Did he?
Someone else already said that Legolas’s involvement was created for the movies, but I will point out that Thranduil, Legolas’s father, is the Elvenking that imprisons them in the book (though he is not given the name Thranduil in “The Hobbit”), and Gimli’s relation to Gloin is also from the books.
So the meme stands to book lore if changed to, “the son of someone who…”
Legolas is the Crown Prince (probably). He is generally considered to be uninvolved in his father’s wilder moments but it’s a bit more than just being his son. Son and Heir in a setting that’s big into monarchism.
I think Tolkien would probably argue that doesn’t make him an instrument of the state, necessarily, but Tolkien also thought anarcho-monarchism wasn’t an oxymoron and refused to tell us about Aragorn’s tax policy.
Not in the books, but in the movies:
Thank you.
