My take on Skald’s question: There were other Dunedain in the north. Aragorn probably had a cousin somewhere who would become Chieftain of the Rangers. Faramir becomes Steward of Gondor.
Without Aragorn, I don’t see much hope for Gondor’s survival. However, with Sauron’s forces rampaging through the west, that might make it easier for Frodo to reach Mount Doom and destroy the Ring.
After Sauron falls, Aragorn’s cousin becomes king of Arnor. Eomer having died in the war, Eowyn becomes Queen of Rohan. Faramir marries her, and their descendants become the rulers of the Rohirrim and the remainder of the southern Dunedain.
I treat this as a screwup by JRRT, and ignore it. As far as I am concerned, the only elf who returned from the hall of Mados is Luthien - and then only under conditions (mortality).
The extraordinary grace granted to Luthien was not that she come back, but that her fate and Beren’s be joined. Coming back once but then really dying is a sort of compromise between the fates of Men and Elves.
There’s plenty of other evidence in the Silmarillion for the notion of Elves being reborn.
I agree. He’s absolutely vital at several points of the story, and his premature death would have big - and disastrous - consequences for the Free Peoples. I could see some other Dunedain from a cadet branch maybe rising to claim the throne of Gondor, but even with Gandalf the White going to Plan B, there probably wouldn’t be time before Minas Tirith fell and things totally fell apart. There would likely be a mass exodus of Elves to take ship into the West, with the Dwarves hunkering down in their cave-fortresses at Erebor and elsewhere, and the tattered remnants of the kingdoms of Men escaping into the wilderness, like Turin and his followers of old, to desperately keep fighting Sauron’s victorious hordes.
If Frodo completed his quest, of course, some good might still be salvaged from the disaster, but the outlook would be pretty grim.
Aragorn rattled Sauron with the use of the Palantir. This was huge.
His bringing the dead against the Corsairs was part of what saved Minas Tirith.
No Aragorn and Helm’s Deep would probably mean Rohan would have had no King as Theoden and Éomer both died trying to hold it. Saruman would still have lost but he would have done more harm first.
Now if Aragorn had died at Weathertop we have a different scenario. This was very early and Frodo probably would never have made it to Rivendell and in fact, the Ring probably would have fallen to the Nazgul. If the Ring did make it to Rivendell, the party that set out for Mordor would have been very different. I strongly suspect more Elves. In fact I suspect Glorfindel or perhaps both of Elrond’s Sons would have went.
If Aragorn did not fall until the Black Gate, then Faramir would have ruled Gondor and probably taken the mantle of King. Gondor would have faded away much faster of course. The North would have probably repopulated but as many minor and petty kingdoms.
With respect to the Maiar, wasn’t Saruman denied the West? As I recall, when Grima Wormtongue stabbed him, his ghost, for want of a better word, rose from the body, looked to the West, and then dispersed in the wind. I took that to mean that, because he had betrayed his mission, he was denied the right to return to the Blessed Lands and simply died.
I’ve always taken it that Manwe woke up from his nap, saw Saruman trying to come home, and said, “Sorry, dude, not happening. Take it up with Eru.”
Meanwhile, Ulmo was muttering “You know, none of this crap would have happened to the Children of Iluvatur if anybody listened to me. Why, exactly, are you in charge, you feckless wanker?”
Tulkas said nothing, of course, as he had long since abandoned Manwe’s idiot camp and was shacked up with Luthien and Nessa both.
Which, fortuitously, brings up Melian. She abandoned her body voluntarily after Thingol was killed by the Dwarves and returned to Valinor. So that’s one more data point for the Ainur.
Did I miss something somewhere, or was Durin the only one who actually was supposed to reincarnate? And then only intermittently, not in the sense that there was always a Durin among the Longbeards.
One thing I never really got about the Ents…they were the olvar equivalent of the Eagles, the protectors and lords of plant life. So why do they get to be a Free People but the Eagles don’t?
Hence the incredibly selfish bitch portion of my description. I mean, I think the people of Doriath could really have used that freaking magic shield right then.
If he dies anywhere but the Black Gate, the War might have been lost. Only Aragorn had the kingly cojones to go challenge Sauron at the Black Gate, brave men fell by the wayside on the road there out of abject terror. Without that last distraction of Sauron’s attention, Frodo and Samwise might well have fallen under the gaze of the unblinking eye while in Mordor before reaching the Crack of Doom.
One reason might be that the Eagles’ work directly under the Valar’s aegis in a way that the Ents do not seem to. I mean, yeah, they have their own stuff going on, but when Manwe calls they drop whatever sheep they were just carrying off and do his bidding, and Manwe calls upon them in a way that Yavanna does not do to the Ents.
I really likedSpeaktomeMaddies scenarios. Both of those stories would hold my interest and sound true to the spirit of the original. Both need more hobbit action, of course.
Wasn’t there some indication that Orcs were corrupted versions of Elves? There were some Elves that never went to Valinor, if memory serves. Is there any word in the canon about them possibly having been copied or bred into Orcs?
There’s plenty of word, but none of it really definitive. Some wise and knowledgeable characters express a belief that Orcs were made in imitation or mockery of Elves, while others believe that Melkor was never able to actually create anything new, and that the Orcs were just Elves that were corrupted. The omniscient narrator never says which view is actually correct.