chronos, I just reviewed “unfinished tales”. and it contains a lot on the reputed elven ancestry of the Dol Amroth line. JRRT tells the purported family history of Imrahil, beginning with the first lord of Dol Amroth’s marriage to a Sylvan elf maiden, one of Nimrodel’s attendants.
The book also makes the point that the Eldar referred only to those elves who answered the Valar’s call and began the journey west. Those who refused the summons altogether were the Avari. So there could have been many couplings of the Avari and men, and not violated the “3 unions of Eldar and Edain” bit in LOTR.
However, the book also goes on to state that the sylvan elves were not Avari, because they were descended from those elves that started the journey west, but dropped out.
Sure, but that’s the irony. They could have, but all their strength was used up schlepping extremely heavy plate mail around. The good guys didn’t carry heavy armor because they were the forces of…light.
Abe, note that the Web site mentions the photo of the Uruk-Hai might be taken from the assault on Helm’s Deep. Regardless of how light the orcs would have travelled, if they know they’re going to fight against a well-defended stronghold they’d be likely to bring along armor. Otherwise, the defenders would just shower them with arrows and thin their ranks considerably.
Of course they did! What do you think Bilbo’s hauberk was made of?
But that just raises another problem with plate armor. No matter what it’s made from (and especially if it’s mithril, of course;)), plate is expensive. No nation in the history of the world has ever outfitted any appreciable fraction of its military in plate armor. Do you really think that anyone would do so with ballista fodder like orcs? The Uruk-Hai were probably lucky if they had leather.
Yes, wearing anything less than plate, they’d be very seriously thinned out by enemy arrows. And that’s exactly what happened in the books. They just had such insane numbers, that even after they had been so thinned, there were still too many of them for the defenders.
About the only way I can justify that scene is if those are Saruman’s personal bodyguards, or otherwise elite of some sort. An elite bodyguard isn’t going to go far from Isengard, so stamina wouldn’t be as much of an issue, and there’d be few enough of them to make it feasible to spend a lot on their equipment.
The other pictures, I don’t have a problem with, at least not yet. Most of the effect in the Grima picture is from lighting and camera angle: The same actor, in the same costume and makeup, but seen differently might appear very wise. And Eowyn in that picture doesn’t look like she could swing a sword effectively, but the real test of that is going to be when we see her swinging a sword. Let’s wait and see.
Chronos, I am in agreement generally, although I fully expect mithril was lighter and stronger than aluminium. If not, boy could an entrepreneur make a killing in Middle Earth!
By the sacred fire, 'tis the Dark Lord itself! I have a few objections to your points, the first being that since the uruk-hai travel on foot (with the exceptions of some wolf-riders, but wolves are not beasts of burden and would probably refuse to be loaded like mules) the idea of bringing the plate armour with them becomes a little bit ridiculous, since whether they are wearing it or taking it as luggage, they’re still carrying it as they run! Secondly, if you check your The two Towers, you will see that “shower them with arrows and thin their ranks considerably” is exactly what the defenders do to the orcs, not just at the battle of Helm’s Deep, but in just about every battle in LOTR (the orcs defend themselves against arrow-fire with shields). And we know that orcs wear not plate but leather and chain mail–in fact I consider their endless running stamina while wearing chainmail an exceptional feat (a human could run wearing chainmail, but could not keep it up for anywhere near as long as the orcs–that leads me to believe the difference may be in endurance rather than strength).
Drastic, your reasoning is impeccable.
No, no, knights did wear full body plate armour, but they could barely walk in it, and had to breed bigger and stronger horses just to bear their weight and maintain good mobility. The full body plate armour you see knights wearing was heavy and thick; it would have been extremely unlikely for even a strong man to run wearing such a burden, since walking was problem enough, and getting on a horse without help an impossibility. Now, orcs/goblins in general, Tolkien tells us, are rather smaller than humans. The Uruk-hai are bigger than your average orc, but we’re not told how big compared to a man. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe they are anything remotely like the ultimate end-of-movie monster that Aragorn kills in Peter Jackson’s rendition, instalment one. I do not think Tolkien tells us anywhere that orcs were such bad-asses, or bad-asses at all really.
On the other hand, we know that dwarves are powerful and sturdy (Tolkien tells us a number of times), and we know that they are strong warriors–much stronger than the Uruk-hai in fact (Gimli kills 42 Uruk-hai at Helm’s Deep in hand-to-hand combat!, He is even able to keep up with Aragorn and Legolas when they chase Merry and Pippin’s captors for days, and we know Gimli wears dwarven mail).
So I don’t understand where you are taking these arguments for the incredible might of the Uruk-hai from. There is nothing in Tolkien ( to my recollection, please correct me otherwise) to indicate that orcs in general or Uruk-hai in particular are immensely strong creatures, certainly nothing near Ents or Trolls and not as strong as dwarves–probably not even as strong as a Man of Numenor. Perhaps orcs weren’t even that much stronger than normal Men.
But they certainly could run, and they had claws, fangs, a fierce and evil disposition, and the advantage of numbers, which are the reasons why they were the servants of evil (along with the fact that they were created by evil of course). Bad-asses, porbably no. Wearing full body plate armour, extremely unlikely unless the offending picture is, as someone suggested, a force stationed permanently in Isengard and that never had to move. However full plate mail seems an idiotic choice to defend a fortification, one would instead rely on the structure’s defences and the mobility and responsiveness of the internal force (which full plate armour would preclude).