I never read the “History of Middle Earth” books, just LOTR, Silmarillion, Hobbit, Unfinished Tales and Narn i Hîn Húrin and I think my ignorance is showing when tested against a true master 
Which is ridiculous because according to the lore, the Sun is a fruit of the golden tree Laurelin and the Moon is a flower of the silver tree Telperion. So, the light from one of the trees was literally sunlight. The sun in Middle Earth is certainly magical, though it’s the sort of magic that went into all creation.
I like the idea of Glorfindel being in the series. I did like how Jackson elevated Arwen’s role in the movies, because he made her a real character with impact and not just “Strider’s girlfriend”, but he did so at the expense of Glorfindel. I always liked him in the stories (especially the Silmarillion) and I’d like to see him. (I even named a tabletop RPG elf after him as a teen at one time.) He was freaking awesome, practically an elven superhero.
All that being said, the Stranger is not what I would picture Glorfindel to be like, at all.
I’ll accept the title of Master as long as we reserve Grand Master for @Qadgop_the_Mercotan.
Whenever I run my Middle Earth D&D campaigns, Glorfindel is usually the most powerful person on the side of the Free Peoples. Even the 3 great Rangers Aragorn, Elladan & Elrohir pale in comparison.
Glorfindel died killing a Balrog at Gondolin (but he got better). The Witch King who thought he could take Gandalf the White ran from Glorfindel in Angmar (the Witch King’s Realm). Elrond was afraid to send Glorfindel with the Fellowship as it would have been like a beacon of light on a stealth mission.
At the time of the War of the Ring, only Galadriel was probably more powerful on the Good Side until Gandalf came back as Gandalf the White.
So mote it be.
I am a fanatic, here is a lot of my books right behind me in my office.
Click for larger picture
I like how the “Recipes” binder is the largest & in the most convenient location. Are you a actually a hobbit?
I’ll be amused if they include a dragon in the show given the competition. And perhaps we’ll get to see the Dwarven rings-They never got as much attention as the others.
I’m a Tolkien nerd, you are apparently a Tolkien scholar.
I tip my hat to you.
Every so often I’m reminded that I need to buy a new copy of the Tolkien Bestiary. And I tip my even smaller hat as well.
Probably.
Thank you.
I would fully expect to see a Dragon at some point. There were many more still alive and active back in the Second Age. Of course by many more I might mean as few as a dozen. But how can they possibly pass up the opportunity to show a Dragon?
I’m still ploughing slowly through “The Nature of Middle-Earth” so haven’t been able to comment thoroughly on the current state of JRRT lore as of yet. Tough to consider myself Grand Master as a result.
I’ve also been hesitant to raise the deep JRRT lore anymore, as it confuses too many Tolkien neophytes, and I end up getting accused of thread-shitting and making fun of fellow fans, as seen in post 39 of the linked thread.
Yes, it was over 18 years ago, but that’s measuring by Years of the sun, not Years of the Trees (so just barely more than 0.125 YT).
Me, nurse a grievance? Never!
Well, hardly ever.
All I took from your link was I would have defended you and in the next post, how would you even find moldy Lembas. I mean maybe cram, but not Lembas.
Do you think it’s wrong to imagine oneself facing off with Steve Colbert in a Tolkien lore contest? I think he’s much better than I am with Sindarin but I’m not sure how good his Quenya is. Nor how much he knows about the lost Vala . . .
Hmmmmm . . .
I would enjoy seeing that. Maybe I could be your second.
I think you would do very well.
Rings of Power had 25 million viewers on the first day. House of the Dragon took a week to get to 25 million. I wonder how much of that difference is the number of subscribers to Amazon being so much (I think) larger than HBOmax? Are Dragon viewers re-watching a lot?
Yet another question, sorry. Am I right in remembering that this series is partly based on unpublished notes etc. of Tolkien? In other words, what exactly did they pay for to use to make this series?
They have the rights to the LOTR trilogy, including the appendices. The Silmarilion, Unfinished Tales, H.O.M.E.S., the adaptations of his notes by Christopher, and his letters and notes, published and unpublished, weren’t part of the deal and can only be referenced by sint of their having been mentioned within LOTR.
That has to be rough to mine for characters and plots.
It’s been nearly 20 years since I’ve read the books and I don’t have a copy on hand to refer to, but the appendices contain a pretty detailed timeline of the Second Age which is probably a major source for the writers on this show, and the poems and songs in the main text (which I always tended to mostly skip over when I read the books) do contain a lost of First Age lore in broad strokes. I imagine that’s why they’ve been able to reference things like the Two Trees and Feanor crafting the Silmarils, but not events like the Kinslaying or the Doom of Mandos or the fall of Gondolin.
(As an aside, the use of the word “doom” to mean “judgment” or “decree” really needs to make a comeback. It just sounds so ominous.)
(PS: “by sint of” in my previous post was meant to read “by dint of”, but my phone’s autocorrect has a nasty habit of not doing anything at all when it really ought to.)
Thanks for the info! The Stranger doesn’t feel like Gandalf with the fireflies dying, but him shouting kind of does. We’ll see. Also I noticed there was no mention of Ungoliant in the beginning, but I imagine that’s just a restriction of the sources again.
IIRC, Shelob is described in The Two Towers as a descendent of Ungoliant, so presumably they could mention her, but I don’t recall whether her part in destroying the Trees was mentioned, so that might be off limits.