No question animates the mind of a young speculative fiction fan more than “Who would win?” It’s a question that provokes our firmest cultural loyalties and the lizard part of our brain that enjoys nothing more than smashing action figures together. It’s a question that’s lead to untold hours of heated discussion, ruined hundreds of friendships, and earned billions of dollars at the box office with movies like Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman. It’s hardly a new phenomenon either: King Kong and Godzilla first faced off in 1962, and it’s easy to imagine that the earliest versions of The Iliad arose from heated debates over campfires about who’d win in a fight, Achilles or Hector.

One cultural phenomenon that’s largely escaped “Who Would”-ism is the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien. Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy gave us a few battles we didn’t know we wanted, and still don’t (Legolas vs. Bolg; Thranduil vs. The Scenery). Sure, there have been a few articles imagining Aragorn facing off against Jaime Lannister and the like, but they’re relatively rare compared to the heated “Captain America vs. Batman” or “Ninjas vs. Pirates” discussions that pop up regularly over pizza and pipe-weed.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Middle-earth has a certain literary cachet other pop cultural universes lack. Tolkien was a professor at Oxford, of course, and The Lord of the Rings is a foundational text of High Fantasy, and retains a lofty air. Second, the central characters of Tolkien’s most widely read books are the diminutive and good-natured hobbits, who are hard to press into the service of battling other heroes. There’s not much fun to be had in imagining Frodo Baggins locked in a fight to the death with a pre-Hogwarts Harry Potter (Frodo would win … and feel absolutely terrible about it).

Still, Middle-earth is rife with interesting match-ups and none more so than a battle between the last surviving Dark Powers of Fire in the Third Age: What if Smaug had sought the treasures of Moria rather than Erebor, and so woke Durin’s Bane? Who would win?

TO THE MYTHOPOEIC THUNDERDOME!

First, let’s introduce our contenders:

Balrogs and dragons both originated in the First Age as servants of Morgoth, the first and greatest Dark Lord. Of the Maiar spirits Morgoth seduced to his service, “Dreadful … were the Valaraukar, the scourges of fire that in Middle-earth were called the Balrogs, demons of terror.”

As Legolas later says of the Balrog in Moria, Balrogs are “of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.” And indeed, in The Silmarillion, the Balrogs rank above all Morgoth’s servants, aside from Sauron himself. Their primary narrative purpose in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings is to provide an appropriately noble and titanic death for the greatest heroes: Feanor, Fingon, Ecthelion, Glorfindel, and Gandalf the Grey all meet their ends in combat with these evils of the ancient world (one can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Glorfindel accompanied the Fellowship of the Ring as Elrond originally intended: would he have taken Gandalf’s place in fighting the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dum and shouted “Not this shit again!” instead of “Fly, you fools!” as he tumbled into the abyss?)

The origins of dragons are murkier. Tolkien never tells us how they came to be, though in The Children of Húrin, the first dragon Glaurung, “spoke by the evil spirit that was in him.” It’s likely, then, that the first dragons were Maia spirits animating mortal bodies—like Wizards, but with scales and fire (think how much more effective Radagast would have been as an enormous, flaming horror reptile).

As in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Tolkien’s dragons serve as weapons of mass destruction—and, in fact, in the earliest versions of Tolkien’s legendarium, the “dragons” that destroy the Elven city of Gondolin are war machines, not actual creatures. Tolkien eventually changed them to match the more familiar image of the dragon of Western folklore, though the dragons of Middle-earth are also highly intelligent, sardonic, and enjoy fucking with people. Glaurung sows destruction in The Silmarillion with both his fiery breath and his skill at mind-control and manipulation. He hypnotizes Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor into committing incest and then suicide, which is a dick move even for a lizard from hell.

Now, how do they stack up?

The texts don’t provide much evidence for our battle. Dragons and Balrogs never face off in Middle-earth, though they are present together at a few battles during the First Age. When Glaurung first comes forth in the Battle of Sudden Flame, “in his train were Balrogs.” This suggests the Balrogs were subservient to Glaurung, or at least acting as his support.

More tellingly, in the War of Wrath that brings an end to Morgoth’s reign and the First Age, “the Balrogs were destroyed, save some few that fled and hid themselves in caverns inaccessible at the roots of the earth.” The release of the winged dragons—Smaug’s ancestors—however, was “so sudden and ruinous…that the host of the Valar were driven back.” Tolkien doesn’t provide the number of dragons or Balrogs here, so we can’t know how much the sheer quantity of Balrogs and dragons played a part. Still, the dragons proved more effective in battle.

Then there’s Gandalf the Grey, who managed to kill a Balrog single-handed, but decided to manipulate some Dwarves and one very reluctant hobbit into dealing with Smaug. Granted, Gandalf didn’t set out to face a Balrog, and he died in the process (…he got better), but it’s telling that he didn’t even try to take down Smaug by himself. Of course, the Gandalf the Grey in The Hobbit is, in many ways, a different character from the Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings—as different, really, as he is from Gandalf the White. In The Hobbit, he’s a different, less powerful incarnation of the same being.

So we’re left to our overexcited imaginations to imagine how this fight would play out. And thank Eru for that—it’s far more fun:

So, the first thing any self-respecting wyrm is going to do is unleash his fiery breath—but this wouldn’t phase a scourge of fire like a Balrog.

Balrogs have a few weapons available to them: flaming swords, whips of many thongs, and magic. A flaming sword probably isn’t much good against a dragon, and spells don’t seem to work well on them either: the Elves of Nargothrond surely had magic to spare, but that didn’t stop Glaurung from turning their fortress-home into his own personal Scrooge McDuck-style money vault.

That leaves the Balrog with his whip of many thongs, which he could use to hogtie Smaug. Except that Smaug’s “teeth are swords, my claws spears”, and could cut through the thongs. Even if the Balrog’s whips are impervious to dragon teeth and claws, Smaug can quickly flap his wings and fly out of range.

Now, I know what you’re going to say: but Balrogs have wings! Sure, they have wings. But so do ostriches, and you don’t see them flocking high in the skies over Africa. Even if Balrogs can fly—and nothing Tolkien ever wrote indicates that they can—then they clearly suck at it. Of the few Balrogs we know about, two fell into chasms—Durin’s Bane and the one defeated by Glorfindel. That is not a promising record for winged demons of terror.

So Smaug can keep a healthy distance from his demonic opponent, but that doesn’t help him win. More importantly, flight leaves Smaug vulnerable. It exposes the small bare patch on his underbelly—his only weakness. Balrogs are great warriors, and even if they fly about as well as dead penguins, they can probably hurl a flaming sword with pinpoint accuracy.

Smaug stays on the ground. The dragon’s flames and the Balrog’s weapons are useless. We’re down to grappling, with the great wyrm and the demon of terror locked in a desperate, deathly, fiery embrace.

But wait! Smaug has one last weapon: his eyes. We don’t know if Smaug could freeze people and mind-control them as well as his forebear Glaurung, but just glimpsing Smaug’s eye made Bilbo want “to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.”

Theoretically, then, up close or at a distance, Smaug’s eyes can put Durin’s Bane under the dragon-spell. But then, would the dragon-spell work against a demon of terror?

Dragons and Balrogs are both, in origin, Maia spirits. Smaug isn’t Maiar, but his power is equivalent. And we know the power of one Maia can affect other Maiar. After all, Sauron’s Ring is a terrible temptation to both Gandalf and Saruman. And in the Chamber of Mazarbul, Gandalf and Durin’s Bane exchange spells and counterspells that the wizard says, “nearly broke me.”

So, one glimpse into Smaug’s eyes and the Balrog falls under the spell. Even if it’s just for a second—a moment of hesitation or distraction, it’d be enough. Smaug would snatch up Durin’s Bane and gobble him up with his sword-sharp teeth (and we know swords can kill Balrogs).

There you have it. Who would win in a battle between Smaug and Durin’s Bane? The winner is the wyrm. And we can imagine Smaug curled up comfortably on a bed of mithril deep in Khazad-dûm, triumphant, stronger than ever. And probably a little gassy.

Austin Gilkeson formerly served as The Toast‘s Tolkien Correspondent, and his writing has also appeared at Catapult and Cast of Wonders. He lives outside Chicago with his wife and son.

I think it’s fair to assert that the trope of the damsel in distress has been falling away in contemporary fantasy for some time, but I’d like to shine a light on one who helped break that literary mold even in the 1970s: Lúthien Tinúviel. This famous Elfmaiden, who stars in the iconic love story of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, didn’t need to be rescued like a video game princess. She broke out of bondage, rescued her own questing boyfriend, and personally took on the big boss at the end of all levels. It’s like… imagine if in the original game, you play as Zelda, and you get to bust her out of Ganon’s prison, find all the Triforce pieces with Link, then fight your way through Death Mountain together.

Let’s be clear. There are innumerable wonderful heroines in the genre, and the list grows every day. I am merely positing that Lúthien, conceptually, is one of the best. This badass heroine rises up from the fairy tale beauty and Eldar privilege of her birthright to get her hands dirty and solve problems like a big girl. She and her mortal betrothed, Beren, are equals even when others around them—immortal and ostensibly wise beings—choose not to see it. They are a two-person army of determination and doom. (To be fair, they do have the help of a magical dog/fifth wheel in their adventures—more on him later.) They are true to one another in the face of every opposition: Lúthien’s own dad, various grudge-bearing Elves, a legion of vile monsters, and a constant barrage of dire prophecies.

You surely know of Éowyn, a real stand-out gal in a big book featuring a hell of a lot of fellas. She’s a woman who does what, truly, no man can: kick the Witch-King’s ass—not just because of a loophole in prophecy but because she has the guts to challenge him. And of course you know of Galadriel, who is both wise and powerful, but in the final days of the Third Age she is more soothsaying and advisory than enemy slaying. And you probably know of Arwen, who is more of a behind-the-scenes mover and the chief source of moral support for Aragorn. We can scoff at Arwen’s assumed demureness—and Tolkien’s decision to keep her largely out of sight—but Strider wouldn’t have become King Elessar without her. Yet these three ladies are why Lúthien is—to me—of vital importance in the bigger picture, as she is the forerunner of all women who get shit done in Middle-earth. These three, and many more, are the echoes of her badassery.

Would some of us rather J.R.R. have added plenty more female characters of varying complexity and power to his stories? Of course we would. The truth is, there are more influential women than you’d think to be found in the pages of 1977’s The Silmarillion. It’s just that Lúthien serves up something special, with a side order of blood, poison, and enchantment.

“Lúthien” by Anke Eissmann

If you haven’t actually checked out Chapter 19 of The Silmarillion, “Of Beren and Lúthien,” I hope to convince you to do so. Reading the preceding chapters would provide helpful context on the state of Middle-earth at the time (in the First Age), but it’s still something of a standalone tale. I find myself rereading it more than any other just for a fix. The adventure and wonderment of The Lord of the Rings is phenomenal, but it’s understated and drawn-out compared to how much punch Tolkien packs into this one particular story. Elves, Men, and romance aside, it’s also chock full of mighty spells, magic weapons, werewolves, vampires, magic dogs, sing-offs, dying words, and the infamous Morgoth himself (aka Sauron’s original master).

One thing to appreciate about this tale is the fact that both its hero and its heroine share equal billing. Neither is the main character and neither upstages the other; they tag-team their way to Morgoth’s own throne room in the depths of what amounts to Hell in this world. To be fair, it does take some time to get to the point of gender symmetry, but that’s part of the journey. Despite the folkloric narrative style of The Silmarillion, there is some measure of chauvinism to be found among its characters. Even the Elves, the first Children of Ilúvatar (God in all but name), do not name women often among their heroes. Yet there are, at least, as many Ladies of the Valar (archangels) as there are Lords, and in Middle-earth’s power couples, it’s usually the female who is the greater: witness Galadriel to Celeborn or, in this story, Melian to Thingol.

Although Beren loves Lúthien above all things and is an honorable Man, even he overlooks her potential at first and tries to shelter her from harm… until she refuses to back down. Three times it takes to cut through his pride and intense desire to protect her. Then he relents as any man should when he sees he is not always the wiser nor the stronger.

A new edition of Beren and Lúthien, with illustrations by Alan Lee

But let’s back up. Just who is this lady and why is her story so worth knowing? Tolkien, who popularized many of the fantasy elements we now call tropes today, turned the fairy tale princess conceit on its head with Lúthien, even as he showcased his love and reinvention of pre-existing folktales and mythologies. I want her, and him, to get more credit for this.

Most readers first encounter the tale of Beren and Lúthien in its shortest form as told by Aragorn in Chapter 11 of The Fellowship of the Ring, “A Knife in the Dark” when he and the hobbits are gathered around a fire at Weathertop. They’d been asking him about elder times since he seemed to know a lot about the past. Samwise specifically expressed an interest in hearing more about Elves—who, it’s worth noting, are in their time of fading from Middle-earth during the War of the Ring.

‘I will tell you the tale of Tinúviel,’ said Strider, ‘in brief—for it is a long tale of which the end is not known; and there are none now, except Elrond, that remember it aright as it was told of old. It is a fair tale, though it is sad, as are all the tales of Middle-earth, and yet it may lift up your hearts.’

And Aragorn does mean “in brief,” as we get from him only the nutshell version of Lúthien’s tale, first a bit in song then in prose in one big paragraph. In real world chronology, Tolkien wrote the tale in epic form in the 1920s as a poem (which can be found in its unfinished form in The Lays of Beleriand) and he did so before even working on The Lord of the Rings. Still, Aragorn’s fireside yarn is enough for the hobbits, and more importantly, it sets the stage for his and Arwen’s own parallel, behind-the-scenes-until-the-end story. But truly, the tale of Aragorn and Arwen—while long-suffering and exceedingly hard-won—isn’t quite as fast and fierce as that of their First Age forebears. Which is to say Aragorn’s story actually has far fewer monsters, spells, hunts, dungeons, and magic dogs in it.

Oh, did I not mention the supernatural canines? This tale has a bunch!

Lúthien’s story is also fairly unique in that the heroes are not merely reactive to the villains. In a lot of classics, from “Beowulf” to The Odyssey to Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings itself, the good guys are spurred into motion because if they don’t, bad things will happen. Grendel and his mom come busting in, forcing Beowulf to retaliate. Odysseus is just trying to get home while meddling gods make his life complicated. Stormtroopers shoot up Luke’s moisture farm so a wise old hermit comes out of hiding and prompts him to unwittingly oppose his dad who was helping his boss blow up planets (that about the short of it?). And in Rings, Sauron begins to rise again while searching for his lost jewelry with new intel, threatening everyone, and this forces Gandalf to stir up heroes to oppose him.

But in Lúthien’s story, the great enemy Morgoth is just sitting there on his dark throne thinking his dark thoughts—for all intents and purposes, and as much as he possibly he can—minding his own business. And it’s the good guys who show up and in get all up in his face. Sure, Morgoth’s the author of all evil on Middle-earth and as a rule he constantly antagonizes the Elves of the First Age just to spite Ilúvatar. During the time of Beren’s quest, he wasn’t doing anything personally to either of them beyond his usual policy of having his minions kill their kinsmen whenever possible. But to be fair, he’s always doing that. Par for the course.

The story goes a little something like this and believe me when I say this is very abridged.

So this Man named Beren, who is already high on Morgoth’s shit list for various vengeance-fueled exploits, has been battling his way through lands thick with monsters. Things get so perilous for him that he is forced to flee into the Mountains of Terror, which are called Ered Gorgoroth. Seriously, how bad do things have to be when you have to retreat to a place after which a Norwegian black metal band names itself? Pretty bad. But although “[s]heer were the precipices” of these mountains, and “horror and madness” walked in the wilderness before him, Beren manages to come stumbling down, weary and dazed, into a beautiful forestland. And there, one night in his fevered state, he sees Lúthien dancing in a moonlit glade. He falls hard for her, and soon after, she for him. He names her Tinúviel, which means Nightingale or Daughter of Twilight.

“Daeron spies on Beren and Lúthien” by Anke Eissmann

See, from his wanderings he had strayed unknowingly into Doriath, the Hidden Kingdom, one of the many secret Elf-lands in the The Silmarillion. Despite the wrathful protest of Lúthien’s father, Thingol, who was king of this realm, the couple are determined to make their biracial, unprecedented relationship work: she is an immortal Elf and he is a mortal Man and the two races cannot share the same ultimate fate. What this means—and it’s a very big deal in Tolkien’s work—is that the afterlives of Elves and Men are not the same. Elves, when they perish, are reincarnated in Valinor, a physical realm in the world far to the west, and sometimes they can even return to Middle-earth. But Men, when they perish, go elsewhere beyond the world altogether, for they are more like guests in Middle-earth and not bound to it as are the Elves. Elves live and relive, while mortals die.

King Thingol knows this and doesn’t want to see his daughter slumming it with some ill-fated, short-lived Man. He speaks harshly and demands to know just who Beren thinks he is daring to woo his daughter. But when Beren is at first daunted, it’s Lúthien who speaks up. Tolkien’s women are not silent for long.

‘He is Beren son of Barahir, lord of Men, mighty foe of Morgoth, the tale of whose deeds is become a song even among the Elves.’

She’s not a fangirl, just a young woman in love and proud of her choice to be with him. And this gives Beren himself courage enough to speak up and defend his own lineage. But it’s still not enough for Thingol, because it never is for Elven lords, is it? He gives Beren an impossible task, one that he figures will totally get rid of the guy. And that’s because it’s a deed that countless Elves and whole armies failed to do many times in the past: reclaim the Silmarils from Morgoth, or even just one.

And just what are the Silmarils? They’re the three highly-coveted über gems that fuel many of the conflicts of The Silmarillion. Think epic MacGuffins. They were crafted by the legendary Fëanor, a prince of Elves who was basically the most skilled artisan of all time. Unbreakable, unspeakably lovely gems, they were made to preserve the last vestiges of the light of the Trees of Valinor. These trees of legend don’t otherwise factor into this story but suffice it to say that they were two colossal pillars of light and glory, likened to the sun and the moon, that shone upon the world in ancient times. The trees’ destruction and the subsequent darkening of Middle-earth were contrived by Morgoth, who—not so coincidentally—was also the one who later stole the gems and has held them ever since. Yes, most of Tolkien’s stories are about people fighting over jewelry.

Now, the light of the Silmarils, the last remnants of the light of the Trees of Valinor, could burn even Morgoth’s evil flesh. He’d affixed the gems into a crown and wore it on his head in agony just to snub his hated foes. Which you have to agree was very metal of him.

Back to Beren. If he wanted to get hitched to Lúthien, he would have to retrieve one of these gems straight from Morgoth’s headgear. King Thingol feels clever and smug for demanding the impossible, but Thingol’s wife is not so amused. For one, the mother of Lúthien isn’t actually an Elf at all—which, now that I think about it, makes me think maybe Thingol should have shut up about interracial marriages—nor was she of the race of Men. Nope, Melian was a Maia, a spiritual being on par with the balrogs, the Istari wizards, and Sauron himself. In fact, it was her powers of protection that secured her husband’s kingdom with—and I’m paraphrasing here—an Invisible Fence of Keeping Out Pretty Much All Evil +5. She was the reason everyone was safe and privileged enough to even be talking about such lofty marriage vows.

“Beren’s trial” by Anke Eissmann

Since this article is about Lúthien—no, really, it is—let me just pause again and point out that her mom isn’t just some angelic trophy wife. Where Thingol is all pride and wrath (and I assume furious Hugo Weaving eyebrows), Melian brings clear-headed counsel to his kingdom and a wisdom that makes even her high-blooded husband seem childish. And so she knows a thing or two about prophecies. She calls it like she sees it:

‘O King, you have devised cunning counsel. But if my eyes have not lost their sight, it is ill for you, whether Beren fail in his errand, or achieve it. For you have doomed either your daughter, or yourself. And now is Doriath drawn within the fate of a mightier realm.’

Calling for a quest to swipe a Silmaril is no joke. It brings the Oath of Fëanor to the table, and that’s usually bad news. The Oath in question was one Fëanor and his seven sons made back when Morgoth stole the Silmarils, and it essentially invokes death and destruction upon any who dared to keep the Silmarils from his kin. That meant even if Beren succeeded in his quest, holding a Silmaril—nay, even just seeking one—will incur the wrath of Fëanor & Sons. The Oath is a curse, and Thingol is drawing everyone involved into it simply by naming the Silmarils as the price for Lúthien’s hand. Not a smart move, but one made in passion.

Beren, being brave, mighty, and foolish—and above all, in love—just laughs off the king’s ultimatum and says:

‘For little price do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft. But if this be your will, Thingol, I will perform it. And when we meet again my hand shall hold a Silmaril from the Iron Crown; for you have not looked the last upon Beren son of Barahir.’

And off he goes, alone on his impossible quest. And in a normal fairy tale, this is as you would expect. Boy meets girl. Girl’s father dislikes boy and gives boy a suicide mission. Girl stays behind. Because that’s what princesses do—right? Stay with me.

“The archers of Nargothrond” by Anke Eissmann

Beren thus leaves and strolls into another nearby hidden Elf-kingdom (Middle-earth is lousy with them), and while he almost becomes target practice for its border guards (kidding, Elves would never miss), they recognize the ring he wears. Why, it’s the Ring of Barahir, the one that Aragorn will wear someday! See, it was once given as a token of friendship to Barahir, Beren’s dad, by an Elf king named Finrod Felagund. And that’s to whom these border guards now escort Beren.

Finrod Felagund is basically the most likeable Elf ever. He’s Galadriel’s brother, for one! He’s the sort of leader who gets his Elf-boots dirty and goes adventuring. Oh, and—fun fact—he’s also the Elf who made first contact with the race of Men when they first arrived on the scene in Middle-earth; he’d spoken well of them to his kin so that these hairy, short-lived Men were not immediately driven away from Elven lands. He also knew Beren’s dad, Barahir, personally—indeed, he’s friends with the whole bloodline—and now, hearing of Beren’s quest, Finrod actually sets aside his crown to join his young friend on his foolish quest.

Seriously, Finrod’s the nicest guy ever. If this was modern Earth, I bet he’d even give up a weekend to help his buddy move, and probably offer to use his own van, too. Just saying he’s that kind of guy.

Finrod brings along his most loyal warriors and together they all set out to take on Morgoth together. But after some crazy adventures—including Finrod disguising them all as Orcs to get through enemy lands—they meet the first boss monster: Morgoth’s right-hand man, the dreaded Maia and future ring-maker, Sauron! Beren’s party is unmasked, defeated, and after a deadly sing-off between Finrod and Sauron (think Epic Rap Battle of History: Silmarillion Edition), evil is the victor and so they’re thrown into the dungeons of the island fortress of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. AKA, the Island of Werewolves. Werewolves, which are totally a thing in Tolkien’s world, even eat some of Finrod’s Elves just to terrify the rest.

Now back to Lúthien! She’s had enough waiting around. She feels in her heart that something is wrong, and when she consults with her literally angelic mother, discovers that Beren is now languishing in Sauron’s dungeons in Tol-in-Gaurhoth. But before she can set out to rescue him, her father learns that his daughter is planning on chasing after her scumbag boyfriend. And he gets stupid about it. Thingol, for all his faults, does love his daughter and rightly fears she would place herself in great peril going after Beren. But his solution is a little sketchy for a mighty Elf king.

He has Lúthien confined in a special house high in the lofty branches of a massive beech tree. It’s opulent and befitting a princess of her stature, but yup, Thingol essentially locks his daughter up in a tower on house arrest. This is, frankly, lousy fathering, and I do wonder at this point why Melian puts up with this—but then, aside from her protective border fencing, the queen seems content to remain advisory. Or perhaps, being prescient, she knows that her daughter solves her own problems…

Enter now the Lúthien Who Gets Things Done. Thingol grounding her is the final straw, and she’s no daddy’s girl. Lúthien enacts her own talents by putting “forth her arts of enchantment,” causing her hair to grow to an exceptional, Rapunzelish length. Here Tolkien’s homage to fairy tales is evident but also twisty, as Lúthien weaves from her dark hair a shadowy, sleep-inducing cloak and a super-long rope, down which she climbs from the great tree herself (no dude climbs to her) and leaves her guards asleep.

On the way to rescue Beren, she crosses paths with the Elf brothers Celegorm and Curufin, who’d been hanging out in Finrod’s nearby kingdom. Now they are are out hunting Sauron’s wolves with Celegorm’s super amazing awesome wolfhound, Huan. These Elves are two of the sons of Fëanor—who you may remember from such oaths as the aforementioned Oath of Fëanor. They’re also arguably the douchiest Elves in The Silmarillion, but Lúthien doesn’t know this yet. Seeing how good-looking she is, and how trusting, Celegorm suddenly desires her for himself. After the two lead her in feigned friendship back to their adopted kingdom—Finrod himself still a prisoner of Sauron’s at this time—they hold her captive. Celegorm even has plans to force her into marrying him so he can up his status among all Elves. But Huan, the horse-sized magical hound of Valinor, who had been given to Celegorm by the Valar long before—and presumably before Celegorm grew into such an asshole—intervenes on Lúthien’s behalf.

Now understand this: Huan is the best dog ever. Despite being normally loyal to his master, he is no dumb beast. Huan is true of heart and highly intelligent. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Lassie? Morons… compared to the awesomeness of Huan. Coming to love Lúthien himself, in that warm, fuzzy, and pure way only a dog can, he springs her from her prison in the dark of night and they flee the kingdom together. He even allows her to ride on his back, which he isn’t normally cool with anybody doing. But Lúthien is special and Huan is a Very Good Boy.

“The death of Finrod Felagund” by Anke Eissmann

Together they reach Sauron’s island fortress, but sadly, not in time to save Finrod. The Elf king breaks out of his shackles in time to stop one of Sauron’s werewolves from devouring Beren, and with his bare hands Finrod wrestles and slays the beast at the cost of his own life. Death from violence is especially tragic for Elves, but at the same time, isn’t the same as the death of mortals. Finrod would be reincarnated elsewhere, but would not rejoin the world in the same way, and certainly shall never see Beren again. Beren falls into despair, unaware that the Best Girlfriend Ever was already at the bridge of the tower up above.

Now Sauron, who somehow is still more likeable than those damned Elf brothers, is actually pleased to see Lúthien at his doorstep. If he could capture the lovely and much-ballyhooed Elf princess he would win some serious points with his boss, so he sends monster wolf after monster wolf down to subdue her, but Huan dispatches each one easily. So Sauron gets out the big guns in the form of Draugluin, the daddy of all werewolves, the first and meanest of his kind.

The two canines fight savagely until Draugluin, mortally wounded, turns tail then drops dead at Sauron’s feet back inside the tower, after telling his master that it was Huan who had come. Now Sauron has heard of Huan, the great hound of Valinor, as did many, and he knows of the prophecy that Huan would only meet his end by “the mightiest wolf that would ever walk the world.” Since Draugluin was clearly not the one, Sauron decides to make himself into the murderous wolf in question. He changes forms—as Maiar can do from time to time—and goes down from his tower to personally take on the big wolfhound. For he is now Wolf-Sauron, using precisely the sort of sorcery he is denied in The Lord of the Rings: the disembodied “Great Eye” we all know and love would be the best he could manage in those latter days.

Another dog vs. dog battle ensues, but Lúthien is no mere bystander. This lady has agency and guts. She uses the sleep-inducing threads of her home-grown cloak and makes Wolf-Sauron drowsy and sluggish so that Huan can get the upper hand (paw?). Huan is triumphant, and finally gets Sauron by the throat. Morgoth’s lieutenant tries to shift forms to wriggle free but the wolfhound’s jaws are too strong. As Sauron considers departing his body in spirit form to effect his escape, Lúthien gives him “counsel.” Sure, he could go all Pac-Man ghost-like and fly back to Morgoth like a whiny baby, but if he does…

‘There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes, unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.’

Oh snap! Remember, Lúthien is the ultimate “flower” of Elvendom and here she’s all up in the face of Sauron—you know, future Lord of the Black Land, the Lidless Eye, the Big Bad Mofo of Mordor (I may have made up that last one). She says she’ll let him go if he gives up mastery of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. Sauron, sobered by what she’s saying, agrees to her terms to save his literal skin. He relinquishes his tower, assumes the form of a vampire—a demon bat in Tolkien’s world—and flies off, ending his part in this tale. The future Dark Lord of the Third Age, beaten down by a pretty Elf girl and her dog. Hell yes.

And thus the damsel our hero Beren is rescued on his own mission! “Thank you, Princess. But our mortal Man is in another castle!” Lúthien finds him in the dungeons and draws him back up out of his despair with the power of her voice. They bury Finrod on the island, which actually used to be part of his own kingdom. The quest for the Silmaril remains unfulfilled, but they need time and rest to recover from their many hurts. Beren and Lúthien get to spend a few months together in peace. Huan, ever faithful, even goes back to his master Celegorm the Seriously Undeserving. The Elves of Finrod’s kingdom lament the death of their lord but—and I feel like this sits near the heart of the story—they also proclaim “that a maiden had dared that which the sons of Fëanor had not dared to do.” In this, there is a snub of the two jerky Elf lords and accolades for Lúthien. It’s not expected that a woman challenges such terrible foes, especially the “Daughter of Flowers,” but it also obviously pleases the Elven populace to have seen this.

After a short time, Beren is resolved to continue his quest. But being a bit dense, he tries to drop our heroine back home first… as if she wasn’t crucial to his quest’s success? And being who she is, Lúthien isn’t having it:

‘You must choose, Beren, between these two: to relinquish the quest and your oath and seek a life of wandering upon the face of the earth; or to hold to your word and challenge the power of darkness upon its throne. But on either road I shall go with you, and our doom shall be alike.’

“The attack of Fëanor’s sons” by Anke Eissmann

Heavy and romantic words in a story already full of them. But before they go on, in charges Celegorm and Curufin! The brothers had spied them in the woods and sought revenge for wounded pride and imagined slights. These guys are elitist, self-entitled Elf privilege personified. Celegorm tries to run Beren down on his horse, while Curufin grabs Lúthien up onto his. But now that he’s rested up, our hero employs the Leap of Beren—which, yes, Tolkien actually uses as a proper noun, for it was “renown among Men and Elves”—and dodges one brother while bearing the other off his horse. Lúthien is thereby flung into the grass, stunned. Just as Beren is about to strangle the life out of Curufin, his brother Celegorm recovers and goes to run Beren through with a spear.

And that’s when Huan, who’s been trotting along with his master this whole time, has had enough of his master’s shenanigans. He foils Celegorm’s attack and scares off his steed. Lúthien demands that Beren spare Curufin because, like her mother, she is the moral compass among all these hot-headed males. Interestingly, Lúthien has shown that she falls under the power of other Elves more easily than any monster of Morgoth, for at heart she is too trusting of kin. Beren honors his lady’s request, but Beren deprives the jerkwad of his gear and takes as recompense an elegant knife named Angrist. This sweet blade had been crafted by the same talented dwarf who forged the famous sword Narsil—as in, the very blade that would later cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand.

The two sons of Fëanor curse Beren and then start off. Quite suddenly, though, Curufin grabs his brother’s bow and from afar shoots an arrow at Lúthien. WTF? When Elf attacks Elf it’s an uncommon travesty, but this is just the sort of evil with which Morgoth has infected Middle-earth by this point. Huan snatches the arrow out of the air with his mouth—who’s a Good Boy?—but Curufin shoots a second time. This time is it Beren who steps in front of Lúthien and accepts the hit. Down he goes with the Elf’s arrow in his chest. Huan chases off the brothers then fetches herbs to help Lúthien tend to Beren’s terrible wound. He’s totally her dog now.

“[B]y her arts and by her love” Lúthien heals Beren. They come to the borders of Doriath again, but because he still doesn’t get it, Beren sneaks off early in the morning to continue his quest alone. Tolkien doesn’t say so, but Lúthien probably rolls her eyes when she wakes up. It’s a testament to her love for Beren that she takes this is stride and simply goes after him with the Best Dog Ever beside her.

“The parting” by Anke Eissmann

But first they stop by the mountain pass where they battled Sauron. Because they’re going deeper into enemy lands they know they’ll need a disguise. Huan takes “thence the ghastly wolf-hame,” or skin, of Draugluin the dead werewolf and he puts it on like clothing. Being from Valinor, a blessed realm untouched by Morgoth’s evil, Huan probably normally has a very shiny coat and wins Best in Show every time, but that’s much too conspicuous in evil lands. The foul skin of a werewolf sire solves that! Lúthien, meanwhile, is far too pretty to walk casually about, either. Therefore she puts on the “bat-fell of Thuringwethil” as her disguise. Thuringwethil was a vampire messenger, and though her demise is never actually mentioned in the tale, she was presumably slain among the other minions of Sauron. So with Huan at his most fiendish, and the lovely Lúthien looking more goth than ever with “great fingered wings […] barbed at each joint’s end with an iron claw,” they continue on unhindered.

Across a dark forest “filled with horror,” they finally catch up to Beren. This freaks him out at first because of the Halloween costumes they’re wearing. Once they reveal themselves to him, though, he is dismayed. Why? Because his beloved Lúthien, whom he loves above all else, was once again in peril just being there. And that’s when Huan, who has had enough of this fool’s stubbornness, tells it to him straight:

‘From the shadow of death you can no longer save Lúthien, for by her love she is now subject to it. You can turn from your fate and lead her into exile, seeking peace in vain while your life lasts. But if you will not deny your doom, then either Lúthien, being forsaken, must assuredly die alone, or she must with you challenge the fate that lies before you—hopeless, yet not certain.’

After probably saying, “Wait, you can talk?!” (and to which Huan would have answered, “Only three times in my whole life, as it happens”), Beren concedes at last. The maiden he loves was going to be there with him to face the greatest of all enemies, and he just has to get used to it. Huan also tells them that he can go no further on their road together—possibly because he is tired of being a fifth wheel on this, the weirdest date of all time. This also frees up the Draugluin skin suit, which Beren puts on. So Beren with his badass/gross werewolf-skin and Lúthien with her sexy/gross bat-skin set off on the last leg of the quest. Interestingly, these forms are more than mere cloaks, though; such were the arts of Lúthien and/or the powers of the slain monsters themselves that donning the skins transforms their wearers—at least in part. “Beren became in all things like a werewolf to look upon, save that in his eyes there shone a spirit grim indeed but clean.” And Lúthien in her vampire form could actually fly.

It’s so freaking awesome. In an essay, Tolkien scholar Thomas M. Honegger wrote that this element of the tale seems to borrow from Guillaume de Palerne, a French romance poem from the thirteenth century—which Professor Tolkien would be more than familiar with—in which two young lovers escape an arranged marriage by donning the skins of polar bears at the behest of a prince-turned-werewolf. When he doesn’t invent an idea out of whole cloth—and it’s no secret he drew from old mythologies and literature—Tolkien repurposes them.

By their servant-of-Morgoth cosplaying, Beren and Lúthien come “through all perils” far to the north to the hellish gates of the Dark Lord’s lair at Angband which I imagine makes Mordor seem like a holiday destination. Travel brochures would highlight Angband’s serpent-filled chasms, its carrion fowl screeches in the sky, and the thousand-foot cliff wall rising above it. But here our heroes are stopped in their tracks when they see a creature guarding the gate like Cereberus at the gates of Hades.

It is Carcharoth, the Red Maw, the Jaws of Thirst, the biggest and meanest of wolves, who’d been sired by Draugluin, likely bred for the express purpose of battling Huan. Carcharoth had been fed by Morgoth’s own hand the flesh of Men and Elves until “the fire and anguish of hell entered into him, and he became filled with a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong.” (He’s also the last supernatural canine in this story, I promise.) Yet Huan isn’t here this time, just Lúthien and Beren. Carcharoth, despite his thirst for violence, is merely puzzled by their presence, unsure of who they are. They look odd. And heyyyy, that wolf-skin looks kind of familiar—

Lúthien takes advantage of the dread wolf’s vexation, throws back her vampire-skin, and casts a spell of sleep upon him. Down he goes, snoozing like Fluffy outside the hiding place of the Philosopher’s Stone. They enter Angband, descending its many dark stairs, and “together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men.” For here at long last they step into Morgoth’s “nethermost” hall, a place of death and torment, where the Dark Lord himself is sitting upon his throne with his court of fell monsters around him.

Illustration by Sam Hadley

Normally this is where the male hero draws his sword and boldly confronts the villain. Not here! Beren is immediately cowed by Morgoth’s majesty, crawling low to the floor at the Dark Lord’s feet like the dog he’s become. Lúthien, meanwhile, is “stripped of her disguise by the will of Morgoth,” though she stands her ground and willingly endures his vile gaze.

In the book Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien (a worthwhile read, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan), scholar Cami D. Agan addresses this vital development. “Chillingly, this moment appears to enact [Lúthien’s] description of Sauron’s impending humiliation.” It’s serious business to stand vulnerable before such a fiend; “physically and metaphorically naked before the gaze of Morgoth, Lúthien is threatened with objectification, rape, and perpetual torment. However, Lúthien retains her identity, names herself, and thus solidifies her power. In naming herself, Lúthien claims equal standing with Morgoth himself; she is unafraid, ‘not daunted by his eyes,’ the very eyes that Sauron fears to endure in defeat.”

As the embodiment of pride in Middle-earth, Morgoth is overconfident. He allows her to address him, vulnerable as she appears. So Lúthien offers to sing for him “after the manner of a minstrel.” He buys it, expecting that he’s fully in control of the situation. But as Agan writes, “Lúthien appears to offer ‘service’ out of a position of weakness—and this is what Morgoth ‘sees’—when in reality she has worked through his bodily desire to create a space and time wherein she might take mastery of Angband.”

Morgoth is, like most, captivated by her beauty. He is not immune to its power, for he’d been a being of beauty himself once, back when he was greatest of Ilúvatar’s celestial team. Lúthien artfully uses Morgoth’s own lustful fascination against him. She slips into the shadows of his chamber and begins a new “song of such surpassing loveliness, and of such blinding power,” like some epic-level D&D bard spell. Morgoth is utterly dumbfounded and blinded. The crown on his head with its three Silmarils blazes with light, stirred by Lúthien’s power, and under its weight Morgoth is bowed down. She uses her cloak—you know, the one she wove of hair from her own head—to “set upon him a dream, dark as the Outer Void where once he walked alone.” Morgoth collapses to the ground, the crown sent rolling across the floor, and his entire court falls into slumber with him.

A touch from Lúthien awakens the now-sleeping Beren—remember him? This being the pivotal moment in his quest, he throws off the wolf-skin and uses the iron-slicing knife Angrist to cut free one of the Silmarils from the fallen crown. Realizing that nobody, but nobody, will get this chance again, Beren decides to try for all three gems, but the knife breaks and a shard goes flying and—as Murphy’s Law apparently dictates even on Middle-earth—strikes the sleeping Morgoth in the cheek. The Dark Lord begins to stir, Lúthien and Beren make like Entwives… and leave. Swiftly!

“Beren recovers a Silmaril” by Anke Eissmann

While the menagerie of monsters isn’t quick to awaken and give chase, Carcharoth is waiting for them at the door, wide awake now and angry. Lúthien is too spent from her struggle against Morgoth to deal with the big bad wolf again, but Beren has a Silmaril in his hand and it blazes forth with the light of the Trees of Valinor. He thrusts the gem out, hoping to frighten away the wolf with its power, “‘for here is a fire that shall consume you, and all evil things.'” But Carcharoth, channeling Fenrir the wolf of Norse mythology from which Tolkien undoubtedly drew inspiration, chomps down on Beren’s outstretched right hand and bites it off, Silmaril and all.

Then swiftly all his inwards were filled with a flame of anguish, and the Silmaril seared his accursed flesh. Howling he fled before them, and the walls of the valley of the Gate echoed with the clamour of his torment.

So off runs the Silmaril-stricken wolf, with Beren’s hand in his belly, burning with holy flame. It doesn’t kill him, just drives him mad with rage and he kills everything in his rampage. Beren, meanwhile, falls, poisoned by Carcharoth’s venom. Beren is dying once again, but Lúthien draws out the venom with her lips as if it were a mere snake bite and not a gaping severed hand wound. This—this here!—is the badass princess I’m talking about, and it’s just what I’ve come to expect from her.

Just another day in this romance, though! Boy meets girl. Girl puts evil demigod to sleep. Boy steals demigod’s gem. Demigod’s dog bites off boy’s hand and poisons boy. Girl saves boy again by sucking poison out of boy’s bloody stump.

Lúthien uses the last of her power to bind Beren’s wound, but Morgoth’s horde is soon to overcome them. All seems lost… except for a story device familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings. Lúthien and her boyfriend are spied from above and saved by Thorondor, Lord of the Eagles, and two of his vassals, who were actually flying over the region specifically in search of them. Does it seem random, or dumb luck? Nope! Huan, the most exceptional dog in all the world, had asked all his animal friends to keep an eye out for these two specifically. See, the Eagles are a cut above the animals of Middle-earth, having been placed in the world by the Valar, like Huan himself, specifically to aid the enemies of Morgoth—but not unconditionally.

Beren and Lúthien are carried far from Morgoth’s lands and dropped off at the border of Doriath. Beren languishes and nearly dies from his horrendous wound, but he pulls through, waking to the singing of his beloved Tinúviel. And as many of Tolkien’s characters are wont to do, he receives another name. Beren still goes by Beren, but now he’s also Erchamion the One-Handed. The two lovers share in a time of peace and togetherness again, albeit with one fewer hand between them, but the quest remains unfulfilled, under a technicality: the Silmaril he was to retrieve is actually inside a rampaging wolf monster.

Lúthien is actually fine with this; she’s proven by now that she’s nobody’s fool and she’s through worrying about her dad’s expectations. She is content to elope, having been to literal Hell and back, and is content to leave the quest alone. But Beren still wishes to do right by her father and, more importantly, by the honor of his word. When the two do return to Thingol’s court, the Elf king isn’t exactly happy to see Beren still alive. Beren fesses up that he doesn’t have the promised Silmaril yet. He shows Thingol his stump and, for crying out loud, he gives himself another epithet. Now he is also Camlost, the Empty-Handed. Seeing this, and hearing the hardships of their adventure in full, Thingol actually softens up at last and finally consents to their marriage.

And so, before the throne of Doriath, “Beren took the hand of Lúthien.” Which, frankly, seems like an insensitive way for Tolkien to have worded it, under the circumstances. So hey, Beren gets the girl! But actually, Lúthien got the boy first. He kind of had her at “Tinúviel.”

Now that the wedding has happened, Thingol organizes a hunt for Carcharoth because he’d been terrorizing the land in his agony and he did still have that elusive gem that everyone wants. Huan, of course, is the first to volunteer, and Beren, Thingol, and a few other significant Elves sign on as well. Lúthien, notably, does not go, for a “a dark shadow” falls over her for what I can only imagine is the weight of her newly-bestowed doom. She has just been hitched to a Man and that’s never happened to an Elf before. It’s unclear what the consequences will be—but in truth, the prospect of real death falls upon her. Men like Beren live with death close at hand at all times, but for Elves it is, as mentioned earlier, quite a revelation to digest.

Carcharoth is eventually tracked to the banks of a big river, where he has paused to drink, for its sweet waters are the only thing that can temporarily relieve the burning Silmaril-based indigestion he’s been suffering. After a game of cat and mouse with the hunters, the great wolf leaps at Thingol. Beren jumps in the way, saving his new father-in-law, and gets mauled horribly by Carcharoth. Then the wolf is tackled by Huan and the two engage in a titanic final battle that churns the earth and “choked the falls” of the river itself. The wargs of the Rings trilogy had nothing on these two.

At last, Huan slays Carcharoth… but his own prophesied death at the jaws of the greatest wolf comes to pass as well. Huan collapses beside Beren and speaks his final words, saying farewell. Beren is too gravely wounded and too grieved to speak, because honestly, the magical heavenly dog was always too good to be true, and now he was gone. He had done more than his part in helping the two lovers. Man and Elf’s best friend.

“The Quest Fulfilled” by Anke Eissmann

Carcaroth is cut open and the Silmaril is recovered! Then—finally—Thingol is satisfied that the mission has been accomplished. Yet his own victory is hollow and “full-wrought” because he’s still losing his daughter to this brave and foolish Man… and at this point said Man is dying, for real this time. By the time Beren’s body and Huan’s corpse are brought back to Elven lands, Lúthien is there to receive them. She embraces Beren, and he dies.

The end.

Nope again! As if this love story wasn’t already its own twisty tale of magic blades, holy gems, and monster skins, here is where one Man and one Elfmaid really break the rules. Because Lúthien asked him to—seriously, because she just bade him to—Beren’s spirit lingers in the halls of Mandos before passing on to wherever it is that the spirits of Men go. Mandos is the archangelic being whose judgments shape the world, and his halls are essentially the waiting room to all the mysteries beyond the veil. And here Beren waits because he finally really listened to her.

Lúthien herself shows up to meet him there, leaving her body lifeless behind her on Middle-earth to the great despair of her family. And then she sings her “most sorrowful” song to Mandos. Aside from bumming him out big time, it’s obviously an earworm of great power:

Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and listening the Valar are grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars.

Lúthien is not only a participant and heroine of this story that’s so central to Tolkien’s world, but she also sets precedence for the union of the races of Man and Elf thereafter. Her lament before Mandos is a butterfly effect for events to come. Moved by her song, and knowing he cannot change the rules, Mandos thinks about what he can do. He turns to Manwë, the King of the Valar (and brother of Morgoth!), who does have the authority to at least pull some strings in the heavens. Manwë therefore gives Lúthien a choice:

• (A) Dwell in paradise among the Valar, but without Beren, and there she would forget all worldly griefs.
• (B) Return to Middle-earth with her husband and join him in a mortal’s uncertain life, where nothing, not even joy, can be promised. (Sound familiar, fellow humans?) In time, true death would come them both.
• (C) Kidding, there’s no C.

She chooses B, forsaking the immortality of Elves and all mystical ties to her people. Lúthien and Beren do live on for a time, resurrected, and able to visit those they love who still lived. And because she is a mortal now, Lúthien knows her parting with her parents will be exceedingly painful. In the mysterious afterlife of Tolkien’s legendarium, it is at least clear that mortals and immortals go their separate ways when all is said and done. Curiously, the Silmarillion’s narrative presents death as a gift to Men, something the Elves at times do envy, but that is another topic for another day.

Eventually Lúthien and Beren retire in a scenic island called Tol Galen, but no one ever sees them again, nor know where they eventually died. Yet they do have children. Elrond will be their great-grandson, and his daughter, Arwen Undómiel, will face the same choice Lúthien had. In some ways, Arwen’s life mirrors Lúthien’s in both function (she marries a Man and chooses mortality to be with him) and form (Arwen looks a lot like her). The very concept of the Half-elven—those born of the union of Men and Elves—comes with its own policy, a new rule that requires such individuals to decide whose fate their line would bear. Elrond, for example, chooses the immortality of the Eldar, but is unable to prevent both his twin brother and his daughter from choosing the doom of Men. Yet even those who fade away lived remarkable and lengthy lives. Elros, brother of Elrond, would become the founder of Númenor and Arwen, of course, would become pivotal in the life of Aragorn, who in turn is pivotal in the defeat of Sauron in the Third Age.

So ultimately, Beren and Lúthien become a kind of archtype for their respective races. Yet in the end this is still mostly a love story, not an action story. They are star-crossed lovers in a way that makes Shakespeare’s Veronan teens just a summer fling. Sure, Romeo and Juliet defy their rich Italian families to hook up. Tristan and Isolde wade through some feudal red tape for their passion. Catherine and Heathcliff just pine and brood over each other on the English moors. There are a lot of famous lovers in classic literature and many of them are worth reading about for the sheer passion and poetry of it. But a lot of them—dare I say most of them in the mythological or fantasy variety—also include a swooning damsel who is either rescued or “won” by their men. Even Buttercup in the otherwise awesome The Princess Bride mostly just cries and gets upset while Westley and his friends do all the work. But “Of Beren and Lúthien” is a tale in which the lovers save each other; neither can succeed on their own but together overcome all obstacles (with the help of their dog and their friends), and in the end she is a heroine who chooses to be with her beloved forever and share his fate… whatever that may be.

I think Beren’s great. He’s a hero’s hero without needing to be womanizing or blustery. We know him, because it’s easy to imagine he’s a lot like Aragorn. But Lúthien, to the casual Rings reader, is not as familiar in one woman. She’s as spiritual as Galadriel, as valorous as Éowyn, as comforting as Arwen. She’s the memorable one here—a heroine of mettle and volition, a woman who escapes the chains imposed on her, makes her own decisions, commands enemies and friends alike, stands boldly against evil, and yet is the voice of healing and mercy when that is needed instead. She may seem like a superhero at times (to be fair, the Silmarillion doesn’t spend much time talking about everyday people), but she is still at times naive and flawed. She falls for a rugged, sweaty, homeless, and mortal ranger type and that gets them both in a heap of trouble with her people.

So boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl go on a crazy long adventure, upstage everyone, and live in mixed sorrow and happiness until the end.

Then, of course, it’s also a very personal tale for old J.R.R. and his bride Edith, who once gave him inspiration “in a wood where hemlock was growing,” where her dancing begat a legend.

Photo by Álida Carvalho

This article was originally published in September 2016.
A new illustrated, hardcover edition of Beren and Lúthien is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/

Jeff LaSala is a freelance writer who once published, among others, an article in Dragon magazine called “D&D Love Stories” because courtship that involves monsters and magic is better than any romantic comedy. He wrote some sci-fi/fantasy books, works for Tor, and wanders the roads of life together with his wife and son. “And whither then? I cannot say.”

J.R.R. Tolkien nerds like me already know there’s a new book out—Beren and Lúthien—that again demonstrates that the Professor continues to release great stuff even from beyond the Circles of the World. Now, if you don’t really know much about these two characters, the titular Man and titular Elf, consider delving into their tale at long last! In one of many letters to his publisher, Tolkien had pitched theirs as “the chief story of the Silmarillion,” but more importantly, the tale of these two lovers was extremely close to the heart of the good ol’ Professor himself. Beren and Lúthien are like ripples in the Middle-earth legendarium, touching everything in all directions.

I previously wrote an article about Lúthien showcasing the badassery of the Elven half of this particular celebrity couple (Berúthian?), but this time I’d like to look at the new book itself, discuss some of its outrageous ideas, and admittedly go all fanboy on the real hero of the story (hint: he’s such a good boy). But here’s a sneak peek of Beren and Lúthien:

Sauron’s a kitty-cat and Gimli’s an Elf. Wait, whaaaat?

Just an honest disclaimer: what follows is a basic review, a discussion of some of its livelier elements, and a spate of thoughts and near-digressions. Oh, and plenty of spoilers, should that matter. (Tolkien himself didn’t seem to care much about spoiler alerts, but that’s a topic for another day.)

When I first heard about this publication—a new Tolkien book in 2017?!—I was super excited. Beren and Lúthien’s have always been my favorite pre-LotR story, and I know I’m not alone in that. I was hoping it would get the Children of Húrin treatment, which is to say that the book would be the novelized form of another particularly memorable chapter from The Silmarillion. Thus greater details from the story would surely emerge, as they did for Húrin! In that book, previously unnamed characters popped up—like the friendly old servant with the missing foot, and the woodsy young Elf who remained childlike in heart—and all kinds of new dialogue enriched the tale…the terrible, horrible, no good, very grim tale of Túrin Turambar.

So in the same vein, I hoped for further intel about Beren’s quest for the Silmarils, which is what this story is essentially about. I wanted to know more, for example, about Thuringwethil! She was some sort of leathery-winged, iron-clawed vampire in the service of the great enemy, Morgoth—or, at least she was before becoming Lúthien’s personal Batgirl costume. All we really got in The Silmarillion was her name (which meant “Woman of Secret Shadow”) and job title (“messenger of Sauron”).

Or, if not further details about Thuringwethil, maybe we’d at least learn more about the Leap of Beren. Which was, according to The Silmarillion, “renowned among Men and Elves” but it’s never said why. He used it to bear down on a douchebag Elf who was trying to abscond with his girlfriend, but just how had the ability to jump earned proper noun status, and where else might Beren have leaped so magnificently and so memorably? Could he hop rooftop to rooftop like the Tick? Leap fantastic distances like John Carter on Mars? Over tall buildings in a single bound like the Man of Steel? He might have been a hero, but he was still just a Man. I needed to know. Surely this new book would tell all.

“Beren’s Leap” by Ted Nasmith

Alas, it does not. So it looks like we’ll only know more about the Leap of Beren when we also find out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll^® center of a Tootsie Pop^®.

Christopher Tolkien is forthcoming about this in his Preface; the book “does not offer a single page of original and unpublished” text of his father’s. Which is certainly a bummer. But what the new book does do is hold up a big, old-timey, Sherlock–style magnifying glass to the story and its evolution. Like almost everything published posthumously under the Tolkien name, it is comprised of J.R.R.’s unfinished scrawlings tied up and edited into a cohesive narrative by his son. And Christopher—now in his 90s—does it thoroughly, taking on the task of chronologically contextualizing each snippet. That’s no easy job—have you seen Tolkien’s handwriting? Plus, Beren and Lúthien includes nine amazing-as-always Alan Lee paintings and a slew of beautiful sketches throughout.

There’s also a wonderful little chapter Christopher Tolkien provides after the Preface called “Notes on the Elder Days,” and it helps set the stage for those who don’t already know how this story connects to LotR or what’s going on in the First Age up until this point. Specifically, it fills readers in on who the hell Morgoth is, what this land called Beleriand is that we never see on any LotR maps, and what the deal is with the Elves and why they’re so center stage at this point in time.

Ultimately, the book presents the Beren and Lúthien story as it developed in the real world, from its earliest beginnings as a simple, unattached fairy tale to its ultimate placement as a key episode in the history of Middle-earth. Remember, the official incarnation is “Of Beren and Lúthien,” Chapter 19 in The Silmarillion. But these two characters don’t spring up out of nowhere—their lineage and their lives up until the moment of their meeting in the woods of Doriath are rich indeed—and yet their union becomes pivotal in the threads that bind the origin of Arda itself to the major players of the Third Age and the shenanigans of that Ring-making Dark Lord with whom we’re all much more familiar. Through Beren and Lúthien “the first marriage of mortal and immortal is achieved,” and Lúthien’s own momentous choices even set down new precedents for the fates of their respective races.

The texts in Beren and Lúthien are primarily taken from the publications The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (1984, “The Tale of Tinúviel”) and The Lays of Beleriand (1985, “The Lay of Leithian”), since these include early versions of the Beren/Lúthien legend. And I do mean early: Tolkien’s first writings about Beren and Lúthien began in 1917 while he was on sick leave from the British Army in the Great War, long before The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings itself, and all the legendarium-building that followed. Famously inspired while watching his wife dancing in a glade of hemlocks, Tolkien conceived the story and it took on many shapes throughout his life.

“Lúthien,” by Ted Nasmith

First we get The Tale of Tinúviel, the earliest recoverable version of the story, wherein Beren is not a Man at all but a Gnome, an Elf-like species normally considered “treacherous creatures, cruel and faithless” by other Elves. Lúthien herself is known only as Tinúviel and she is the Princess of Fairies (fairy being synonymous with Elf here). In this version, there is no political element—no sons of Fëanor, no Nargothrond, no Finrod—and everyone’s big enemy is named Melko (he’s just not quite as wicked without that terminal “r”). And good old Huan, the dog to end all dogs, still shows up. But he talks a lot more—like, a lot more—and he’s also got an epithet. Here, he’s the Captain of Dogs. Milkbones for everyone!

The most entertaining aspect of this early draft is that the role that Sauron later assumes—the sub-arch-villain who holds Beren captive early in his quest—is here played by Tevildo the Prince of Cats! Tevildo’s an evil “fay” who takes the form of a great big black kitty with a golden collar, and he rules over all the giant cats, who in turn are made large and strong by his mastery; they spend their days sunning themselves on terraces.

Let me say that again. Tevildo the Prince of Cats. Tevildo. Evil is almost literally his middle name.

When he has Beren in thrall, he doesn’t torture him like Sauron will in later incarnations of the tale; sure, Beren gets scratched and bitten, but mainly he’s made to do menial work in the kitchens of Tevildo’s castle! Unspeakable indeed. Huan gets involved and helps Tinúviel free her man from enslavement/scullery duties and actually does most of the leg work. And yes, there is of course great enmity between Tevildo and Huan already, as they get on like cats and dogs even in this nascent Middle-earth. In this version, Huan’s all too happy to help Tinúviel with a plan for rescue, for he is, as he declares, “Huan of the Dogs, chief foe of Tevildo.”

In my earlier Lúthien article I pointed out that our heroine was breaking stereotypes for women in fantasy back when The Silmarillion came out in 1977, but actually, this story got started sixty freakin’ years earlier. That is to say, it was a very young and lovesick Tolkien who wrote about a very liberated woman who breaks her own damn self out of a prison-tower (okay, a very tall treehouse) and then saves her own goddamn boyfriend. Hell, the phrase “Lay of Leithian” is said to mean “release from bondage.” From the get-go, Lúthien was no rescued princess. This badass maiden always had mad skills and the backbone to get stuff done. Then again, this incarnation of Lúthien also does a lot more crying, so maybe it evens out. Even so, the partnership of Beren and Tinúviel is kick-ass and rock solid.

“Lúthien Escapes the Treehouse” by Ted Nasmith

To me, the whole Tale of Tinúviel actually reads like a twentieth-century storybook fairy tale, more like The Hobbit in its more whimsical moments than the serious-minded, and at times far graver, LotR. There are even moments that sound like more familiar, less Tolkienesque fairy tales, demonstrating that young J.R.R. was still finding his own voice.

For example, in the account of Tinúviel’s escape from the great beech treehouse, she secures her exit by tricking her guards into fetching the ingredients of a spell: water drawn from a spring at midnight in a silver bowl, wine delivered in a flagon of gold at noon (which the guard must deliver while singing), and a spinning wheel. Thus she weaves her magic and grows her hair crazy long. Then there’s this little unexpected, not-quite-relevant moment when Beren and all the other prisoners of Tevildo’s castle are set free. Tolkien specifically calls out one of them, a blind old Gnome (aka Noldorin Elf) named…Gimli! And then he just moves on with the story, and we never hear from our Gimli’s namesake again. The Tale of Tinúviel is a delight to read, but at the same time, I’m very glad Tolkien revised it.

All the other incarnations and extracts of the story follow. Some of the names change, and the lands and politics of Middle-earth begin to slide into place around it. By this point, Beren is no longer a Gnome but a proper Man, and very much mortal—a key point in the long run, after all. And though Lúthien is essentially the same, Tevildo is now replaced by the necromancer Thú, the Master of Wolves and greatest lord of Morgoth (previously known as Melko). And here, of course, we see the real beginnings of our good friend Sauron—his actual promotion to Sauron from Thú comes a bit later in Tolkien’s life.

These pre-Silmarillion versions are presented largely in verse, as Tolkien had first devised them because he was a linguist and medievalist; epic poems like Beowulf were his jam! Now, I’ve never studied much poetry beyond a few college classes, so I’m no expert on the subject, but to me the “The Lay of Leithian” has some of the most evocative, even cinematic verse ever. It brings gravity and power to the story in ways even The Silmarillion does not.

Although to its credit, even The Silmarillion doesn’t skip on the poetic form of Finrod’s mighty sing-off with Sauron in the first half of the story. It shows you that immortal First Age combatants don’t always draw swords; contests of will are spiritual battles. Considering that Ilúvatar brought the world itself into being with great choirs, it’s no surprise that music plays a vital role in the “magic” of Arda. And it’s easy enough, maybe, to imagine an Elf like Finrod Felagund spilling forth power like some 18th-level elf bard in D&D with a harp and some marvelous lyrics, but it’s another to imagine Thú/Sauron himself singing. But no, it’s not so crazy. He is a Maia, and would have participated in the Music of the Ainur at the beginning of creation. He had music before any physical manifestation at all, before the world was made.

And because we do live a world where Christopher Lee once put out actual symphonic metal albums and won an award called the Spirit of Metal, it’s just as easy to imagine Sauron whipping out a B.C. Rich Ironbird Pro while “chanting a song of wizardry” before the “[t]hunder rumbles” and “fires burn.” Power chords indeed. Or maybe—and this might just be me—launching into a prog rock bass solo. Maybe slappin’ da bass like Geddy Lee.

“Finrod Felagund vs Sauron—The Rock-Off” by tigressinger

But I digress. So not only does “The Lay of Leithian” present pieces of the story in a beautifully rhythmic form, it provides some rich detail eventually glossed over in The Silmarillion. One of my faves is when Beren and Lúthien are about to embark on the last leg of their quest and journey into Angband, Middle-earth’s own hell. Because of Huan, they’ve got the skins of Draugluin, the ex-daddy of all werewolves, and Thuringwethil, the aforementioned vampire she-bat. Lúthien does more than simply have them put on gross beast coats for disguise; by her arts, the skins transform them into these monstrous shapes as well, and they become even in their minds a bit like the werewolf and vampire.

Swift as the wolvish coat he wore,
Beren lay slavering on the floor,
redtongued and hungry; but here lies
a pain and longing in his eyes,
a look of horror as he sees
a batlike form crawl to its knees
and drag its creased and creaking wings.
Then howling under moon he springs
fourfooted, swift, from stone to stone
from hill to plain—but not alone:
a dark shape down the slope doth skim,
and wheeling flitters over him.

But not alone. That’s romantic as hell, in my opinion. And I’m sorry, but forget cooking classes. Opposing the Dark Enemy of the World, together as a couple, is really going top-shelf on date night ideas. These two are valorous, uncompromising, and certainly in over their heads, but they go balls-to-the-wall to achieve it. (What, it’s an aviation expression!) Remember, it was Beren who swore to recover a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth to win her hand, but because of Lúthien’s devotion to him, he doesn’t fly solo. Nor could he have succeeded without her. It’s not every girl who’d slap around Sauron and then turn into a monster-bat for a relationship.

“Transformed” by Ted Nasmith

But as a farm boy once said, “This is true love. You think this happens every day?” But actually, no—Lúthien is like Princess Buttercup if she’d gone seeking the Dread Pirate Roberts herself, or Penelope if she didn’t wait for Odysseus but charted her own ship into the middle of his (mis)adventures—though with that analogy, Odysseus would also be faithful to her. Sorry if I’m belaboring a point. Lúthien just that cool, and Beren would do anything for her, and by their devotion both are increased.

There comes another moment later, when Beren and Lúthien do reach Morgoth’s unholy court, that didn’t make the cut in The Silmarillion but is in this book presented again. Beren is a mere mortal and is instantly overwhelmed by the Dark Lord’s presence, slinking down at Morgoth’s feet. Thus in their moment of truth, Lúthien, as the daughter of a mighty Elf king and mightier Maia queen, must take on Morgoth alone. She uses her voice and her spell-woven cloak to beguile him and cast him into his slumber. And here’s where Christopher Tolkien offers this tidbit from the tale:

—what song can sing the marvel of that deed, or the wrath and humiliation of Morgoth, for even the Orcs laugh in secret when they remember it, telling how Morgoth fell from his chair and his iron crown rolled upon the floor.

They do!? We know from all the canon texts that Morgoth’s, and then later Sauron’s, minions and monsters are really just slaves who serve out of fear and domination, never from any sense of loyalty. They hate their masters, in fact, but as far as I know it’s never been shown that they would dare “laugh in secret” whenever one is knocked down a peg. It’s these little glimpses of Tolkien’s behind-the-scenes that I find most fascinating, and why I enjoy books like this one.

Illustration by Sam Hadley

My conclusion is that Beren and Lúthien is a fine book, very worth owning. But here’s the thing: you’ve got to appreciate Tolkien’s writing, and a lot of behind-the-scenes lore, to make this a meaningful purchase. Even the explanations provided by Christopher Tolkien between all the difference excerpts can be tangly. If this book also included, in its entirely, “Of Beren and Lúthien” from The Silmarillion, then I would be quick to recommend this book to everyone as the perfect gateway to all of Tolkien’s works beyond The Lord of the Rings. The characters are interesting and approachable, and their story has many connections to LotR, both thematic and literal. But ultimately, I do think this may be a book only for fans already sold on the Beren and Lúthien story. Just as, in the same way, I wouldn’t recommend The Adventures of Tom Bombadil for those who don’t particularly like that gonzo yellow boot fetishist’s placement in the Lord of the Rings itself.

But before I wrap up, I need to go back to Huan. Oh, Huan. Not enough ink has been spilt in honor of the Hound of Valinor, if you ask me—and don’t get me wrong, he does plenty in this book. Heck, no one does more for the eponymous lovebirds of this story than this big-hearted wolfhound. Sure, I was hoping to have more of him, just as I’d hoped for more about the legendary Leap of Beren, but I must be content to revel in his awesomeness as the greatest dog in the world just as is. The poetry brought in from “The Lays of Beleriand,” at least, provides more detail about the loveable pooch.

In brief, Huan was one of many hounds in the Blessed Realm of Valinor, and the Vala known as Oromë the Huntsman was their keeper. And long, long before Beren came along, back before the great screw-up of Fëanor and his seven sons, Huan was an adorable puppy (I assume):

In Tavros’ friths and pastures green
had Huan once a young whelp been.
He grew the swiftest of the swift
and Oromë gave him as a gift
to Celegorm, who loved to follow
the great god’s horn o’er the hills and hollow

It goes on to say that when the great Elf prince Fëanor made his terrible oath and led the Noldor out of Valinor, enacting a series of unfortunate dissents, Huan was the only hound to go, too. Specifically, he stayed with Celegorm, who is arguably one of Fëanor’s most dickish sons. And through their adventures together (which we largely don’t know about), he saved his master “from Orc and wolf and leaping sword.” So hundreds, possibly thousands, of years before he got to meet the way, way better Lúthien, he was loyal to Celegorm. And hey, he’s a dog. Dogs tend to love unconditionally. And Huan strikes me as the sort of character who sees the good in everyone, or tries to. Who knows? Maybe he was a great master for all those centuries.

“Lúthien and Húan in Tol-in-Gaurhoth” by Randy Vargas

Pretty much the first thing we learn about Huan when we meet him in The Silmarillion is that he’s faithful. To a fault, you have to figure, to stay saddled to so haughty an Elf. But, you might say that Huan—immortal Huan the Big Grey Dog—had a purpose all this time. He stayed true to Celegorm only until the Elf finally crossed a line and tried to run Beren through with a spear. (Incidentally, Huan’s forsaking of Celegorm happens right after the Big-Ass Leap of Beren.)

Whether by his own will, or by the unseen hand of Ilúvatar, this wolfhound will end up saving both Beren and Lúthien many times over, and give them great advice which helps them get their act together. Then he goes on to personally slay werewolf after werewolf at Sauron’s door. Then he takes on Sauron himself and with Lúthien’s help beats him. And in the end of the quest Huan tangles with prophesied “mightiest wolf” Carcharoth the Red Maw—and dies for it. And because he does this, possessing every bit of agency and mettle as any two-legged fantasy hero (if not more so), he allows for everything, and everyone, that follows to be possible.

See, without Huan’s help, there would have been no more Beren and no more Lúthien. And then we’d not have met their son Dior, the very first of the Half-elven. Dior’s mother had, upon Beren’s death, traveled in spirit to the Halls of Mandos to sing her lament and thereby win some new rules concerning the fate of all the Half-elven to come. These individuals of Man and Elven blood are each given the choice to be “counted among” Men or among Elves (but not both). They either remain immortal like the Elves and live as long as Arda itself does, or else choose to become mortal, like Men, and eventually die and go beyond the Circles of the World, where even the Valar cannot speak to their fate. Only Ilúvatar knows what purpose Men will have in the long run, and by Lúthien’s choice she will go with Beren thence. Thence, I say!

So the only daughter of Dior turns out to be Elwing, who marries Eärendil the Mariner (whose own tale is decidedly splendiferous), and their sons will be Elros and Elrond. From Elrond and his wife, Celebrían (daughter of the Lady of the Golden Wood!), we will eventually meet Arwen Undómiel—who is herself likened to Lúthien on many accounts and certainly shares her doom. And Elrond’s brother, Elros, will choose to be counted among Men, but he’ll also become the first king of Númenor. And from that powerful but ultimately ill-fated lineage of Men we will finally meet Aragorn many, many generations later. You might have heard of him?

And this is all because a particularly loyal hound stayed true to a not-so-stellar master for years uncounted, holding out for the better people in his life who would bring out his true purpose. What I’m saying is, If J.R.R. Tolkien and W. Bruce Cameron could have co-written a book, it would have been titled A Dog’s Purpose Full-Wrought. Damn it, I want to read that book so much. It would tell Huan’s entire story, from litter to cairn, and explain how he put up with that jerkface Celegorm for so long, so he could, in turn, become friend and co-conspirator and wolf-slayer and counselor to a guy named Beren and a girl named Lúthien. And the whole thing about Huan being given the power of speech only three times in his existence, and yet his choosing to save all three occasions toward the end of this long life, just for the benefit of those two? Yeah, he’s a Good Boy. He probably wasn’t even scared of vacuum cleaners.

“Lúthien Escapes Upon Húan” by Ted Naismith

As for learning more about that Leap of Beren, well, it looks like the world will have to wait. I’m not one for fan fiction, but if I were to try to flesh out this legend, I would have wanted to include some new dialogue between our hero and Lúthien’s father, Thingol, when they meet for the first time, what with all that high tension in the king’s court.

Therefore Lúthien spoke, and said: ‘He is Beren son of Barahir, lord of Men, mighty foe of Morg—’

‘Wait!’ Thingol interrupted, clearly flabbergasted. ‘Not Beren…of the Leap of Beren?!’

‘The same,’ Beren replied.

Seriously, that guy could jump. Or so we’re told.

Jeff LaSala received the Ring of Barahir from his wife as a counter-engagement ring many years ago. He listens to The Prancing Pony Podcast and/or the Tolkien Professor for his routine Middle-earth fix and writes sci-fi and/or fantasy when he can find the time (and sleep).

Hobbits live the good life: they eat all day, they generally work with their hands and enjoy nature (unless they are wealthy and don’t work at all), and they live in an idyllic farmscape full of lush trees, rivers, and green hills. They also consume their fair share of ale in taverns, an ode to the pub culture that J.R.R. Tolkien himself heralded from.

But how much can a hobbit actually drink?

There is a joke in the Lord of the Rings films that is not present in the books—while hanging around at The Prancing Pony, Merry comes back to the table with a great big tankard. and Pippin asks what he’s drinking:

“This, my friend, is a pint,” he says wickedly.

Pippin’s eyes widen. “It comes in pints?”

It makes sense that hobbits would veer toward smaller pours because they are smaller people—you wouldn’t give a five-year-old a pint glass of juice because they have smaller stomachs and the glass would be harder to manage in smaller hands. But even if the average hobbit goes from half-pint to half-pint, that doesn’t mean that their rates of consumption are low in the alcohol department.

So how much can they put away when they’re tavern-crawling with pals? It depends on a multitude of interesting factors….

Hobbit measurements. According to Tolkien, hobbits are generally two-to-four feet tall, with the average height being three feet and six inches. This is during the events of LOTR; Tolkien claims that hobbits alive today rarely reach three feet. [The Fellowship of the Ring, “Concerning Hobbits”] Of course, a full-grown hobbit will average more body weight than your typical human child of the same height thanks to a slower metabolism and their famous love of food (“Elevensies” is a thing!), so we can estimate that while a 42-inch-tall child weighs 40.5 pounds on average, a hobbit will clock in at around 70 pounds. Being generally smaller also means having a smaller stomach, but that shouldn’t prove a problem; your average adult stomach can expand greatly to hold multiple liters if needed—that means a hobbit can probably stomach 1.5 liters (more than 3 pints) without much effort. So that means that volume isn’t too much of a concern while drinking.

Type of Beer. LOTR refers to hobbit brew as both “beer” and “ale.” As we observe various species getting drunk off of the ale presented, we can assume that Tolkien is not referring to the small beers of yesteryear, but the average fare one might find in a pub in the 20th century. The majority of hobbit ales can be labeled as session beers, lending themselves to long nights out after a hard day’s work.

Alcohol Content. Ale averages around 3-6% ABV. For the sake of easier math, let’s assume 5% ABV for your typical hobbit ale. Something that’s sessionable, but not so low that your average Man wouldn’t notice the kick, since the hobbits are clearly fine drinking beverages that are brewed with Big Folk in mind, too.

Units of Alcohol. The specific unit for a measure of beer is also important here. It’s probable that a pint in Middle-earth is an Imperial pint, which is different from the American unit. (The Imperial pint is larger.) A full Imperial pint is 568 milliliters, making a half-pint 284 milliliters.

Alcohol Elimination Rate. This is one of the key variant factors in determining how quickly hobbits can process alcohol; contrary to what many people believe, your metabolism has very little to do with how quickly you process alcohol. The biological process that determines that is actually a construct called the Alcohol Elimination Rate, which is basically a calculation that determines how quickly your liver can filter the alcohol in your system.

One of the factors in this calculation is the frequency of how often you drink; a person who drinks regularly will eliminate alcohol faster than someone who only drinks once in a while because they’ve built a chemical “tolerance”. Another factor is the size of your liver compared to your body mass. If a hobbit’s liver size in relation to their body size is similar to that of an adult human, they will eliminate alcohol at relatively the same rate as an adult human. If a hobbit’s liver size is larger than an adult human one (which is true for children) when compared to their body size, than they are more likely to have an alcohol elimination rate closer to an alcoholic or a child. It is entirely possible—perhaps even probable—that hobbits have larger livers, the same way a human child would. Given that hobbits have a relatively constant rate of consumption (six meals a day, when they can get them), their systems are not exactly the same as one scaled for a human.

With that in mind, it’s time to do some math!

Blood alcohol content is generally determined by the Widmark formula. While this formula is not absolute, it gives us a helpful baseline. Here is an updated version of the formula:

% BAC = (A x 5.14 / W x r) – .015 x H

Here are the variables that you need to account for:

A = liquid ounces of alcohol consumed

W = a person’s weight in pounds

r = a gender constant of alcohol distribution (.73 for men and .66 for women—this one is tricky on flexibility)

H = hours elapsed since drinking commenced

The .015 in the equation is the average Alcohol Elimination Rate for a social drinker. If hobbits do indeed have a higher Elimination Rate, than that number should be altered to around .028 for the formula to give an accurate BAC%. We determine A by calculating amount of alcohol in the ale consumed, which is the number of liquid ounces in one beverage multiplied by the number of beverages consumed multiplied by the ABV of the beverage. If a hobbit consumes two half-pints of ale, the formula for A looks like this:

9.6 ounces x 2 half-pints x 5% ABV = .96 oz

If we use this formula to account for the BAC of a male hobbit who has had two half-pints of ale over the course of an hour on an empty stomach, with an average human Elimination Rate, this is what we get:

(.96 x 5.14 / 70 x .73) – .015 x 1

(4.934/ 51.1) – .015 x 1

.0965 – .015 x 1 = .082 BAC%

For the record, .08% puts you over the legal limit for driving in the U.S. (Granted, hobbits don’t drive cars. Do they need a license for ponies?) Let’s see what happens when we adjust for the Elimination Rate of someone with a larger liver, closer to the range of a chronic drinker:

.0965 – .028 x 1 = .069 BAC%

If we assume the latter, then a hobbit who puts away a pint in an hour would be in the “buzzed” territory—lowered inhibitions, a bit louder and more boisterous, emotions intensified. If the same hobbit consumed 1.5 pints in the same hour, their BAC would rocket up to .12%, leading to serious motor skill and memory impairment as well as poor self-control. Two whole pints in an hour would lead to a BAC of .17%, making this same hobbit start to feel dizzy or nauseous, with blurred vision and a possible risk of blackout. By three pints and a BAC of .26%, the poor guy is probably throwing up near some poor farmer’s stables and leaning on his pals for support because he cannot walk without assistance.

So, if a hobbit consumes a steady half-pint an hour, they’d maintain a vague euphoria. But if they plan on consuming at a more rapid rate, they have to watch themselves (or have some good pals looking out for them). Which means that hobbits process alcohol similarly to humans, just in smaller portion sizes. And they likely have awesome livers getting the work done for them.

Just some useful info for when the hobbits drop by your house, and you want to make sure they enjoy your holiday party.

This article was originally published in October 2016.

Emily Asher-Perrin tried hobbit beer in New Zealand. It was delicious. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

We’ve got to talk about Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth. The man might have made up some beautiful languages and written stories that generations of writers have responded to in ways ranging from homage to bad photocopy, but I’m going to guess he was no connoisseur of geography.

Even at an early age, I thought the map of Middle-earth looked a little… odd. With my years of geological education and work experience, now it seems more like a geographical car wreck from which I can’t quite look away. (This is what happens when you spend a lot of student loan dollars on graduate school.)

Middle-earth’s got 99 problems, and mountains are basically 98 of them.

To understand all of the hair-tearing I do every time I look at this map, we need to understand where mountains come from. I talked a little bit about mountain building in my previous post, in the context of active versus passive margins as seen in the case of The Hunger Games’ Panem. The big thing to keep in mind is that mountain ranges are the fingerprints left behind by tectonic activity. Everything on the surface of the Earth ultimately wants to return to base level, also known as sea level. Given a long enough time and no tectonic activity to mess things up, the land surface would all end up being pretty close to sea level. Tectonic activity is what keeps wrinkling up the surface and giving all the water some elevation to run down.

The main creator of mountains are tectonic plate collisions. You either end up with the heavier oceanic plate grinding under the continental crust—which is lighter because it’s got a lot more silicates in it—and wrinkling it up that way, as seen all around the Pacific Rim; or you have two plates of roughly equal density colliding and, since one isn’t going to sink under the other, building up and up like a cartoonish car pileup, which is why the Himalayas keep getting a little bit taller every year.

Extensional tectonics is another way to wrinkle up your crust that isn’t going to create mountains in quite the same way. This happens when the crust is under tensional stress (being pulled apart) rather than the compressive stress (being squished together) you get from tectonic collisions. On a continent, the stretched crust will thin out and fault, which allows blocks to drop down and create oddly parallel low basins with higher crust on either side. (These are also called “horst and graben” landforms.) This is what we see in the Basin and Range Province in the Western US, as well as the Baikal Rift Zone and the rift systems in East Africa. If rifting is continuous enough, you can end up with a new ocean basin, complete with spreading center, cutting your continent in half.

Knowing these basic mechanisms, you can look at a map of the Earth and see how the mountain building comes together. A lot of it’s on those active margins, where oceanic crust is subducting under continental crust. When you get mountains cutting in the middle of continents, it shows where there were continent-continent collusions, with the mountains acting like sutures and tying the land masses together.

Which brings us back to the map of Middle-earth. There’s some weird stuff going on with these mountain ranges. To illustrate, I’ve added some lines to the map so you can more clearly see what I see whenever I look at it.

I’m good with the mountain ranges on the west coast of the map. I can pretend that Eriador is like the California of Middle-earth, and it’s a nice active margin—I will just ignore that my housemate, who unlike me has completed the Silmarillion slog, has disabused me of that notion. And I can buy the placement of the Misty Mountains, again as a continent-continent collision, perhaps, even if there should be a lot more shenanigans going on then, in terms of elevation. But when you throw in the near perpendicular north and south mountain ranges? Why are there corners? Mountains don’t do corners.

And Mordor? Oh, I don’t even want to talk about Mordor.

Tectonic plates don’t tend to collide at neat right angles, let alone in some configuration as to create a nearly perfect box of mountains in the middle of a continent. I’ve heard the reasoning before that suggests Sauron has made those mountains somehow, and I suppose right angles are a metaphor for the evil march of progress, but I don’t recall that being in the books I read. And ultimately, this feels a lot like defending the cake in the song MacArthur Park as a metaphor—okay fine, maybe it’s a metaphor…but it’s a silly metaphor that makes my geologist heart cry tears of hematite.

Mount Doom, I’m more likely to give a pass to, since it’s obviously a place of great magic. But geologically, it posits a mantle plume creating a hot spot under Mordor—since that’s the only way you’re going to get a volcano away from subduction or rifting zones, and I’ve already called shenanigans on Mordor being either of those. And the hallmark of hot spot volcanism is that you get chains of volcanoes, with the youngest being the active volcano and the older ones normally quiescent. This is caused by the tectonic plates moving over the hot spot; examples include the Juan Fernández Ridge, the Tasmantid Seamount Chain, and the Hawaiian Islands (more properly called the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain). You’ll notice most hot spots can be found in the oceans, because there’s more ocean on Earth than land, and also the crust is thinner there, so a hot spot causes volcanism much more readily. On continents, you’re more likely to get dike swarms (e.g.: the Mackenzie dike swarm in Nunavet, Canada) where magma filters into cracks and weak spots between formations and remains underground until unroofed by erosion—or chains of massive volcanic calderas like the ones you see ranging from Yellowstone to the Valles Caldera in the US.

Okay, so maybe Mount Doom is from a really young hot spot and there’s been no drift since it started. That’s the best I’ve got for you. It’s better than the nonsensical border mountains.

To be fair to J.R.R. Tolkien, while continental drift was a theory making headway in the world of geology from 1910 onwards, plate tectonics didn’t arrive on the scene until the mid-50s, and then it took a little while to become accepted science. (Though goodness, plate tectonics came down—I have it on good authority from geologists who were alive and in school at the time that it was like the holy light of understanding shining forth. Suddenly, so many things made sense.) Fantasy maps drawn after the 1960s don’t get even that overly generous pass.

But even without understanding the major forces behind mountain building, all you have to do is look at a topographic map of the world around us to get a sense of where mountains might naturally grow. There aren’t right angles in the mountain ranges of Earth. Trust me, I’ve looked. There also aren’t massive rivers that run parallel to those mountain ranges for long distances—remember that one problem I mentioned earlier that wasn’t mountains?—but that’s a discussion for another time.

Top image from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Alex Acks is a writer, geologist, Twitter fiend, and dapper AF. Their sweary biker space witch debut novel, Hunger Makes the Wolf, is out now from Angry Robot Books.

Look, we all get it. He’s based on Odin of Norse mythology. He’s good-natured and kind, and he’s also an otherworldly being with some macro concerns that are hard for mere mortals to conceive. But Gandalf the Grey had plenty of faults, and one of his biggest was withholding information from people to suit his particular plans.

Yeah, it all worked out in the end and Middle-earth was saved from darkness. But some communication would not have killed the guy.

1. You’re Heading to the Mountain to Reclaim Your Heritage, But I Really Just Need You to Kill This Dragon

A bunch of dwarves and their wizard pal show up on Bilbo Baggins’s doorstep, eat all his food, and propose to him. (Will you be our burglar?) They tell him that they must go to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, a kingdom full of treasure that was stolen by a great dragon. Their rightful king, Thorin, is kind of a pompous guy, but the point is sound; the dwarves are essentially a refugee people, driven from their homeland and their sovereignty by a greedy giant wyrm. Greed still causes too much trouble in the end, and also demands of reparations from the wood-elves and the people of Laketown; a giant battle ensues that leads to Thorin’s death, and brings an end to his baker’s dozen band of brothers, plus Bilbo.

But Gandalf was pulling for this little adventure to go down for one particular reason: the Lonely Mountain had a dragon problem. One that Gandalf didn’t want to see used for nefarious purposes. It’s never made clear whether Sauron would have had control over Smaug (seeing as Sauron was a lieutenant of Morgoth, the guy responsible for making most of the scary stuff on Middle-earth), or just have been able to convince him to join his side once he had amassed more power, but Gandalf was definitely concerned about having a great big dragon around to help the bad guys. So helping Thorin was largely a means to an end, one that he neglected to mention. Seeing as the aftermath of this adventure led to the deaths of Thorin and his kin, it would have been nice to bring up maybe once.

2. Being a Ring-bearer Won’t Stop Your Home From Becoming a Casualty

Nothing quite like telling a kid who’s just come of age to hold onto the most evil item in the world without really explaining what it is, then showing up seventeen years later and being like “Hey, so that thing I left here is maybe the most important item in the world currently and your location was compromised, so you should probably hightail it to elven territory.” Gandalf does his best to make it clear that the Ring does terrible things to its bearers. He almost prepares Frodo properly for the burden it will place on his soul. To be fair, it’s hard to communicate that sort of thing to a person who hasn’t really seen the kind of darkness Sauron is capable of raining down.

But Frodo and his hobbit compatriots sign up for this journey with one major caveat—they want to protect their home. They honestly believe that if they can defeat Sauron in time, the Shire won’t get hit in this war. And Gandalf doesn’t really disabuse them of that notion. Others do, certainly, particularly once Frodo looks into Galadriel’s fancy mirror. But it would have been nice of Gandalf to be a little more forthcoming in that regard. He’s closer to them than all the elves are and they trust him, so it might have been a little less jarring coming from him. After all, knowing that your home will inevitably be drawn into the fray is still a good reason to get out there into the world an do something about it.

3. Sorry I’m Acting Like an Ass, Being Resurrected Kinda Futzed With My Memories

You know when you die, but then you’re resurrected in a newer, fancier form? Gandalf seems to leave his compatriots in the Mines of Moria when they startle a Balrog into wakefulness, but the Valar (who are basically the gods of the Middle-earth) bring him back to life with an upgrade: He goes from being Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White, a promotion for him and an intentional demotion to old head of the wizard order, Saruman the White (because he’s been hanging out with the bad kids, making nastier soldiers and ripping up forests). While Gandalf’s friends are delighted to see him returned, they are a bit perplexed by his manner when he arrives. Namely the fact that he doesn’t seem to care much about any of them despite their previously ingrained bonds of fellowship.

Turns out being brought back to life makes you forget the previous one for a bit. But rather than making that clear from the get-go, Gandalf just goes around being full of purpose and utterly dismissive of his comrades. It would have taken him literally ten seconds to correct this. I understand that wizards are kinda the kings of brevity in all places where you wish they weren’t, but this would have prevented a whole lot of head-scratching and assumable hurt feelings. “Sorry, I don’t really remember you that well right now! Give me, like, a week. I promise I’ll care about you then.” Being dead is weird, coming back is weirder, but your friends are still your friends.

4. Peregrin Took, You Should Not Touch the Palantir BECAUSE IT’S EVIL

This one is pretty obvious because Gandalf even admits that he screwed up. He took the Palantir from Saurman and told Pippin not to look at it… but he gave no explanation as to why that would be important. None whatsoever. To Pippin. The baby of the group. The one he constantly decries for being foolish and clumsy and thoughtless. The member of the Fellowship who seems to distill all the hobbit potential for curiosity into one pint-sized package. And Gandalf just says “No don’t touch that thing because I said so.”

Really? It would have taken too many words just to say “Hey, this thing is super dangerous and will lead the enemy right to us.” Would it have been so hard to give Peregrin Took the tools he needed not to wreck everything? Fool of a Took indeed. Methinks the wizard doth protest to much and should maybe take a look in the mirror next time.

5. LOL After I Take This Horse, No One Else Will Be Able to Ride Him

We’ve established that Gandalf is a fan of doing his own thing without letting people onto his plans, but then there’s the matter of Shadowfax. You know. The lord of horses. The greatest equine in the history of Rohan and all its horse-riding peoples. Gandalf has a moment where he needs some help from King Théoden, and asks if he can borrow a ride for the next part of his journey. And Théoden is very chill about this request and kindly tells old Stormcrow that he can pick a horse and be on his way. So Gandalf picks the greatest of the lot without telling anyone that he plans to do so, and speeds away on the fly-est horse that Rohan has ever known.

It gets better, though. Because Gandalf isn’t a man, he’s a Maiar—essentially an angel in human form. (I am aware that it’s more complex than that, don’t @ me Tolkien fans.) And because he’s such a fancy, special guy, Shadowfax decides that mere humans are not good enough for him anymore. So not only did Gandalf broadly interpret Théoden’s offer by nabbing a horse that he should have respectfully let alone, but after he brings said horse back no one else can ride him. (Unless Gandalf asks him to. Really nicely.) Shadowfax is spoiled for riders now that he has been in Gandalf’s presence for long enough. You might as well give him the horse after that, which Théoden does, presumably because it’s easier than getting into a fight with an angel-wizard.

That’s kind of a dick move, Mithrandir.

Emily Asher-Perrin adores Gandalf, which makes her wonder why it is so satisfying to call him a jerk. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

The Hobbit isn’t as good a book as The Lord of the Rings. It’s a children’s book, for one thing, and it talks down to the reader. It’s not quite set in Middle-earth—or if it is, then it isn’t quite set in the Third Age. It isn’t pegged down to history and geography the way The Lord of the Rings is. Most of all, it’s a first work by an immature writer; journeyman work and not the masterpiece he would later produce. But it’s still an excellent book. After all, it’s not much of a complaint to say that something isn’t as good as the best book in the world.

If you are fortunate enough to share a house with a bright six year old, or a seven or eight year old who still likes bedtime stories, I strongly recommend reading them a chapter of The Hobbit aloud every night before bed. It reads aloud brilliantly, and when you do this it’s quite clear that Tolkien intended it that way. I’ve read not only The Hobbit but The Lord of the Rings aloud twice, and had it read to me once. The sentences form the rhythms of speech, the pauses are in the right place, they fall well on the ear. This isn’t the case with a lot of books, even books I like. Many books were made to be read silently and fast. The other advantage of reading it aloud is that it allows you to read it even after you have it memorised and normal reading is difficult. It will also have the advantage that the child will encounter this early, so they won’t get the pap first and think that’s normal.

I first read The Hobbit when I was eight. I went on to read The Lord of the Rings immediately afterwards, with the words “Isn’t there another one of those around here?” What I liked about The Hobbit that first time through was the roster of adventures. It seemed to me a very good example of a kind of children’s book with which I was familiar—Narnia, of course, but also the whole set of children’s books in which children have magical adventures and come home safely. It didn’t occur to me that it had been written before a lot of them—I had no concept as a child that things were written in order and could influence each other. The Hobbit fit into a category with At the Back of the North Wind and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and half of E. Nesbit.

The unusual thing about The Hobbit for me was that Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit and a grown up. He had his own charming and unusual house and he indulged in grown up pleasures like smoking and drinking. He didn’t have to evade his parents to go off on an adventure. He lived in a world where there were not only dwarves and elves and wizards but signs that said “Expert treasure hunter wants a good job, plenty of excitement and reasonable reward.” He lived a life a child could see as independent, with people coming to tea unexpectedly and with dishes to be done afterwards (this happened in our house all the time), but without any of the complicated adult disadvantages of jobs and romance. Bilbo didn’t want an adventure, but an adventure came and took him anyway. And it is “There and Back Again,” at the end he returns home with treasure and the gift of poetry.

Of course, The Lord of the Rings isn’t “another one of those.” Reading The Lord of the Rings immediately afterwards was like being thrown into deep magical water which I fortunately learned to breathe, but from which I have never truly emerged.

Reading The Hobbit now is odd. I can see all the patronizing asides, which were the sort of thing I found so familiar in children’s books that I’m sure they were quite invisible to me. I’ve read it many times between now and then, of course, including twice aloud, but while I know it extremely well I’ve never read it quite so obsessively that the words are carved in my DNA. I can find a paragraph I’d forgotten was there and think new thoughts when I’m reading it. That’s why I picked it up, though it wasn’t what I really wanted—but what I really wanted, I can’t read any more.

I notice all the differences between this world and the LOTR version of Middle-earth. I noticed how reluctant Tolkien is to name anything here—the Hill, the Water, the Great River, the Forest River, Lake Town, Dale—and this from the master namer. His names creep in around the edges—Gondolin, Moria, Esgaroth—but it’s as if he’s making a real effort to keep it linguistically simple. I find his using Anglo-Saxon runes instead of his own runes on the map unutterably sweet—he thought they’d be easier for children to read. (At eight, I couldn’t read either. At forty-five, I can read both.)

Now, my favourite part is the end, when things become morally complex. Then I don’t think I understood that properly. I understood Thorin’s greed for dragon gold—I’d read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and I knew how that worked. What puzzled me was Bilbo’s use of the Arkenstone, which seemed treacherous, especially as it didn’t even work. Bilbo didn’t kill the dragon, and the introduction of Bard at that point in the story seemed unprecedentedly abrupt—I wonder why Tolkien didn’t introduce him earlier, in the Long Lake chapter? But it’s Bilbo’s information that allows the dragon to be killed, and that’s good enough for me, then or now.

Tolkien is wonderful at writing that hardest of all things to write well, the journey. It really feels as if he understands time and distance and landscape. Adventures come at just the right moments. Mirkwood remains atmospheric and marvellous. The geography comes in order that’s useful for the story, but it feels like real geography.

Noticing world differences, I’m appalled at how casually Bilbo uses the Ring, and surprised how little notice everyone else pays to it—as if such things are normal. Then it was just a magic ring, like the one in The Enchanted Castle. The stone giants—were they ents? They don’t seem quite ent-ish to me. What’s up with that? And Beorn doesn’t quite seem to fit anywhere either, with his performing animals and were-bearness.

The oddest thing about reading The Hobbit now is how (much more than The Lord of the Rings) it seems to be set in the fantasyland of roleplaying games. It’s a little quest, and the dwarves would have taken a hero if they could have found one, they make do with a burglar. There’s that sign. The encounters come just as they’re needed. Weapons and armour and magic items get picked up along the way. Kill the trolls, find a sword. Kill the dragon, find armour. Finish the adventure, get chests of gold and silver.

One more odd thing I noticed this time for the first time. Bilbo does his own washing up. He doesn’t have servants. Frodo has Sam, and Gaffer Gamgee, too. But while Bilbo is clearly comfortably off, he does his own cooking and baking and cleaning. This would have been unprededentedly eccentric for someone of his class in 1938. It’s also against gender stereotypes—Bilbo had made his own seedcakes, as why shouldn’t he, but in 1938 it was very unusual indeed for a man to bake. Bilbo isn’t a man, of course, he isn’t a middle class Englishman who would have had a housekeeper, he is a respectable hobbit. But I think because the world has changed to make not having servants and men cooking seem relatively normal we don’t notice that these choices must have been deliberate.

People often talk about how few women there are in LOTR. The Hobbit has none, absolutely none. I think the only mentions of women are Belladonna Took, Bilbo’s mother (dead before the story starts) Thorin’s sister, mother of Fili and Kili, and then Bilbo’s eventual nieces. We see no women on the page, elf, dwarf, human, or hobbit. But I didn’t miss them when I was eight and I don’t miss them now. I had no trouble identifying with Bilbo. This is a world without sex, except for misty reproductive purposes, and entirely without romance. Bilbo is such a bachelor that it doesn’t even need mentioning that he is—because Bilbo is in many ways a nominally adult child.

I think Bilbo is ambiguously gendered. He’s always referred to as “he,” but he keeps house and cooks, he isn’t brave except at a pinch—he’s brave without being at all macho, nor is his lack of machismo deprecated by the text, even when contrasted with the martial dwarves. Bilbo’s allowed to be afraid. He has whole rooms full of clothes. There’s a lot of the conventionally feminine in Bilbo, and there’s a reading here in which Bilbo is a timid houseproud cooking hostess who discovers more facets on an adventure. (I’m sure I could do something with the buttons popping off too if I tried hard enough.) Unlike most heroes, it really wouldn’t change Bilbo at all if you changed his pronoun. Now isn’t that an interesting thought to go rushing off behind without even a pocket handkerchief?

This article was originally published in September 2010.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published a collection of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections and thirteen novels, including the Hugo and Nebula winning Among Others. Her most recent book is Thessaly. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

Welcome to the Silmarillion Primer, wherein I discuss, praise, and adoringly poke fun at J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal work in a series of essays, spanning twenty or so installments, as a prep for its would-be readers. I’d warn you that there will be spoilers, but honestly, spoilers just aren’t a thing to the good professor and he sure wouldn’t have cared (hey man, Frodo lives!). But more on that later.

They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars…. This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore.

Thus spoke Elrond in 1937’s The Hobbit, which turns eighty years old this week. He name-dropped Gondolin again in 1954’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Yet it would be another twenty-three years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s readers got the full story of that ancient Elven city and the other previously-alluded-to mysteries of the Elder Days. And so very much more.

The Silmarillion, a text Tolkien had been working on most of his life, is a hot mess of a masterpiece. Even in its vast world-building brilliance, it is merely, as he called it, “a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity,” and it’s essentially Middle-earth’s origin story. Fans of his legendarium owe much to Christopher Tolkien for bringing it all together, since his father did not live to see it completed himself. In fact, after The Hobbit’s success, Tolkien pitched The Silmarillion to his publisher but they rejected it almost on principle, since they really just wanted more hobbit stories.

But he never gave up, never stopped working on it. After his death, and presented with his father’s august but many-layered and often inconsistent drafts and notes, Christopher had his work cut out for him. As he explains in the Foreword:

I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative.

And what a narrative it is! Anyone who’s tackled The Silmarillion at least once can tell you that it can be intimidating. There’s no question. Some who have attempted to read it have called it boring, dry, “a slog.” The language is often archaic, the chronology less than intuitive, the timescale enormous; and the character and place names are hilariously legion. But those who’ve made it through, especially those who’ve gone back to read it again out of sheer love for the world and its lore, know what a treasure trove it really becomes. I say becomes because you can miss a lot on the first (or second, or even tenth) go-round. Then, of course, to many of us it’s anything but boring. What starts as a stumbling block, that rich language, becomes as poetry—half the story is the art of language itself.

To be sure, The Silmarillion is not a novel in the way we’re used to; it doesn’t resemble The Lord of the Rings very much in structure or even style, except perhaps in dialogue. It’s more like fantastic nonfiction, or like a history book that might be shelved in the library of Rivendell. Yet even the historical bits are interspersed with novel-like segments. The narrative often pans out—way out—offering a god’s-eye-view of all existence and spanning huge swaths of time in just a few passages, then at unexpected moments slows down, zooms in close, and observes the very words and manners of its heroes and villains.

My answer to the challenge posed by this seemingly ancient tome is this very Primer. I’ll help you weave through the lofty language and highlight the names most worth remembering. This is not a reread or a thorough analysis of the text. (There are some excellent places to find those out there already.) This is—for lack of a better word—a prelude or pre-read aimed mostly at casual Tolkien fans. I hope to convince you to dive deep into its “dim waters of the pathless sea,” walk its treacherous and “clashing hills of ice,” and defy its “dark nets of strangling gloom” with me.

In my humble opinion, The Silmarillion is fantasy of the highest order, a great drama unfolding beneath the “wheeling fires” of the universe and set “in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of innumerable stars,” a world simultaneously like and unlike our own. And for those of you who are familiar with Tolkien’s creation myths already—those who have seen the light of the Trees—I hope this will be a fun refresher for you.

The Silmarillion is many things, and contains an almost incalculable number of themes, lessons, and beautiful/astonishing/terrible characters. But if I had to really boil it down to its bones, I’d say it’s this: the story of a world wrought by an omniscient and flawless Creator with the help of many flawed sub-creators who are wise but not all-knowing. Despite the book’s sumptuous yet daunting language and larger-than-life heroes, it’s imbued with all-too-familiar patterns of human behavior—even in its nonhumans. There’s always this perception floating around that Tolkien’s world is black and white, that his good guys are all goody-two-shoes, that his villains are too simplistically evil. And I can kind of see where this idea comes from in The Lord of the Rings, even if I disagree, but my immediate reaction to that is always: “Oh, they probably haven’t read The Silmarillion, then.”

Sure, The Silmarillion has its share of virtuous Aragorns and Faramirs and it definitely has its dominate-everyone-LOL Sauron types (including actual Sauron), but most of its characters wade through a murky spectrum of honor, pride, loyalty, and greed. Heroes fall into evil, good guys turn against each other, high-born kings turn out to be dicks, and powerful spirits tempted by evil may either repent of it or double down. It’s all there.

Oh, and lest I forget: The Silmarillion features fantasy literature’s most epic of jewel heists. Hell, the whole thing is a string of gem thefts. The titular gemstones, the Silmarils, are both like and unlike the One Ring we know and love. They’re coveted by pretty much everyone and inspire some truly dastardly deeds, yet they are of somewhat divine origin. Not intrinsically corrupting like Sauron’s ring, they do not possess the malice of their maker, and in fact are hallowed, scorching “anything of evil will” that touches them. In Tolkien’s world, the Silmarils are both MacGuffins and Chekhovian guns. Off the page, they motivate people to run around and do what they do; on the page, you know at some point someone’s going to get burned. Or stabbed. Or slashed. Or have something bitten off. It happens.

And that’s The Silmarillion for you. It’s all shining gems, flashing swords, whips of flame, foul dragon reek, and blood-soaked earth. It has more tragedies than victories, more sorrow than joy, but because it was written by a man of self-conscious faith, it also packs a few eucatastrophic punches. So chin up, good readers: the body count is high, but the payoff is glorious.

Tolkien, by the way, didn’t give a warg’s ass about spoilers. As a culture, we’ve become overly sensitive to the concept in recent years. When I read or hear discussions of Tolkien’s books, I still sometimes hear the “spoiler alert” expression, used either in observance or mockery of this modern day craze. But neither Tolkien nor his son had any such sensitivity. In his Foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien casually refers to Sauron’s annihilation at the end. If you wanted to keep from knowing certain plot developments in this book, you’re kind of out of luck. He’s going to “spoil” them for you, and once you start to pick up on this tendency, it gets downright humorous—never mind how many appear in the chapter titles themselves. Anyway, if you didn’t already know that the One Ring indeed gets destroyed at the end of LotR, then I’m guessing you’re also not sure just yet about Luke Skywalker’s parentage, who Keyser Söze is, or why Snape is such a jerk to Harry Potter the whole the time. Oh, and the walrus was Paul.

One thing a reader might wonder once they dive into The Silmarillion is: Whose account is this exactly? Is the narrator both objective and omniscient? Sometimes it feels distinctly like an Elf’s point of view. Well, it’s lightly implied in the LotR Prologue, then later supported by Tolkien himself in notes and letters, that within Middle-earth, the Baggins’s Red Book of the Westmarch—which details the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as written by the hobbits—also includes Elvish legends of old, which means some or all of the events detailed in The Silmarillion. Alternatively, consider this excerpt from Morgoth’s Ring (Vol 10 of The History of Middle-earth), wherein Christopher Tolkien shares more of his father’s behind-the-scenes intel:

What we have in ‘Silmarillion’ etc. are traditions . . . handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor); but already far back—from the first association of the Dúnedain and Elf-friends with the Eldar in Beleriand—blended and confused with their own Mannish myths and cosmic ideas.

And there we have it; Elvish POV but as passed down by mortals and translated by hobbits, perhaps even characterized by their own imperfections. And all of this is mere myth, after all. But to Tolkien, myth was meaningful, illuminating, relevant. Much more can be said about his stance on fantasy and myth, much more, but…another time. For now, consider that now more than ever before, Tolkien’s fairy-stories can provide the perfect escape. Not from real life—because God knows, The Silmarillion has its share of anguish and mourning alongside its triumphs and joys. I mean, rather, escape from whatever keeps us from from keeping our heads: political cobwebs, social blinders, or whatever snake oil the profiteers of the modern world are peddling. Escape from whatever current discord troubles us.

Speaking of discord, the first installment of the Primer will discuss the Ainulindalë, the introductory creation myth chapter in The Silmarillion, on October 4th.

Jeff LaSala is a production editor and freelance writer who can’t leave Middle-earth well enough alone. He also wrote some sci-fi/fantasy books and now works for Tor Books.

In Which Ilúvatar, After Creating the World, Presents Specific-Yet-Vague Plans for the Future, and Melkor Becomes a Rebel Without Probable Cause

The Ainulindalë—“the Music of the Ainur” in Elvish—is a kind of prelude story to The Silmarillion proper. It’s the literal beginning to the legendarium, and though it’s only a few pages long, there’s a lot packed in there! For an author famous for long passages and rich detail, J.R.R. Tolkien does a surprisingly good job at concision with his ancient history. With so much foundational material to grasp—and much of it important for future chapters—I am therefore only going to talk about the Ainulindalë in this article.

To start off, if you can pronounce Ainulindalë (eye-noo-LINN-da-lay), you’re already in great shape…

Dramatis personæ of note:

• Ilúvatar – the One, the creator of all
• Melkor – an Ainu, the most gifted (and rebellious) of them all
• Ulmo – an Ainu who sure likes water
• Manwë – an Ainu, air enthusiast
• Aulë – an Ainu, into earth and making things

Ainulindalë

Things get underway in a very Genesis-like fashion; in fact, the earlier the chapter, the more biblical everything sounds. In the very first sentence, we meet the legendarium’s one and only all-powerful god, Eru, the One. But Eru is just how he signs his name. He’ll actually go by Ilúvatar (ill-OOH-vah-tar) among the Elves, and therefore us. But I’m getting ahead of myself, as there are no Elves yet. And I say “he” because the narrator uses such pronouns, but gender itself seems to be a trait of the world—and there is no world yet. You’ll see.

Presumably because no one else existing is rather dull, Ilúvatar makes the Ainur (EYE-noor) from his very thought. The Ainur (singular, Ainu) are entities reminiscent of both archangels and polytheistic deities, as they are divine beings of enormous power who will assist Ilúvatar in the creation of the universe and help oversee its future. We don’t know many of them there are—hundreds, millions, who can say?—but by the end of this section we will be concerned only with a dozen of them. And of those, only a few are even named in the Ainulindalë.

Though there is apparently no familial bond between the Ainur and their maker, I cannot help but see Ilúvatar as something of a godparent, or maybe foster parent, or even benefactor. I hesitate to say father, for reasons I’ll get to shortly. He cares for the Ainur and invests power and trust in them—desiring their company and their artistry for what he’s planning. He lets them dwell with him in the Timeless Halls, which must be some prime real estate indeed, considering there is nothing but a great Void everywhere else.

Music as power is a recurring concept in The Silmarillion, especially in creation itself. And though Ilúvatar loves music, he doesn’t do any singing himself. Rather, he is the composer, the muse, and the audience. He gives the Ainur vocal themes to sing, writ not on sheet music but within them, kindled like a “secret fire” by the Flame Imperishable. Think of that as the ultimate cosmic power source. (And yes, it’s the same Secret Fire referenced by a certain wizard on the bridge of Khazad-dûm.) Thus empowered, the Ainur can now “adorn” the musical themes he has given them, and Ilúvatar requests that they sing to him while he listens—if they wish to.

Wait—if?

Well, yes. Possessing the free will to choose—in this particular case, to sing or not to sing—is going to be a huge recurring motif throughout The Silmarillion. And this is no mere illusion of choice, either: sometimes the “wrong” decision is actually made and consequences unfold accordingly. But here we see, from the get-go, that the Ainur do elect to sing the themes that Ilúvatar has given them. They want to. And they find that when they sing, they hear and thereby learn more about each other.

Now, the Music of the Ainur is not some lockstep chorus, but the mother of all jam sessions. Ilúvatar has presented the themes, but he’s left each Ainu to improvise, harmonize, and experiment however they wish, as long as it’s in accordance with those themes. If one Ainu desires a folk rock version of the theme, then soft and melancholic it shall be; if another finds heavy metal truer to their hearts, then darker and graver that same theme shall be. Ilúvatar likes rock either way, is what I’m saying. He wants the Ainur to be individuals, to express themselves, to be artists in the Music. I can’t stress that enough, because those differences are going to take shape in the world to come.

Interestingly, the Ainur are effectively “blind.” But it’s fine, as all of this is playing out in a great Void, where there is nothing but the dwellings of Ilúvatar and the Ainur and their music—and that music spills out into the Void, making it less so. They still perceive each other and Ilúvatar, and can obviously hear as with ears, but they are bodiless, spiritual beings. And time doesn’t really exist yet as we understand it. Heck, the universe itself doesn’t exist yet. But what does exist so far—and the Music of the Ainur—is perfect, flawless, and Ilúvatar seems pleased.

But every great story must have conflict, right?

“Spoiler” Alert: There’s really only one passage that peeks far ahead into the future. Speaking of this great music, we are told:

Never since have the Ainur made any music like to this music, though it has been said that a greater still shall be made before Ilúvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Ilúvatar shall give to their thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased.

So, if the themes of Ilúvatar are going to be “played aright,” then I guess that means you know they’re going to go awrong first. Not too spoilery, as spoilers ago, since one paragraph later, we’re introduced to the instigator of all that goes wrong.

Thus do we meet Melkor, one of the Ainu, and kind of a prodigy among them. We are told he has at times gone off into the Void alone in search of the Flame Imperishable, seeking it as if it were some Pac-man Power Pellet floating all by itself for the taking. In going off alone, Melkor has developed some ideas and desires that are not quite in line with those of the other Ainur. He wants to make things of his own, independent from the boss, wanting the Void to not be so void. He is, at the first, impatient. He won’t be the only Ainu to exhibit impatience about creating things—and his impulse to create is not necessarily a bad thing in itself—but he will be the only one to carry it to a terrible conclusion.

Melkor fails to find the Flame Imperishable—because of course it’s with Ilúvatar alone—so he tries to assert his ego in the music itself. He’s powerful and a jack-of-all-trades; we are told he has “a share in all the gifts of his brethren.” And though he’s been singing with the others, Melkor now wishes to stand above them. He is the student not content with being the most talented; he also needs to be team captain, prom king, prom queen, and valedictorian. So he begins to deviate in his singing, adding his own selfish thoughts to it. He strays from Ilúvatar’s theme, not because he thinks a face-melting solo will totally impress the others—that would almost be okay, if it was just to make them happier—but because he wishes to increase his own glory. He must upstage, outshine, be acknowledged as greater than the rest. Melkor is the ultimate Me Monster.

He brings discord to the music of the Ainur. It disturbs those around him, making them falter in their own singing, and it grows louder and louder, becoming infectious. Some of his fellow Ainur even start to attune themselves to his deviant melodies like a particularly nasty earworm. It becomes increasingly disruptive as it grows, and like a “raging storm” the discord eventually roars around Ilúvatar’s own throne. It might be tempting to sympathize with Melkor as a nonconformist, to regard him as simply thinking outside the box—but as we’ll see, that’s not really the problem. It’s that Melkor wants to own the box.

Ilúvatar does not scold Melkor for his transgressions yet. He has placed trust in the Ainur, after all, and does not prevent them from doing what they will, even if that means allowing disharmony. Ilúvatar smiles like a patient elder and responds to the discord by initiating a new song, a second theme that swells and increases the power of the whole. And Melkor, spiteful little brat that he is, fights this one, too. He needs to be the best, to be shown as mightier than his creator. The whole thing becomes a war of sound so cacophonous that some of the other Ainur stop altogether, too bothered to continue.

Ilúvatar thus prompts a third theme in the Music, which is especially momentous and foreshadows events to come:

This one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.

“Beauty from sorrow” is worth remembering. Though Melkor’s music tries to drown that third theme out, his “most triumphant notes” are actually woven right back into Ilúvatar’s own. But it does seem like Melkor has managed to at least piss Ilúvatar off, though that may be overstating it. By whatever means the Ainur can perceive, Ilúvatar’s face becomes “terrible to behold” and it is clear that he has had enough. He halts the music suddenly, right after an epic crescendo.

Ilúvatar addresses the Ainur now, reminding them who they are—who he is—and informs them that he will now show them what all their singing has been for. And then, specifically addressing Melkor, he drives home a particular point which will also be well worth remembering in chapters to come:

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

Which is to say, “Know that whatever you even think of started with me first. Whatever deviation or evil you make in days to come I will use to enact even better things, things that will blow your mind.” Melkor, like a scolded kid, is shamed but quietly harbors anger. He does not ask forgiveness, he does not repent. He just broods and pouts. He certainly never takes Ilúvatar’s “shall prove but mine instrument” statement to heart. He will only try again and again to exert his own will upon events.

After this, Ilúvatar gives the Ainur the power of sight, and reveals to them a great vision. As if in a huge metaphorical classroom, he flips off the lights, turns on the projector, and plays for them a holy-crap-totally-amazing movie. It’s like watching a film adaptation of their music! The music was not for mere entertainment, as they might have thought, but has provided the blueprints for the universe itself—for the World with a capital “W”—which Ilúvatar will soon make “globed amid the Void.”

Hmm. Time for a helpful sticky note to keep some terms straight.

Let’s change the metaphor a bit. Like space rebels looking at a holographic schematic of a moon-sized battle station—only way bigger, more lovely, filled with bright and colorful creatures, and intended not for destroying but for designing—the Ainur gaze upon this vision with wonder. They can see now what their thoughts, their artistry, their musical imaginations, will become when the World is made manifest. Ilúvatar has given all the Ainur a hand in creation, though the actual creation hasn’t happened quite yet. He goes on to talk to them, and from his words they inherit the wisdom and foresight that we will henceforth associate with the Ainur—that which makes them godlike in knowledge compared to all other peoples. Through Ilúvatar’s narration over this vision, they even see the future history of the World unfold. This will give them foresight—but it’s not complete, nor fully predetermined; what they’re looking at is still just a hologram, a pre-production film.

It is in this vision, this glorious animated PowerPoint presentation, that the Ainur first begin to see other things that they had not imagined, things that come from Ilúvatar directly and not from their individual contributions. Most importantly, this is where they first glimpse the Children of Ilúvatar—the catch-all term for both Elves and Men, the peoples fated to populate the coming world, each in their own time.

Note that the Ainur themselves are not called Ilúvatar’s “children”: the relationship between their creator and these two distinct classes of beings is not the same. While the Ainur will always be mightier than both Men and Elves by a long shot, the Children of Ilúvatar still present a great mystery to them precisely because they are not like them. The Children are exotic, alien, and seem to reflect parts of their maker that the Ainur have not understood. And this fascinates them. Which makes sense—aren’t things different from us usually intriguing? Who doesn’t love a good mystery?

The Ainur are wowed by these (still hypothetical) Children and feel an immediate affection for them. Ilúvatar tells them that he has chosen a specific place for these Men and Elves to live, “in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of innumerable stars”—which is to say, the Earth. Arda, it will be called, a much smaller habitation within the vastness of the universe. Immediately, a bunch of the Ainur desire to go to this place and get involved with these strange new beings. Of these, who do you think is the most anxious to go?

Why it’s Melkor, who had wanted to create things of his own to govern—after all, this may be the next best thing! Tragically, he lies even to himself at first, claiming that he simply wants to go down and make things right again, to “order all things for the good of the Children of Ilúvatar.” Sound legit? Of course, what Melkor really wants is to have servants, “to be called Lord, and to be a master over other wills.”

Ilúvatar makes a few interesting points about the nature of the World they’d helped to shape, and here we are introduced to three more of the Ainur who will play major roles in upcoming events: Ulmo, Manwë, and Aulë. Ulmo’s voice in the Music had focused on the concept of water, so that will become his forte. Winds and air had been Manwë’s aerial style, so he’ll have mastery over those. And the substance of the earth itself, like rocks and soil, had been Aulë’s—let’s say percussive—contribution, so he’ll get to shape those in ages to come. But because of Melkor’s earlier discord, dangerous extremes of weather and temperature have also been introduced into nature, things like “bitter cold immoderate” and “heats and fire without restraint.” Still, Ilúvatar assures the Ainur that because of such extremes, other wonderful things can and will happen—the cold allows for snow, which can be beautiful, along with “the cunning work of frost.” Fire creates steam from water, vapor collects into clouds in the air—now the skies can look more awesome!

Ilúvatar’s point is that the results of Melkor’s meddling can be worked with, and right away the other Ainur become excited at all the possibilities; Ulmo and Manwë will even have a bromance over the many ways their elements can intermingle. It’s interesting to note, however, that in the mind of Ilúvatar, Melkor and Manwë are as brothers. Here, then, is a familial bond of sorts that predates any actual genetics, though their relationship will play out more like sibling rivalry than anything else.

Anyway, at this point, Ilúvatar switches off the vision abruptly, ending it before its full runtime. And this means that while the Ainur have learned much of what will come to pass, or could come to pass, they don’t know everything. They don’t know how it’s all going to end. They didn’t even get to the part of history where Men are supposed to take over on Earth and Elves reach their ultimate decline. Ilúvatar is keeping that ending to himself, for now.

So yes, the End of the World is under wraps. It’s the final act, the final reel, that even the Ainur don’t get to see. So neither do we. Welcome, reader, to the human condition—am I right?

But seeing the Ainur so anxious to begin, Ilúvatar calls out “Eä!”—simultaneously naming and creating the entire universe according to the vision. And within that universe, the tiny little Earth, Arda, is also formed. Now at last—yes, after all the hoopla and hypotheticals—actual existence has come to be, and now the Void and the Timeless Halls aren’t the only things around. Instead of being nearly everything, the Void is just a place outside of Eä (AY-ah).

With both Eä and Arda now in existence, those Ainu most eager to enter it—fourteen of the mightiest Ainur—now come forward. Ilúvatar will make them custodians of this world, but only on the condition that they’re in it for the long haul. There’s no going back. When Arda’s time is done—however many ages that will be—only then will they be released from this service.

And so these fourteen volunteers become the Valar, the Powers of the World, and down they go…

Universe not to scale.

And as soon as they’re in, they’re caught off guard. It’s in a very raw state. Whaaaa? Sure, they recognize it—yeah, this is the place they’d seen in that cool vision—but it’s not fully formed yet. It’s like unbaked clay still in need of shaping. But the Valar (singular, Vala) are nothing if not industrious and optimistic—particularly the three elemental buddies Ulmo, Manwë, and Aulë, who spearhead the operation. Of course, Melkor is here, too, and he tooootally for sure wants to help. He’s actually rather pleased to see it in this uncooked condition. Straightaway he starts meddling with the others’ work, spoiling it. He’s the most powerful Ainu, remember. And delighted to see that Arda was “yet young and full of flame,”

he said to the other Valar: ‘This shall be my own kingdom; and I name it unto myself!’

Basically, Melkor is doing what a bully does when they reaching the sandbox first. “Mine! I called it first! And I licked it. All mine.”

Which is a no-no, if Manwë has anything to say about it. In fact, Manwë will be given the very role that Melkor really wants for himself: King of the Valar and lord of Arda. Manwë then summons spirits—beings lesser than he, some being other Ainur, some not—to help him deal with the Melkor problem. (“The Melkor Problem” could very well be a nickname for the entire First Age of Middle-earth, as we will see.)

Because they’re in the World now, the Valar can take physical shapes. There was no need to , before, and sure, they can still go about invisibly, bodiless, whenever they choose. But now they choose Earth-like forms for themselves. Since their love for the Children of Ilúvatar had inspired them in the first place, they select shapes reminiscent of those they’d seen in the vision. Remember, though, that the Children haven’t appeared yet, so for any given Vala it’s still just guesswork as to what Men and Elves will really look like. Certainly the Vala will have humanoid features, and the text does describe some specifics in the next chapter.

Then there is this:

But when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby.

Gender is an artifact of the World, and so the Valar choose to manifest in body according to their core temperament. It’s marvelously philosophical despite being such a short passage, but it’s still open to our interpretation. The Valar do not procreate, are not of the World itself and therefore have no biological connection to nature, yet we will also see some of them—not all—join with one another as spouses…though its possible these bonds began much sooner. Still, these things are established later on.

Like gods in pantheistic mythologies, the Valar can choose forms either splendorous or terrible. Even Melkor has a choice, but his temperament and his malice naturally lends itself to a horrific form. And he makes sure to appear in greater majesty than his brethren…

as a mountain that wades in the sea and has its head above the clouds and is clad in ice and crowned with smoke and fire; and the light of the eyes of Melkor was like a flame that withers heat and pierces with a deadly cold.

Melkor splits from the other Valar and makes war against their labors. He is impotent to create new things but is highly skilled at corrupting what has already been made. As the Valar form up the lands of Arda, Melkor breaks them; as they delve, he fills; as they pour, he spills. He is the mightier still, but he is also alone; they are more numerous and they cooperate with one another, working in concert and in harmony as they did in the Music. Slowly, over untold ages that even the Elves cannot account for, Arda comes together and is “made firm” despite Melkor’s sabotage. It’s not fully as the Valar intended, but neither is it a ruin. It is still Arda, but at times will be called Arda Marred.

A final word about the Valar, which may be said of all the Ainur (and we will meet a bunch more in the Valaquenta, our next installment): as powerful spirits formed from the sheer thoughts of Ilúvatar, they can be thought of as vast as the world, yet as fine-tipped as a needle. There is a particularly twisty but fascinating sentence in the Ainulindalë that describes this, but it amounts to referencing both the enormity of a Vala’s power and the precision and interest with which they approach this world they love. Why would such mighty cosmic beings come down into this tiny little world when the universe itself is so vast? Because even small things are of worth. The Valar had fallen in love with the vision, and wanted to keep and protect it, and make it thrive. One might just as well wonder why a wise old wizard would take an interest in a single hobbit.

It can also be asked why Ilúvatar allows the troublemaker Melkor to enter into the World at all. It’s kind of a universal question, isn’t it? Why would an all-powerful god allow discord to exist in the World and spoil its harmony? In the context of Tolkien’s legendarium, it’s not enough to consider the conditions placed upon the Ainur who volunteered to enter it—forever to remain within it, while it lasted. Because then you could say Melkor’s evil could be contained in this way, but when you see what his long term fate will be, you’re left still wondering. So for now, instead consider what “things more wonderful” will be devised in the wake of his deeds?

Read on; we will see some of them some soon.

In two weeks, we’ll take a look at the Valaquenta and “Of the Beginning of Days.”

Top image: “Ainulindale VIII” by E. F. Guillén

Jeff LaSala can’t leave Middle-earth well enough alone. His son has a Quenya middle name, for Eru’s sake. He also wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel and some other sci-fi/RPG books. Oh, and works for Tor Books.

Remember when I said that the map of Middle-earth had 99 problems and mountains were 98 of them? Well, it’s time to talk about that one remaining problem: rivers. I’ll mostly be talking about the Anduin here, since it’s the most major river on the map.

But first: why do I keep coming back to Tolkien? There are a few reasons. Just as Tolkien’s novels have had a massive influence on epic fantasy as a genre, his map is the bad fantasy map that launched a thousand bad fantasy maps—many of which lack even his mythological fig leaf to explain the really eyebrow-raising geography. The things that make me cringe about the geography of Middle-earth are still echoing in the ways we imagine and construct fantasy worlds today.

But also, perhaps more importantly, Tolkien is no longer with us. He’s far beyond caring that I don’t like his invented geography even if I do like his books. I’d much rather use him as an example than pick on the map of someone who is alive and able to feel attacked by my loving annoyance at the placement of their fjords.

Or the incomprehensible courses of their rivers—or rather, the oddities of the drainage basins that feed the rivers. When you’ve studied sedimentary geological processes for any length of time, the idea of your basin—the not-really bowl-shaped-except-in-the-most-general-sense area that is a low surrounded by highs from which water drains and carries its sediment load—is all-important. Rivers are created and fed water and sediment by their drainage basins, and have their own lives that develop over time.

To quote Anderson and Anderson in their seminal textbook Geomorphology: The Mechanics and Chemistry of Landscapes:

…Because water flows through landscapes, it is a great integrator. It is for this reason that most geomorphologists view the drainage basin, the total area that contributes runoff to a given cross section of a river, as a fundamental unit of landscapes… This method of parsing up landscapes is so common that areas lacking regularly branching rivers and well-defined divides (sensible drainage basins) are considered “deranged.” (349)

So what is it about the mighty Anduin that makes me tilt my head like a dog hearing a high-pitched noise? There are four main factors, in ascending order based on how easily I’m able to mentally excuse each point.

It cuts across two mountain ranges.

There is one fact you really need to understand to grasp the basics of how rivers work. Ready? Water flows downhill. That’s it. That’s the secret. Water flows downhill, and as it flows it tends to erode sediment and transport it downstream, and over long enough periods of time, that gets us our classic V-shaped river valleys and a ton of other morphological features. Which is why, when a river is on a collision course with mountains—normally places where the elevation goes up—you have to stare at it for a minute.

This is the easiest oddity for me to find an excuse for—because it is actually something that happens in reality! For example, the Colorado River cuts pretty much perpendicularly through the entire Basin and Range Province of North America. And the reason this works is because the Colorado was here before all that extensional tectonic silliness happened and the basins started dropping down from the ranges—and that process of down-drop was slow enough, relative to the ability of the Colorado to cut its own channel, that the river didn’t get permanently trapped in one of the basins.

So if we make the assumption that the Anduin existed before the mountains—and assume that the mountains uplifted in a natural way, thank you—it’s very possible for it to have cut down fast enough to maintain its course despite uplift. (Keep this in mind, we’ll be coming back to it later…)

Where are the tributaries?

Rivers usually have a dendritic network, which looks sort of a tree in reverse made of flowing water. “First order” streams make the thinnest tips of the network, like the twigs at the very end of branches. The first order streams combine into second order streams, which combine into third order streams, and so on. Stream networks are generally fractal (this is the number one way to artificially generate a realistic-looking drainage pattern), though it should be noted that the fractal nature breaks down when you get to the channel origins of the first-order streams.

It’s very unusual for a large river to split before it reaches baselevel—defined here as the elevation at which a river reaches a relatively still body of water and effectively stops. Baselevel is generally going to be sea level, unless the river is trapped in a local basin. Anyway, at baselevel, rivers tend to fan out into a delta, because they hit a point where the slope is effectively zero and they no longer have the energy necessary to carry their remaining sediment load. This makes little things like the apparent delta of the Entwash where it connects to the Anduin seem really weird, from a geological standpoint, because somehow that stream’s hit its baselevel, but the Anduin continues blithely flowing onward—so obviously there’s some kind of slope going on there. That connection can’t be the Entwash suddenly turning into a braided river either, for similar reasons—the Anduin is still just doing its thing.

Some of this, I can mentally excuse because at some point it becomes a question of map resolution. Most maps, depending on the scale, are only going to show the really high-order streams. So it could just be that a lot of the tributaries are below the resolution of the map.

However, there’s another oddity that leaps out, particularly in relation to the Anduin: it looks like a tree missing half its branches. There are several tributary streams that we see coming off the Misty Mountains to the west… and nothing from the east. This gives the impression that the river isn’t really the lowest available point of its own drainage, or that there’s something really off about the apparent basin that seems to run from the Misty Mountains to the Sea of Rhûn.

What exactly is the Anduin’s drainage basin, anyway?

“Lakes are local drainage problems,” is a geomorphologist joke that is absolutely hilarious if you spend most of your time modeling sediment transport. But what lakes (or little seas, like the Sea of Rhûn and the Sea of Núrnen in Middle-earth) represent is a local baselevel. They indicate the fact that, due to local topography, the drainage has no way of leaving the basin and making it to the ocean… so the water has its own party (in the form of a lake or sea) that’s totally as good as the one going on in the ocean—just smaller.

In light of this information, the Sea of Núrnen actually makes geographical sense because it’s surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges and I’m going to pretend that to the east, just off the map, there’s some other elevated feature that prevents all fluvial escape. So the Sea of Núrnen presumably occupies the lowest available area in the basin and that’s why all the rivers head straight for it.

But then, what is the deal with the Anduin? There’s nothing to indicate some division between its side of the basin and that which is occupied by the Sea of Rhûn, other than that little patch of unnamed mountains to the sea’s west, and the Mountains of Mirkwood, which are a tiny, east-west range. Why do the Carnen and the Celduin bear east instead of joining up with the Anduin? Why does the Forest River, which originates in spitting distance of the Greylin, make a beeline through Mirkwood toward the Celduin instead of joining with the Anduin? Is there an invisible mountain on the western edge of Mirkwood? Did the Forest River and the Anduin have some kind of nasty fight and they’re just not speaking to each other anymore? And what’s the topographic deal with the Brown Lands? As it looks right now, you’ve got a big basin with two completely distinct north-south drainage systems, which is… weird. Really weird.

Now, if there was some kind of topographic high between the two river systems—and there’d be drainage shedding from both sides of that, by the way—that would go a long way to explaining the final issue as well. Which is…

What is with the Anduin’s course?

For much of its run, the Anduin is roughly parallel to the Misty Mountains—it doesn’t really deviate until Lorien, and even then it stays pretty close considering the apparently massive, empty area to its east. This is an odd-looking feature I have seen in many a fantasy map.

So why is it odd? Remember what we covered in point number one? Water flows downhill. And beyond that, it tends to follow the steepest gradient downhill, thanks to gravity. To illustrate what I mean, let’s take a look at a contour map.

Map courtesy of Google Maps. You’ll note that this is a fairly small area we’re looking at (scale in lower right corner) and it’s got about 400m of relief. But what holds true for streams at a smaller scale is going to hold generally true for larger streams. What I want you to note is that the first and second order streams—the tributaries, example marked in red—tend to cut across the elevation contours, nearly perpendicularly. They’re taking the shortest path down the elevation. (You’ll even note that for some of them, the contours point inward toward the stream; this is an erosional feature, meaning the stream has cut into the landscape and made a valley.) The highest order stream is marked in yellow—it’s sitting in the lowest elevation, but still draining downhill. You’ll note that this means it’s going along the foot of the hills…because there’s a hill on the other side of it. It’s effectively trapped in this corridor, which in reality is probably the valley that it’s cut for itself over tens of thousands of years.

You can find big rivers that do appear to run roughly parallel to high relief areas. Such as this section of the Po (top) and Danube (bottom). But the other thing I want you to note is that these rivers have a high relief area on either side of them, relatively close. We’re basically looking at a wide flood plain between two topographic highs. When it’s a situation where you’ve got mountains on one side and a big flat basin on the other, like we see with, say, rivers of the Amazon Basin…

The river just can’t get the hell away from the mountains fast enough.

Rivers want to go out to the baselevel—the lowest point—of their drainage basin. They’ll meander once their gradient gets low enough, for certain. But so long as there’s a downhill slope to be found, they’ll be heading down until they’re as low as they can get. So with no area of higher elevation to the east of the Misty Mountains, by all rights the landscape should be gently sloping downward in that direction—and the river should be following it.

It’s the strange drainage basin issues that ultimately cause me to run out of excuses for the rivers of Middle-earth. Even if you grant the mountains as things created by the Valar doing their Valar-thing—which means my mental excuse for the Anduin cutting through mountain ranges is void—it still looks weird from a geological perspective.

Because unless all of that happened an extremely short time ago (as in less than a couple hundred years), the river would have started to change its course in response to the elevation differentials we see. Rivers are not static things. Water flows downhill, remember? And while it’s running downhill for all its worth, water erodes sediment from one place and dumps it in another. Rivers are constantly cutting and re-cutting new courses for themselves, building new channel levees and bursting through them. Though I suppose one could always argue that water in Middle-earth works differently than it does on Regular Earth, and geomorphology is an invention of Sauron.

Alex Acks is a writer, geologist, Twitter fiend, and dapper AF. Their sweary biker space witch debut novel, Hunger Makes the Wolf, is out now from Angry Robot Books.

As we hurtle toward Halloween, or, as we like to call it, THE GREATEST DAY OF THE YEAR, we were reminded of what may be the greatest Halloween costume in recent memory. All you need is a Nazgûl outfit, a black horse, and an ability to ask after the whereabout of “Baggins” and the “Shire” in a creepy voice. The original costume was created by thespooklock (who has since deleted their Tumblr presence) and as you can see, it’s terrifying. Especially when viewed through that fabulous German Expressionist angle.

Click through for more Nazgûlery!

Now, granted, this costume is probably easier to achieve in a lonely field:

Or a shadowy, not-quite-Fangorn-forest:

But we’d like to imagine a Nazgûl going door-t0-door, asking for the location of the One Ring, and having to accept those Reeses Cups that are supposed to be pumpkin-shaped but actually just look like weird blobs. Maybe he and the other eight Ringwraiths could go all the way over to the rich neighborhood, where every single house gives out King-Sized candy bars instead of the stupid Fun-Size ones, and then maybe they can try to sneak into the cemetery to frighten some goth kids.

You can see the whole post over at reddit!

Update: Amazon Studios has officially acquired global TV rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise. The multi-season epic fantasy TV series will be produced at Amazon Studios with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, publisher HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema. Click through for more information, including potential new storylines to be explored in this series.

According to a press release on November 13, 2017, the Amazon Prime Original series will explore “new storylines preceding” The Fellowship of the Ring:

“The Lord of the Rings is a cultural phenomenon that has captured the imagination of generations of fans through literature and the big screen,” said Sharon Tal Yguado, Head of Scripted Series, Amazon Studios. “We are honored to be working with the Tolkien Estate and Trust, HarperCollins and New Line on this exciting collaboration for television and are thrilled to be taking The Lord of the Rings fans on a new epic journey in Middle Earth.”

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s TheFellowship of the Ring. The deal includes a potential additional spin-off series.

It is unclear if the Amazon series will be solely a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if it will pull any familiar characters from that series, or if it will also retread the same ground as the movie trilogy. Hopefully Amazon will provide updates about the status of the project as development continues.

The original article, below:

According to Variety, Warner Bros. Television and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien are developing a television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with Amazon Studios reportedly in early talks to air the epic fantasy series.

Sources say that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is personally involved in the negotiations, which is unusual for him, but makes sense based on the programming shift that Bezos ordered earlier this year: moving away from “niche, naturalistic series” such as Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle toward “large-scale genre programming”—that is, toward a Game of Thrones successor.

We don’t know much else for the moment, though TheOneRing.net has provided a history of the transfer of movie, television, and other rights from the Tolkien estate to various production companies and studios. They also cite Deadline’s report, which says that Netflix and HBO were also approached about the deal but that the latter dropped out, while the former is still potentially in the running.

“Plus,” Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva notes, “I hear that the rights for a TV series in the Lord of the Rings do not encompass all characters and are limited.”

And, lest we forget, there are already three movies adapted from the original trilogy, and three more from The Hobbit. Would you want to see The Lord of the Rings as an epic fantasy TV series?

It looks like Amazon has their wallets set on adapting some tales and adventures in Middle-earth, this time for the smaller screen. While the new series will focus on Middle-earth tales outside the main Lord of the Rings arc, we thought it’d be more fun to speculate about what might happen if they had to recast the whole crew from LOTR. What would that even look like today? And who could appropriately fill Elijah Wood’s, well, not shoes… hairy foot prosthetics?

We have some thoughts, of course.

Note: Keep in mind, we’re trying to pick actors who we think would be open to television, and there are many parts that we came up with more than one actor for. We’re going by previous film rules that the hobbits have to be shorter for the perspective shots.

We should probably start with the Fellowship and go from there, yes? Okay, let’s do this:

Frodo Baggins

Either one of these guys.

Daniel Radcliffe

Obviously this is a joke about how people somehow constantly mix up Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood. But also… Daniel Radcliffe could easily play this part. He’s already got one epic fantasy series tuck under his belt where he went through an emotional wringer. He could do it again. And this time he wouldn’t be a kid while doing it, so the whole experience might be less fraught.

Dane DeHaan

He couldn’t save Valerian, but Dane DeHaan has a vulnerability in other roles that might make him an excellent Frodo. Plus, when he’s looking gaunt, he has that perfect I’m-being-possessed-by-a-magic-ring look. Right?

Samwise Gamgee

Christopher Larkin

It’s really hard to imagine anyone but Sean Astin as Sam. But as Monty on The 100, Christopher Larkin hits all the right notes: he’s smart and super good at stuff, supportive of his besties and his girlfriend, and stubbornly hopeful even in the face of the actual end of the world. It’s difficult to find actors who can play the kind of vulnerability of lines like “It’s your Sam, Mister Frodo,” but Monty goes through some pretty heavy shit with his self-destructive best friend Jasper, with Larkin excellent at playing the steady, truly good heart of things in a truly dark world. He’d get to lighten up a little as Sam, and he’s got a smile that lights up screens. He’s just right.

Meriadoc Brandybuck

Dominique Tipper

Tipper is tough-with-a-hidden-golden-heart as The Expanse’s Naomi, but her offscreen personality runs more to jolly and snarky, so we think she’d be great for both the eager adventurous Merry, and the battle-scarred “Scouring of the Shire” Merry—any decent TV series would leave that bit in, dammit.

Peregrin Took

Maisie Williams

Maisie Williams is perfect as Arya Stark, but she’s also incredibly warm and funny when you see her in interviews. She’d make a wonderful Pippin, and is young enough to be the baby hobbit of the group. Plus, she’s scrappy for those moments when Pippin actually has to step up.

Gandalf the Grey

Peter Capaldi

The Doctor is basically just an alien version of Gandalf, that is, in terms of adventuring around willy nilly and causing trouble for the people who he loops into his adventures. Capaldi already had the perfect wizard eyebrows, he has the ability to contrast gentleness with fury, and he spent his entire tenure as the Doctor trying to grow out his hair to wild lengths. Might as well let him go for it.

Morgan Freeman

Freeman is a qualified badass who somehow always make you feel safer when he talks. Which is spot on for the Fellowship’s wizard. He’s already played God, so we can’t imagine that being the Middle-earth version of an angel would be too hard for him.

Aragorn, Son of Arathorn (Elessar, Strider, etc…)

Ricky Whittle

After watching American Gods, we’re pretty sure there’s nothing Whittle can’t do. And he’s British, so his accent for the role would be legit. He’s regal as all get-out, but in that perfect understated way that Aragorn requires.

Zach McGowan

McGowan keeps playing the dirty scrappy bad (or at least morally dubious) guy (in The 100 and Black Sails); let’s give him a chance to play the scruffy, intense, ready-for-a-fight good guy. He’s a believable fighter with a sometimes-scary intensity; his Aragorn would likely walk a line between threatening and charismatic. Though it would involve lots of ominous smizing for the camera.

Boromir of Gondor

Naveen Andrews

In Lost, Sense8, and Once Upon A Time, Andrews has proved over and over that he’s capable of being both stately and sneaky. There’s a nobility about him, but you know better than to assume that he’s on your side. These are all important characteristics for Boromir, and it would be great fun to see what he could do with that role.

Pablo Schreiber

Likely the direction you would go in if you wanted Boromir more on the unsavory side, Schreiber’s work on American Gods and Orange in the New Black have proven that he knows how to make odiousness interesting. And he’s not without his heartfelt moments either, meaning that when he felt bad about trying to take the Ring from Frodo, you’d probably still feel sympathy for the guy.

Legolas Greenleaf

Sung Kang

It’s those cheekbones. Ok, it’s not just the cheekbones: it’s the way Kang moves through scenes as Han in the Fast and/or Furious movies. He’s unflappable, but you get the sense he’s always ready for something to happen. He’s sly and funny and badass, but not unless he needs to be. (Plus, casting him as a long-lived elf would balance out Han’s fate, which some of us are—sniff—still not over.)

Hale Appleman

If you aren’t familiar with Appleman, start watching The Magicians, like, NOW. Appleman plays Eliot, master of cocktails, dubious ideas, clever one-liners—and also High King of the magical land of Fillory. His Eliot can swan about in fancy clothes with the best of them, but he can also be a convincing threat, a loyal friend (just imagine him palling around with Kristofer Hivju as Gimli!) and a genuinely caring person who’ll throw himself into situation that would destroy a lesser man. This all makes him Fellowship material—plus he’d look really good wielding a bow.

Gimli, Son of Gloin

Nick Offerman

Ron Swanson is basically a Midwestern dwarf, right? Some fans were displeased at the more comedic sheen that Gimli took on in the films, but it does suit the character at proper intervals. Offerman is patently hilarious, but also stoic and excellent at deadpan reactions—something that could serve Gimli incredibly well. He’d like one of Galadriel’s hairs, please and thank you.

Kristofer Hivju

Nobody has mastery over a beard like Tormund.

Bilbo Baggins

Jon Stewart

This would be pretty great. Jon Stewart has the warmth, and it would be interesting to see him play a character who has as much baggage as Bilbo is carrying around. And then Stephen Colbert would be furious with him for not insisting on his casting, too.

Saruman the White

Michael Keaton

As part of the Keaton comeback tour, we’d really love to he him play a part like Saruman. Safe to say, when you’re played by Christopher Lee the first time around, the next guy better go in a very different direction, and Keaton would certainly do something with the part that no one has ever seen before.

Gollum

Bill Skarsgård

Look, if you’ve got to take over for Andy Serkis, you need to be something of a chameleon and really good at the more physical side of acting, and the youngest Skarsgard already has that going for him. His performance as Pennywise in IT pretty much proved that. So this is kind of a no-brainer.

Elrond of Rivendell

Idris Elba

Everyone agrees that we would pretty much do anything that Idris Elba told us to do at any time, so it makes sense putting him in charge of a beautiful elven haven and watching him raise his eyebrows imperiously at everyone. Also, he’s inhumanly gorgeous, which is kind of a rule for elves.

Liam Neeson

He needs to complete his bingo card, okay? He’s been a Jedi and Aslan, but the poor guy didn’t make it into Harry Potter—he needs this one. And then when Arwen rushes off to marry her beloved Aragorn, he can get in the guy’s face and do some modified version of the monologue from Taken.

Arwen Undomiel

Hannah John-Kamen

On Killjoys, John-Kamen is the undisputed master of the steely gaze, perfect posture, and complete and total ownership over any space she’s in. Also, she’s stunning. So she’s basically already an elf.

Galadriel of Lothlorien

Yetide Badake

Badake has already proven her capacity for luminosity on American Gods, but where that show has cast her as a down-on-her-luck deity, the role of Galadriel would allow her to be the regal queen she’s meant to be.

Jamie Clayton

After stealing hearts as resident hacktivist Nomi Marks on Sense8, it would be wonderful to see Clayton play a role that showcases her grace. She would be a stunning possibility for Galadriel, full of strength but also possessing that poise that elves exhibit so effortlessly.

Celeborn of Lothlorien

Russell Brand

Just make him stand in the background and nod at everything his wife says. Maybe wearing leather pants? Fine, no leather pants… he’ll just make really wide bug eyes at every upsetting piece of news.

Theoden of Rohan

Jiang Wen

After his performance as Baze in Rogue One, we’re keen to see more of Wen. We also know he’s really great at tragic endings, which is kind of Theoden’s MO. It makes sense to put him in a position that commands respect and awe, but also allows him to get things done. And he has the soothing dad-vibe that we need from Theoden King.

Eomer of Rohan

Tom Hopper

Just look at that jaw. Hopper was born to ride horses into battle.

Eowyn of Rohan

Lili Reinhart

The thing about Riverdale’s Betty Cooper is that she looks an awful lot like she could be the little sister of Battlestar Galactica’s Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff). Therefore, we want to see her in a fiercer role. You might think she’s mostly playing pure and nice as Betty, but this version of the character has a darker side, and Reinhart balances people-pleasing sweetness with unexpected determination.

Tatiana Maslany

We all just really need to hear Tatiana shriek “I AM NO MAN,” right? Right? Conversely, she could play every member of the Fellowship simultaneously. We’re open to ideas here, is what we’re saying. But she should be there.

Wormtongue

Fiona Dourif

There are so many improbably great things packed into Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but possibly the best great thing is Dourif’s performance as guttural holistic assassin Bart Curlish. If she brought even a fraction of that weirdness to Wormtongue, it would light up the screen—plus how much fun would it be to watch Brad Dourif’s daughter take on one of her dad’s iconic roles, after acting with him in the latest Chucky movies?

Denethor

Irrfan Khan

He was the jovial John-Hammond-alike in Jurassic World, but we’d love to see some pathos from Khan, and he’s got all that majesty that Denethor clearly believes of himself.

Christopher Eccleston

A master of nastiness when they occasion calls for it, Eccleston would play Denethor’s bitterness to a tee, while still giving the audience a sense of what he may have been like in his semi-glorious days. We believe that he’d be a pretty scary dad, too.

Faramir

Riz Ahmed

It seems like Ahmed is always being passed over and ignored in roles where he’s doing so much heavy lifting, so Faramir is perfect for him! Honestly, though, he’s a lovely actor with a deep sincerity to him that we want to see in an expanded role.

James McAvoy

McAvoy has played some real intense parts over the course of his career, but his kinder side is well-suited to characters like Faramir. He’s got the earnestness and the heart required to make everyone feel for Gondor’s second, less-loved son.

Glorfindel

Jeff Daniels

He specifically asked for the role in The Martian, so we initially tossed this one into the ring as a joke, but the more we think about it, we think the man would make a great heroic elf.

Rosie Cotton

Angel Coulby

We need a perfect human to play Rosie Cotton, and no one quite embodies that so well as the elegant and effortless Angel Coulby. It’s so easy to see how she might steal Samwise Gamgee’s heart, and since she’s already been the Queen of Camelot (on Merlin), playing Rosie might be nice and laidback switch-up.

Treebeard

Photo: Marvel

Vin Diesel

He’s already been a smaller sentient tree and a giant robot, and being a part of this would probably make his nerdy heart burst. So this one’s kind of a no-brainer.

Goldberry

Jameela Jamil

When you need someone who is not merely “dewy” but truly “radiant,” Jameela Jamil is the actor you call.

Tom Bombadil

Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Lin-Manuel Miranda

We’re not even having a discussion about this: he is the only choice that makes sense, and he can write his own music to the Bombadil Song and the world will be a better place. Just, everyone go home we are done here.

What’s your dreamcast for a Lord of the Rings TV series?

Queen Berúthiel’s cat is out of the bag! Amazon made its bewildering announcement last week that it has acquired the rights to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings novels” into a multi-season television show of some kind. Which means it’s obviously time for wild speculation and baseless, unrequited yearning.

What I won’t do right now is overthink this. We just don’t know too much. And now the news is out that Christopher Tolkien himself is no longer part of the Tolkien Estate, which does explain a little bit about what’s going on. As a Tolkien nut, I’m only a little anxious because I’m not particularly fond of where the fantasy genre is at, in relation to television (and I realize I may be alone in that), and I’d hate to see his world sullied by greedy hands in similar fashion. But there is always hope that this series could be amazing in the long run. And frankly, the books themselves will always be unsullied, no matter what they do.

So, care to set aside cynicism and join me for some totally unfounded and ill-considered (if Tookishly adventurous) guesswork?

All right, so what do we know so far? The official press release is maddeningly vague, saying that Amazon plans to “bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.” Then it goes on with:

Set in Middle Earth [sic], the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The deal includes a potential additional spin-off series.

New story lines preceding Fellowship? Hmm, so then not really based on The Lord of the Rings itself, but I guess that includes all the things referenced by the Appendices? There’s no mention of The Hobbit (which certainly precedes it) in this press release, nor The Silmarillion—a text for which I’ve recently embarked on a primer/guide here on the site (come along for the ride!)—which makes me think it’s likely to focus on events leading up to, and probably centered around, the War of the Ring itself.

Appendix B, “The Tale of Years,” briefly summarizes the First Age but doesn’t go into any detail about it. They probably don’t have Silmarillion rights, so they’ll likely stick to latter days.

The Second Age is chock-full of great stuff, summarized mostly in the timelines of that appendix, and most of it centers around Sauron’s rise to power in the absence of his erstwhile master, Morgoth. Men, Elves, and Dwarves are the good guys, but they don’t always get along—plenty of room for drama there. Various episodes could feature:

• Dwarves! In great numbers they head over to occupy and fortify Moria. This is pre-Balrog, of course, as they mine for mithril and actually get along well with the Elves just outside their porch (you know, back when they make that fancy back door the Fellowship will later rediscover). Durin’s folk need some love, Amazon!
• The Númenóreans. Blessed with long life and possessing greater power than most other Men, they show up on the coast of Middle-earth after having ruled on their island-kingdom for some time. They’re kickass mariners and mighty warriors. Such promise and ambition! Want more female characters? Why not start with Tar-Ancalimë, the first queen of Númenór?

• The Elves (specifically the Noldor). Those who haven’t sailed West with their kin establish the realm of Eregion. Who wants more Galadriel? Oooh, I do! And here she is, ruling Eregion for a while with her husband, Celeborn. Forget the Kardashians—what’s in fashion is what Celeborn is wearing!
• Sauron. Dismayed by all these do-gooders in the north, he establishes himself in an obscure and dark little land called Mordor. There he shores up his power and begins construction on Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower. Orc contractors are probably called in. The drama, the infighting! The literal infighting. (In one one of Tolkien’s essays, he writes that the Noldor called Orcs the Glamhoth, which means “host of tumult.” Move over, Sons of Anarchy—give me the spin-off series Hosts of Tumult.)
• The creation of the Rings of Power. Knowing all too well the mettle of the Elves, Sauron tries to trick them with a ring-based pyramid scheme. When that doesn’t quite seal the deal, he makes war with Eregion. Elrond himself joins the fray in this one as he leads the Elven forces! It’s turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory for Sauron: Eregion is wrecked but the new Dark Lord is ousted from that part of the world.

• The Nazgûl origin story. With his ring gambit foiled by both Elves and Dwarves, Sauron turns the nine kings of Men into ringwraiths and starts siccing them on his enemies. You can’t tell me you don’t want to see more Nazgûl on screen.
• The Fall of Númenór. This would probably make for an entire season. Sauron lets himself gets “captured” by Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, the latest and most bombastic king of Númenór, at this point. Under his puppetmaster-style ministrations, Sauron drives Númenór into utter corruption. The saga of Númenór has a lot of conflict, a lot of Men vs. Men hostility, to sate the fans of gritty fantasy. There’s even blood sacrifice. Ar-Pharazôn goes on to lead his kingdom into folly and physical ruin as he launches an armada to attack all of Valinor. Bad idea. Númenór sinks into the sea with a great cataclysm, with only a small percentage of its population (i.e. Aragorn’s ancestors) escaping before the disaster.
• The Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Sauron returns to Mordor, having helped destroy the mightiest of Men, then goes on the defensive when he finds that the High King Gil-galad and his Elves have gotten organized along with the surviving Númenóreans. Gil-galad, with Elrond in tow, fights alongside Elendil and his son Isildur in the Battle of Dagorlad and then later at the foot of Mount Doom! Sauron loses his Ring in that famous moment, and his power is broken (for now). This moment would totally be a series finale.

The main problem with all this Second Age stuff is that the details just aren’t there in the Lord of the Rings Appendices. For that you need The Silmarillion, or other books. Not sure Amazon is able to use those sources…yet. That would open up a heck of a lot more, for good or ill.

Meanwhile, what does the Third Age offer? The Lord of the Rings takes place at its tail-end, but plenty of great stuff occurs beforehand, and that just might be what Amazon is going to look at. What stories could you tell with multi-season television programming if you really want to?

Well, here are a few, in no particular order.

• When the Dwarves in Moria finally delve “too deep”—and rouse the Balrog. Not a good day for Durin VI, I can tell you. Surprise, Balrog! Good for at least one episode, right? Action-packed.

• The Witch-King of Angmar. Everybody’s favorite Nazgûl has more of his history fleshed out in Appendix A of LotR. After Sauron’s defeat he eventually returns to rule the northern kingdom of Angmar. Even when Angmar falls, being a ringwraith, the Witch-King “lives” on. How great would it be to hear aloud the prophecy that foreshadows Éowyn’s later victory over him (#ShePersisted)? Glorfindel himself says it: “Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man shall he fall.”
• Almost anything involving the Easterlings and the Haradrim. And maybe preferably in times of peace. They do invade Gondor at various times, and yes, they’re almost always allied with Sauron—but Tolkien makes it clear that all Men on the Enemy’s side were deceived by his lies. Men, quite unlike Orcs, are not intrinsically evil. Moreover, we only ever see the soldiers who march in Sauron’s war—the ones who, as Samwise wonders in The Two Towers, might “rather have stayed” at home. I think most of us can agree that it would be exceedingly awesome to see those parts of Middle-earth where white-skinned people aren’t the majority, or calling all the shots. Every culture has its stories and its heroes. Even the Númenóreans as a whole bend to evil and hubris eventually—but not all embrace it. All the stories of Gondor came from that tension.

• Elrond’s romance with Celebrían. Elrond is one of the sons of Eärendil and Elwing, and Celebrían is the daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel. Because of their famous parents, these two are already celebrities by the time they get married in the Third Age. Now we’ve all seen way too many weddings in movies and on TV, yes…but we have seen Elf weddings? Totally different. They give birth to their two sons, Elladan and Elrohir, 29 years later, and then have a daughter, Arwen, only a scant 111 years after that. To add to this family’s storied history, some 2,268 years later still, Celebrían is captured and tormented by Orcs in the Misty Mountains. She’s rescued by her sons, but though her body heals her mind does not; she must set sail for the Undying Lands, the only place she can be fully mended, and leave her family behind until they all make the same journey far in the future. This is some serious family drama, folks. Think This Is Us but with *way* bigger leaps in time.
• The adventures of the Istari! These seemingly old men show up in boats on the shores of Middle-earth, but where did they all go during the 1,341 years that passed before the events of even The Hobbit? I mean, we know of a few places, and of the White Council where at least two of them end up. But wouldn’t it be cool to see the moment when Gandalf first meets a hobbit, and when he tries pipeweed for the first time? How about seeing Saruman strolling in the woods alongside Treebeard, talking as they once did before things got dreadful. And how about those Blue Wizards?
• Círdan the goddamned Shipwright! This is the only Elf ever described as having a beard. How can we not want to see more of his story?

• Young Aragorn meeting Gandalf, and their adventures together. Theirs could be like a buddy cop show—one is sagacious, cranky, and knows more than he’s saying, and the other is young, skillful, and doesn’t play by the rules. (Actually, he probably totally plays by the rules; Elrond raised him.) Then we can follow Aragorn’s solo adventures under the alias Thorongil—first in Rohan then in Gondor. And let’s not forget about the mid-season finale when he meets Arwen  in the woods, à la Beren and Lúthien.
• Two words: Tom Bombadil. Think Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood but way crazier, and involving plenty of trees, water-lilies, and mischievous barrow-wights. And some seriously questionable fashion on his part. Can the mainstream world handle Tom? Probably not. But maybe his lovely wife, Goldberry, will make seeing him on screen more palatable.

Really, that’s just a tip of the iceberg of what Amazon could possibly tackle, in terms of storylines. I’m almost sure they’ll do none of these things.

So, what’ve you got? What would you want to see?

Top image: “The Witch-king of Angmar” by Peter Xavier Price

Jeff LaSala will hope for the best. And when there is none, then we may at least be avenged. He wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel once, some cyberpunk stories, and some RPG books. And now he works for Tor Books.

In Which An Elf Lord Sees About a Girl While His Westward-Venturing Friends Take an Unexpected Cruise

“Of Thingol and Melian” is a super short chapter that introduces us to two major characters of the First Age even as it brings them together. “Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië,” meanwhile, tells us how all those Oromë-following Elves make it across the Great Sea to join the Valar on the continent of Aman. And just who the heck are these Elves anyway? Well, Tolkien introduces us to them in floodgate fashion, so I’ll focus on discussing the most important ones. One particularly interesting thing about these two chapters is that they’re entirely Melkor-free! That’s right: he’s locked up for “three ages,” however long that is. Now that doesn’t mean there’s no evil in the world—this is Arda Marred, after all—but at least its primary dealer has been contained.

Oh, and hey, this section also introduces us to two Elves familiar to The Lord of the Rings readers: Círdan the Shipwright and Galadriel! (Yeah, they’re really old.)

Dramatis personæ of note:

• Melian – Maia, lady of good counsel (and good birds)
• Elwë/Thingol – Teleri Elf lord, future king
• Finwë – Noldor Elf lord
• Ingwë – Vanyar Elf lord, teacher’s pet
• Ulmo – Vala, Lord of Waters, living tugboat
• Ossë – Maia, salty but friendly mariner

Of Thingol and Melian

Back in the Valaquenta, we were introduced to some Maiar of interest. Melian was one of these. We don’t know what part she may have played in the rise and fall of the Lamps or in the making of the Trees, but we know she is a vassal of two Valar: Vána—caretaker of youth itself in Arda, wife to Oromë and sister to Yavanna—and Estë, healer and purveyor of restful sleep and wife to Lórien. So it’s a safe bet that Melian was close at hand during such events. Interestingly, Melian will eclipse both these ladies, in page space if not cosmic importance, for while Vána and Estë are mentioned only a few times throughout the book, Melian’s actions will continually help keep evil at bay on Middle-earth for many chapters to come.

She starts off simply hanging out in the gardens of Lórien, adored by all and dispensing wisdom. Moreover, we’re told that when she sings it’s an event. Everyone, even the Valar—even flowing water in fountains—stops whatever they’re doing to listen. If she toured Aman with that voice? Fahgettaboudit, tickets would be sold out constantly. And like a Disney princess, birds and especially nightingales (her signature friends) surround her at all times. If anyone says “a little bird told me” in Valinor, they’re almost certainly referring to Melian. They certainly don’t mean Manwë, because that guy’s birds are huge.

When the Elves first awakened over on Middle-earth, Melian was mysteriously moved to depart Valinor. Whether she did so right then and there, or not until after the Valar learned that the Elves had even shown up, we’re not told. Nevertheless, she ventures across the Great Sea alone and fills “the silence of Middle-earth before the dawn with the sound of her voice and the voices of her birds.” Interestingly, this was when Melkor was still loose. So, gutsy girl, going on a solo quest like this—I love that. But maybe it’s because she’s not perceived as a threat; as far as Melkor can tell she’s not hunting his monsters like that meddling gadabout Oromë. So anyway, that’s where she is for a long, long while. Being a Maia, years going by is nothing.

Now we cut over to the east, across Beleriand, and flash forward in time to where we left off in the previous chapter. The Teleri—those water-loving Elves who came last on their journey westward—were in no big hurry.

Understand that all the Eldar, even those of the Vanyar and Noldor who stayed close to Oromë during the westward march and were now far to the west, seem to be dawdlers by nature. And why not? The lush and starlit world around them is AMAZING. But the Teleri are, like, professional dilly-dalliers. To be fair, this last trek across Beleriand is still considered by the narrator to be “near its end” at this point because the ground they’ve covered to get this far since leaving Lake Cuiviénen is no joke.

Even so, consider this: Teleri means “Last-comers” or “the Hindmost,” a name given to them by the Eldar who were ahead of them. Sure, they have their own name for themselves, but history isn’t written by heel-draggers. You snooze, you get remembered as the Last-comers!

Since the Teleri are moving so slowly, their leader, Elwë, sometimes goes off into the woods alone.  He’s more restless than they, having seen the Two Trees of Valinor, and his people aren’t exactly going anywhere anytime soon. He can explore then circle back around again, no prob. And when the three kindreds were traveling closer together, Elwë was even able to run ahead and visit Finwë of the Nolder. These two were—and are—besties. But now he’s alone, and on one such adventure he wanders into a forest called Nan Elmoth.

And there he meets someone—a special someone. A very special someone, who is apparently surrounded by nightingales constantly, given all that chirping.

And man oh man, is he smitten. This is the first of just a few (but very important and world-altering) love-at-first-sight moments in Middle-earth. In a book that’s essentially one epic fairy tale, this is a real fairy tale moment. “Enchantment” falls on him, and when he actually hears Melian’s voice, he’s done. It’s over. Her song fills “all his heart with wonder and desire.” And that’s before actually seeing her. When he finally does set eyes on her, he’s transfixed all the more. Her complexion is to die for, for the “light of Aman” is reflected in her face.

Love overtakes him. He takes her hand, and “straightway a spell is laid on him.” Suddenly his plans—to reunite with his friend Finwë, to lead his people to Valinor, to dwell again in the light of Two Trees—just vanish. He forgets everyone and everything: his brother (Olwë), his pet gerbil, his appointments, all his passwords. All gone. And yeah, this seems very heavy-handed. We’re not told that he’s enslaved or that he was joined with Melian against his will. Trust me, we’ll see uncomfortable stuff like that later and the difference is clear. So while it’s some kind of spell, it’s still love. Tolkien is deliberate with his words. What we’re not told is who laid this enchantment on him. Melian seems powerful enough to be the source, but why? Nothing here suggests that this is her plan or that she has foreknowledge of their meeting. She’s no Mandos. And she herself was moved to come to Middle-earth when she did.

And that’s not even the weird part. What’s most interesting about this moment is that these two people—one a Maia, the other an Elf lord—just stand there, looking at one another, hands clasped and perfectly still, for years. Decades. Maybe centuries. The trees of the forest grow tall around them. And since no one else knows that Elwë is here, his people look for him all around Beleriand and do so in vain.

That these two meet and fall in love at first sight (at first sound?) could be attributed to many things, but the stasis they enter feels more like “doom”—and perhaps the hand of Ilúvatar—though that is just speculation. What comes of their relationship lays the foundation for many events and heroes to come—not to mention the division in the Elves that this creates—so it’s like this needed to happen.

At the close of the chapter, never one to miss an opportunity to invent a new name, Tolkien assigns Elwë a new one: Thingol (meaning “grey cloak,” owing to his long silver hair), which is what the narrator will use from here on out.

“Spoiler” alert: We’re not done seeing the story of the Teleri play out, but we are given a heads-up about a few things way in advance:

• First, Thingol ain’t never gonna see Valinor again…alive.
• Thingol and Melian will go on to establish a realm right there in Beleriand and rule as its king and queen.
• Someday these two are going to have a child who will be the “fairest of all the Children of Ilúvatar that ever was or shall ever be.”

Theirs is essentially going to be the first of the organized Elven kingdoms of Middle-earth. Remember, plenty of Elves didn’t even come this far west, and wandered off into woods of their own. But Thingol’s and Melian’s realm will be Doriath, and their people will be the Sindar, the Grey-elves, and these represent many of the Eldar who set out to answer the summons of the Valar but for one reason or another didn’t make it. While the Sindar will never experience the light of the Two Trees, their king and queen have. And because of who Melian is (a Maia!) and where she comes from (the Timeless Halls, before the universe itself was made!), this king will have a lot more power at his disposal and a lot more wisdom than he would have otherwise. Not that he takes much advantage of that last one. You don’t even know! (Unless you do.)

So there we have it. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl stand in a forest for a freakishly long time while “long years were measured by the wheeling stars above them.” If this chapter was a Hollywood romance, the falling-in-love montage would be surprisingly drawn-out and inevitably involve some time-elapse shots of the night sky. The soundtrack would probably include a lot of birdsong and—if I had any say in it—vocals by Jon Anderson (and keyboards by Vangelis).

Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië

Tolkien likes to send his readers to the index often—and I recommend you really do use it frequently on a first read, it’s legit helpful. For now, let’s start with Eldalië, which is just a fancier word for the Eldar—meaning those Elves who either journeyed to Valinor or at least gave it a shot. Eldar and Eldalië are totally synonymous. Thanks, Tolkien!

When last we left the Vanyar and Noldor kindreds of the Eldar—excuse me, the Eldalië—Oromë had left them high and dry on the coastline, waiting for some way to cross. Now he could have led them to a treacherous ice-bridge of sorts in the far, far north, where the tip of Middle-earth almost touches the tip of of Aman. But it’s a bitterly cold place that Elves would not—and one day will not!—enjoy, so he rules that out. Instead, he seeks out Ulmo.

Ulmo, you may remember, is the Lord of Waters and also the “chief” of those Valar who were very much against summoning the Elves to Valinor. He wanted them to be free and to wander Middle-earth and make it all the better for their presence. But the Valar had outvoted him, had wanted the Elves close and safe in the bliss of Valinor and the light of the Two Trees.

So at his peers’ request, Ulmo comes over to meet the Eldar gathered there at the coast. Previously, only the three original ambassadors would maybe have met him before. This time two full kindreds of Elves, the Vanyar and the Noldor, are standing there looking at this mighty spirit. They were already fearful of the sea, and now here’s this great being of elemental power come to meet them face to face.

Perhaps he takes a form like Poseidon, a god clad in scaly sea-mail, or like the water itself, incarnate in a humanoid shape. But more likely he appears as something like an Elf—but y’know, probably with stylish wavelike hair and fishy mer-man gills. Then the Eldar learn what everyone over in Valinor already knows: Ulmo is a really nice guy! He talks to them, plays music for them with his “horns of shell,” and their anxiety is transformed into wonder. Now they love the sea! (Man, those tarrying Teleri are really missing out. Hurry up, slowpokes!) I suppose that when the personification of one of the world’s fundamental building blocks—in this case, H₂O—shows up and talks to you face to face and turns out to be a first-rate chap, you’re more inclined to trust it.

Now that the Elves are unafraid, Ulmo just needs a way to ferry them all across the Great Sea. He looks around and finds an island way out in the middle of nowhere that no one else was using. He “uproots” it with help from some of his Maiar servants, then tugs it over to the Bay of Balar (in the southwest corner of Beleriand). The Vanyar and Noldor all climb aboard, and since there’s still no sign of the Teleri showing up…off they go!

Interestingly, a piece of this island breaks off at the outset, remaining there in the bay for later use. The Isle of Balar, as it is called, will become especially useful during events many, many chapters from now.

Without further ado, the Vanyar and Noldor set out on this all-expenses-paid, one-way trip aboard an Ulmo-drawn island across the sea. This is no quick voyage, but then again almost every sentence in these ancient days could well represent the passage of many years. Eventually they do reach the Blessed Realm of Aman. There Ingwë and Finwë lead their respective peoples ashore, where they’re welcomed by the Valar. Bam! Trees! Lights! All these Valar and Maiar with their mad worldbuilding skills!

Bliss Achievement unlocked.

Now let’s cut back again to those Johnnies-come-lately, the Teleri. And before we rag on them too much (though it is fun), remember that only those three ambassador Elves—Ingwë of the Vanyar, Finwë of the Noldor, and Elwë (now Thingol) of the Teleri—had seen the light of the Two Trees with their own eyes, had looked upon the glory of Valinor and witnessed the majesty of its lords. Those three alone could truly understand what they’d all signed up for; the rest could not. And in the defense of the Teleri, in the long run we’re going to see that the Valar’s request that all the Elves come join them really probably wasn’t what Ilúvatar had in mind for his Children.

In any case, Elwë (Thingol) has gone AWOL and the Teleri are without their lord. So with Valinor’s biggest superfan gone, what are they to do? Hey, why not split up some more and make it even harder on the reader to keep the Elf subdivisions straight? And just for fun, some of them will keep the name Teleri and some will ditch it. So here follows the new divisions of the Teleri…

Those who keep the Teleri name are those who still believe in the dream of making it to Valinor and want to press on. The original plan—“It’s what Elwë would have wanted,” they might be telling themselves. This sizable batch of Elves are now led by Olwë, and wouldn’t he know better than anyone? And look, Olwë tried to find his big brother—don’t say he hasn’t tried. Meanwhile we, the readers, know Elwë is off holding hands with a girl for a very long time and probably getting loads of cooties for it. So Olwë and the Teleri eventually move on and finally reach the Mouths of Sirion, a great delta at the coast—same region where the Vanyar and Noldor had come to before them.

But they totally missed the boat, er, island. And Ulmo doesn’t show up like he did for that first wave of Elves who waited here. Instead, two of his vassals do: Ossë and Uinen, two Maiar of coastal waters who delight in crashing waves and/or smaller flowing bodies of water. A married couple, they teach these Elves “sea-lore and sea-music,” and now the Teleri moniker of “Sea-elves” really begins. Water fans, all around.

Those who carry a torch for Thingol and refuse to go on without him call themselves the Eglath, the Forsaken. “If he’s not leading us to Valinor, then we’re not going,” seems to be their stance, and so they remain inland, searching for their long-lost lord. Would it have killed Olwë and the others to just wait a little bit longer? What’s the big hurry? “Fine, just go ahead and forsake us, see if we care,” one might suppose they think. So these Eglath, this subgroup of the Teleri, keep up with their search parties.

Years go by, and over in Valinor Finwë and the Noldor deeply miss their old friends—those lovable if lollygagging Teleri—and so they ask the Valar if anything can be done to bring them over. And the Valar comply. Ulmo, with reluctance—probably muttering under his breath that none of this is a good idea—pulls that island-ferry back across the Great Sea to retrieve them. Ossë is especially bummed by this development, because the coastline of Middle-earth is totally his turf and he’s really enjoyed hanging out with the Teleri. No, he doesn’t try to stop his boss (against whom he once rebelled), but he does persuade some of the Elves to stay put of their own accord—maybe so Tolkien can come up with yet another name? The rest, with Olwë at their head, do bugger off to Aman at last.

Those Telerin Elves persuaded by Ossë to stay in Middle-earth, specifically on the western coastline of Beleriand, call themselves the Falathrim—the coastline itself being named the Falas. Learning everything about the sea from both Uinen and Ossë, the Falathrim are Middle-earth’s first mariners and their leader is Círdan the Shipwright! Círdan (KEER-dan) is that coastal-dwelling plot fixture of all that follows, a real stand-up Elf who always has eyes on the sea, yet remains to help ferry others across in days to come.

The Teleri’s “ship” finally comes in.

Then one day, out of the blue, Elwë finally wanders out of the woods with a new name and a wife who’s so badass that I’m pretty sure he’s the trophy. Although he’d already seen the light of the Two Trees, Thingol doesn’t crave it so much anymore. Thingol is Elwë 2.0—better, faster, taller, and the very presence of his bride, Melian, strengthens and magnifies him in every way. She’s wise, she’s drop-dead gorgeous (stand-still-for-a-long-time gorgeous?), she reflects the very light of the Blessed Realm in her face like an “unclouded mirror.” And truly, everyone who comes to know Melian firsthand is going to be better for it. Thingol, as plenty of Tolkien fans have noted before me, has married up big time (a trend among lordly males in The Silmarillion). Although he’s still just an Elf, Thingol now even appears to his people “as a lord of the Maiar.”

So let’s recap the split of the Teleri, since it’s the most complicated subdivision of the Elves. The Teleri were just the third and largest kindred of Elves who did set out to make the journey to Valinor. But with some speed bumps (Anduin and the Misty Mountains, Elwë going missing, becoming an audience to Ossë’s seaside pitch), they break up along the way so that only some of the original Teleri make it across the Great Sea and keep the name. The rest remain on Middle-earth, and a lot of Beleriand-dwelling ones will someday become Sindar under Thingol’s kingship.

Here’s one final look at Beleriand for now.

The paths and sunderings of the Teleri in Beleriand, with some license taken.

And now, with Beleriand in good hands (i.e. Melian’s, with help from Thingol), it’s time to cross the pond completely for the next four chapters. We’ll come back to what happens on Middle-earth eventually, but now we’re off to the West to see what became of those three kindreds who answered the summons: the Vanyar, the Noldor, and that portion of the original Teleri who tarried the least.

A simplified graph of the Teleri sunderings.

The Teleri, as we know, have been ferried across the Great Sea. Ulmo, in a minor act of defiance—sticking it to the Man(wë), if you will—drops the island with all these Elves on it right there out in the harbor, within sight of Aman but not exactly all the way there. He roots it there for all time, and “the Valar were little pleased to learn what he had done” (which probably just means that they tutted politely).

But now sitting apart from the mainland, the island finally gets its name—which is odd, because you just know the Elves must have invented a bunch of names for it by now. With nowhere to roam but on that one island for years, they will have named every tree, rock, and Elf thrice over. In any case, Tol Eressëa (TAHL eh-REH-say-ah), the Lonely Island, is its name from this point forward.

Now Valinor is lit with the light of the Two Trees. They wax and wane and measure time and they’re unutterably lovely and powerful…but they’re bright. Anyone who lives in a big city can tell that you stars are hard to see at night when there’s so much light in one place, so although all the Eldar are encouraged by the Valar to hang out in the gardens around the Trees, they’re still the People of the Stars and long for a better sky view. Plus they do love those seashores…

“The Light of Valinor on the Western Sea” (1998) by Ted Nasmith

Most of them thus had settled in Eldamar, meaning “Elvenhome,” the coastal region of Aman between Valinor proper and the bay, where the Teleri are now hanging out on their island. The Valar really do love the Children of Ilúvatar and want them to be happy, so they’re very accommodating of their needs and desires. To make sure that all the Elves still benefit from the Trees, they carve a gap in Aman’s mountain-fence, the Pelóri, that would otherwise have blocked their light. The Vanyar and the Noldor together build Tirion, a city of “white walls and terraces,” upon a giant green hill that some lazy, possibly hungry Elf went and named—much to our chagrin—Túna (and it’s pronounced exactly like you think).

So now the Two Trees shine upon Tirion and even reach the western shores of Tol Eressëa. Vanyar, Noldor, Teleri—all happy in the bliss of the Trees at last. Yavanna herself even puts a cherry on this sundae of awesomeness in the form of a very special White Tree she gives them—not light-producing, not big and mighty like the Two Trees, but nevertheless made in the image of Telperion, the silvery one. More like the gift shop replica of Telperion. Rings readers know where descendants of this white tree will eventually end up, but until then a bunch of its first seedlings simply flourish around Eldamar and even on the Lonely Isle itself.

But wait, we’re not finished just yet. As the years go by, the Teleri get restless because, frankly, they’re hard to please. They want to have their cake (to be on the shores and delight in the music of the sea) and eat it, too (to be closer to the Trees and hang out with their Noldor friends). So Ulmo grudgingly sends Ossë to teach the Teleri “the craft of ship-building”—you know, as he had Círdan’s gang back on Middle-earth. This will allow them to come and go from the Lonely Isle as they please. He even gives them a bunch of swans strong enough to pull the white ships they make, and that officially establishes their artistic motif as they build more and more. Once in Eldamar, they even make a seaside city of their own, Alqualondë, Haven of the Swans. This is where Olwë finally settles down, and where the Teleri this side of the Great Sea will tarry no more.

“The Ships of the Teleri Drawn by Swans” Ted Nasmith

The chapter ends with some brief introductions. These aren’t names you need to remember completely just yet, but just know they’re going to start being important in the very next chapter.

First, it’s helpful to know that the Vanyar, the Fair Elves, gravitate to Varda and Manwë the most. They even eventually leave Tirion to the Noldor alone and go and dwell in loftier places closer to the Valar. Just as the Teleri tend to revere Ulmo and the water, so do the Vanyar cleave to the powers of the sky and stars.

The Noldor, however, love to work with their hands; they’re natural designers, crafters, and probably make good city planners, general contractors, and interior decorators. They really like what Aulë is all about and he loves them best, too. Aulë and “his people”—that is, his Maiar vassals—go among them and teach them what they know. (This means a certain silver-tongued Maia who will favor robes of white or even “many colours” in the far-distant future could very well be among these teachers.) The Noldor are so taken with arts and crafts that, we’re told, “they soon surpassed their teachers.” Which is downright ominous. Especially since Finwë’s masons…

first discovered the earth-gems, and brought them forth in countless myriads; and they devised tools for the cutting and shaping of gems, and carved them in many forms. They hoarded them not, but gave them freely, and by their labor enriched all Valinor.

This gem association is going to be a strong one in days to come. If you’re an Elf and you give someone a gem, you’re definitely a Noldo. In fact, the Noldor give so many shiny stones to their Teleri friends, “opals and diamonds and pale crystals,” that the Teleri gussy up their favorite haunts by tossing such gems right onto their beaches and in their pools. Free for everyone to enjoy.

The Vanyar, by and large, stand by the Valar and don’t make waves. Their king is Ingwë, and he’s also High King of all Elves, but we don’t really learn the names of his kindred because the Quenta Silmarillion is, ultimately, the Tale of the Silmarils, and that’s a story driven by the Noldor.

“Spoiler” alert: Tolkien gives us a heads-up that the Noldor are actually going to return to Middle-earth. They’re the ones whose fates will be wrapped up with the aforementioned Silmarils and they’re the Elves who’ll butt heads with the Dark Lord(s) more than anyone. So it’s the kings and princes and children of the Noldor we really need to know about.

We already know Finwë, who now in Valinor is declared King of the Noldor. His wife is Míriel, and two of them have one son, Fëanor, who is arguably the most impactful Elf in the entire history of Arda. In the next chapter we’ll find out why, but the circumstances of giving birth to Fëanor leaves his mother physically and spiritually spent, and she comes as close to true death as an Elf can. This leads to Finwë remarrying—an almost unheard phenomenon among Elves. So with his second wife, Indis (of the Vanyar!), Finwë has two more sons: Fingolfin and Finarfin.

Now let’s hold up right there. That’s already too many Fin-names, right? Buckle up, there’s more coming.

For starters, both of these second sons will be kings some day in their own time—whereas Fëanor won’t ever be, though he’ll sure try. Fëanor is going to be the easiest name to remember because he’s the wunderkind in a family of wunderkinds, and the things he does during his life affect pretty much everything and everybody for the rest of the book—Elves, Men, monsters, villains.

So all right, Fingolfin and Finarfin. What’s the difference between these Fin-bros? Fingolfin, the elder, is the strong and valiant one, while Finarfin, the younger, is the fair and wise one. It’s not a perfect parallel, but if it helps, compare them to Boromir and Faramir; both brothers have hearts and loyalties in the right place. But Fingolfin/Boromir, the elder, is a valorous fighter first and Finarfin/Faramir, the younger, is more likely to listen, speak softly, and make friends. (And yes, parallels like this show up quite a lot throughout the history of Middle-earth. Take notice!)

Fëanor is their half-brother, and he’s older than both of them and better at pretty much everything “of word and hand” attributed to Noldor specifically—craftwork, skill at arms, semiotics, and I assume graphic design. Fëanor marries, too (we don’t get her name until next chapter), and from this pair come seven sons. Yup, seven. They’re not all going to be vital names to remember, but some of them are going to make some serious trouble.

If it helps to remember the sons of Fëanor, you can group them by the first letters of their names, and all you really need to know until a few individual ones stand out more later in the text is that they’re all varying degrees of awful. Some are absolutely better than others, to be fair. And just for some blasphemous fun, you can even give them Disney-dwarf-style nicknames:

1. Maedhros (MY-thros) [Worry] – Less terrible. At times admirable, capable of remorse.
2. Maglor [Sappy] – Less terrible. Gentler of spirit than his brothers, a singer and poet.
3. Celegorm (KELL-eh-gorm) [Hasty] – More terrible. Really just the worst. Hunter and animal handler.
4. Caranthir (CAR-on-theer) [Cranky] – Slightly less terrible. Sharp of tongue, quick to anger.
5. Curufin (KOO-roo-fin) [Crafty] – More terrible. Skillfull, hangs with his big brother Celegorm. Will have a son far more famous than himself.
6. Amrod [Dusky] – Medium terrible. Twin of Amras.
7. Amras [Rusty] – Medium terrible. Twin of Amrod.

It’s worth noting that we’re told that Fëanor and his sons, characteristic of days to come, are somewhat fidgety among an already fidgety people (the Noldor as a whole). They tend not to stay put, but range all around Valinor and to its borders, even going so far as the westernmost shores that look out upon the Outer Sea, beyond which would lie the Walls of Night and the dark unknown. I’m not saying that Fëanor is going to be anything like Melkor once was, going off alone into the Void seeking the Flame Imperishable…but he’s totally a little bit like that.

Then both Fingolfin and Finarfin—the two half-brothers of Fëanor, all three being the sons of Finwë, the king—eventually have children, too.

Fingolfin’s kids are Fingon, who shares his dad’s Fin and will later inherit the kingship; Turgon, a son who’ll go on to be lord of a city named Gondolin; and Aredhel (AR-eth-ell), their little sis, who likes to ride and hunt, but who often spends time in questionable company—especially later.

Finarfin’s kids are five, the first and last of whom are going to become especially memorable. The eldest is Finrod, the coolest Elf in all of Arda and who’ll one day be given the badass title Lord of Caves. The youngest, the baby sister, is Galadriel, whose hair is “lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin,” referencing one of the Two Trees of Valinor.

I know that’s a heckuva lot of names to keep straight, but that’s it for a while. A full cast of characters, plus all the Valar we know and love, for the drama to come. And hey, speaking of the Two Trees, I’ll add just one more thing. There’s been all this talk of the sundering of the Elves into different groups, but there’s also two very broad categories all Elves fall into…

The Calaquendi, Elves of the Light, is a catch-all term for those who looked upon the Two Trees of Valinor during their time of bloom. That means all the Vanyar, all the Noldor, and those of the Teleri who make it across to Aman. It’s never strictly defined, but you get the overall sense that such Elves are stronger and possibly wiser, just as a rule, than those who do not. Almost like these Elves—to make another blasphemous D&D reference—got a bump in their Strength and Wisdom scores just by looking upon those Trees. In The Lord of the Rings, notice how ethereal Galadriel and even Glorfindel are described compared to, say, Legolas, Haldir, or even Elrond.

And then there’s the Moriquendi, Elves of the Darkness. They’re simply those who never do see the Two Trees, who never make it to Valinor before the tenebrous events of Chapter 8. They were born in and remained in the twilight of Middle-earth countless years before the sun ever shows up. Hence, Elves of Darkness. They’re not weak by any stretch—and some prove to be formidable indeed—but they don’t get a spiritual leg up like those Tree-peeping Calaquendi. Interestingly, Thingol is one of the Calaquendi—because, remember, back in his Elwë days, he was one of three that made the pilgrimage to Valinor before anyone else. Yet he now rules a realm full of Moriquendi back on Middle-earth.

Anyway, in the next installment, we’ll find out just what makes Fëanor so damn interesting, and so damn familiar, in “Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor.”

Top image: “The Light of Valinor on the Western Sea” (2004) by Ted Nasmith

Jeff LaSala would like to thank his brother, John (whose name should maybe be Johnwë), for being his proofreader and sometime Tolkien fact-checker. Jeff wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel once, produced some cyberpunk stories, and now works for Tor Books.

In Which Arda’s Greatest Overachiever Steps Up and Melkor Is Released On Good Behavior

In the sixth chapter of The Silmarillion, “Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor,” we’re given a short but impressive intro on the guy whose actions will upset the geopolitical foundations of Elvendom in the near future. We met him in the previous chapter and even got as far as the names of his kids, but now we’re taking a step back to look at his early life: the intensity of his birth, the tragedy of his mother, and the dilemmas of his father. Fëanor has so much to offer, and some of it will be to the betterment of all, and some…not so much. There is a bit of a call-back in his nature to the Ainulindalë, to the secret fire and to another who went often alone seeking greater power.

Speaking of whom, at the end of the chapter, Melkor will be released from his three-age prison sentence, which doesn’t bode well for anyone. So what does the most powerful of the Ilúvatar’s offspring brood about in prison? Certainly not rainbows and puppies.

Dramatis personæ of note:

• Míriel – Noldor Elf, weaver, tragic mother
• Finwë – Noldor Elf, king, husband to…it’s complicated
• Fëanor – Noldor Elf extraordinaire, jack/master of all trades
• Melkor – Ex-Vala, ex-convict out on parole
• Manwë – King of the Valar, judge

Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor

This chapter is one part origin story, two parts character profile. It sets the stage for the deeds of (1) the most influential member of the Children of Ilúvatar, and (2) his (and their) bitterest foe. At first it seems odd to reintroduce these two in the same chapter, but they are as easy to compare as to contrast. It’s like a silvery coin flipped into the air. One side bears Melkor’s face, blackened but strangely still fair; the other, shinier side shows Fëanor’s face only slightly tarnished. How’s it going to land?

Fëanor is a complex character and he’s hard to sum up in few words, but if I had to describe him with just one, it would be rousing—for nothing about him is lazy, inactive, or complacent. He is a Roman candle blazing fiercely amidst every other Elf’s long, slow burn. An Elf of action and purpose, even when those things go wrong. Some readers respect him, some hate him. I think it’s okay to do both. He’s like that smart and politically outspoken person in your life who you greatly disagree with but can’t help admire for their intelligence and conviction. Yet bullheadedness steers them toward trouble, and maybe the wrong side of history.

As with many nuanced characters, the story begins with the mother. Which is interesting, as maternal figures are markedly lacking, or conspicuously dead, throughout the legendarium. Tolkien himself lost his mother young in life, and it’s hard not to think this played a part in the lives of some of his more memorable characters.

Fëanor’s mother is Míriel, a weaver whose hands are more “skilled to fineness” than any among the Noldor. And up until the birth of her (in)famous son, the love between her and her husband, Finwë, King of the Noldor, is a deep and untroubled one, whatever may come.

We’re reminded that this is the Noontide of Valinor’s blissful days, and the same could be said for the Firstborn of the Children of Ilúvatar. If the long existence of the Elves was a single day, we’re already at midday—yes, this early in the book. As a race, they’ve still got a long time before Nightfall, but the point is they’ve already been around for a hell of a long time by this point. How long? More than three unquantified “ages”—since Melkor’s three-age sentence was laid on him well after the Elves showed up. And an age isn’t exactly a blink-and-you-miss it span of time.

From The Lord of the Rings alone, we’re accustomed to talk about the “twilight” of the Elves. A fading, a diminishing. And the truth is, we’re going to start hearing about the start of that fading only a few chapters from now. But my point is, the Elves have already had a good and long run. We just don’t read about it all because it was, by comparison to everything coming, less eventful. The Silmarillion covers only the really big news.

So it’s in this Noontide that Finwë and Míriel have lived in joy and in prosperous times. The Noldor quarry, craft, and devise. And it is in the midst of such productivity that their baby is born. Now Finwë names him Curufinwë (which literally means something like “skillful son of Finwë”) but that’s not the name that sticks. His mother names him Fëanor, and through the very the process of bearing him, Míriel is “consumed in spirit and body,” and afterwards asks to be released “from the labour of living.”

Which…damn. Elves are immortal; they’re meant to live as long as Arda itself. There’s nothing about this in the handbook!

So, grieved over this heavy and very unprecedented request, Finwë turns to Manwë himself for help. But even the mighty King of the Valar cannot simply “magic” a person back to full hit points and mental health. Having no easy answer for his Noldor friend, Manwë recommends them to the the Gardens of Lórien for care. Lórien is totally Valinor’s rehab center. And it’s where Estë, the Vala of healing and rest, also dwells. Perfect! There’s no better healthcare in Arda than Lórien. (It’s also the only game in town.)

For whatever reason, Finwë can’t remain there with her. Very limited visiting hours, I guess. And the whole situation sucks. On top of being separated from his wife, he knows Míriel will miss the first years of Fëanor’s young life—which any parent knows is an especially wonderful (if challenging) time. And of this, she says to him:

It is indeed unhappy, and I would weep, if I were not so weary. But hold me blameless in this, and in all that may come after.

It’s an especially sad and ominous moment. Míriel clearly senses or even knows something, about the power, possibility, and maybe precariousness of her son’s life. It is no throwaway name she gives him, for Fëanor means “spirit of fire.” And fire, as we’ve seen from the literal beginning, in both physical and metaphorical ways, can be a force of creative energy (the Flame Imperishable) or destructive evil (the Balrogs). Fëanor will show us more than a little of both.

But neither Estë nor Lórien can mend Míriel’s weary spirit. She has put too much of herself into Fëanor and has nothing left, not even basic nurturing. Her spirit departs, leaving her body “unwithered” but lifeless, and she drifts at last into the Halls of Mandos. This is the closest thing to true death an Elf can experience. If slain, they relinquish their bodies and go to Mandos and can even be rehoused in body after a great length of time. But Míriel’s not interested even in that. She’s not coming back. Does she fear what’s coming, fear association with it? “But hold me blameless…in all that may come after.” It is understandable, if abstract, to be physically spent—but why so sorrowful?

Breaking my own rule for just a moment, I’d like to draw in a quote from one of the History of Middle-earth books, The Peoples of Middle-earth, concerning this moment. Tolkien wrote:

The death of Míriel Þerindë—death of an ‘immortal’ Elda in the deathless land of Aman—was a matter of grave anxiety to the Valar, the first presage of the Shadow that was to fall on Valinor.

I mention this as a reminder that the Valar, for all their power, are not omnipotent gods. That fate of this one Elf disturbs them. Interfering with Míriel’s choice to remain a disembodied spirit indefinitely was not something they were allowed to, or even could, do. Ilúvatar’s bylaws are quite clear. Moreover, her fate is a true symptom of the fact that even here in the bliss of Valinor…things are not quite normal. This is Arda Marred, remember…not Arda As It Was Intended To Be.

Of course, Finwë is especially grieved now. Not only is his wife gone—and his love for her was as real as it comes—but he had hoped for more children. In the great span of his life—or at least what his life could be—he is still quite young. Day after day Finwë sits with Míriel’s body beneath the silver willows of Lórien instead of with her spirit in the Halls of Mandos. We’re not told if this is because he would not be permitted to visit her actual spirit; he himself is both living and still incarnate. Visiting the Halls of Mandos doesn’t seem to be an option.

Plus wouldn’t it be awkward visiting your departed loved one with Mandos, the Doomsman of the Valar, watching over your shoulder? I’m just saying. That guys knows things. You don’t want him staring at you.

Finwë sits with her, not wanting to be separate from her. Moreover—and this is huge—we are told that “alone in all the Blessed Realm he was deprived of joy.” That means everyone else has been well and truly happy at this point, traipsing for untold years through this veritable heaven on Earth. But not Finwë, who for all intents and purposes is a single dad now. So he finally walks away from Míriel and throws himself into being the best father he can be. He showers all his love on little Fëanor. And he’s good at the new dad thing, at least at the start.

His son grows swiftly, “as if a secret fire were kindled within him, ” into a tall, raven-dark, and handsome Elf prince. Fëanor seems to inherit the raw talent of his mother, the stature and charisma of his father, and the cumulative skill of the entire Noldor people. He is arrogant and stubborn, listening very little to the wisdom of others, but his mind is keen. Not only are his hands possessed of greater proficiency than any other among the Children of Ilúvatar, but he is also the most “subtle in mind.”

He’s even the inventor of the runic alphabet that the Eldar use from this point on. See, for all their love of speech, it’s only in only relative recency that an Elf came up with a written form of their language(s).

And as if it’s not enough to be the best at everything, Fëanor improves upon that, too. He’s like the Benjamin Franklin of the Elves; he seems to have discovered and/or invented everything of consequence. Only replace that whole key and kite thing with, say, a variety of light-emitting gemstones and a bunch of palantíri (yeah, the Seeing Stones were just a fun side project for him). “Seldom were the hands and mind of Fëanor at rest” is the point. The guy is a machine. But—and this is worrisome—he does his best work alone. As we’ve seen in the Ainulindalë, an uber-talented character going off alone isn’t always a good thing.

Anyway, from Fëanor’s hand come wonders the world has never seen. Gems that can capture and retain light are his speciality, and will lead us to those really important ones that show up in the next chapter. But given how productive he is even in his youth, there’s no way he didn’t at some point construct a diorama of the Gardens of Lórien or win every science fair. I bet on some bored afternoon as a small boy he threw together a silver-painted rocking horse model of Nahar, Oromë’s legendary steed, or made a clockwork Nessa doll that really dances.

At some point, Finwë finally gets out of the house and presumably stops smothering his son with attention. Remember, he’s the King of the Noldor and he still wants much more from life—and more children—and expects to have millennia to look forward to. So it’s just a matter of time, one supposed, before he meets and marries another Elf. This one is Indis, and is quite unlike Míriel. For one, she’s of the poetry-loving, Valar-devoted Vanyar, not a fellow Noldor. She also brings golden hair into a house of dark-haired men, and will pass those genes down to her granddaughter, Galadriel.

This remarrying thing is an absolutely unprecedented thing—Elves do not do this—and it “was not pleasing to Fëanor.” To say the least! And really, the whole situation is a metaphysical snafu. The death of Míriel—made of her own volition—and then the question of whether Finwë even can remarry vexes the Valar. Finwë and his family sure do make things complicated.

There is some fascinating behind-the-scenes discussion of this in Morgoth’s Ring, wherein all the Valar actually hold a council just to debate the matter. Legislation is proposed and made, Mandos gets involved, the late Míriel’s own spirit is consulted, and her explicit silence is deemed an approval, if nothing else. See, no Elf can have two spouses. If one is alive, the other can never be again. All Elves will be together in the end, whatever end, and if in death you reunite with more than one spouse, things are only going to be awkward. It’s all very crazy and fascinating and I recommend anyone check that book out (so much good stuff in there). But it’s beyond the scope of this Primer, so…moving on.

The main point is that all of this is really the result of Arda Marred. Melkor’s early meddling has poisoned the world in these less obvious ways. That the Valar brought the Eldar to Valinor and the light of the Two Trees is all well and good, but it’s also kind of just sweeping dirt under the rug. The dirt is still there, even if it’s beneath the surface. This is some of it.

And so a rift begins in the house of Finwë, with Fëanor spending more time away from his step-family, alone with his good looks and his mad skills. His much younger half-siblings, Fingolfin and Finarfin, eventually come onto the scene, and Fëanor isn’t the sort of big brother to show them the ropes. He’s got no time for anyone who isn’t Fëanor. With the exception of his father, whom he loves greatly. But when they hang out, there’s no way they talk about Indis and her sons.

When Fëanor himself comes of age, he is clearly Valinor’s most eligible bachelor. He’s the eldest son of the king, handsome and seething with raw talent and ambition. But Elves aren’t flighty about love, and though we know that Fëanor is proud, there is no reason to think he differs from his people in this. In fact, while he’s still quite young, he meets the daughter of a renowned Noldor smith from whom he’d learned “much of the making of things in metal and in stone.” I suppose, as a mentor. Which means that he falls for the boss’s daughter. Huh!

Her name is Nerdanel the Wise. Right away she sounds like the perfect foil for Fëanor. She becomes the cool head of their marriage, strong-willed like him, but far more patient. When his temper threatens to overtake him, Nerdanel alone can calm him. We are told that, unlike him, she desires to “understand minds rather than to master them.” When you have a heart-to-heart with Nerdanel, she wants to know your point of view first. If you try to have a heart-to-heart with Fëanor, he’ll Elfsplain to you how you’re wrong and how you should do what he says. The desire to influence or control others is not exactly an endearing trait, is it? Gosh, and where have we seen that before?

Still, let’s be clear. Aside from being a stubborn ass sometimes, Fëanor is no villain. Not yet. And certainly there’s nothing to suggest he’s a bad husband to Nerdanel. They are fire and ice; together they’re steamy. He’s passionate and headstrong, but he loves her, and I doubt he talks down to her as he does to others. Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium seem untroubled in familial relationships by the vices and petty desires that Men are plagued with. There’s no infidelity, no impropriety, no reality TV drama. With literally only the one exception we’ve just seen, they mate for life and are true to one another. They’re hardwired this way.

And so it is only Fëanor’s later deeds that will estrange these two. To the detriment of everyone. Once she’s not around him regularly, the dude is a loose cannon.

In any case, Fëanor and Nerdanel go on to have seven kids together—seven!—and throughout the long history of the Children of Ilúvatar, no other Elf parents will have this many. Did I mention he was an overachiever? Well, their kids are going to be movers and shakers in years to come, though they won’t quite make as indelible a mark as good ol’ dad. We learned in the previous chapter what their names are: Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amrod, and Amros. Some of them inherit a measure of Nerdanel’s temperament, but most will possess Fëanor’s pride and tenacity. We’ll be able to see which ones take after him the most.

Speaking of pride, we come at last to Melkor. By the time his three-age sentence has finished, the three kindreds of the Eldar have long been ensconced in their posh homes in and around Valinor. The sons of Finwë and Indis are also already grown.

So the shackles come off, the doors of his prison are opened, and out into the Tree-lit realm Melkor is led to stand trial again—as was agreed. Before Manwë and all the Valar in their circle of thrones, he looks around and sees the Eldar gathered “at the feet of the Mighty.” These are the pesky Elves on whose account Melkor was laid low and locked up for so long? The ones who have benefited the most from his absence? Noted.

For their part, one has to assume that the Elves have been briefed on who Melkor is and what part he played before their coming. Some of them will remember the days at Cuiviénen, when rumors of a dark rider plagued them—and some of their kind were stolen away and never seen again. But they’ve never seen his evils with their own eyes. (The fate of those missing Elves and the existence of Orcs is known to no one yet, not the Valar, not Manwë. Project Orc is still on the downlow somewhere back on Middle-earth.) So to the first of the Elves, the world was beautiful even back then, but not entirely safe. Oromë had eventually come, and it all had worked out in the end. But plenty of Elves now exist who had never been to Middle-earth or seen its darkness. Fingolfin, Finarfin, Fëanor, and however many hundreds or thousands had been born since Ulmo ferried the Eldar across. Twice.

Heck, even their kids and Fëanor’s seven sons might be on the scene by the time Melkor is unshackled. Tolkien’s chronology is less clear before the start of solar years; the exposition in these early chapters isn’t presented in a perfectly linear fashion, either. My point is, the Eldar who were born into the bliss of Valinor are all the young “millennials”; they never knew the fears of the twilight days but also began their lives with greater education than their parents. The Eldar now have the Valar to learn from—often face to face!

So Melkor now sees the Elves standing there, buddy-buddy with the Valar. Which sickens him. The Valar are his own social and spiritual caste. Yet here, the Children freely dwell as willing subjects and friends and students, not as slaves and workers. That’s how things should have gone down in his mind. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling Valar! Especially Tulkas, that musclebound oaf… Oh yes, Melkor’s had three ages to daydream about vengeance against him and everyone else who’s wronged him. But now that he’s out, it’s the Eldar he hates most. They’re the ones who ratted him out and got him thrown in the slammer.

So yes, these Elves. He sees the shining gems that they’re all decked out with. Which is totally the Noldor’s doing. One wonders if Fëanor himself is present at this trial. His bling would be the brightest.

And what happened then…?
Well…in Valinor they say
That Melkor’s dark heart
Shrank three sizes that day!

All right, so that’s not how Tolkien put it. Even so, envy takes hold inside Melkor. He hides his loathing, for he “postponed his vengeance,” and he throws himself at the mercy of the court. He even requests of his brother, Manwë, that he might go forward now as “the least of the free people of Valinor,” and work now to help mend all troubles he’s caused. He makes no mention of the Orcs, that’s for damned sure. If they knew about those experiments, this trial wouldn’t end well for him.

So he sues for pardon. Interestingly, Nienna “aided his prayer,” meaning she actually speaks up on his behalf. She’s the only one who does. Seriously, Nienna! The Vala of grief, the Vala who has mourned and will forever mourn the marring of Arda by the defendant. She backs him up here, wanting Manwë to be merciful and grant Melkor pardon. And what about Mandos, who knows some things about the future? Mum’s the word.

At last, Manwë relents and pardons Melkor.

All right, so…why? To be fair, we readers know how long this book is, and that this is still just Chapter 6 of the Quenta Silmarillion. We can read the chapter titles from the Contents page and get the gist of things (and presumably Mandos gets to rifle and skim through the pages a bit). But the Valar? No. They don’t know, they can only hope. They might suspect that Melkor isn’t going to keep his word, they might worry and watch and wonder if this was the wisest choice.

Corey Olsen, the esteemed Tolkien Professor, has an excellent comparison to make about this choice. In one of his SilmFilm episodes, he likens Manwë’s choice to Aragorn’s at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring when the dying Boromir tells him the Halflings have been taken by the Orcs:

The decision to turn away, not pursue Frodo, but instead chase down Merry and Pippin’s captors—from a purely objective ends-oriented decision-making process—was a stupid decision…. I mean, yeah, Merry and Pippin are friends and stuff, but look, if Frodo fails because he doesn’t have guidance, the entire world is going to be destroyed. I like Merry and Pippin, too, but come on! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right? Wisdom would suggest following Frodo is obviously the most shrewd thing for him to do if he wants to maximize the chances that the good guys win. Leaving Merry and Pippin to die in the hands of the orcs would clearly be a wrong thing to do. He has the power to help them…. Morally, he can’t leave them them to die. And Aragorn takes this as an indication that it’s therefore the right thing to do. This is his sign that he’s not supposed to follow Frodo now…. I’m not going to think about what is the wisest, shrewdest thing. Instead I’m going to follow what is right even when it looks like it’s the wrong thing….

It’s not that [Manwë is] stupid, it’s not that he’s foolish in the sense of he doesn’t think of these things, or acts rashly without thinking. It’s that he thinks and considers and yet chooses to show pity, chooses to show mercy, chooses to give the benefit of the doubt, and to follow hope instead of wisdom.

I think most of the Valar—even Nienna, Melkor’s ad hoc defense attorney—knows this is a big gamble and that they’ll probably regret it. But they are the offspring of the thoughts of Ilúvatar, the one whose mercy has been witnessed before. And so Manwë knows this is the right thing to do: to give Melkor one last pass, on the off-chance that Melkor turns over a new leaf. The only condition is that Melkor must remain in the city of Valmar, and not roam all of Valinor or, worse, all of Arda. He probably has to periodically check in with a probation officer and show that he’s not trying to take over the world again. The Valar want to keep an eye on him.

And Melkor plays the part of a penitent ex-Vala well. Three ages in the fastness of Mandos hasn’t changed the fact that he’s a “liar without shame.” He is good at seeming benevolent with his “words and deeds” and his many helpful pointers actually benefit both the Elves and the Valar. He might be evil, but he’s still a master of many things. He has been, since the Timeless Halls, the most talented at everything. Most talented of his peers…sounds familiar again, right? It’s downright Fëanorian, innit?

Manwë is fooled by his good behavior. He wants to believe that his brother might actually be…well, cured. Part of Manwë’s blindness is his own humility. He lacks the ego that drives Melkor. An he simply doesn’t understand evil. Of course, there are two among the Valar who aren’t fooled: Ulmo—hard to pull a fast on him! And Tulkas—who just thinks Melkor is cruisin’ for a bruisin’ at all times. Yes, they observe Manwë’s ruling and don’t interfere. But Tulkas clenches his hands every time he passes Melkor on the street and, I’m thinking, makes a show of neck-cracking every chance he gets.

But it’s the Eldar that Melkor has in the crosshairs now. Hey may not be able to overthrow the Valar as he once dreamt, but he can mess up Ilúvatar’s precious Children. They’re vulnerable, and here he is right among them like a werewolf in…weresheep’s clothing? Maybe he can’t go after the Vanyar; those fair-haired, hippy-dippy, poetry-spouting bootlickers that stay too close to the Trees and to the Valar. More importantly, they’re too damned happy. And he won’t even bother with the Teleri. They’re nothing to him, those incurious, swan-loving Sea-elves.

But the Noldor—ah, the Noldor! He can relate to them. They’re intrinsically crafty, they yearn to know what they do not already. And more importantly, they’re restless. Yes, he can work with all this! Best of all, a lot of them come to trust him. Well, except that one cocky gem-crafting Noldo. What’s his name again? Oh yes, Fëanor. He despises Melkor, and never accepts counsel from him, despite all his skill. Whatever, if Fëanor won’t be manipulated directly, perhaps Melkor can pull his strings indirectly.

So there we have it. By chapter’s end, we’ve got one important new character in play, an old one back in play, and this town ain’t big enough for the both of them. Somebody get the popcorn!

In the next installment, we’ll finally get eyes on Fëanor’s titular gems and we’ll try to figure out what sort of bonnet-dwelling bee Melkor is breeding in “Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor.”

Top image: “The Secret Fire” by Deviant Art user noei1984

Jeff LaSala wonders what sort of screwy “secret fire” has kindled his son’s growth, because that kid won’t stop running and yet boycotts all sleep. Anyway, he once wrote a Scribe Award–nominated D&D novel, produced some cyberpunk stories, and now works for Tor Books.

There are plenty of holiday films that we adore, favorites that we screen every year to great applause (or groans) from family and friends. But don’t we all have a few films or TV shows that we associate with the holidays, despite them having nothing to do with the season?

Here are a few of our go-tos while we’re holed up with cocoa, gingerbread, and mulled wine.

(Now we really want mulled wine…)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

I could not tell you why this film is always on around December 25th in my house. Maybe it makes sense because it’s about locating the Holy Grail? That’s kind of related to the holiday, but not at all why it became one of my yearly indulgences. There’s just something about Last Crusade that is deeply comforting to me, like snuggly pajamas. From the soundtrack to the color palette—it’s oddly specific, I know, but the blue of the sky and the grey tones of the grail knight are soothing somehow. I can fully engage with it or fall asleep to it, and either way I’ve had a good evening. Sometimes it’s fun to have on in the background while I’m baking. Also, it’s something of a trade-off in my head; Thanksgiving is for James Bond marathons, so maybe I just graduate to Jones next month for the sake of completion.

Other titles I screen that would qualify include The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (which has Santa but isn’t really about Christmas), Lilo and Stitch, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. —Emily

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Mystery Science Theater 3000 has always carried a sleepy Saturday morning vibe, the kind that I took for granted as a kid and which has now become a blessed and rare reward. That sleepy vibe returns around Christmas, prompting me, usually without realizing, to complete my memory of the experience by booting up an episode of MST3K. It usually has to be one of the brighter, daffier episodes, though, to go with the twinkliness of the holiday. Roll on, The Puma Man! (Or maybe “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank”.) —Chris

In Bruges

I don’t know what possessed us last year to watch Martin McDonagh’s darkly funny caper about two hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) killing time in the Belgian city of Bruges, but it made for a surprisingly fitting holiday movie. Though I’ve never visited Bruges, the cobblestoned streets and the architecture (especially the very important carillon tower) remind me of the parts of Bavaria in which we used to spend Christmas when I was little. Maybe it’s that Ray’s (Farrell) crankiness for their forced vacation is just grinchy enough to be hilarious. And something about Bruges-as-purgatory really forces you to reflect on key moments in your life and important people to spend them with… which is what most holiday movies are supposed to do, and so many fail at. —Natalie

The Many Fast and/or Furious Films

I’ve had one perfect New Year’s Day in recent memory, and that’s because I spent it the best way possible: Watching all of the Fast & Furious movies with a bunch of friends. The important thing is to watch them in chronological order, not release order, because if you try to watch Tokyo Drift third, you’ll lose momentum. (You can also skip Tokyo Drift. I won’t tell.) The Furious franchise starts out as a car-tastic cousin of Point Break, and is full of absurd moments (like when a cop inexplicably orders his minion to make him a pair of iced cappuccinos), but as the series goes on, it figures out its obsessions (FAMILY) and strengths (increasingly absurd car stunts; Michelle Rodriguez fighting Ronda Rousey; the sexual tension between Vin Diesel and basically everyone).

And then it adds The Rock. Fast 5 is when you really want to start paying attention—but that means you can gradually wake up over the course of The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Fast & Furious. Invite your favorite people over, make some mimosas, get some Coronas (you want Dom to like you, right?), order some takeout, and settle in for the long haul. By the time you get to Fast & Furious 6‘s second barbecue, you’ll be cozy and happy and ready to face the year with your own chosen family.

You might also want a ten-second car. —Molly

Trilogy Marathon: The Lord of the Rings

I’m a Christmas media fanatic. In December I try to schedule my time so I can watch some type of holiday special or film every day, I festoon my home with tinsel, and I drink as much cocoa as I can hold. Because of this, the post-Christmas doldrums are strong with me. Over the years I’ve tried to force myself through my sadness by watching holiday specials on the 26^th, but each attempt curdled like bad eggnog in my mouth. A few years ago my partner and I hit upon a new scheme: make the 26^th the Official Trilogy Day!

We began with the obvious and tackled the Star Wars Trilogy. And lo! The 27^th dawned, and I felt better than I had in any previous year. And thus a new tradition was born, and we tried Back to the Future, the first three Thin Man movies (those are the good ones) and then the one that stuck: The Lord of the Rings. Obviously, LOTR was already something of a holiday tradition anyway since the movies came out in December, but in a purely shallow way, watching all three movies while stuffing yourself with leftovers is the perfect way to ease back into regular, non-Christmas time. On a more serious note, since Christmas, at its heart, is about celebrating light in the darkness, what better scene to watch than the lighting of the beacons? —Leah

Originally published in December 2016

Much has been said—over and over again and usually with well-intentioned sciolism—about those blasted Eagles in The Lord of the Rings.

There is actually precious little written about Tolkien’s imperious birds of prey, and I suppose that’s why it’s easy to armchair criticize the good professor for his use of them as eleventh-hour saviors. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some important distinctions to make. And what’s not to love about giant raptors? Since the rocs of Eastern legends and Marco Polo’s apocryphal adventures, everyone is fascinated by the idea of big birds, right?

So to sum up everyone’s problem: why didn’t one of the Eagles just fly the One Ring straight to Mt. Doom, or at least carry Frodo there, and just be done with it? Or heck, why not a whole convocation of them? Some readers and nitpicky moviegoers regard this as some kind of plot hole… which I say is a load of horsefeathers. I will concede that, of course, it would have been nice if Tolkien had added—among other things—a couple of helpful lines to make it clearer that the Eagles were simply not an option for this task and that the characters in The Lord of the Rings understood this. But maybe he didn’t need to, since any attentive reading will reveal certain truths.

Sure, plenty of arguments can be made against the Eagles’ involvement, but none can really be substantiated. One theory is simply that such a gambit probably wouldn’t succeed. The Eagles, while mighty, aren’t necessarily powerful enough to storm Mordor even in great numbers—Sauron’s power has grown strong again and it’s pretty likely he could handle them if they entered his land. He’s nothing if not studied; he knows of the Eagles. Plus, the great birds are physically vulnerable to the bows of Men (as mentioned in The Hobbit), to say nothing of the darts of Orcs or the sorcery of Sauron’s other servants. And do you think the Eagles themselves would immune to the One Ring’s evil?

“Eagles to the Carrock” by Ted Nasmith

Still, that’s all speculation. If anyone’s really hung up on this head-scratcher, they might as well wonder why the Elves didn’t just use their deep immortal minds to discover thermonuclear power and invent fission bombs, then detonate them in Mordor? Because they didn’t and, more importantly, they wouldn’t. They’re asking for a fundamental shift in the nature of Middle-earth, its divine custodians, and its inhabitants. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.

Let’s make one up-front distinction. There are the films, and there are the books, and both are awesome in their own right. Now, as much as the films do change some things rather drastically—Faramir (he does the right thing from the get-go!), Osgiliath (we don’t even go there!), the time of Saruman’s death (too soon!), etc.—I’m pretty sure not using the Eagles can be justified simply by saying… because the books didn’t. Which is to say, adding the Eagles in a transport capacity would be a game changer bigger than anything else and would have doomed the films by betraying the books way too much. Tolkien himself balked at the idea when he read and rejected a proposed film script in 1958 that tried to increase the Eagles’ role.

Oh, and side-note for anyone who hasn’t read the books: the Eagle-summoning moth that Gandalf wizard-speaks with is an interesting visual device, but it’s got no literary tie-in. If anything, it muddies our idea of who the Eagles serve. It seems like Gandalf can summon them in that moment—when really, he can’t. Even the Grey Pilgrim has nothing to do with their sudden arrival at the Black Gate in the third book/film.

Illustration by Eric Fraser

So the short answer, concerning the books, is what’s found in the pages of The Lord of the Rings, which is scant wordage indeed. The extended, deeper answer lies in The Silmarillion and books beyond, where the identity and origin of the Eagles is addressed—at times in passing, at times directly.

But let’s start chronologically in the real world. The Hobbit came out in 1937, when Middle-earth at large was still just baking in the oven. Here our feathered friends are depicted a bit more simply, even more surly. When they first show up, Tolkien writes straight-up: “Eagles are not kindly birds.” They don’t even bear the capitalization later attributed to their race. “Some are cowardly and cruel,” he adds, and it was only the eagles of the northern mountains which are “proud and strong and noble-hearted” at all.

They only save Thorin and Company in what feels like a deus ex machina move because they are “glad to cheat the goblins of their sport,” and because their boss—the otherwise unnamed Lord of the Eagles—commanded them to. He alone is friendly with Gandalf. Not until the end of that episode does Bilbo, our POV protagonist, realize that the eagles aren’t actually the next threat, and that he won’t be devoured after all. The eagles aren’t gentle with the group and they explain themselves little. While the dwarves are clasped in eagle talons, Bilbo has to grab onto Dori’s legs just in time to be saved at all, forced to cling on to the dwarf’s legs for dear life the entire flight.

Illustration by Sam Bosma

Gandalf convinces the eagles to carry them a bit further than just their mountain eyries (which aren’t especially convenient to climb down)—and only the Lord of the Eagles has the sensitivity to order his friends to fetch food and firewood for them. The great birds outright refuse to carry the company anywhere “near where men lived,” because they know they’ll get shot at. Because men would—very reasonably—think the eagles were stealing their sheep. Because they’re giant freaking birds of prey and even talking birds are going to eat other animals (whether those others can talk or not). Hey, this ain’t Narnia.

Yes, the eagles do join the Battle of the Five Armies at the end of the book, because they do hate the goblins, had spied their mustering in the Misty Mountains, and so opportunistically choose to join in on the goblin slaughter. They aren’t there, like the wood-elves or Men, for any portion of Smaug’s loot. They were just happy to make there be fewer goblins in the world. Everyone, but everyone, agrees that goblins suck. Remember, if not for the goblins, the elves and dwarves would have come to blows. And clearly eagles and Men have been at odds before. Not everyone plays nice in Middle-earth, not even the good guys. Just ask The Silmarillion! So then, after the Battle of the Five Armies is won, Dain Ironfoot crowns “their chief with gold” and then the eagles fly home. And that’s that.

Now fast forward through time to The Fellowship of the Ring, where by this time Tolkien has given the Eagles their capital E. They’re still not active participants in Middle-earth’s daily affairs—they never are. They’re not flying all around doing good deeds, saving the day willy-nilly, and rescuing cats from trees. (I bet they ate a few cats, though.) At most, we learn that the Eagles “went far and wide, and they saw many things: the gathering of wolves and the mustering of Orcs; and the Nine Riders going hither and thither in the lands; and they heard news of the escape of Gollum.”

They are the eyes in the sky—but why, and for whom? Well, at this time, they did much of their spy work at the request of Radagast the Brown, the animal-loving wizard who is friends with birds above all. The wizards, while it’s never really spelled out in such terms in this book, are plugged into greater powers and have an active interest in the movements of Sauron and his minions. And later, Galadriel herself—whose power and history are great indeed—is able to request the help of Gwaihir, “swiftest of the Great Eagles” in seeking Gandalf’s fate.

In the persnickety why-didn’t-the-Eagles-just-do-X argument, I always come back to what Gwaihir says to Gandalf when he picks him up, “un-looked for,” at the pinnacle of Orthanc. It clues us into the nature and purpose of his race. Gandalf later recounts this aerial exchange at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell:

‘“How far can you bear me?” I said to Gwaihir.

“‘Many leagues,” said he, “but not to the ends of the earth. I was sent to bear tidings not burdens.”‘

Which is kind of perfect. It’s succinct, maybe even a bit crass, but it’s actually all that really needs to be said. “Look,” Gwaihir is basically saying, “Since I’m here, I’ll help you get to point B, but I won’t solve all your problems for you.” If the Windlord says he’ll fly you many leagues—leagues are usually three-mile increments—he’s not saying he’ll fly you all of the leagues. Eagles don’t write blank checks.

“Gandalf Escapes Upon Gwaihir” by Ted Nasmith

At this point in the story, Gandalf already knows about the One Ring and is pretty rattled by Saruman’s betrayal. Things are looking bleak, and he sure could use any help he can get. Yet he doesn’t say to Gwaihir, “Oh, hey, since we’re on the subject of rides… any chance you could also fly a hairy-footed little buddy of mine to Mordor?” It’s already off the table in Gandalf’s mind—not to mention it hasn’t even been decided what to do with the One Ring. And I like to think that Gwaihir, although he’s obviously fond of the two good wizards, is a cranky bird; Gandalf isn’t going to rock the boat.

At the Council of Elrond, when all topics and ideas are being tossed up to see if they stick, at no point does anyone even suggest the Eagles. It’s like they all already know not to bother. They get it, even if we don’t. And it’s not like they aren’t already entertaining crazy ideas. To show you how desperate the good guys are feeling with the One Ring in hand, Elrond even suggests going to Tom Bombadil, like, right there in front of everyone even though most in attendance have no clue who that is. And it’s Gandalf, who arguably knows more about the major players than anyone else present, who dismisses bothering with that deranged but powerful woodland hobo. Tom isn’t responsible enough, or ultimately invulnerable enough, to trust with such a weighty piece of jewelry.

And all the talk of getting the Ring somewhere else—to Tom, to the depths of the sea, wherever!—also comes with talk of the sheer danger of the journey. And secrecy! Sauron’s spies are everywhere. There is the omnipresent fear of all roads being watched, and Gandalf’s colleague Radagast isn’t the only one with birds for spies. Sauron and Saruman both use beasts—“Crebain from Dunland!”—and Gandalf worries about both crows and hawks in the service of their enemies. The Eagles aren’t sky ninjas. If you’re an Eagle, you’re big and bold and grand. You make entrances and big screechy swoops. It’s what you do.

The Unquiet Voice of Saruman

So aside from their lofty surveillance up till that point, and later Gandalf cashing in another of his Good For One Free Eagle Ride coupons at the mountain peak of Zirakzigil, the great birds play no more part in the tale until the end. When the One Ring is destroyed, when the borders of Mordor don’t matter anymore, when the peoples of Middle-earth have already come together… then do the Eagles arrive in force to turn a pyrrhic victory into a better one.

Oh, your army is being squeezed by the legions of Mordor at the Black Gate in the great battle at the end of the Third Age? Oh, the Nazgûl are also harassing you? What, they’re riding upon winged beasts that were nursed on fell meats?! Holy heck, yeah, we’ll help with that! And what, your little Hobbit friends have already snuck through the Land of Shadow and up into Mt. Doom and then dropped that vile-ass Ring into the fire? Okay, sure, we’ll get them out!

So this brings me to The Silmarillion, where we are told that the race of Eagles are first “sent forth” by Manwë, the sky-themed King of the Valar and viceregent of all Arda (a.k.a. all known creation). The Valar are essentially the gods, or archangels, of Arda, though they’re certainly never given that label. We read that “[s]pirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from” Manwë’s halls, and that he, quite unlike his wicked brother Melkor—who becomes Morgoth, Middle-earth’s Lucifer figure—is all about ruling in peace and selflessness.

Now, the Eagles are set up to “keep watch upon Morgoth; for Manwë still had pity for the exiled Elves. And the Eagles brought news of much that passed in those days to the sad ears of Manwë.” Think of them as heaven’s news ’copters, ever reporting the tidings of Middle-earth back to their boss, who is not an omniscient, all-seeing being. Owing to their origins, it’s also evident that the Eagles are an immortal species, or at least the early ones were. In some accounts (namely The War of the Jewels), it’s suggested that Gwaihir himself might have been one of the Eagles in the First Age, which would make him one of the few beings of those days who also shows up in The Lord of the Rings . . . you know, many thousands of years later!

In the very early days of creation, when Yavanna, the Queen of the Earth, first supposes that the Eagles would live in the great trees that she plants, Manwë corrects her. “In the mountains the Eagles shall house, and hear the voices of those who call upon us.” Meaning they’re also prayer-hearers as well as reconnaissance agents. So actually, given their special place in the scheme of things—spirits in physical bodies, sent to lair in aeries on Middle-earth and not in more celestial estates—the Eagles are more like Manwë’s special ops. Intelligence agents who also do some special rescue missions, with some sporadic Orc-slaying thrown in.

Another description can be found in Morgoth’s Ring, volume 10 of The History of Middle-earth, wherein Christopher Tolkien organized many of his father’s annotations, notes, and further thoughts. In a chapter on Aman, the Blessed Realm, where all Elves long to be but many (the Noldor) are exiled from, there is this excerpt:

‘They forbade return and made it impossible for Elves or Men to reach Aman—since that experiment had proven disastrous. But they would not give the Noldor aid in fighting Melkor. Manwë however sent Maia spirits in Eagle form to dwell near Thangorodrim and keep watch on all that Melkor did and assist the Noldor in extreme cases.

Maiar are the “lesser” spiritual beings situated in the hierarchy beneath the Valar. The Istari wizards, the Balrogs, and even Sauron himself are all Maia spirits. It’s a spectrum; not all are of equal power, and of course Sauron is clearly one of the mightiest. The implication is that all the great Eagles may be spirits first, yet they do inhabit beast form and are animals in many respects. Even though they can speak as some other animals have shown in Tolkien’s legendarium, Morgoth’s Ring states that they had to be taught to speak; it does not come naturally to them.

Even during the epic events of the First Age, the Eagles are used sparingly, whisking heroes and royals out of peril—and on several occasions, dead bodies!—usually when said heroes already did the valiant or foolish things they had set out to do. Sound familiar?

In one memorable example, we read in the chapter “Of the Return of the Nolder” that Thorondor, “mightiest of all birds that have ever been,” is sent as an insta-reply to the prayer-like cry of Fingon. See, Fingon, an Elf prince, goes searching for his lost cousin, Maedhros, eldest son of Fëanor (of Silmaril-creating fame). He at last finds Maedhros chained by one hand high up on the edge of a mountain face. He was bound there by Morgoth as a hostage, and had languished in torment, likely for years.

“Maedhros’s Rescue from Thangorodrim” by Ted Nasmith

But instead of having his liver devoured by an eagle every day like the poor Greek Titan this scene is obviously inspired by, Tolkien—who loves to invoke and then twist choice moments from real world mythologies—uses an eagle as the Elf’s salvation. When it’s evident that Fingon cannot climb to his cousin to save him, Maedhros pleads for death instead. He asks Fingon to slay him with an arrow. So Fingon, grieved of what he must do, cries out to Manwë: ‘O King to whom all birds are dear, speed now this feathered shaft, and recall some pity for the Noldor in their need!’

Right away, this supplication is answered—not with the mercy-killing accuracy he was hoping for but with a flesh-and-bone and many-feathered beast! Thorondor swoops down from the sky—presumably saying, “Whoa, chill with the arrow.”—and flies Fingon right up to his chained-up cousin. Even in that moment, the Eagle doesn’t just solve their problems; he’s just playing flying carpet for them. Fingon is unable break the shackle that binds Maedhros to the mountain, so Maedhros again pleads for mercy killing instead. But nope, Fingon got this far with the Eagle’s help and refuses to kill his cousin. So he does what a lot of Tolkien’s badass characters do: he maims a guy. Maedhros’s hand is hacked off at the wrist, allowing him to escape the bond. Then the Eagle flies them both back home. It makes all the difference for these two Elves, but the heavy-handed divine intervention that the Eagles represent is always… just so. A lift here, a flap there, a short-lived flight from B to C. Never A to Z.

In another chapter, Thorondor again comes screeching down from the mountain just when Morgoth is about to break apart the body of Fingolfin—the High King of the Noldor, who he’d just slain—and scratches the Dark Lord right in the face! And it totally leaves a scar. Good bird!

In yet another scene, Thorondor and two of his vassals (one of whom is our pal Gwaihir) spot Beren and Lúthien after the famous interracial couple collapse wounded and weary from having just taken Morgoth to the cleaners in his own lair. Always the Eagles are held in reserve, watching, reporting when they’re asked to—and sure, dive-bombing Orcs and other nasties when they can fit it into their schedules. Always with a view towards helping out the Noldor, whom Manwë has a soft spot for throughout The Silmarillion. Yes, in short, when the Eagles swoop in it’s because Manwë pitied the fools.

Finally, Thorondor and seemingly all his vassals do take part in the War of Wrath, unquestionably the largest battle that ever takes place in Middle-earth. It’s the one where basically everyone, including the Valar, team up against Morgoth and his monstrous legions to finally put an end to his dominion… though, of course, not of all the evils he’d sown. There are heavy losses across the board. The Eagles, in this epic showdown, notably show up to help take down all of Morgoth’s remaining dragons, which he’d unleashed all at once. Think massive bestial dogfight, a “battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt.”

In the Second Age, the Eagles adopt a cooler and somewhat more figurative role. Morgoth has been replaced by his chief lieutenant and future ring-making successor, Sauron. After waging nasty wars with the Elves, Sauron allows himself to be captured by the Númenóreans—that noble and long-lived branch of Men from which Aragorn is descended—and worms his evil counsel into their power-seeking mortal hearts. As a “repentant” prisoner, he becomes their puppetmaster and inspires them to wickedness and deadly hubris. The rulers of Númenor then turn their eyes upon the Valar in the far west and become convinced that they can conquer them. Sauron, ever a deceiver, has them believing that the Valar jealously hide the power of immortality from Men. Falling for Sauron’s lies hook, line, and sinker, and thus believing that the Valar can be overcome by sheer force, the Númenórean king begins to plot against them. And with him most of his people.

“The Eagles of Manwë” by Ted Nasmith

And that’s when the weather, which was always so perfect in Númenor, begins to darken. From the western horizon—beyond which Valinor lies—a colossal cloud appears, “shaped as it were an eagle, with pinions spread to the north and the south… and some of the eagles bore lightning beneath their wings, and thunder echoed between sea and cloud.”

Here we see a meteorological manifestation of the Eagles, not the birds themselves, formed as if in warning. A scary-ass omen in the sky. Accordingly, many freak out. Those weren’t bear-shaped clouds, nor shark, nor honey badger. Those are goddamned eagles, and anyone know knows anything at all about the Valar knows who is represented by those great birds of prey.…

‘Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West!’ they cried. ‘The Eagles of Manwë are come upon Númenor!’ And they fell upon their faces.

So while the Valar give fair warning, and the weather worsens and lightning even slays some people in hills, fields, and city streets, the power-hungry Númenóreans only get angrier and more defiant. But the fate of Númenor and its many repercussions are a whole different story, and lead to some serious geological fallout.

If you accept that the Eagles are more divine agents than courier service and yet you still wonder why the Valar didn’t just send them to find Sauron’s misplaced ring in the Third Age, and save everyone a heap of time and trouble, then carry it up to the volcano, it’s important to note that in Tolkien’s legendarium the gods, such as they are, take a very hands-off approach to the world. One could argue, and many have, that this expresses some of Tolkien’s own religious beliefs—which were strong but also tastefully understated. If there is a God, he allows the world to manage itself, choosing to inspire good deeds instead of having them carried out by divine agents.

As for Middle-earth, the Valar are not entirely idle. At the end of the First Age, they come forth to help give Morgoth the boot. And in the Third Age, remember that they do send some divine begins into the world with the express purpose of challenging Sauron when he proves almost as troublesome as his old boss had been. They do so by sending a tiny boatload of angelic (Maiar) beings in threadbare guises, downgraded for their mission into the bodies of old men with earthly needs (food, sleep, etc.). They are forbidden from using their full might—and only one of them, good old Gandalf, really even sticks to this one job.

Incidentally, as I mention in my essay on Saruman, there is a section in The Unfinished Tales where Christopher Tolkien relates from his father’s notes a scene wherein Manwë himself, who favored the airs and winds of Arda, directly volunteered Gandalf for the Saving Middle-earth gig that he and the other Istari are given.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Eagles, when they do show up in Third Age events, usually do so where Gandalf has already rallied his squishier friends to take on the forces of evil? Twice in The Hobbit the Eagles come to the rescue, even bringing beak and talon to bear in the Battle of the Five Armies to help turn the tide. In The Lord of the Rings, Gwaihir himself shows up three times: (1) saving a wizard from the clutches of another, (2) whisking the same wizard from a mountaintop after he’s been reborn, and (3) helping out at one more battle before saving a pair of Hobbits from rivers of fire.

As Gandalf relates after being picked up that second time:

‘“Ever am I fated to be your burden, friend at need,” I said.

‘“A burden you have been,” he answered, “but not so now. Light as a swan’s feather in my claw you are. The Sun shines through you. Indeed I do not think you need me any more: were I to let you fall, you would float upon the wind.”

‘“Do not let me fall!”I gasped, for I felt life in me again. “Bear me to Lothlórien!”

“That indeed is the command of Lady Galadriel who sent me to look for you,” he answered.

So are the Eagles a deus ex machina? Eh, sort of, but that’s not exactly how Tolkien thought of it. A deus ex machina is a too-convenient, unbelievable, and out-of-left-field sort of plot device that’s more for getting the author out of a jam than telling the reader a good story. Yes, the Eagles turn up “un-looked for,” but they’re still a known part of the world, creatures with a rare but established precedence for showing up in pivotal moments, and they do bring positive outcomes by design. Specials ops!

“The Shadow of Sauron” by Ted Nasmith

Tolkien coined a term: eucatastrophe, “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears,” and he regarded it as “the highest function of fairy-stories.” That’s maybe a tall order in the jaded contemporary fantasy of today, but I still buy it. And it’s worth mentioning that The Lord of the Rings always has been a shining example of the old-timey fairy-story Tolkien was such a fan of, but he still pulled it off without it being goofy.

So again… why didn’t the Eagles just fly a ringbearer to the fires of Mt. Doom? Because these majestic birds aren’t someone’s pets. They’re an elite agency that may or may not get called in at any time—and not by just anyone. Sauron and his Ring are Middle-earth’s problems. But at least Gandalf, the only responsible wizard, specifically sent by the Valar to help it deal with its Dark Lord trouble, was permitted to receive occasional aid from the Eagles. And so he did.

But still, not often. Only in true need. Gandalf roams Middle-earth for about 2,021 years, and as far as we know, in all that time he doesn’t even ask for the Eagles’ help but for a couple of times.

Ultimately, these birds are about the joy that accompanies the exclamation, “The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!” We’re supposed to have forgotten about them until the moment they arrive, in that final hour when we’ve nearly won the day! But even in winning, death can still be the likely outcome. Like when Gandalf realizes the One Ring has been destroyed, and Sauron defeated, he knows Frodo and Sam are in trouble and he so he turns to his cranky bird friend.

‘Twice you have borne me, Gwaihir my friend,’ said Gandalf. ‘Thrice shall pay for all, if you are willing. . .’

‘I would bear you,’ answered Gwaihir, ‘whither you will, even were you made of stone.’

I only wish there was more banter, more Eagle-and-wizard bromance camaraderie to read about. In any case, having said all this, I know there will always be those who squawk about the Eagles’ saving-the-day antics as if it was a problem.

And still those voices are calling from far away.

This article was originally published in December 2016.

Jeff LaSala is a production editor and freelance writer who can’t leave Middle-earth well enough alone. He also wrote some sci-fi/fantasy books and now works for Tor Books. He knows that in addition to Thorondor, Landroval, and Gwaihir, a few of the other Eagles are probably named Don, Glen, Bernie, and Randy.

No question animates the mind of a young speculative fiction fan more than “Who would win?” It’s a question that provokes our firmest cultural loyalties in the lizard part of our brain that enjoys nothing more than smashing action figures together.

One cultural phenomenon that’s largely escaped “Who Would”-ism is the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien. Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy gave us a few battles we didn’t know we wanted, and still don’t (Legolas vs. Bolg; Thranduil vs. The Scenery). Sure, there have been a few articles imagining Aragorn facing off against Jaime Lannister and the like, but they’re relatively rare compared to the heated “Captain America vs. Batman” or “Ninjas vs. Pirates” discussions that pop up regularly over pizza and pipe-weed.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Middle-earth has a certain literary cachet other pop cultural universes lack. Tolkien was a professor at Oxford, of course, and The Lord of the Rings is a foundational text of High Fantasy, and retains a lofty air. Second, the central characters of Tolkien’s most widely read books are the diminutive and good-natured hobbits, who are hard to press into the service of battling other heroes. There’s not much fun to be had in imagining Frodo Baggins locked in a fight to the death with a pre-Hogwarts Harry Potter (Frodo would win … and feel absolutely terrible about it).

Still, Middle-earth is rife with interesting match-ups and none more so than a battle between the last surviving Dark Powers of Fire in the Third Age: What if Smaug had sought the treasures of Moria rather than Erebor, and so woke Durin’s Bane? Who would win?

TO THE MYTHOPOEIC THUNDERDOME!

First, let’s introduce our contenders:

Balrogs and dragons both originated in the First Age as servants of Morgoth, the first and greatest Dark Lord. Of the Maiar spirits Morgoth seduced to his service, “Dreadful … were the Valaraukar, the scourges of fire that in Middle-earth were called the Balrogs, demons of terror.”

As Legolas later says of the Balrog in Moria, Balrogs are “of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.” And indeed, in The Silmarillion, the Balrogs rank above all Morgoth’s servants, aside from Sauron himself. Their primary narrative purpose in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings is to provide an appropriately noble and titanic death for the greatest heroes: Feanor, Fingon, Ecthelion, Glorfindel, and Gandalf the Grey all meet their ends in combat with these evils of the ancient world (one can’t help but wonder what would have happened had Glorfindel accompanied the Fellowship of the Ring as Elrond originally intended: would he have taken Gandalf’s place in fighting the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dum and shouted “Not this shit again!” instead of “Fly, you fools!” as he tumbled into the abyss?)

The origins of dragons are murkier. Tolkien never tells us how they came to be, though in The Children of Húrin, the first dragon Glaurung, “spoke by the evil spirit that was in him.” It’s likely, then, that the first dragons were Maia spirits animating mortal bodies—like Wizards, but with scales and fire (think how much more effective Radagast would have been as an enormous, flaming horror reptile).

As in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Tolkien’s dragons serve as weapons of mass destruction—and, in fact, in the earliest versions of Tolkien’s legendarium, the “dragons” that destroy the Elven city of Gondolin are war machines, not actual creatures. Tolkien eventually changed them to match the more familiar image of the dragon of Western folklore, though the dragons of Middle-earth are also highly intelligent, sardonic, and enjoy fucking with people. Glaurung sows destruction in The Silmarillion with both his fiery breath and his skill at mind-control and manipulation. He hypnotizes Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor into committing incest and then suicide, which is a dick move even for a lizard from hell.

Now, how do they stack up?

The texts don’t provide much evidence for our battle. Dragons and Balrogs never face off in Middle-earth, though they are present together at a few battles during the First Age. When Glaurung first comes forth in the Battle of Sudden Flame, “in his train were Balrogs.” This suggests the Balrogs were subservient to Glaurung, or at least acting as his support.

More tellingly, in the War of Wrath that brings an end to Morgoth’s reign and the First Age, “the Balrogs were destroyed, save some few that fled and hid themselves in caverns inaccessible at the roots of the earth.” The release of the winged dragons—Smaug’s ancestors—however, was “so sudden and ruinous…that the host of the Valar were driven back.” Tolkien doesn’t provide the number of dragons or Balrogs here, so we can’t know how much the sheer quantity of Balrogs and dragons played a part. Still, the dragons proved more effective in battle.

Then there’s Gandalf the Grey, who managed to kill a Balrog single-handed, but decided to manipulate some Dwarves and one very reluctant hobbit into dealing with Smaug. Granted, Gandalf didn’t set out to face a Balrog, and he died in the process (…he got better), but it’s telling that he didn’t even try to take down Smaug by himself. Of course, the Gandalf the Grey in The Hobbit is, in many ways, a different character from the Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings—as different, really, as he is from Gandalf the White. In The Hobbit, he’s a different, less powerful incarnation of the same being.

So we’re left to our overexcited imaginations to imagine how this fight would play out. And thank Eru for that—it’s far more fun:

So, the first thing any self-respecting wyrm is going to do is unleash his fiery breath—but this wouldn’t phase a scourge of fire like a Balrog.

Balrogs have a few weapons available to them: flaming swords, whips of many thongs, and magic. A flaming sword probably isn’t much good against a dragon, and spells don’t seem to work well on them either: the Elves of Nargothrond surely had magic to spare, but that didn’t stop Glaurung from turning their fortress-home into his own personal Scrooge McDuck-style money vault.

That leaves the Balrog with his whip of many thongs, which he could use to hogtie Smaug. Except that Smaug’s “teeth are swords, my claws spears”, and could cut through the thongs. Even if the Balrog’s whips are impervious to dragon teeth and claws, Smaug can quickly flap his wings and fly out of range.

Now, I know what you’re going to say: but Balrogs have wings! Sure, they have wings. But so do ostriches, and you don’t see them flocking high in the skies over Africa. Even if Balrogs can fly—and nothing Tolkien ever wrote indicates that they can—then they clearly suck at it. Of the few Balrogs we know about, two fell into chasms—Durin’s Bane and the one defeated by Glorfindel. That is not a promising record for winged demons of terror.

So Smaug can keep a healthy distance from his demonic opponent, but that doesn’t help him win. More importantly, flight leaves Smaug vulnerable. It exposes the small bare patch on his underbelly—his only weakness. Balrogs are great warriors, and even if they fly about as well as dead penguins, they can probably hurl a flaming sword with pinpoint accuracy.

Smaug stays on the ground. The dragon’s flames and the Balrog’s weapons are useless. We’re down to grappling, with the great wyrm and the demon of terror locked in a desperate, deathly, fiery embrace.

But wait! Smaug has one last weapon: his eyes. We don’t know if Smaug could freeze people and mind-control them as well as his forebear Glaurung, but just glimpsing Smaug’s eye made Bilbo want “to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.”

Theoretically, then, up close or at a distance, Smaug’s eyes can put Durin’s Bane under the dragon-spell. But then, would the dragon-spell work against a demon of terror?

Dragons and Balrogs are both, in origin, Maia spirits. Smaug isn’t Maiar, but his power is equivalent. And we know the power of one Maia can affect other Maiar. After all, Sauron’s Ring is a terrible temptation to both Gandalf and Saruman. And in the Chamber of Mazarbul, Gandalf and Durin’s Bane exchange spells and counterspells that the wizard says, “nearly broke me.”

So, one glimpse into Smaug’s eyes and the Balrog falls under the spell. Even if it’s just for a second—a moment of hesitation or distraction, it’d be enough. Smaug would snatch up Durin’s Bane and gobble him up with his sword-sharp teeth (and we know swords can kill Balrogs).

There you have it. Who would win in a battle between Smaug and Durin’s Bane? The winner is the wyrm. And we can imagine Smaug curled up comfortably on a bed of mithril deep in Khazad-dûm, triumphant, stronger than ever. And probably a little gassy.

This article was originally published in May 2017.

Austin Gilkeson formerly served as The Toast‘s Tolkien Correspondent, and his writing has also appeared at Catapult and Cast of Wonders. He lives outside Chicago with his wife and son.

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” –Gandalf, The Return of the King

Recently, a friend of mine tried to convince me that The Lord of the Rings is a story of good versus evil, a simplistic fable of light triumphing over dark, and that Tolkien liked to write in black and white morality. This is a deep misunderstanding of morality and the nature of conflict in Tolkien’s storytelling: in fact, the pull toward loss and catastrophe is far stronger than the certainty of victory, and the world of Middle-earth is always on the edge of a fall into darkness.

The promise of destruction hovers constantly over The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The Silmarillion in particular is, in many ways, a story of what Tolkien once called “the long defeat” (Letters, no. 195)—the entire world is devastated not once but twice in battles that shatter continents. Of the six major battles against Morgoth, the rebellious god and Satan-like figure of Tolkien’s mythology (Sauron, in comparison, was only a henchman), three are devastating losses, one is a temporary victory that ends in the death of one of the greatest Elves to ever live (if also one of the most divisive), and one causes the aforementioned destruction of half a continent.

Oh, sure, the latter ends in Morgoth’s imprisonment. But lest we forget, eventually he will break free again and throw the world into darkness.

Splintered Light by Verlyn Flieger is one of the first full-length studies of Tolkien’s writing and one of the few on The Silmarillion (a sort of mythological history of Middle-earth—to give you some perspective, the entirety of The Lord of the Rings is encompassed in two paragraphs in the last chapter of The Silmarillion). In it, Flieger argues that the back and forth pull between two emotional poles of despair and hope is a constant of Tolkien’s writing.

Following Flieger’s lead, it’s necessary to look closely at The Silmarillion, and specifically at Tolkien’s creation myth, to understand the complex nature of good and evil in his world. The first section in the published Silmarillion, the “Ainulindalë”, describes the universe as created by Eru (roughly speaking, God) and sung into being by the Valar (roughly speaking, angels). However, all is not well in the choir: the rebellious Melkor seeks to make his own music outside of that composed by Eru, thus introducing discord and conflict into the melody.

It’s this rather poor decision that precipitates Melkor’s eventual fall (more on that later), but its significance for Tolkien’s cosmology is far greater than that: Eru weaves the rebellious theme into the overarching music, making it part of the grand design, but the problem with incorporating angelic rebellion into your creation is that—well, you’ve incorporated angelic rebellion into creation.

As Tolkien put it in a letter to a friend in 1951, explaining his conception of the Middle-earth mythology:

In this Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the World (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken. The fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable.” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131)

He contrasts this with the version of creation given by “what may be perhaps called Christian mythology,” where “the Fall of Man is subsequent to and a consequence (though not a necessary consequence) of the ‘Fall of the Angels’” but not an inherent part of the world’s nature. In notes, Tolkien described the entirety of the Middle-earth universe as “Morgoth’s ring”—the essence of his evil is baked in, as it were, from the start.

Perhaps this inherent corruption is why the idea of the Fall endlessly haunts Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is dotted with falls, figurative and literal, great and small. The mighty Elf Fëanor falls to his pride and jealousy, just as Melkor did. The house of Hurin collapses into ruins amid tragedy that can only be described as sordid. The great sanctuaries—Nargothrond, Gondolin, Doriath, and the island of Númenor—are all sacked and destroyed.

Númenor itself makes a perfect test case for the ways in which goodness in Tolkien is not a given, even in his heroes. Founded as an island nation for the descendants of the savior-hero Eärendil, Númenor is created as a kind of in-between land, a liminal space between the paradise of Valinor and the mundane world. Númenor and its people are favored above other humans—but even before Sauron manages to slip in as an advisor to the king, the island has already begun to fall apart. Driven by a fear of death, the Númenoreans turn away from their special relationship with the Valar, dabbling in the twin evils of necromancy and imperialism.

This gradual moral decay eventually culminates in a disastrous attempt to invade Valinor by force, and the island of Númenor is utterly destroyed by Eru himself, in his first direct intervention in events, ever. A remnant survives (the ancestors of Aragorn and the Rangers), but the glory of Númenor is gone forever, and as an additional consequence, Eru reshapes the world, sundering Valinor from the earthly realms.

The reshaping of the world after Númenor’s destruction is a loss that resonates with another major theme of Tolkien’s: the world is moving ever away from the divine. In the beginning the Valar walk among the Elves, but they gradually retreat from the world, eventually leaving altogether. This is a process begun at Númenor’s fall, and the resultant removal of Valinor. Tolkien wrote that

The Downfall of Númenor…brings on the catastrophic end, not only of the Second Age, but of the Old World, the primeval world of legend (envisaged as flat and bounded). After which the Third Age began, a Twilight Age, a Medium Aevium, the first of a broken and changed world. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131)

The course of Middle-earth’s history is the gradual motion away from a beautiful past that is always growing further beyond reach. Tolkien’s nostalgia for a bygone age is a simultaneous yearning for and awareness of things lost beyond recovery; not only are the Valar retreating from the material world, but even the Elves begin to leave the world of Men.

It isn’t only on a grand scale that Tolkien illustrates the tendency of the world toward destruction, however—the falls of individuals are every bit as dramatic. The history of Middle-earth is dotted with other characters who succumb to pride or arrogance: Fëanor in the First Age, Isildur in the Second Age, and others. No one is so pure that they are not at risk: not without reason do Gandalf and Elrond both refuse to take charge of the Ring, and while hobbits are able to resist longer, Frodo ultimately fails to let the Ring go, claiming it as his own (it’s only Gollum’s intervention that prevents disaster). The Ring may be a force of its own, but it speaks to the inner darkness in everyone.

Tolkien’s pessimism shows clearly in an unfinished “sequel” to The Lord of the Rings that he began writing but never finished, which takes place in Gondor during the reign of Aragorn’s son. In the story, a sort of “Satanic” cult has arisen and young boys play at being Orcs. Human beings, Tolkien wrote in his letters about the tale, grow quickly dissatisfied with peace (Letters, no. 256 and 338); the title “The New Shadow” alludes to the growth of new evil even after the destruction of Sauron. Tolkien deemed the story too dark and never finished it.

On the other hand, there is a version of Tolkien’s cosmology that holds out hope for a final victory: the Second Prophecy of Mandos promises that while Morgoth will escape and cover the world in darkness, in the end he will be killed and a new world created, free of the flaws of the old. This messianic, Revelation-like story lingers in a few places in The Silmarillion. In the story of the creation of the Dwarves, Tolkien mentions the role they will play in “the remaking of Arda after the Last Battle” (The Silmarillion, “Aule and Yavanna”). However, the prophecy itself was not included in the finished version, and it seems Tolkien did not intend it to be. Not only does Tolkien’s history not reach this promised conclusion beyond prophetic mention, but by its exclusion it is eternally deferred—always just beyond reach, positioned in a nebulous future-conditional.

Thus far, I’ve mostly focused on the darkness that dwells in the heart of Middle-earth, but that is primarily because it is the facet most often overlooked by readers. Equally important is the other side of the coin—glimmers of hope, the turn toward the light: what Tolkien called “eucatastrophe” in his essay “On Fairy Stories”.

According to Tolkien’s definition, eucatastrophe is “the sudden joyous ‘turn’” at the end of a story that averts disaster. It gives “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world” that does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure but nevertheless offers hope for something other than universal and final defeat. The story of Beren and Luthien is one such glimpse, as is the ultimate destruction of the One Ring even after Frodo’s failure. Each victory may be small, or temporary, but that does not make them meaningless.

In the 1950s, Tolkien wrote a philosophical dialogue between an Elf and a human woman called “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth,” (subtitled “Of Death and the Children of Eru, and the Marring of Men”). In this piece, Tolkien offers two different Elvish words for hope. One, amdir, describes the expectation of good “with some foundation in what is known”—a realistic kind of hope based on past experience. The other is estel, which the Elf Finrod describes thusly:

“But there is another [thing called hope] which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust.” It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being.” (“Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”, Morgoth’s Ring)

Estel describes a hope that flies in the face of expectation but is nonetheless sustained, remaining despite loss and despite defeat. It represents what might be called faith, not only in the religious sense but in the manner of a deeply held belief that does not require “evidence.” Tolkien’s hope seems closer to estel than amdir, not to be defeated by the ways of the world. Estel, it is worth noting, is one of Aragorn’s many names.

The story of Lord of the Rings, and of the history of Middle-earth more generally, is not that of one battle of good versus evil, but of instances of a battle that is ongoing, where the final victory (or defeat) is always deferred, just at one remove.

Tolkien’s ethos is not that good will always triumph over evil. Rather, it is that good is locked in a constant struggle against evil, and that victory is far from inevitable and always temporary. Nonetheless, the fight is still necessary and worthwhile. Even in the face of futility, even if it is all a part of “the long defeat,” as Galadriel describes her ages-long fight against the dark (The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Mirror of Galadriel”), it is valuable to remember the infinitely wise words of Samwise Gamgee’s song in The Two Towers:

Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.

This article was originally published in March 2017.

Elise Ringo is an enthusiastic nerd putting her English degree to good use by writing about anything other than the literary canon and thinking far too much about pop-culture. She runs a blog at Becoming the Villainess and tweets as @veliseraptor.