as suddenly as he had vanished. So Lobelia's plans were thwarted for a time, and she was forced to settle for a looted collection of Bilbo's silver spoons.
As time went on, the hopes of Lobelia and Otho seemed destined to be dashed. Bilbo showed little sign of aging (due to the Magic Ring that he had acquired during his adventures, though of course Lobelia knew nothing of that). In III 2989, Bilbo adopted his cousin Frodo as his legal heir, thus putting an end any hope that Lobelia and Otho would inherit Bag End.
At the famous Birthday Party of III 3001, Lobelia was present to see Bilbo disappear once again. Bag End passed on to Frodo, who lived there for the next seventeen years. At last, in the year III 3018, Frodo announced that he was leaving Hobbiton and moving to Crickhollow in Buckland. By this time Otho was dead, but Lobelia was finally able to buy Bag End at the age of exactly one hundred.
Despite waiting for decades to acquire Bag End, Lobelia did not live there for long. Her son Lotho had built up sufficient wealth and influence to make a bid for control of the Shire, and setting himself up as Chief Shirriff he deposed the Mayor of Michel Delving and took over the running of the affairs of the Shire from Bag End. Soon Lotho's power was itself usurped by a stranger from the south known as Sharkey, and it was later discovered that Lotho himself was murdered by Sharkey's henchman Gríma. After Lobelia tried to stop Sharkey's Men from building at her home, she was bundled off to Michel Delving and imprisoned there.
After the Shire was roused against Sharkey by the returning Travellers, Lobelia was rescued from the Lockholes, still holding on to her umbrella. Dispirited by the death of her son, she had no desire to live any longer in Bag End. Returning it to Frodo, she removed to Hardbottle in the Northfarthing, the home of her family the Bracegirdles. She died there the following year.
Footnotes
| 1 | Lobelia's actual name among the Hobbits is recorded as Hamanullas, which was taken from the name of an unidentified small blue flower. Tolkien's anglicisation is based on the similarity of the lobelia to this description, though he may also have been influenced by Victorian flower symbolism, which equated the lobelia with malice and spite. |
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Otho Sackville-Baggins
The frustrated heir of Bilbo Baggins
The son of Longo Baggins and Camellia Sackville. Otho's father Longo was Bilbo Baggins' uncle, making Otho himself Bilbo's cousin and heir. He and his wife Lobelia eagerly anticipated their inheritance: Bilbo's home at Bag End. Otho would never inherit that smial, though, because Bilbo changed his will to make Frodo Baggins his heir. Eventually, Frodo sold Bag End to Lobelia, but Otho had died six years earlier, and never owned the home he had coveted throughout his life.
Sackville-Baggins Family
The descendants of Longo Baggins and Camellia Sackville
A short-lived family of the Shire-hobbits, formed by the marriage of Longo Baggins to Camellia Sackville. It came to an end with the death of Longo's grandson Lotho in the War of the Ring.
