Is funny how the Dwarf/Elven bitterness exists in various AD&D worlds too (IIRC), where there is no backstory to explain it 
Sunnis and Shi’ites can’t get along in this world about a simple disagreement from 1400 years ago. Trust me that it’s not beyond the bounds of reality that they dislike each other directly from what they did 8000 years ago.
Especially since the elves in question were ALIVE back then. :eek:
Don’t be silly… This is the backstory for D&D worlds. Well, part of it, at least.
:D.
Agree.
Most folk forget that time didn’t begin with the First Age, which is just when the Sun arose and Humans awoke. The Spring of Arda lasted for uncounted years before the Lamps (which was the first source of light) were destroyed. The counting of years started with the Years of the Trees (the second source of light) and the Awakening of the Elves. Galadriel was the daughter of Finarfin who was the son of Finwë who was among those that awoke at Cuiviénen so she’s a third generation Elf. The Annals of Aman (in History of Middle-earth vol. X) places Galadriel’s birth in the Valian Year 1362, each of which is approximately equal to ten years of the Sun. The first Sun rose in Valian Year 1500, or 15,000-13,620 = 1,380 solar years later. The First Age lasted another 600 years, and with the combined total of the Second and Third Ages of 6,460 years, Galadriel when we see her is 8,440 years old.* So, good guess on the age.
(* thanks to the Green Books at theOneRing.net’s old site)
Lovely lady. Doesn’t look a day over 8,340.
One thing to keep in mind is that Tolkien started to rethink his entire Legendarium prior to his death. What started out as a Faerie tale became Mythology and then he tried to turn it into History.
I’m going from memory as I haven’t immersed myself in the past couple years, but Tolkien’s world starts out as a flat plate with an island in the middle lit by two enormous lamps in the North and South. Melkor, the evil Vala, toppled the Lamps and marred the land as the Valar (God’s Angels) worked to shape the world. They were concerned that Illuvatar (God) had hidden the Children yet to be born (Elves and Humans) somewhere in the ground that might get destroyed so they stopped fighting Melkor and created a continent in the West (Valinor) and waited for the Elves to be born. Yavanna put a sleep on Middle-earth and created the Trees to light the West. After many years, Varda took dew from one of the light trees and created the stars (there were stars before, but faint) and this awakened the Elves. They lived for years on a flat Earth under stars until Melkor destroyed the trees and darkened the land. A flower from each of the trees survived and these were used to create the Sun and Moon which awakened Men. This began the First Age (of the Sun, it wasn’t the actual “first” age) which lasted about 600 years and ended with the defeat of Melkor (renamed Morgoth). The Men who helped in the battle were rewarded with a island in the West near Valinor home of the Valar and where the Elves were invited to spend eternity. After 3000 years and thanks to the corruption of Sauron, they decided to invade Valinor (which they were forbidden to visit). This enraged the Valar so much, they sank the island and made the earth into a globe. Valinor remained in the “True West”, which would have been a straight line from Middle-earth to them. Since the world was now a globe, Men sailing West would now never reach Valinor, but the Elves still could sail to the True West (and that’s where they took Frodo and Bilbo at the end of the movie). The survivors of the sinking (who weren’t in on the invasion) went back to Middle-earth and established Kingdoms (of which Aragorn became the heir).
Well, after working on these stories for nearly his entire adult life, Tolkien decided that it was ludicrous that the Elves could be older than the Sun and Moon, so the Sun and Moon already existed when the Elves awakened, and the earth couldn’t have been flat, since we know it was always a globe. So that meant he had to rework the creation story, to reflect actual science. Well, since there’s an actual mundane sun, that means no trees of light, which then that affects the Silmarills and the war against Morgoth. This affects all the stories.
Also, Orcs were originally supposed to have been Elves that were kidnapped and tortured by Melkor before the Valar realized they were awakened. So, since Elves are immortal are Orcs? Elves can be slain or die of grief, so their spirits go to the Halls of Mandos in the even farther Western reaches of Valinor. Do the Orcs go there? Plus, the Elves were so beautiful that there’s no way they could be Orcs, so Orcs had to be Mannish. But Orcs appeared before Men awoke. Well, perhaps men were around longer than we thought. Since the Sun was no longer what awakened men (as the Sun has always been here) then Men awakened before we realized it and Orcs came from them. Or perhaps Orcs were actually automatons created and imbued with a tiny portion of the essence of Melkor’s spirit, weakening him as he created more and more.
This goes on and on. Tolkien was ready to shitcan his entire history and start all over, but by this time he was so old that he knew he would never finish and he died with everything in disarray.
His son Christopher, who had been his sounding board since the beginning, took what he could of the stories and with a fantasy writer whose name escapes me, compiled the Silmarillion as best they could. As Tolkien had many unfinished drafts, they had to finish stories themselves and made a bit of an effort to not contradict the Lord of the Rings and its appendices. After the publication of the Silmarillion, Christopher was going to turn over all of J.R.R.'s writings to a University but had to catalog it first and put it into some semblance of order. This became the History of Middle-earth 12 volume set.
It’s tempting to delve through the HOME and take Tolkien’s latest (chronological) writings and assume that they are final word on certain subjects. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Tolkien spent many years after the publication of LOTR responding to letters and writing essays clearing up and expanding on aspects of his mythology so we have excellent clues as to how to answer nearly any question that might come up. However, there is a certain period near the end that he began to rethink everything and it would have required a complete overhaul of everything that he never got around to doing. Those late essays reflect that rethink rather than the way the “world” was when LOTR was conceived.
Canon is considered what was published in his lifetime, which was The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (plus a short story, if I recall). Even The Hobbit was subject to revision after publication to fix it to canon (Riddles in the Dark). The legends covered by the Silmarillion were well thought out but not completed. Most of it, however, existed prior to LOTR and was the background that Tolkien used to create the canon. In my opinion, while there can never be true Elvish canon, the stuff that existed at the general time of LOTR’s conception is the closest to canon as we can get. The late and perhaps senile ramblings of a man in the throws of regret at not finishing his life’s work cannot override the previous 50 years of imagination.
Wait, he was going to get rid of the Trees? And the reshaping of the World, and the True West? I hate to say it, but it’s for the best that he never finished that.
That is indeed one of the many themes of LOTR. The Fellowship reflected just that. It’s not as emphasized in the movies, but the Elves are all leaving. They had ruled the world for many thousands of years. After the wars with Morgoth had ended then they became content to live in the past. The Rings of power had the primary purpose of putting off decay, that is, change as a bad thing. With the destruction of the One Ring, they knew that they can no longer prevent this. By this time, most of the Elves had left anyway. If I’m not mistaken, in the movie, Elrond mentions this in a conversation with Gandalf. It’s about as close as the movie gets.
Dwarves really don’t fit into the bigger picture. They were unexpected in the world. Ilúvatar (God) created the world by gathering his spirit helpers (Valar for the greater spirits and Maiar for the lesser ones) and gave to them a theme to sing. One of the Valar was Melkor, who introduced a dissonance into the theme. The music was stopped. It was begun again and he did the same thing. Then Ilúvatar sang a theme himself. When all this was done, he brought forth a vision of the themes the Valar had sung, and it was the world and all that was in it (so the world is actually made from music). When he made the vision of the song he sang alone, this was the Children of Ilúvatar, that is, the Elves and Men. The Valar were then told they had to bring about the vision themselves and were sent into the void to create the world. The Children were hidden in the world by Ilúvatar for when the time was right. The Valar then set about the process of forming the world, based upon their memories of the vision they were given. One Vala by the name of Aule was impatient for the Children to arrive so he created his own. Since he had an imperfect understanding of the third theme, his creations were not quite right. When he was finished, Ilúvatar spoke to him and asked why he had done something outside his authority. Aule apologized and was about to destroy them with his hammer and Ilúvatar relented. He would allow the Dwarves to live but they could not awaken before the Firstborn. The seven dwarf fathers were hidden in the depths of the Earth until the right time. They have a legend among themselves that their spirits are gathered in Halls set aside in Mandos near the Elves and that Ilúvatar promised their fathers that they would be hallowed and would have a place among the Children in the End. Then their part will be to serve Aule andaid him in the rebuilding of Arda after the Last Battle.
Damn, never get a Tolkienite talking about Tolkien.
It’s true, he later thought that he really need the sun and the moon (or at least the sun) to be present in Arda much earlier.
I did always think it’d have been pretty damn dark at Cuivienen. Starlight alone would not give a lot of illumination.
I always supposed that with the Elves greater eyesight they were like cats and the starlight was of no impediment.
And where the Udun were you lurking in years past during all our JRRT discussions about our favorite non-canon Vala, anyway? :dubious:
(Meassë was popular)
I think even cats have a tough time seeing in just starlight. More like the Elves had light-amplifying eyes like we have today with technology.
Either that or it was Hollywood dark: Sorta dim but not really dark so’s you can see the actors’ faces.
Nah, my favorite was the one who came into the World to chain Time into years, months, and days.
(that shouldn’t be very surprising, I suppose)
Which one though? There were 3.
The cats of Queen Beruthiel didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Queen Beruthiel killed the thread!
The funny thing is, you never see cats at all in Middle-earth except in the tale of Queen Beruthiel. Dogs are mentioned, and wolves (but no large felines), and obviously horses. Also, you’d think Rohan would have to have even more cattle and/or sheep and/or goats than horses, yet they’re never mentioned. Admittedly, farm animals are not all that enormously exciting, but what happened to the herd animals while all the Rohannites (? Rohannians? Rohanni? Rohannim? I assume Rohirrim referred only to fighters) were hiding in Helm’s Deep?
It’s not dead yet.
I hope it doesn’t die, I still have two more EEs to watch! Though it’s quite likely that no one gives a rat’s patoot anymore. Still, I’ll doggedly continue to post my thoughts because I’m a completist at heart.
Still waiting on the books, btw.
Tevildo, Prince of cats, is featured prominently in JRRT’s early writings on Middle-Earth. He was sort of a Sauron forerunner.
He and his cats embodied evil, of course.