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Middle Earth characters

2023-05-17T00:49:33Z

2601:243:C500:E260:9183:D8B3:E478:4661: /* Gondorians, Arnorians and Black Númenóreans */

Much like [[Star Wars|a certain other popular franchise that is the bread and butter of nerds everywhere]], describing even the cursory information is a massive job. But hey, that's what we're here for. Below you'll find a guide to the many beings who call Middle Earth home. For a guide to the places in Middle-Earth and the location itself, [[Middle Earth|see here]].

==Humans==
The second-born of [[God|Eru Ilúvatar’s]] children. Humans are split across many tribes and nations throughout Middle Earth. Unlike the immortal Elves, who are tied to the world and reincarnate in Aman if they die, the souls of men leave the world altogether to parts unknown by all save Ilúvatar himself. Men are also a mystery to everyone else in Middle Earth and are given "strange gifts," for they alone are able to shape their fates beyond the Music of the Ainur. It's noted that while Men are more corruptible to evil than the Elves and were the most similar to Morgoth in nature, Morgoth still greatly feared Men, including those who served him, since they were such an anomaly in Arda. Nevertheless, most [[Warriors of Chaos|of evil's footsoldiers in the franchise who aren't Orcs/Goblins/Uruk-hai are corrupted humans]]. Their capacity for corruption has, in fact, given the race of Man something of a mixed reputation among Elves, who sometimes regard them as weak. Luckily, there's always an Aragorn or Faramir just waiting to prove them wrong.

=== Edain of the First Age and Outlaws ===
The Edain were the first three tribes to arrive in Beleriand and make contact with the elves. The Edain and their descendants were staunch allies of the elves and the forces of good, despite taking terrible losses during the first age. It should also be noted that, while the elves were always superior to men in beauty, craft and wisdom, the Elves and Edain were equals in strength and endurance, and an Edain could be mistaken for an elf from long distance.
* '''Beren Erchamion''' (the Renowned in Sindarin) - Member of House of Bëor and the protagonist of "Beren and Lúthien" story. Is notable for [[Awesome|stealing a gem from the crown of Evil Satan guy]] and marrying an Elven woman (the first time in the Legendarium). Beren’s ring of Barahir becomes the only relic of the Numenorean Royal family that survives into the Third Age, used to mark Aragorn’s royal lineage. Based off of Tolkien himself, which is a ''bit'' self-indulgent on his part, but most would say the man earned it.
* '''Hurin Thalion:'''(the Steadfast) - One of mankind’s bravest warriors and a close ally of Turgon of Gondolin. He and his men fought to allow Turgon to escape Morgoth, with Hurin being the sole survivor. [[Grimdark|Morgoth tortured Hurin for the location of Gondolin, but Hurin refused to betray them, so Morgoth cursed Hurin’s children and for Hurin to witness their doom from afar]].
* '''Turin Turambar''' (Master of Doom) - Member of House of Hador, son of Hurin, known to be '''THE''' Kullervo expy way before [[Elric]]. Went from great hero to [[meme|An Hero]] thanks to Morgoth placing a curse over his family. It is said that he will finally get his revenge against Morgoth in the Dagor Dagorath (Middle-Earth's Ragnarok), by being the one to finally killing him.
* '''Tuor Eladar''' (the Blessed) - Cousin of Turin and a great human hero during the war with Morgoth, chosen by the vala Ulmo to find Gondolin and warn its inhabitants that the city will fall. In spite of Turgon's reluctance to leave he was able to convince the city's population to listen. Also married an elf princess and is the grandfather of Elrond. His symbol is the Swan, a motif kept by his human descendants.
* '''The Gaurwaith''': The Gaurwaith were a band of outlaws who Turin came to be in control of. They died in the battle at Amon Rûdh after Mîm's betrayal (see Mîm's section for the cause and details). Androg, the one indirectly responsible for the betrayal through an accidental murder, sacrificed himself to save Turin, Beleg and his own son Andvir. After Beleg was accidentally killed by Turin and Turin's suicide, Andvir was the last survivor. He related the portions of Turin's tale relevant to him to the poet Dirhaval, whose account of Turin's life make the primary source of the story of Hurin's family.
===== Followers of Melkor in the First Age =====
*'''Ulfang the Black''': Chief of one of two Easterling tribes that migrated westwards and became friends with Elves. [[Erebus|Unlike his fellow chieftain Bór the Faithful however, he was a traitor serving Morgoth all along.]] [[Horus Heresy|And yeah, his sons and tribesmen basically gave the Dark Lord the second biggest army in his service (after Orcs, of course).]]

=== Númenóreans ===
The Edain were rewarded by the Valar after the first age with their own island nation and extended lifespan; by 25 their aging slows down dramatically and can live for potentially hundreds of years, though they also have the ability to die willingly; some do before senility and infirmity sets in, but later Númenórians held on to their lives as long as possible out of fear of death. The Númenórian empire grew powerful, establishing many settlements across Middle Earth during the Second Age. However, Númenor was destroyed following a split between its people, as explained below.
*'''Pre-Schism Edain''':
** '''Elros''', or '''Tar-Minyatur''' as a King (Kings of Númenor always took an Elven Regnal name, and when that stopped -see below- it meant the end of the human golden age), was the first ruler of Númenor and Elrond's brother who chose a human fate (but still got around 500 years to live). He is also an ancestor of Aragorn.
** '''Tar-Minastir''': the eleventh king who ruled during the War of the Elves and Sauron; Minastir sent an army to aid the elves, but because Numenor had no standing army at the time, it took weeks to prepare an army and they arrived too late to save Eregion. Tar-Minastir's rule marks the beginning of Numenor's shift, as now they had a taste for war and an envy of the elves, and started permanent settlements in the mainland. But things wouldn't fully go south until the rule of his grandson Tar-Atanamir, as seen below.
*'''The King's Men''' - the majority faction in Númenor. With the support of the royal house, they were an Imperialist, faithless (later satanic), human-supremacist faction that opposed the Valar and desired power, wealth, and immortality. They would fall to Sauron's lies, and become the Black Númenóreans after Númenor's destruction.
** '''Tar-Atanamir''' - Founder of the King's Men faction and thirteenth king of Númenor. Atanamir openly opposed the Valar and Elves and coveted their immortality. Because men were forbidden to sail west, he sent his men east to start colonies in Middle Earth and subjugate the people living there, extracting its wealth for his kingdom, though he didn't have the balls to stop using an Elven name, the arrogant egomaniacs that followed him dropped that.
** '''Ar-Pharazôn the Golden''' - Last king of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn usurped the throne from its rightful queen, his cousin Tar-Miriel, by [[Rape|a ''very'' forced marriage]]. Ar-Pharazôn defeated Sauron in open combat and brought him back to Númenor as a hostage to prove his might; this however turned out to be a trap, as [[Erebus|Sauron manipulated Pharazôn and the King's Men into believing that by worshipping Morgoth and making human sacrifices to him, they'd be able to challenge the Valar and take immortality for themselves, leading to Numenor's ruin]]. [[Fail|The moment Ar-Pharazôn and his men set foot on Aman, however, his armies became trapped beneath the Earth, Aman was permanently separated from the rest of the world, and Númenor sank beneath the seas as divine punishment]].
*'''The Faithful''' - the minority faction who still retained their devotion to Eru Ilúvatar and respect for the Valar and Elves. The Faithful became more oppressed over time by the King's Men.
**'''Tar-Palantir''' - The final Faithful king and second-to-last king of Númenor. Tar-Palantir tried his best to reverse the damage brought on by his predecessors, but it was too little too late, and much of Númenor's population opposed his policies. Tar-Palantir prophesied that the line of kings would end if the White Tree was felled; this came partially true, as the kings of Númenor ended with Ar-Pharazôn after he sacrificed the White Tree to Sauron, but a sapling of the tree was saved and the line of kings continued through the line of Elendil.
** '''Tar-Miriel''' - The daughter of King Tar-Palantir, and the last rightful heir of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn was like "fuck that, I want to be in charge" and married her to get the power [[Rape|against her will]]. Sadly dies when Númenor goes under. Actually gets to be in charge in [[Skub|Rings of Power]] as Queen-Regent [[Wat|while her daddy's locked up as a prisoner in his own kingdom.]] Blinded later on, which in conjunction with her foresight gives her an "Oracle of Delphi" feel.
**'''Amandil''' - The last Lord of Andúnië, which is a cadet branch of the Royal line and had been the centre of the Faithful presence in Númenor; though once Amandil had been close friends with Ar-Pharazôn, the lordship had later been revoked, thanks to the cunning of Sauron. When Amandil had learned of Ar-Pharazôn's plans of invading Aman, he with three other servants travelled to the West to warn the Valar and have mercy upon Númenor. Though, just in case that plan didn't work, he also warned his son and grandchildren to flee the island with as many of the Faithful as they could find. Nothing more is known of Amandil's fate. Just as likely he could have died instantly as he stepped into Valinor, as he could have been welcomed by the Valar and become immortal, like Tuor.
**'''Elendil''' - Son of Amandil, Elendil and his family did their best to preserve their ancestor's traditions, including saving a fruit of the White Tree of Kings (Nimloth) before it was destroyed. They organised the evacuation fleet to Middle Earth during the fall of Númenor, where they settled new Kingdoms in Gondor and Arnor. As the new High King, Tar-Elendil lead the Men of the West during the War of the Last Alliance, where he fell in combat against Sauron.

=== Gondorians, Arnorians and Black Númenóreans ===
Gondor and Arnor were kingdoms established by the Faithful after the fall of Númenor. Though Arnor in the North fell to Angmar, Gondor lasted through the entire Third Age and well into the fourth, becoming the ''Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor'' (since the heir to Arnor's throne, Aragorn, inherited Gondor's, what with his original kingdom being gone and all).
* '''Isildur''' - second High King of both Gondor and Arnor. Finally defeated Sauron in the War of Last Alliance, but became a victim of One Ring's power and tragically died in an Orc ambush, leaving the Ring without a host for a while. Body was never found. Becomes a Nazgul in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity, until Talion frees his spirit from Sauron's control...and then later takes his ring and his place as one of the Nine.
* '''Anarion'''- Isildur's brother, died before their father Elendil during the early months of the War of the Last Alliance.
* '''Gondorians''': The Dúnedain of the South. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor.
** '''Denethor II''' - Ruling Steward of Gondor at the beginning of the books. He originally was a great and capable ruler whose sanity was damaged by usage of the Anor-stone Palantir, as instead of helping in espionage against Sauron it showed [[Grimdark|the death of everyone and the triumph of evil]]. By the time of War of the Ring he is majorly depressed, almost insane, and highly incompetent. Finally snapping completely during the siege of Minas Tirith, he tries to immolate himself and his unfavorite son, Faramir, but only succeeds in the first of these.
** '''Boromir''': Elder son of Denthor and a great captain of Gondor (also daddy's favorite). Despite being a great warrior and leader, Boromir ultimately fell to the temptation of the Ring and tried to take it from Frodo. Despite this, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his life to serve as a decoy for Frodo and Sam, and acknowledged Aragorn as his kinsman and king. Somewhat infamous for being one of the only major heroes in the trilogy to die, and the only one of the Fellowship to die (well, him and Gandalf, but the latter got to come back). Remember kids, this ''isn't'' [[A Song of Ice and Fire|that other popular Fantasy series where good guys drop like flies]] (even though Boromir's actor would end up being in and dying in that too!).
** '''Faramir''': Younger son of Denethor and leader of Gondor's Ithilien Rangers. Faramir, while a skilled warrior, he had no love of war and preferred to study and sought council with Gandalf. Denethor disliked Faramir and even told him he would've preferred Faramir to die and Boromir to live. Despite the toxic family environment, Faramir became a worthy steward and passed the rule of Gondor to Aragorn. Like Beren, Tolkien has admitted to basing Faramir off of himself, though also admits that Faramir is more courageous than he.
** '''Prince Imrahil''': Prince of Dol Amroth, who aided in the defense of Minas Tirith and accompanied the Host of the West on the march against the Black Gate. Sadly reduced to a bit role in the movies proper (he isn't even mentioned by name in the films). Fun fact he is also the Uncle to Boromir and Faramir, with his sister Finduilas Marying Denethor.
* '''Arnorians''': The Dúnedain of the North. They are descendants of the Faithful from Númenor. After the fall of Arnor and its successor kingdoms, the Dúnedain chose to live in hiding rather than rebuild the kingdom, protecting the people from the shadows.
**'''Chieftains of the Dúnedain''':
**''' Aragorn II (Elessar Telcontar)''': Last Chieftain of the northern rangers. He was a member of the Fellowship and contributed to the defeat of Sauron. He later claimed the kingship of Gondor and restored Arnor, as the third High King, and married his Half-Elven kin Arwen. One of the main heroes of the franchise, and all-around badass, especially in the films where he does shit like cleave through Uruk-hai like they're made of twigs, throw torches in Nazgul's faces, and ''parry sword strikes from Olog-hai''. As an aside, while the movie's take on Aragorn is as well regarded as the rest of the films, it is still nevertheless the case that his characterization is different: Book Aragorn is more of a stoic, mythical figure similar to King Arthur, who accepts the call to become King of Gondor without any question and is more of a wise, benevolent fighter-King than Movie Aragorn, who is rejecting his destiny at first due to him having severe feelings of inadequacy and far less of a poetry-reciting philosopher (though still very selfless and noble).
*'''Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar''': Descendants of the King's Men from Númenor. The Black Númenóreans who did not directly serve Sauron in Mordor continued their predecessor's ways and held sway over Umbar and Harad as their own colonial possessions. Over time, the Black Númenóreans intermixed with the native population or died out altogether. Some Black Númenóreans were actually renegades from Gondor, who stole large parts of Gondor's fleet during a civil war and became pirates ever since. That Harad's people suffered under their control makes them throwing in with Sauron to get revenge deeply ironic, [[Just As Planned|but that's Sauron for you]].
**'''Mouth of Sauron''': The "not Nazgul" who serves as Sauron's herald and envoy (and implied to serve as a torturer as well). A Black Númenórean of great rank and magical might within Sauron's cult, who's served Sauron for so long, that he forgot his own name and only goes by the aforementioned title Sauron gave him. Puts the "ass" in "ambassador" and in the movies has one of the most dangerously toothpaste-neglected set of chompers in all of fiction. He has lived for a long time, having entered into Sauron's service when "the Dark Tower first rose again", which depending upon interpretation, either makes him an extremely long-lived Black Númenórean if said rising was post-Downfall of Númenor in Second Age 3320, or makes his servitude a much more reasonable 68 years if said rising was Sauron's return in Third Age 2951. Either way, his life was no doubt extended with foul sorcery and dark arts. Despite being a cowardly wuss in the books and getting beheaded mid-sentence without a fight in the films, he's playable in a few video games where he's actually allowed to kick ass for a change.

=== Men of Middle Earth ===
Men not related to the Númenóreans, but who also play significant roles in the world.
*'''Northmen/Men of the North'''
Men who live north of Gondor and west of the sea of Rhûn. This includes the Rohirrim, the Dalish, and the Woodsmen of Rhovanion. The Northmen are distantly related to the men of Gondor, as their ancestors came from the same group as the Edain.
**'''Rohan'''
***'''Eorl the Young''': Founder of Rohan.
***'''Helm Hammerhand''': The Ninth King of Rohan, during a time of protracted war against the Dunlendings as well as great civil strife within Rohan. Said strife came to a head when a rich noble named ''Freca'' with greatly mixed Rohirric and Dunlending ancestry claimed that his family line had a greater claim to the throne and attempted to coerce Helm to marry his daughter to his own son ''Wulf''. After a great many insults and arguments, Helm punched him so hard in the head that Freca was said to have died instantly from the sheer power of that single blow, which gave Helm his byname of '''Hammerhand'''. Helm declared Freca and his kinsmen to be enemies of Rohan, and they fled into Dunland, only to return four years later with a great host of their own led by Freca's son Wulf. Edoras and the Westfold was overrun by the invaders, and Helm and his sons were made to endure a long siege at the then-named Súthburg. By all counts he was an unstoppable warrior, capable of killing scores of Dunlendings with his bare hands and routing their lines with only a blow of his great war-horn. Such was the carnage he single-handedly inflicted that he was likened to a Snow-Troll. Thus was the fortress of Súthburg renamed into ''Helm's Deep'', with the keep where his war-horn was kept renamed to the ''Hornburg''.
****[[Skub|In the Shadow of Mordor continuity, none of the above happens exactly as it did, and instead he is nearly slain; presumably by Freca and his followers. Sauron and Celebrimbor give him a ring of power as he lies dying]], whereupon he becomes an angry, hammer wielding badass with a horned helmet. The corrupting nature of his Ring of Power however drives him to ever greater madness and rage, during one such moment of anger he strikes down his own daughter, and proceeds to kill his rival for the throne and everyone who tries to stop him, which completes his transformation into a Ring-wraith. [[A Song of Ice and Fire|So basically Robert Baratheon]] but a Nazgûl.
***'''Théoden''': King of Rohan. For a time he was possessed by Saruman the White as part of his ploy to conquer Rohan, but was freed by Gandalf. Théoden led Rohan in the successful defense against Isengard and rode to Gondor's aid in the battle of Pelennor Fields. Died in battle, but by all accounts was one hell of a leader (except in the Rankin Bass animated film, where his death sucks utterly).
***'''Théodred''': Son of Théoden. Théodred was killed by Saruman's forces, but Théoden didn't learn of this until after his mind was restored.
***'''Eomer''': Nephew of Theoden and heir to the throne, after Theodred's death. Eomer became King after Théoden died at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
***'''Eowen / Eowyn''': Niece of Théoden and sister of Eomer. Eowen was a shieldmaiden and long desired to win glory in battle, but was often left behind as Théoden feared Rohan would be left leaderless. Eowen developed a crush on Aragorn, but when he refused her claiming she only loved the idea of him, Eowen went to Pelennor Fields in disguise and fought against the Witch-King of Angmar in one of the most badass duels in the whole book series. After the battle she met Faramir and settled down with him, claiming she no longer wished to fight, but to restore what had been destroyed in the war. Much like Princess Leia from Star Wars, one of ''the'' original badass ladies, nerd-crushes, and feminist role models in fiction all rolled into one. The PJ movies make her even ''more'' badass by having her bring down a Mumakil solo and holding her own against an army of Uruk-hai that get into the glittering caves at Helm's Deep in a deleted-but-mentioned-in-reference books scene.
***'''Grima Wormtongue''': Advisor to the king, but in reality a pawn of Saruman. After his treachery was discovered, Grima ran back to Saruman, where he was regularly abused and mistreated by him until Grima finally stabbed Saruman in the back (literally) during their misadventure in the Shire and was shot with arrows for his troubles; in the movies he instead dies at the Orthanc and it's Legolas who kills him. Widely recognized in-universe and out as a slimy prick and complete coward.
**'''Dale'''
***'''Bard the Bowman''': First king of the restored Kingdom of Dale. Bard was an accomplished bowman who could communicate with birds and had a black arrow that always reached its target. This combination helped him to kill Smaug after finding the weak spot on its chest. After the Master of Lake-Town disappeared, he became the new King.
***'''Master of Lake-Town''': An unnamed character who ruled Lake-Town during the events of the Hobbit. He was a greedy SOB who was only interested in his own power and wealth; he abandoned Lake-Town when Smaug attacked, then later ran off with a good chunk of the loot following the Battle of the Five Armies. Died alone and starving to death in the barren wilderness.
*'''The Wildmen of Dunland''': Primitive men who lived in the hills. Unlike the Northmen, the Dunlendings were much more hostile to outsiders, having been enslaved and abused by the conquering Númenóreans of the past. They allied with Saruman as he promised that their original lands would be taken from the Rohirrim and returned to them.
*'''Beornings and Woodsmen''': Named after their progenitor Beorn, a large wild man who could transform into a bear, an ability some of his descendants would share. They lived primarily in the lands between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood. While not overly friendly to outsiders, they were willing to aid the Free Peoples in the fight against Sauron and his minions. They are likely distant relatives of the Rohirrim. The Woodsmen were minor tribes of Edainic men who lived in Mirkwood and were allies of Thranduil and the Beornings. After the War of the Ring with Dol Guldur destroyed, the Beornings and Woodsmen reclaimed Central and Southern Mirkwood (now Greenwood) for themselves.
*'''Woodwoses/Druedain''': A name borrowed from medieval legend; they are wild men who live deep in the forest and remain isolated from the rest of men. They are short and stocky, so some confuse them for Dwarves, but they are definitively of mannish stock. Despte their reclusiveness, the Druedain had been allies of the Edain and their descendants as far back as the First Age, so they appear periodically among the free peoples. The Druedain helped the Rohirrim reach Minas Tirith by way of secret highway through the forest, so they could reinforce the city and avoid an ambushing army. Somewhat like a smaller version of a Sasquatch, or more size-accurate, the Orang-Pendak of Vietnam.
*'''Men of the East''': Commonly referred to as “Easterlings”, and come from the vast lands East of the Sea of Rhun.
**'''Rhun''': Men from the vast and uncharted lands of the East. Rhun is made up of many kingdoms and tribes, most of which are under Sauron’s dominion. However, it should be noted that one of the missions of the Blue Wizards was to raise a resistance in the lands of the East and South; we don’t see them in the stories because they likely were too busy fighting in their homelands.
*'''Men of the South''': collectively referred to as “Southrons” and live south of Gondor and Mordor.
**'''Haradrim of Near Harad/Far Harad''': Tribesmen of the deserts and jungles of Harad. Like the Easterlings they lived under the sway of Sauron, but earlier in their history they also suffered under the dominion of the King’s Men of Numenor (who became the Black Númenóreans and Corsairs of Umbar); this would give them a pre-existing hatred for the descendants of Númenor. Also like the Easterlings, some had allied with the Blue Wizards and refused to fight for Sauron. The Southron's usage of heavy cavalry and scimitars at the battle of the Pelennor Fields suggests a Saracen-like aspect; which together with the inclusion of the tribal and African elements suggested by Sigelhearwan; implies that the Haradrim are organized in an empire-like fashion held together with tribal confederacies.
**'''Men of Khand/Variags of Khand''': Of all the Men under Sauron’s rule we know about Khand the least, other than that they were horsemen who attacked Gondor, it is not even clear as to whether the nomadic horsemen natives and Variags are the same or separate peoples, although the etymology of the word ''Variag'' being derived from the Russian word for ''Varangian'' implies that the Variags are viking-like mercenaries in some fashion, and thus are separate (and possibly even foreign) peoples.

==Elves==
Elves are the first of Ilúvatar’s children (meaning they were created by him alone, without any help from the Valar). They are descended from three main tribes of people, listed below; the Teleri tribe was so large that it separated into several different groups, depending on how far they migrated from the Elves original homeland. Elves are immortal, but suffer from weariness if they remain in Middle Earth for too long, hence why nearly all ended up living in Valinor. Elves' spirits are bound to the world as well; when they die, either they reincarnate in Aman in the Halls of Mandos, or if they reject Mandos, they become disembodied spirits that haunt the land and are vulnerable to corruption by necromancers, especially Sauron. The nature of Elven spirits appears to affect marriages as well, as once they marry they never divorce, cheat or engage in polygamy as their very souls would rebel against the idea (except for that one guy but he was a prick). Elves are also immune to illness, but are more vulnerable to extreme distress, in some cases causing rapid aging or even death. Elves have skills and abilities that seem like magic to mortals, but to the elves it is little different than interacting with the natural world.

=== Vanyar ===
The first and smallest Elvish tribe; they never left The Undying lands to return to Middle Earth except during the battle at the end of the First Age where the Valar finally got sick of Melkor's shit, in which Vanyar forces marched to war for the only time in history, so we know the least about them.
* '''Ingwë:''' The Leader of the Vanyar, went to Aman during the great Elven Migration, stayed in Valinor and thusly became utterly irrelevant for the World's Story, even before the great Migration fully ended.
* '''Ingwion''': The only known son of Ingwë, and even then he is only known for commanding Valar ships that landed in the Middle Earth during the War of Wrath which means he got more done than daddy, though that's not saying much.
* '''Indis''': second wife of Noldor king Finwë, and the mother of all of his children barring Fëanor. She had a bad relationship with her step-son.

=== Noldor ===
The second tribe of Elves. They are great craftsmen and seekers of knowledge. Because if this, they were the only tribe that Morgoth was able to manipulate during his time on Aman, causing half of the Noldor to rebel against the Valar and live in Middle Earth in exile.
* '''Finwë Ñoldóran''' ('''Finu'''): The original leader of the Noldor and their first King. Generally a relaxed dude with the questionable fame of being the first being to be killed in the undying Lands, iced by the Big Bad himself, Melkor.
* '''Curufinwë Fëanáro''' ('''Fëanor'''): Finwë's most incredible son and second King. Unparalleled craftsman, he created the Silmaril, possibly the Palantiri and outstanding weapons as well. After Melkor stole the Silmaril, he unfortunately became a massive hothead and swore vengeance, which doomed all Noldor who went back with him to Middle Earth. Died in one of the earliest battles the Elves had to fight, though it took seven Balrogs to beat him down. He also renamed Melkor to Morgoth. Infamous and in-universe and out as the guy who fucked everything up bad.
* '''Nelyafinwë Maitimo''' ('''Maedhros'''): The (nominal) third King of the Noldor and the eldest son of Fëanor. Sadly, wasn't as badass as his father and was captured by Morgoth before he managed to assume power. He spent several years in captivity before being rescued by his cousin, after which Maedhros did a controversial move and passed the crown to his cousin's father Fingolfin, [[RAGE|which was not approved by his younger brothers]]. After that he was reduced to a minor Elven princedom that hopelessly tried to oppose Morgoth, but at the end he gave into his Oath for the Silmarils, trying to steal one from Beren and Luthien's children; and later stole the other two from the Host of the West. Though he eventually repented and killed himself.
* '''Ñolofinwë Aracáno''' ('''Fingolfin'''): The first High King of the Noldor (in Middle-earth) and one that didn't lose power as fast. Followed his half-brother Fëanor to Middle-earth and founded one of the Noldor kingdoms there. After another battle with Morgoth's forces, he went to the Dark Lords massive Fortress by himself, taunting him, dueling him for hours on end and wounding the Bad Guy seven times before finally falling. What a Chad.
* '''Arafinwë Ingoldo''' ('''Finarfin'''): The other half-brother of Fëanor, and the one that's less important. He set out with his brothers, but turned around and went back to Valinor, becoming the third King of the Noldor. He later commanded the Noldor that had remained at the War of Wrath, along with Ingwion.
* '''Kanafinwë Makalaurë''' ('''Maglor'''): The second son of Fëanor and a great singer, did the same evil shit as his brother Maedhros to get the Silmarils. While his brother sent himself into a hell, Maglor threw Silmaril that Eonwë gave him after Morgoth's defeat into the ocean. It is said he is still wandering the shores of the World regretting every decision he made.
* '''Telperinquar Kurufinwion''' ('''Celebrimbor'''): He ruled over an Elven kingdom of Eregion, which uncharacteristically was situated in the mountains and was a Dwarven ally. He is to blame for the creation of the Rings of Power and other fuckery in the Third Age (although to be fair Sauron deceived him).
** In the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games, he attempted to use the Ring against Sauron and was corrupted by it, [[Fail|with the predictable end results]]. Afterwards he became a wraith, who's bonding with Talion allows the latter to fight on after his apparent death, as well as keep coming back every time he's killed and just generally being a superhuman badass. Eventually convinces Talion to forge a ''new'' Ring of power that's intended to be a copy of The One Ring. Tolkien himself made clear that doing this would just result in another Sauron, and indeed Celebrimbor and Talion's plan ends in disaster and tragedy for both of them. Widely considered one of the best parts of the Shadow duology, especially thanks to Alistair McDuncan's god-tier voice acting.
* '''Findekáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Fingon'''): The second High King of the Noldor. He rescued Maedhros when he had been imprisoned. After inheriting the kingship, he and Maedhros planned to confront Morgoth with everything they had. Unfortunately it wasn't enough and Fingon ended up loosing his his head to Gothmog.
* '''Turukáno Ñolofinwion''' ('''Turgon'''): The third High King of the Noldor and one who got to build Gondolin, where all the cool swords Orcrist, Glamdring and Sting are from. Had very strict views on immigration and even stricter ones on emigration. He died with his wonderful city.
* '''Artafindë Ingoldo''' ('''Finrod'''): Eldest son of Finarfin, king of Nargothrond and one of the big elven cave-dwellers. Helped a Human in his love-quest, which ended up being his demise.
* '''Artaresto Angarátowion''' ('''Orodreth'''): The nephew of Finrod. The resided in Minas Tirith and had become king of Nargothrond, after his uncle's death. He maintained his kingdom in secret from Morgoth and fought him in stealth, until he listened to Túrin. He died in open battle and the realm was destroyed in the process.
* '''Artanis Nerwen''' ('''Galadriel'''): Among the last survivors of the leaders original exiles who didn't leave until after Sauron's death. Never forgave Fëanor for being a creep, and in an insult to him she gave Gimli three strands of her hair after being asked for one, Fëanor having asked for one three times and being rejected each time. Galadriel is arguably the most powerful magic user in Middle Earth by the Third Age (she literally destroys Dol Guldur with a wave of her hand), being one of few elves still alive who came from Valinor and learned magic directly from Melian; however, the two parted ways when Melian learned of the Noldor’s role in the Kinslaying, and Galadriel was unable to return to the Undying Lands until she was finally pardoned after the War of the Ring. Galadriel earned her pardon after resisting the One Ring when Frodo offered it to her; as her original failing was her joining Feanor's rebellion to satisfy her desire to rule her own kingdom, and instead accepting that the Elves’ time in Middle Earth was over. Even before learning magic from Melian, Galadriel had a special talent for knowing the minds and motives of others, which came in handy when Sauron in disguise came to deceive the elves.
* '''Artanáro Artarestowion''' ('''Gil-galad'''): The son of <s>Finrod</s> <s>Fingon</s> Orodreth. Cirdan's best friend, last High King of the Noldor, and the guy who got his face burned by Sauron.
* '''Earendil the Mariner''': The son of Tuor and his wife Idril, father of Elrond and Elros by his wife Elwing. Earendil was a half-elf who lived in the final days of the First Age; after his homeland of Gondolin was destroyed and his people scattered across Beleriand, his own family was nearly destroyed because his wife was in possession of one of the Silmarils and the sons of Feanor wanted it by any means. Earendil and Elwing were forced to flee, eventually sailing to Valinor to beg the Valar to intervene on behalf of elves and men. Earendil and his wife never returned to Middle Earth, but Earendil’s ship was blessed and made to fly, carrying the Silmaril on its prow and became the morning star. Earendil fought in the last battle of the War of Wrath, killing Ancalagon, the greatest of Morgoth’s dragons. As half eleven, Earendil and Elwing were given the choice of the fate of men, or the fate of elves. Earendil would’ve preferred to live as a mortal man, but chose the fate of elves with his wife.
* '''Elrond Half-Elven''': son of Earendil, and head of the House of Elrond. He was born toward the end of the First Age, having been witness to the final atrocities that sank Beleriend beneath the sea. While his brother Elros chose the fate of men and became King of Numenor, Elrond chose the fate of Elves and remained in Middle Earth, serving as herald and loremaster for Gil-Galad. After Gil-Galad's death in the War of the Last Alliance, Elrond took the Noldor elves that remained to Imladris, where they lived in peace and he served as an advisor to the other free peoples. Notably, Elrond did ''not'' take up the title of High King after Gil-Galad's death; while he was of royal lineage, its probable that Elrond didn't see any point since there was hardly a kingdom left to rule, and every single High King had met a grizzly demise beforehand.
* '''Glorfindel''': [[Aenarion|Legendary Elf warrior who died fighting a powerful demonic foe]], only to be resurrected later. Rode against the Nazgul during the Third Age to bring Frodo to Rivendell (Arwen takes over this role in the films, leading to Glorfindel getting cut entirely in one of the bigger changes made in the films).
* '''Arwen Undomiel''': Elrond's daughter and Galadriel's granddaughter (as Elrond's wife was Galadriel's daughter), she is the love of Aragorn's life. As such she decides to stay in Middle-Earth with him even though this ultimately results in her dying alone and unhappy. Barely a character in the books, she's fleshed out heavily in the films (even taking Glorfindel's place for rescuing Frodo).

=== Teleri ===
The third and largest tribe of Elves. After the great migration to Aman, the Teleri mostly refers to the members of the tribe that reached Aman.
* '''Olwë'''
* '''Eärwen'''

=== Sindar ===
Members of the Teleri who reached Beleriand but stayed behind to wait for their king Elu Thingol, who had gone missing (he was in fact entranced at his wife to be). Unlike the rest of the Elves who stayed behind, the Sindar were far more advanced and powerful, because Elu had reached Aman before and taught them what he learned. As a result, Sindarin is the primary elvish dialect in Middle Earth.
* '''Elu Thingol''' ('''Elwë Singollo'''): The only Sinda to have ever seen the light of the Two Trees. He is King of Doriath, along with his wife Melian, and (self-entitled) Lord of Beleriand. Famous for having given Beren the quest of retrieving a Silmaril from Morgoth and for fostering Túrin Turambar. He had been capped by Dwarves, who wanted to keep the Nauglamir, which had the retrieved Silmaril in it, due to a payment dispute.
* '''Eöl Moredhel''' ('''the Dark Elf'''): Easily mistaken for an Avarin Elf of Teleri descent, but is in fact described as a Sinda and Thingol’s kinsman. Eöl was a master craftsman but also one mean SOB. His tribute to Thingol was the cursed black sword Anglachel (later reforged as Gurthang), which always brought misfortune to its owner and was a big part of Turin’s fall. Eöl also kidnapped and forcefully married Turgon’s sister Aredhel when she wandered into his woods, who bore him a son named Maeglin. When Maeglin and his mother fled to Gondolin, Eöl followed them there and demanded the king to return his wife and son. After Turgon denied his demand, Eöl tried to kill Maeglin with a poisoned javelin; but instead killed Aredhel, who flung herself in front of Maeglin. For the murder of the king's sister, Eöl was judged and thrown from the city's walls to his death.
* '''Lúthien Tinúviel''': Thingol's daughter and a stand-in for Tolkien's wife. Part of a power couple with Beren (himself a stand-in for Tolkien). As a beautiful Elf woman with light skin and black hair who marries a mortal man and then dies as a result, she's pretty explicitly the Arwen of her time. Fitting, as she is one of Arwen's ancestors.
* '''Elwing the White''': Granddaughter of Beren and Lúthien, wife of Eärendil, and mother of Elrond and Elros. Elwing inherited the Silmaril from her father Dior, but was forced to flee Doriath when it was destroyed. In the Moths of Sirion the dwealt and married Eärendil. She and her husband both fled Middle Earth entirely when the Sons of Fëanor later came looking for the Silmarils; as her husband had already left by ship to beg the Valar for aid, she jumped into the sea and was transformed into a swan, flying across the sea with the Silmaril to join her husband. Upon arrival in Aman, Elwing convinced her kinsmen, the Falmari, to aid the Hosts of Valinor in freeing Middle Earth (though they still didn’t participate in the war as they still hadn’t forgiven the Noldor for their part in the kinslaying). After the war, she and Eärendil were given the choice of the gift of elves or the gift of men; Elwing chose the gift of elves in honour of her grandmother.
* '''Círdan Ciryatan''' (The Shipwright): Master of Grey Havens and one of the three Elven Ringbearers (although he eventually gave his ring to Gandalf). He is insanely old (to the point that he is the only Tolkien Elf to have a ''beard'') and works as the overseer of Elven migration to Aman. Despite all of previously given information, he is not really relevant and barely appears even in Silmarillion. Sailed to Aman along with the very last Elves in Middle Earth.
* '''Mablung'''
* '''Beleg Cúthalion''': Beleg shared in the accursed fate of Turin, unwittingly causing the betrayal of Mîm due to the memories of the Petty-dwarves being hunted like animals. Beleg died at Turin's hand when he tried to wake Turin up and was struck down by the panicked Turin.
* '''Celeborn''': Galadriel's husband.
* '''Thranduil''': Second (and presumably last) king of Elven Mirkwood and the OG Fantasy Wood Elf ruler. Was bitter that his father died in the war with Sauron and due to that really haven't interfered in the Middle Earth politics before the War of the Ring, although he still helped some Dwarves to get to Erebor.
* '''Legolas''': Son of Thranduil and prince of the Woodland Realm. Legolas was sent as a representative for the Council of Elrond, eventually becoming one of the Fellowship of the Ring. Legolas became close friends with Gimli the dwarf - ironic since both their fathers had bitter enmity due to the events of the Hobbit - with both eventually leaving together for the Undying Lands after the death of Aragorn. One of the most iconic "archer heroes" in all of fiction, especially after the movies came out.

=== Nandor ===
Teleri Elves who diverted at the Misty Mountains during the migration to Aman. The Nandor became the '''Silvan''' Elves, aka Wood Elves, who eventually came under the rule of their Sindar kin.
* '''Haldir''': Marchwarden of Lothlórien, who alongside his brothers stumbled upon the Fellowship as they fled Moria. Unlike his relatives, he actually knew Westron and as such was able to help them reach Galadriel, and a little bit later helped them pack the boats for their journey south.
** In a major departure from the books, the movies had Haldir somehow also lead a troop of Galadhrim Warriors all the way from Lothlórien to Helm's Deep to assist in its defense during the Battle of the Hornburg.
* '''Nimrodel''': An ancient Elf-maid and the tragic lover of the last Lórien King Amroth. She was a bit antisocial and deeply mistrustful of the Noldor and Sindar Elves (with the exception of Amroth, of course), feeling that they brought nothing but war with them; a sentiment that was not factually incorrect, especially in the case of the Noldor. Nimrodel felt the awakening of the Balrog Durin's Bane and tried to flee her homeland, but was found by her boyfriend, who promised her life in Aman. On the road to Edhellond in Belfalas they accidentally separated, with the King boarding the ship and his love getting lost in the White Mountains. After a storm forced the Elves to leave the harbor, Amroth leapt overboard to go back and find her, but drowned. Nimrodel eventually found her way to Edhellond, but the last of the Elves and their ships had already left the ancient city, leaving it abandoned and her alone. Fucking hell.

=== Avari ===
Elves who refused the journey entirely. Mostly irrelevant.

== Dwarves ==
The Dwarves are sometimes referred to as the “Adopted children of Ilúvatar;” their forms were created by Aulë the Smith in his desire to have beings that he could teach his craft to, but because he didn’t possess the Secret Fire, he could not give them true life or free will. Ilúvatar, though disappointed by Aulë acting out of turn, took pity on Aulë’s creation and breathed life into them. However, he also put them to sleep since the elves were preordained to be the first-born children. Because the Dwarves were designed by Aulë and not Illúvatar, they have a few quirks to them compared to the other Children; they're extremely hardy and resistant to corruption, but also very warlike and aggressive, and were prone to pick lots of fights including with other dwarven houses. Also, they tended to suffer from population decline due to a lack of females. It is said that when the Dwarves die, their bodies return to the stone they were made and their souls are gathered to separate chambers within the Halls of Mandos; waiting for the Dagor Dagorath (Last Battle). After the Last Battle, the Dwarves would be hallowed by Eru and ordained to rebuild the world, along with Aulë.
===Dwarves of the First Age===
*'''Durin''' (the Deathless): The eldest of the seven Fathers of the Dwarves. He's founder of the royal House of Durin and is the ruler of the Longbeards. He awoke in Mount Gundabad and travelled southwards, along the Misty Mountains, until he saw a starry crown reflected on a pool upon his head. There he'd founded Khazad-dûm, greatest of the Dwarf mansions, and which would later be known as Moria. He lived for more than two-and-a-half thousand years, hence the title "The Deathless", until the ending years of the 1st Age. Yet even after his death, it's believed that Durin returns from the Halls and incarnates as a new King Durin (presumptively thanks to massive favouritism from Aulë). In later unpublished works, Tolkien may have retconned this instead to where Durin doesn't reincarnate so much as his body regenerates and returns to the world of the living anytime that Durin's Folk is without an heir. Thus Durin restarts the royal line, and that the other Dwarf Fathers have this ability as well.
*'''Telchar''': One of the most famous Dwarf smiths of all, whose craftsmanship could only be matched by Fëanor or equalled by very few on Middle Earth. He's the creator of Narsil, of the knife Angrist which Beren used, and of the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin.
====Petty-Dwarves====
The Petty-Dwarves were a sub-species of Dwarf who were cast out by the other Clans for wicked behavior. They were [[Grimdark|hunted like animals]] during their exile by Elves who weren't aware that other sentient species could exist. When the Elves made contact with other Dwarves, they stopped and left them in peace. By the late 400s of the First Age only three remained, a father and his two sons.
*'''Mîm's Family''': Mîm was the last Petty-Dwarf alongside his sons Ibun and Khîm, who presumably wouldn't be allowed to marry other Dwarves because of their exile, leaving them without potential spouses, and their mother's death sealed their fate. The three lived together in their fathers home in a hill/small mountain, Amon Rûdh and were left alone until, by misfortune, Túrin's gang of anti-Morgoth resistance outlaws happened upon Ibun and Khîm and one of them, Andróg, killed Khîm with a bow during the panic. Túrin repented of his followers mistake and offered their service to Mîm, who accepted and assisted Túrin with resisting Morgoth for a year. Unfortunately, Beleg's arrival pissed Mîm off, understandably so as a genocide victim meeting a warrior of the people who slaughtered all his kin, and arranged to betray the outlaws with an Orc warband, on the condition that they spare Túrin and Ibun and also leave Beleg for Mîm to kill. Andróg, mortally injured, scared Mîm off from the wounded Beleg, then sacrificed himself to repent of his accidental murder and to save Túrin, Beleg and his son Andvír. Ibun either died in the battle, or of some other cause before his father. Mîm then took Nauglamír in the ruins of Nargothrond, and held home and hearth there until 502 of the First Age, whereupon he was killed by Húrin, who saw him as partially responsible for his sons accursed life. Mîm's dying curse on the treasure doomed Doriath and King Thingol and caused the Second Kinslaying. Mîm's death rendered the Petty-Dwarves extinct.

===Dwarves of the Second Age===
*'''Narvi'''
===Dwarves of the Third and Fourth Ages===
Dwarves apparently peacefully went extinct after reclaiming all their lost homes and holds, with the possible exception of Gimli who was allowed into the Undying Lands and may had been given the immortality of an Elf.
*'''Gimli, son of Glóin''': Of the non-royal branch of the house of Durin.
*'''Thrór''': Ruler of Erebor before it was taken by Smaug. After the great exodus of the dwarves, Thror attempted to retake Moria. Thror was killed by Azog, but was avenged by his grandson Thorin.
*'''Thrain II''': Son of Thror. Thrain was imprisoned by the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, later revealed to be Sauron, and had his Ring of Power stolen. He was discovered by Gandalf, and Thrain gave Gandalf the map and key to Erebor, dying shortly after.
*'''Dáin II (Ironfoot)''': Ruler of the Iron Hills; after the death of Thorin Oakenshield, he inherited rule of Erebor. He took an active part in the oft-forgotten northern theatre of the War of the Ring, but was killed at the gates of Erebor by a countless number of Easterlings.
*'''Thorin III (Stonehelm)''': Chronologically, the last known King Under the Mountain before Durin the Last. He rebuilt Erebor and Dale, helped Gimli settle the Glittering Caves in Rohan, and started a new campaign of mining Mithril in Khazad-dûm.
*'''Durin VI''': Famously known for having awakened up the Balrog that laid beep in Moria. Said Balrog slew many-a Dwarves and even Durin was killed. And so the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were forced out and went on a great exodus.
*'''Durin VII (The Last)''': The last reincarnation of Durin the Deathless, cleared out Moria and fully rebuilt the Dwarf kingdom. The Dwarves are strongly implied to have quietly died out some time after his death.
=====Thorin Oakenshield & Companions=====
*'''Thorin II (Oakenshield)''': Heir of Erebor and leader of the dwarves in exile. Thorin leads the quest for Erebor, eventually succeeding in retaking the kingdom from Smaug. However, he succumbs to dragon-sickness and very nearly goes to war with the Elves, but recovers from his madness long enough to join the battle against the Orcs outside the city gates. Thorin dies in battle.
**'''Balin, son of Fundin''':cousin to Thorin and Dain. Balin served as Thorin's advisor during the Quest for Erebor, and later attempted to retake Moria with a small expeditionary force of Dwarves. Balin's fate was unknown until the Fellowship passed through Moria and discovered his dead body. According to Gloin, he was convinced by "whispers" to retake Moria despite the obvious dangers; its speculated that Sauron or his agents may have been involved as Erebor remained a target of interest after it was retaken."
**'''Glóin, son of Gróin''':
**'''Óin, son of Gróin''':
**'''Fili and Kili''':
**'''Dori, Nori, and Ori''':
**'''Bombur, and cousins Bofur and Bifur''':
=====Other Dwarves=====
*'''[[Chaos Dwarves|Nauglath/Nauglir/Nornwaith]]''': The Wicked Dwarves of the East who had fallen under the Shadow, of which little is known about. Briefly encountered in the First Age by the freshly awoken Men, who could tell that they were of "evil mind" and distrusted them. May have existed in the Third Age as well, where they may have possibly made alliances with Orcs.

==Hobbits==
Hobbits appear to be a sub-species of human. Their origins are left deliberately vague since they were always meant to be an unremarkable people who did not take part in the great tales of the world, instead preferring to keep to themselves and living simple, peaceful lives. See [[Hobbits]] for more details.

* '''Bilbo Baggins''': The protagonist of the original Middle-Earth story. Starts out as a standard Hobbit (likes food and smoking pipes, not ambitious, deathly afraid of adventure, etc.) But Gandalf ropes him into the quest to Erebor, and he becomes the group's "burglar", making him the Ur-example of the "Halfling Thief/Rogue member of an adventuring party". Found the One Ring and managed to "win" it from Gollum by outwitting him in a game of riddles. Though not a fighter himself, his actions were still instrumental in helping the Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home from Smaug and stopping the forces of the Necromancer after. By the time of the War of the Ring, he retires to Rivendell and then accompanies the Elves on their journey to the West. The One Ring is thus inherited by...
** '''Frodo Baggins''' ...Bilbo's nephew. Main hero of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and initially a total nice guy. So nice, in fact, that he's able to resist the One Ring's corrupting influence longer and better than most. This makes him "the Ringbearer", and he is tasked with being the one to take the One Ring to Mordor to destroy it. Sadly, while Frodo means well, he's also as useless in a fight as one would expect a guy who's lived a pastoral existence his whole life to be. This not only requires the other good guys to bodyguard him throughout his adventure, but also results in him being (in order) stabbed by the Witch-King, stabbed by a Troll, stabbed by Shelob's stinger (notice a pattern?), captured by Orcs, and finally getting a finger bitten off by Gollum. Suffice to say, after being Middle-Earth's biggest punching bag for so long, Frodo is so shell-shocked that he realizes he can no longer stay in Middle-Earth, and so after helping to kick Sharkey (AKA Saruman) and his gang out of the Shire, joins his uncle Bilbo in sailing to the West with the Elves, bringing his story to a bittersweet close.
* '''Smeagol / Gollum''': Found the One Ring alongside his brother long after Isildur's death. Sadly, where Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam were all able to resist the One Ring to varying degrees, Smeagol...didn't. Instead, [[Fulgrim|he succumbed to corruption and killed his brother]]. From there, the One Ring morphed him into a "not-Goblin" monster who lived a tormented existence for centuries...until Bilbo swiped the Ring from him. By the time Gollum found the One Ring again, it was now in Frodo's possession, and for a time Gollum agreed to serve Frodo and Sam. Gollum swears his loyalty upon the Ring itself, which Frodo warns him repeatedly that the Ring itself would punish him by casting him into the fire if he ever betrayed Frodo- yes this is foreshadowing, and its probably why it was cut from the films, so as not to basically spoil the ending. Unfortunately, whether because his dark side is just too strong or because of a Faramir-caused misunderstanding (depending on the version of the story), Gollum regresses to evil and betrays Frodo and Sam to Shelob. [[Fail|This does not actually let him get the Ring back though]]. Ultimately meets his end, perhaps fittingly, where his "precious" was first forged; he bites the Ring off of Frodo, but then falls into the lava below shortly after (in the books he falls on his own, in the movies, he's falls over while struggling with Frodo). Widely hailed as one of fiction's great tragic villains, and, since the movies, a veritable fountain of memes.
* '''Samwise "Sam" Gamgee''': If there's a candidate for main hero of the Lord of the Rings besides Frodo himself, it would be Sam, his best bro, gardener, bodyguard, and hypercompetent sidekick all rolled into one. As the guy who sticks with Frodo no matter what Middle-Earth throws at them, resists the One Ring's corruption ''even better than Frodo does'', and able to face down threats many Men would balk at (like Shelob), Sam is acknowledged in-universe and out as the greatest Hobbit to ever live. So in summary, [[Grey Knights|incorruptible, loyal, and better than you]].
* '''Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck''' and '''Peregrin "Pippin" Took''': Frodo's cousins and closest friends besides Sam, and basically the "comic relief duo" of the story, though they do both know how to get serious when needed. Among other things they help get the Ents to join the War of the Ring and kick Saruman's teeth in and partake in many of the big battles of the War of the Ring. Merry helps Eowyn kill the Witch-King (albeit by stabbing him in the back while he'd distracted), and Pippin [[Slayers|''kills a Troll'']]. They also each get to don the attire of one of the great kingdoms of Men (Rohan for Merry and Gondor for Pippin).
* '''Fredeger "Fatty" Bolger''': Frodo's other friend, but never makes an appearance in the movies. Fatty gets a bad rap for not wanting to leave with Frodo and go through the Old Forest, but he still had a part to play in staying behind and convince people that Frodo still lived in the Shire. When the Nazgul arrived, he raised the Horn of Buckland to drive them off, and later aided Frodo in the Scouring of the Shire. On a darker note, after being locked away by the ruffians to starve, no one called him Fatty anymore.
* '''Farmer Maggot''': Local farmer...or so he seems. In fact, he is one of the few Hobbits in the Shire who not only knows about what goes on in the greater world, but actively works in conjunction with Gandalf as needed to ferry and receive information. [[Awesome|So basically a Hobbit Secret Agent]].
* '''The Sackville Baggins''': Proof that even Hobbits can be unlikable assholes, the Sackville-Baggins are relatives of Frodo who neither he nor anyone else particularly like. Basically a couple of obnoxious gold-diggers who Frodo sells the Shire to before heading off on his journey (an action he doesn't enjoy more than anyone else). If there's any nice thing that can be said about them, it's that they ''do'' later assist in the ejection of Sharkey and his goons from the Shire, showing they, like all Hobbits, can be courageous when it matters most. Absent in the movies, but unlike Glorfindel and [[Tom Bombadil|a certain someone]], most aren't likely to mind too much.

==Valar, Maiar, and anything in between==
[[Ainur|Have their own page]].

==Orcs==
'''Orcs/Goblins:''' See [[Orc#Tolkien|Orcs]]. Though not what you see with [[Stormtrooper|Imperial Stormtrooper variants]], they still come in a few varieties:
* '''Snaga''': The Black Speech word for Slave or Servant. This contemptuous term is used amongst the Orcs of Mordor and Isengard to refer to the "lesser" AKA regular Orcs, with the implication that they are only fighting for their master because they are being forced to.
* '''[[Black Orc|Uruks]]:''' A superior breed of Orcs created by Sauron in the middle of the Third Age through either eugenic practices or dark sorcery, most likely both. Uruks are resistant to sunlight (or at least far more able to tolerate it), and are taller and stronger than their lesser kin, though possibly only almost as tall or strong as Men. ''Uruk'' is the Black Speech word for ''Orc'', which opens up a whole mess of questions as to why regular Orcs are not called Uruks while these orcs of superior breeding are, although it could simply be a matter of social hierarchy given the existence and roles of ''Snaga'' within Orc society.
**'''Black Uruks:''' Another name for the Uruks of Mordor who served Sauron. May possibly have been a title only granted to the cream of the crop of Uruks, being those were of the strongest breeding and greatest devotion to Sauron, and were possibly further augmented by being "infused" with Sauron's will or dark sorcerous enchantments.
**'''Uruk-Hai:''' Saruman's take on the above project, with these Orcs being the product of either crossbreeding lesser Orcs with Goblin-Men or crossbreeding Goblin-Men with Men, all with his own sorcery added to the mix. This experiment is said to been even more successful than Sauron's own, with the Orcs produced being as tall and strong as Men and very-resistant/tolerant of sunlight. The etymology of their name has some interesting implications, as said above, ''Uruk'' is Black Speech for Orc, while ''Hai'' is the suffix for "''Folk''"/people, with the result being "Orc-Folk". By calling themselves this, the Uruk-Hai are saying that they are the Orc-People, while all the other Orcs are merely just Orcs and not worthy of being called a people, [[Nazi|which sounds very master-race-like doesn't it?]] In-universe, the other Orcs who interacted with them hate and distrust the Uruk-Hai of Isengard for placing themselves above them and looking down on them, which lends credence to this implication.
* '''Goblin-Men/Half-Orcs''': A hybrid of lesser Orcs and Humans. Look mostly human, albeit rather ugly and "sallow-skinned". Often serve as spies for their full-blooded kin, but most seemed to exist as outlaws and bandits, possibly being the descendants of fully Human criminals and outcasts who shacked up with the Orcs who lived in the Misty Mountains and other isolated areas. Half-Orcs may have been a distinctive breed apart from Goblin-Men, but the differences between the two are never made clear. Very, very minor part of the lore, and you hardly ever see them outside of the books proper.
* '''Mountain Orcs/Goblins:''' Orcs that live in the Misty Mountains and other northern mountain ranges. Largely left to do their own thing, they mug random passersby and launch raids against human settlements. Looked down on by Mordor Orcs and Uruk-Hai as being a bunch of feral tribals, who in turn look down on them for being "slaves to the Shadow" even though they are quick to bend the knee when emissaries from Mordor come calling. Sometimes called Goblins due to linguistic shenanigans, but either way they are the same size and "race" as other normal Orcs, although many extra-canonical works tend to call Mountain Orcs goblins and portray them as being the smallest of the Orc breeds. Less so in the movies and video games based on them, where Goblins are indeed treated as distinct from "regular" Orcs.
* '''Snufflers''': A race of small, darkfurred orcs with big nostrils who were used like humanoid hunting hounds by their larger cousins. May have simply been a mutation or breedable trait rather than an actual sub-race. Never seen or mentioned outside of the books, so they're a concept that didn't catch on with most folks.

Similarly, while they get less attention than the Free Peoples, there are still some named Orc/Uruk-hai characters in the franchise:

* '''Azog the Defiler''': An Orc Chieftain of Moria prior to the events of The Hobbit. He murdered the Dwarven King Thrór, and had the gall to say that he executed him for "trespassing" in Moria. He beheaded Thrór, branded his own name on his forehead in Dwarven Runes, and even dismembered his corpse after insulting Thrór's companion Nár and throwing a small bag of gold coins to him. This event started the ''War of the Dwarves and Orcs'', which ended when Dáin II Ironfoot slew Azog at the Battle of Azanulbizar. Azog was succeeded by his son Bolg.
** The Peter Jackson Hobbit movies had him survive his canon death so as to effectively become the main villain of the trilogy. [[Rage|Most fans were not impressed]].
* '''Bolg''': Bolg, son of Azog, was an Orc Chieftain who led a coalition of Orcs during the time of The Hobbit. Vengeful over his father's death at the hands of the Dwarves, he rallied the Orcs of the Misty Mountains along with the Orcs of Goblin Town at Mount Gundabad, and along with a host of Wargs, marched them to battle at Erebor for the Battle of Five Armies. Bolg was killed in battle by Beorn, who had taken the shape of a bear.
**In the Hobbit Trilogy, Bolg is demoted to a second-in-command due to dad still being alive, and Legolas kills him instead after a battle that [[Wat|involves him defying gravity.]]
* '''Uglúk''': An Uruk-Hai of Isengard who led the company which attacked the Fellowship at Amon Hen and captured Merry and Pippin. After being harried and encircled by Riders of Rohan under Éomer's command, Uglúk and his entire company were slain in battle, with Uglúk being personally killed by Éomer in a sword-fight.
* '''Gothmog''': Only mentioned briefly in Return of the King and no other description given than "Castellan of Minas Morgul", he took command over Mordors force that was still besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. The reason he is listed here is because Peter Jackson made him a heavily scarred Orc in the movie adaptation, the books never mention his race. Some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that he was actually one of the Nazgûl.
* '''Grishnákh''': An Orc Captain of Mordor who led his own raiding party of Mordor Orcs in search of the Fellowship. He crossed paths with Uglúk's company in Rohan and tried to intimidate him into turning over Merry and Pippin to his custody, but was unable to do so and lacked the numbers to overtake the individually superior Uruk-Hai. He attempted to depart to the east, but was driven back towards Uglúk's company by the encircling Riders under Éomer, and thus made his last stand together with Uglúk's company near the eaves of the Fangorn Forest.
* '''Gorbag''': A Black Uruk Captain of Mordor who personally served the Nazgûl in Minas Morgul. He; together with Shagrat; found a paralyzed Frodo while on patrol near Cirith Ungol. He was rather observant and wily for an Orc, and was able to deduce that Frodo was not alone in his trespassing and was merely paralyzed by Shelob instead of dead. He attempted to steal Frodo's mithril shirt for himself, but in doing so provokes a fight with Shagrat, which in turn sparks a small insurrection which pitted Gorbag's patrol against Shagrat's garrison. After shanking Shagrat and failing to finish him off with a broken spear, he is killed and trampled by Shagrat. In the movies, it's Shagrat who tries to take the shirt and Gorbag who is loyal to Sauron, and Sam kills him instead.
* '''Shagrat''': A Black Uruk Lieutenant of Mordor who commanded the garrison of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Shagrat disagreed with Gorbag about what to do with Frodo, and tensions between him and Gorbag's troops sparked a small insurrection. After slaying Gorbag and defeating his underlings, Shagrat took Frodo's mithril shirt and journeyed to Barad-dûr. After delivering the mithril shirt and news of the incident at Cirith Ungol, he was executed by Sauron. In the movie, he's the one who tries to take the shirt for himself, but otherwise presumably dies in the same way.

==[[Dragons]]==
The classic, archetypal dragon. Created by Morgoth in the First Age as his most powerful agents. Sub-Types include:
*'''Cold-drakes''': Lesser Dragons who are unable to breath fire, but they are still a couple tons of muscle and scales and are more numerous than the proper Fire-drake Dragons. Those that remain live in the frozen wasteland of Forodwaith in the desolate north of Middle Earth, although even then they still fuck with the Dwarves who lived in the Grey Mountains, even managing to infest the valley of the Withered Heath.
*'''Sea-serpents''': Also known as Fish-dragons, little is known about this particular breed of dragons except what they were called by, and that Morgoth had also created them. It can be devised that they were either intended to fight Cirdan and the Elven ships in Beleriand; to battle the Host of the West, which would have to cross the ocean; to contest with Ulmo, just as the winged-dragons contested with Manwë and his eagles; or some combination of these possibilities.
*'''Spark-dragons''': Sometimes known as Shock-dragons. Nothing is known about them save for this Elven nomenclature.

As for named Dragons of note:

* '''Glaurung''': The Father of all Dragons, and a [[Nagash| thoroughly sadistic prick]] whose main claim to infamy is hypnotizing and cursing Turin into marrying and knocking up his own sister for sick kicks before his death. He is slain by Turin's cursed sword, Gurthang, but gets the last laugh by revealing Turin's marriage is incestuous with his dying words.

* '''The Fire-drake of Gondolin''': An unnamed Dragon that partook in the Sacking of Gondolin. Big enough to carry ''multiple Balrogs'' on its back. Its physiology and its being unleashed on Gondolin alongside the Balrogs suggests it may have been meant to be Glaurung's replacement, but it too was presumably eventually slain (although its death is never outright shown).

* '''Scatha the Wyrm''': So named for his long, serpentine body, he was a treasure-hoarder like Smaug. Got killed by an ancestor of Eorl the Young named Fram after the local men and Dwarves got sick of him stealing from them.

* '''Gostir''': This dragon is only known by name and was one of Morgoth's dragons. Nothing else is written about him, not even what kind of dragon he was! However, considering that ''Gostir'' is Sindarin for "Terrible Sight", he must have been either one extremely ugly or especially scary-looking dragon. Alternatively, if you interept the "thîr" comprisant component of his Sindarin name to refer not to his face, but instead his expression as per one of the alternative definitions of that word; then Gostir might have been a dragon that had an especially potent hypnotic or mesmerizing stare like that of Glaurung.

* '''Ancalagon the Black''': Morgoth's ultimate Dragon, he saw action during the epic War of Wrath and fell during the battle despite initially [[Awesome|beating back the entire host of the Valar]]. Also one of ''the'' biggest fucking Dragons in all of fiction, as multiple "Dragon size comparisons" on the internet have shown. Seriously, this guy was the size of ''mountains'', and his death destroyed some too when he fell from the sky. How in the heck the good guys were ever able to beat Morgoth with this dude on his side is anyone's guess.

* '''Smaug''': The last, and by far the most famous, of all the Middle-Earth Dragons, he lived into the Third Age where he took over Erebor, slaughtered the Dwarves there, and helped himself to their treasure. He lorded over the mountain and its hoard for many years until a company of Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield and aided by Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey finally coaxed him out of his lair, leading to his eventual death when Bard the Bowman shot an arrow that hit him in his one weak-spot. Probably the single most iconic part of The Hobbit, and a highlight of both movie adaptations (yes, even the widely disliked Hobbit trilogy).

==Other Creatures==
'''[[Trolls]]''': Made by Morgoth "in mockery of the Ents", Trolls are giant and stupid creatures often used by the orcs as warbeasts. Like the Orcs themselves, some specially bred Trolls are called "Olog-Hai" and are used as especially dangerous shock troops. Certain breeds, called "stone trolls," will turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.
*'''Olog-Hai''': Sapient trolls who were the troll equivalent of Uruk-Hai.
*'''Half-trolls of Far-Harad''': A possibly mythical race of allegedly half Troll and Men crossbreeds. The confusion is due to them only being referenced a single time within canon at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where the warriors of Far Harad who fought for Sauron were likened to "Half-trolls" and described as being rather large and having "black skin with white eyes and red tongues". May have just been African-type warriors, but the fact that they were described as having "white eyes and red tongues", suggests that they were not actually normal Men, and instead [[Salamanders (Chapter)|Salamander-like]] giants with pitch-black skin and blank, pupil-less white eyes and scarlet red tongues. Alternatively, they COULD have been actually half-man, half-troll, Norwegian myth had that as an explanation for people who were especially ugly hermits or mighty yet ugly warriors. The warrior culture of the Far Harad tribals could view the jungle trolls as virile symbols of barbaric power and Savage Fertility, resulting in zulu-looking men and women boning wild trolls in the jungle, resulting in these bestial half-kin.
*'''Frost Trolls''': A large, shaggy breed of furred trolls native to the far north. Very minor part of the lore, with even more video games and other expanded material not using them.
*'''Ettens''': Another name for Trolls, in the same sense that Goblin is another name for Orcs. Namesake of the Ettenmoors, as Trolls used to infest the region during the time of the Witch-realm of Angmar. "The Etten" was the disguise of an Orc and Troll wearing the same costume to disguise themselves as a massive mutant Troll warlord in the Shadow of War game, so in that version of Middle Earth, Ettens could refer to the more popular pop culture version as two-headed trolls/giants with orcish blood popularized in D&D.

'''[[Treant|Ents]]''': Tree-herders, created by Yavanna to protect the forests. The Ents are extremely old, perhaps the only beings that can rival elves in age. They speak their own unique language that sounds like creaking wood, and are very slow and deliberate in their actions. The Ents are divided into males and females, but by the Third Age, the Entwives have disappeared, leaving the Ent race to eventually vanish.

'''[[Ogres]]''': In-between Orc and Troll in Size, probably mythical and in the same circumstances as the Giants given that they were only mentioned in The Hobbit as well. May also have just been another name for Trolls. Three of them were among Azog's horde in the Hobbit movies during their assault on Laketown, and Games Workshop included models of them for their game.

'''Giants''': Huge humanoids of myth. Only referenced in passing through tales of folklore, but did make an appearance in The Hobbit, where "stone-giants" were described as throwing rocks at each while the Thorin's party attempted to passed through the Misty Mountains. That Giants did not appear or were explicitly referenced after The Hobbit suggests that they were an early idea which was dropped from the greater canon when Tolkien consolidated it with the writing of the main series.

'''[[Werewolves]]''': Fearsome wolves possessed by evil spirits, created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age, but have lingered on throughout the following ages.

'''[[Vampires]]''': Either possibly humanoid bats or just really large sapient and malevolent blood-drinking bats created as minions of Morgoth in the First Age. Very little is known about them. Associated mainly with Sauron, who took the form of one on at least one occasion to escape from Huan, and because the only named Vampire; Thuringwethil; was a servant of Sauron.

'''Nameless Things:''' Things without names, of course. Or much description for that matter. Said by Gandalf to be older than Sauron and live deep beneath the Earth, such that even the Dwarves have never encountered them. Gandalf encountered them in passing while he fought Durin's Bane deep in the tunnels of the Earth after he fell from the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, but even then he refuses to "darken the light of day" with a description of them. Tolkien makes the inference that because these Nameless Things are nameless, that makes them especially dreadful and evil, though they're also largely unconnected with the main conflict that plays out in the story, and exist mostly to add to the world's mystery, as not all dangerous and terrible things are under the Dark Lord's control. They seem rather [[Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] in their description. Various types of Nameless Things were featured in the Lord of the Rings MMO, including one that was infecting orcs with a parasitic fungus like the Cordyceps strain from The Last of Us to turn them into its own army

'''Mewlips''': Evil, amphibious creatures that prey on travelers in the Long Marshes. Possibly fictitious, or misidentified orcs. Some older LOTR RPG materials described them as some form of ghoul-like aquatic undead. Could also be some sort of subspecies of Orc which overcame their dislike of water to become something akin to [[Koalinth|Koalinths]].

'''Mumakil''': Giant elephant-like creatures from Far Harad, used by the Southrons as warbeasts much in the same way as war elephants of ancient times were used.

'''Great beasts/Great beasts of Gorgoroth''': Large beasts of burden used in Mordor. Not described in any detail at all, except that they were used to pull the battering ram Grond during the Siege of Minas Tirith. Are shown in the game "Gollum" as ornery, rhino-like creatures used as beasts of burden by the Uruks.

'''[[Undead]]''': exist in various forms and are specific in how they come about. The most iconic are the Nazgul, or ring-wraiths. Wraiths are a special class of undead that are apparently created and controlled by Sauron when he enslaves a mortal being to his will, principally through the life-extending rings of power. Magic is used to bind the wraith's invisible flesh to their spirit, and it is only with special magic weapons that they can be killed (or the One Ring is destroyed). Next are ghosts, as seen with the Oathbreakers. Because they have no physical presence, ghosts cannot actually interact with the mortal realm. Normally, human spirits leave Arda altogether upon death, but the Oathbreakers are a special case because of the nature of their curse. Illuvatar doesn't allow their spirits to leave Arda until their oaths are fulfilled. Lastly, you have the Barrow-Wights, which are described as dead bodies inhabited by evil spirits; its suggested that these evil spirits are the souls of dead elves (who didn't go to the Halls of Mandos) that were captured by Sauron and enslaved to his will.

'''Caragors''': Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive, being basically bigger, nastier Wargs. Devs even said they're to a Warg what a lion is to a wolf.

'''Graugs''': Also a Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War exclusive. Large, ugly giant monsters big enough to literally eat trolls for breakfast, but can be mounted by Talion, at which point he can basically use them like a [[Awesome|fantasy version of King Kong in New York City]]. Their full name is "Olog-Graug", which would indicate they are actually some sort of enormous, feral troll.

'''Creatures of Myth''': These creatures are likely fictional, as they are only referenced in poems, verse, song, or story. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't actually real. Tolkien did like to keep an air of mystery about it.
*'''Were-Wyrms''': Giant Sandworms like something out of Dune or Tremors. Possibly mythical, as they were only referenced offhandedly in The Hobbit, in a line that suggests they are something of a folktale. Showed up in the third Peter Jackson Hobbit movie. Older media portrayed them as a form of wingless, legless dragon.
*'''Turtle-Fish''': Giant Snapping Turtle sea monsters. Pretended to be islands before sinking when prey got off their boats and explored their shell, before consuming the drowning sailors. Mentioned only in verse within The Hobbit.
*'''Glowworms and Great glow-worms''': Bioluminescent worms of myth said to "creep along the Path of Dreams". Only mentioned in early versions of the legendarium.
*'''Badger-Folk''': Upright walking sapient badgers, skepticism is required due to this being told as part of a story by Tom Bombadil.
*'''Lintips''': Small, mousey-smelling creatures from the Moon which rode down to Middle-Earth on a moonbeam. Another tall tale from Tom Bombadil.

==Items of significance==
We're kind of bloating the definition of "character" here, but there are quite a couple of items in Middle-Earth that might as well be characters since Tolkien assigns a great deal of significance to them.

*'''Rings of Power''': The titular magical rings. There are 20 in total: 3 Elven Rings, 7 Dwarfen Rings, 9 Human Rings and the Master Ring. The Rings were created as incredibly powerful magical artifacts by the Elven smith Celebrimbor in Eregion, intended to perserve the world and increase the wisdom and abilities of the wearer. However, this intended purpose was corrupted by Sauron who helped Celebrimbor in the creation of the Dwarfen and Human Rings. Sauron intended the Rings to be conduits through which he could control the races of Middle-Earth via binding them all to his Master Ring. The Elven Rings stand out because they were created last and without Sauron's help and therefore remain untouched by his corruption (their power still hinges on the One Ring, though). Tolkien kept the description of what the Rings actually ''do'' very vague, from what we could gather from the Elven Rings, they probably all intended to fulfill its wearers deepest desires and guide their people to greater wisdom and understanding of the world. The Elven Rings were not used until Sauron was vanquished for the first time in the battle of the Last Alliance. By the time of the third age, their keepers were Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf. Galadriel used the power of her Ring to preserve a vision of Valinor in Lothlorien and keep evil out of the forests (to the point that Orcs literally and figuratively could not enter it), what Elrond and Gandalf did with theirs is left to interpretation. The Dwarfen Rings are implied to be the main source of their legendary riches with the sideeffect that it made them really greedy, awakening the Balrog of Moria and attracting Smaug to Mount Erebor; the Dwarven rings were eventually destroyed or claimed by Sauron. Of the Rings of Men, we know next to nothing, except that their wearers are now the Nazgûl. The Master Ring has the power to dominate the other ringbearers and is strongly implied to be a sentient being of some kind. It radiates a strong allure to anyone who sees it, to the point that people find themselves unable to let it go once they have it (also why Bilbo giving it up is such a testament to his willpower; he was literally the only being in Middle-Earth who had the Ring and gave it up willingly).
*'''Lesser Rings''': created before the Rings of Power by Celebrimbor and his smiths as practice. As the name implies, their powers are significantly more mundane. Gandalf had originally believed that the ring Bilbo found was one of the lesser rings since it was plain and didn't seem to confer many special abilities. Some of them likely were in Sauron's possession and given to his commanders.
*'''Palantiri''': The seeing stones. There were seven in total that Elendil brought over from Numenor when he landed in Middle-Earth. They were perfect spheres made of black stone and rumored to have been created by Feanor himself. The Palantiri were the key to the early dominance of the Dunedain in Middle-Earth; with them, they could keep a watch over large swaths of the world and communicate with their kin in far away lands. Using a Palantir is a daunting and esoteric task that was not well understood even when knowledge of the existence of the stones was relatively common (emphasis on relative, the existence of the Palantiri was one of the closest held secrets of the Dunedain) and as a result, the mileage one could get out of them varied wildly, generally speaking, they responded best to people the stones thought were their rightful owners. Sauron and Saruman famously were frustrated with their inability to utilize their respective Palantirs full potential; for example, Saruman wanted to use the Palantir of Orthanc to search for the ring but found Sauron instead. By the time of the third age, only four of the seven Palantiri were left: The Palantir of Orthanc which was in Sarumans possession and passed onto Gandalf when Grima threw it out of a window. Gandalf took the Palantir with him to Valinor. Sauron held the Palantir of Minas Ithil, stolen when the Nazgûl sieged and destroyed the city and destroyed when Barad-Dûr collapsed as a result of the destruction of the One Ring. Denethor, by the power of his office, held the Palantir of Minas Tirith, where it passed onto Aragorn when he became King. A fourth one sat in a tower on the western edge of Arnor, directed at where Numenor used to be. The other there were over time lost to the passing of time, Gondor lost the Ithil-Stone when the Nazgûl destroyed Minas Ithil. The largest Palantir of them all was located in Osgiliath and was lost when the city burned down during the Kin-Strife. Arnor had three, one in Annuminas and one in Amon Sûl. All three were lost when Arvedui, the last reigning king of Arnor sought refuge from the Witch-King of Angmar in Forodwaith and drowned when a rescue party sent by the elves of Lindon failed to save him; the stones sank together with their owner.

==Apocryphal Characters==
Due to the huge, enduring popularity of Tolkien's writing, many folks over the years have made their own contributions to the lore, effectively giving Tolkien's writings their own "expanded universe". None of these are canon with the books however, and so are listed here instead. Due to how the purists tend to feel about this sort of thing, pretty much all of the characters here are [[Skub]] by default.
===From Movies===
* '''Alfrid''': The Master of Laketown's own personal Wormtongue, and even more obnoxious and hatable. Much as Jar-Jar Binks is often seen as the character who killed the Prequels (or else dragged them down), Alfrid is seen in much the same way regarding the Hobbit movies. Not helped by the fact that he ''gets away with everything'' (unless you watch the extended cut that is).
* '''Lurtz''': Probably one of the most famous "not in the books" characters ever, Lurtz is an Uruk-hai leader made by Saruman in the PJ movies who is in charge of the band sent to Amon Hen. He's the one who personally puts three arrows into Boromir before Aragorn moves in to take him out in a suitably epic one-on-one fight scene. Due to the popularity of the PJ movies, the aforementioned epic fight scene, and the fact that Lurtz isn't ''that'' important of a character, he tends to be a lot more accepted than many other non-canon characters. Lurtz's role in the books likely would have been taken by Uglúk instead, but PJ wanted to have a menacing Orc antagonist in the first film that would be memorable by being the one to kill Boromir and give Aragorn a tough fight, and to represent the unique threat that the Uruk-Hai posed compared to the bog-standard orc.
* '''Sharku''': Leader of Saruman's Warg Riders, which guaranteed him status as a boss battle in a few of the video games. Also used to fake out killing off Aragorn in the second movie before Aragorn returned alive. Looks a lot like Freddy Krueger, and his name is a reference to Saruman's book alias during the Scouring of the Shire, "Sharkey".
* '''Tauriel''': A redheaded Elf waifu played by Evangeline Lily who is crushed on by Legolas and Kili, to [[Rage|the totally chill reactions of most audiences and fans]]. All told she ''is'' reasonably cool, but the general feeling is that making her part of a love triangle that goes nowhere was a dumb idea. Not to mention the "forbidden love" angle had already been done.
* '''Gothmog''': Only apocryphal-ish, since he ''does'' get a mention in Return of the King, being referred by his title "Castellan of Minas Morgul" in two sentences, where he is mentioned taking command of the Orcish warhost that is besieging Minas Tirith after the Witch-King was slain. Other than that, nothing is known about him and he never does get mentioned again, not even in passing. While some Tolkien Scholars hold the opinion that Tolkien was referring to one of the Nazgûl (since Gothmog was the King of the Balrogs, and it seems weird to not assign a name of such a powerful creature to an equally mighty servant of Sauron), Peter Jacksons interpretation of Gothmog was that of a heavily scarred and crippled Orc general that leads the troops on the ground during the Siege of Gondor and the Battle of Minas Tirith. A bit ironic is the fact that, while he is clearly intended to be Gothmog, he is actually never mentioned by name in the movie. Also fun fact, he was played the same Maori actor who also played the Witch-King and Lurtz.

===From Video Games===
*'''The Third Age Second Fellowship''': A B-Team Fellowship who are the playable characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Sadly, they're all very, very stock as characters, but at least they got to be the protagonists of one of the better Middle-Earth games.
** '''Berethor''': Gondor Citadel Guard sent by Denethor to find his son Boromir, and also secretly a Manchurian Agent for Saruman and carries another secret in his body. Is fear-proof, and this is actually something that factors into the gameplay.
** '''Idrial''': Discount Arwen, being a female Elf who fights with a falchion and water magic and who falls in love with the heroic man of Gondor (Berethor in this case). Gets a bit green-eyed when Morwen shows up as a result.
** '''Elegost''': A Dunedain Ranger who is the party's token archer character. [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Dwarf named Hadhod, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Hadhod''': Party's token Dwarf, but can do shit Gimli can't (fire and earth magic, namely). [[Gotrek & Felix|Is best friends with a Ranger named Elegost, who is his travelling companion]].
** '''Morwen''': Woman of Rohan [[Rule 34|with a bare midriff]] orphaned when Saruman's forces scour the lands, she joins the party as the closest thing they have to a dedicated thief/rogue. [[Slayers|Fights with dual axes and has a need for vengeance against the enemy]].
** '''Eaoden''': Last member of the party to be recruited, which sadly has the effect of making him even ''more'' lacking in personality than the rest. Also from Rohan, he's one of Theoden's Royal Guards and can actually become a serious powerhouse depending on how you allocate his points.
*'''Battle for Middle-Earth OCs''': Since not every faction in these games has a large number of named folks from the books and films to draw on, EA had to get creative, and so invented some playable hero units whole cloth:
** '''Drogoth the Dragon Lord''': Hero unit for the Goblins, and basically going "fuck that" to the idea of Smaug being the last dragon.
** '''Gorkil the Goblin King''': Goblin with delusions of grandeur who hopes to win Sauron's favor by causing trouble in the North. Rides a giant scorpion into battle.
** '''Hwaldar the Brigand''': A Rhudaur hill chief secretly in league with the Witch-King. Hero unit for the Angmar faction.
** '''Karsh the Whisperer''': Former Captain of Arnor named Carthaen who the Witch-King turns into a wraith to serve as one of his minions instead of his enemies. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Morgomir''': Lieutenant of Carn Dûm and a Black Numenorean captain who has become of the Nazgul themselves. Hero unit for Angmar.
** '''Rogash''': The Witch-King's right-hand Troll, being a lot smarter and more dangerous than the standard Olog. Hero unit for Angmar.
*'''Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War Characters''': The cast of Monolith Production's video game duology:
**'''Talion''': Protagonist and pure Badass by way of being a brutal one-man army who can cleave through scores of Uruks, kill Ologs, bring Fire Drakes to heel, and even ''fight and beat Nazgul and Sauron himself''. Looks a lot like Aragorn, but his story goes down a much darker path. Slain along with his wife and son at the start of the game, he is resurrected (sort of), by the spirit of Celebrimbor, turning him into a wraith ''not'' bound to Sauron. From there, he becomes [[Konrad Curze|a ruthless, brutal figure who lives in a world of darkness and evil surrounded on all sides by evildoers he spends his time brutally killing, maiming, and terrorizing]]. Ultimately becomes a cautionary tale about trying to be a Grimdark Anti-Hero in Tolkien's world though; his bearing a new ring of power made by Celebrimbor and using it to bend Uruks and Ologs to his will to build an army in Mordor, makes him all-too similar to the Dark Lord he's fighting against. It culminates in him losing said Ring, taking a discarded Nazgul ring to save himself, and as a result, becoming one of Sauron's nine Nazgul. A lesson in ''not'' fighting Sauron using his methods learned the hard way. In all, most Tolkien purists would consider him way too [[Grimdark]] for J.R.R.'s fiction, and have argued that Tolkien would be horrified by his game's content. But again, given what happens to Talion, it's clear the writers understood the inherent folly in trying to fight Sauron with his own methods. Talion is best seen then as a cautionary tale (and thus a reaffirming of Tolkien's values), not a bastardization ([[Skub|this does not stop people from seeing him and his games as that though)]].
**'''Ioreth and Dirhael''': Talion's wife and son, who, as the wife and son of a tragic Anti-Hero in a [[Grimdark]] story, suffer exactly the fate you expect them to. In Ioreth's case, [[Critical Role|this is not the only time her VA has played a character in a Fantasy series with a sexy faux-British accent who's in love with a brooding, vengeful Anti-Hero]].
**'''The Black Captains''': A trio of Black Numenoreans who act as the main antagonists of the first game. Each represents a different aspect of Sauron's character, and as the folks who murdered Talion's wife and son, are at the top of his shit-list. They are:
***'''Black Hand of Sauron''': Leader of the bunch. [[Tzeentch|Represents the deceitfulness of Sauron]]. Lets his body become a vessel for Sauron so that the latter can temporarily regain his iconic black-armored, physical form.
***'''Hammer of Sauron''': A former Numenorean from the Battle of the Last Alliance [[Angron|who was angry and resentful enough to turn on his fellows]], picking up Sauron's discarded mace and letting it corrupt him (since it seems all of Sauron's stuff does that). [[Khorne|Represents Sauron's physical might and just a generally very angry guy]].
***'''Tower of Sauron''': A tall, scary guy [[Slaanesh|who looks a bit like something out of Hellraiser and accordingly serves as a torturer for Sauron. He represents the horror and viciousness of Sauron]].
**'''Eltariel''': A black-clad Elf who acts as a personal assassin for Galadriel, specially tasked with fighting the Nazgul. Badass enough to keep pace with Talion (and ironically has the same voice actress as his dead wife). Takes the New Ring after Talion loses it and becomes a Nazgul.
**'''Idril''': Gondorian woman who is the daughter of the man in charge of Minas Ithil (which falls much later in the Shadow of Mordor/War continuity). Her daddy betrays the city to the Witch-King on the condition that Idril will be spared, and afterwards Idril leads the surviving Gondorian forces in Mordor. Comments on various collectibles Talion can find scattered throughout Mordor.
** '''Baranor''': A man born in Harad who was given to Gondor as part of a peace exchange and raised by them. Actually did pretty well for himself, becoming a captain in Gondor's army and helping lead the defense of Minas Ithil before it falls. Playable in one of Shadow of War's DLCs, and since he has no Ring of Power, if he dies, its actually Game Over.
**'''Carnan''': An Ent-Wife (or else something like it) and a super-powerful nature spirit who talks weird. Said to be a contemporary of Morgoth, which would make her ''ancient'' if true. Resides in a very forested, scenic part of Mordor that feels more like a part of Lothlorien or Rivendell then anything under Sauron's control, but that is likely owing in part to Carnan's presence. Though mostly a neutral figure unconcerned with the affairs of lesser beings, when a Balrog starts burning her forest down, she joins forces with Talion and Celebrimbor.
**'''Tar-Goroth''': A Balrog awakened by the forging of the New Ring, meaning his rampage is technically Talion and Celebrimbor's fault. There for the sake of having a boss fight with a Balrog.
**'''Zog the Eternal''': An Uruk sorcerer who seeks to summon Tar-Goroth and use him as a living weapon, including against Sauron himself, making him an Uruk with delusions of grandeur. Suffice to say, Talion puts a stop to his plans.
**'''Bruz the Chopper''': An Olog with an Australian accent who is one of Talion's first recruits, but later turns on him when he doesn't get a promotion. Talion responds by mind-raping him, which drives him insane. What happens to him after that is up to the player.
**'''Suladan''': OC Nazgul made for the games, one who funny enough shares a name with one of Games Workshop's original characters from the Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game. Nothing to suggest this is the same character though. His backstory is basically Ar-Pharazon, but a king of the South instead of Numenor, and turned into a Nazgul instead of getting punished by Eru.
**'''Nazgul Sisters (Riya and Yukka)''': Yes, seriously. A pair of twin sisters from an [[Cathay|obscure, rarely seen kingdom of man based off of Asian cultures]] who killed two of Sauron's Nazgul and took their Rings for themselves...which turned them into new Nazgul. Actually try to take power for themselves, but after Eltariel whoops their asses they seem to give up on that idea. Fight with Kusarigama type weapons instead of the usual Morgul Blades.

===From Amazon's Rings of Power===
*'''Arondir''': Black Legolas with a bit of Aragorn / Beren mixed in, or else a male Arwen, since he's doing the whole Elf/Human romance thing, which his fellow Elves point out doesn't end happily for those who do it. Might be Theo's father, but unconfirmed as yet.
*'''Bronwyn''' - Arondir's forbidden human lover (so the Luthien to his Beren, but with the races reversed), who is most notable for [[Derp|somehow commanding humans that escaped Orc invasion despite being a simple farmer (yeah, no signs of any class higher than peasants at all in Southlands)]].
*'''Theo''': Bronwyn's son that currently has super cool dark weapon on his hands, which seems to be a Morgul Blade, leading to fan theories that he'll turn into a Nazgul. Notably, we never get a good look at his ears, suggesting he might be Arondir's kid (which would fit given that he's his mom's boyfriend).
*'''[[Sauron|Halbrand]]''': Mysterious human that joins Galadriel in her quest. Has a lot in common with Aragorn (such as being the successor to a kingdom long vanished), but was ultimately revealed to be a certain ''other'' canon character. Given all of the hints beforehand, namely his silver tongue, talent for manipulation, the fact that he's trying to rule the Southlands (aka Mordor), his asking Adar (who claimed to kill Sauron), if he recognized him, and keen interest and skill in blacksmithing, (to the point that he claimed no one knew the craft better than him and was able to help Celebrimbor make the Rings of Power), this identity reveal didn't come as a shock to anybody when it came...except Galadriel. Speaking of, he got the hots for her during the time they spent together, and attempted to convince her to join him, but it didn't take (obviously). At the end of the season, he does what none should be able to do...[[Meme|he simply walked into Mordor]].
*'''Adar''': Elvish for "father", he's [[Malekith|a corrupted but charismatic black armored Elf]] (according to himself, he's a "first-generation orc", with visible scar on his head where Morgoth poured his evil... corruption juice... thing) who leads a band of Orcs hoping to do...something. Might be Maedhros (since he's got a gauntlet over one hand, and Maedhros burned one of his hands grabbing a Silmaril). Played by Benjen Stark's actor, meaning both of the Stark brother's actors have now been in Middle-Earth adaptations.
*'''Eärien''': Elendil's daughter and an architect-in-training, and that's pretty much it so far. She opposes intervention into the Middle Earth and Pharazôn's son has the hots for her. While the showrunners decided to include her for "female energy," she does very little to actually drive the plot, apart from convince Kemen to burn some ships in order to stop the Numenoreans from leaving because... reasons?
*'''Kemen''': Pharazon's son (presumably from a woman other than Tar-Miriel, since Pharazon hasn't married her yet). Has the hots for Elendil's daughter.
*'''Nori Brandyfoot''' - <s>Hobbit</s>Harfoot girl, since we can't have a Tolkien adaptation without Hobbits. Like Frodo and Bilbo pretty clearly meant to be an audience surrogate, but a lot more eager for adventure at the outset than the latter. Probably won't be carrying anyone's ring around, but you never know. Currently palling around with a mysterious stranger who might actually be Gandalf, furthering the Frodo/Bilbo parallels. No relation to the Dwarf of Thorin's company despite the name.
*'''Poppy Proudfellow''': Sam to Nori's Frodo, basically. Not much else to say.
*'''Sadoc Burrows''': Elder of the Harfoot tribe. There was some initial controversy over his casting, with some people even making the point that [[derp|how did the isolated hobbits change from multi-ethnic to lilY-white after a few centuries?]] (Though Tolkien does describe the Harfoots as darker skinned than other Hobbit types). His character became even more [[skub]] when it was discovered that in spite of the Harfoot's claims that "nobody gets left behind" and "harfoots have hearts as big as their feet," they very regularly abandon other tribe members to death and even outright sabotage their wagons if the tribe gets fed up with them. So yeah, people think of harfoots as sociopaths now. In Sadoc's case though, its suggested that his having to leave behind his own wife and child hardened him into his current state. Dies after getting knifed by the Morgoth cult, even though Meteor Man should be able to heal him.
*'''Disa''': Durin's wife. [[/pol/|Her being black got the predictable reaction]], but she's actually more canon-friendly than many of the other characters in the show due to the fact that her name is listed in the appendices (though many people still complained WHERE'S HER BEARD???). Helps convince her husband to cut Elrond some slack for not seeing him in 20 years. Disa is also some sort of priestess for Khazad-Dum, apparently singing to the mountain to free dwarves trapped in a cave-in. For a moment people joked that maybe ''she'' was Sauron when she suddenly morphed from cheery housewife to political schemer reminiscent of Darth Sidious himself (albeit a much less evil one).
*'''<s>Meteor Man</s> <s>Encino Man</s> The Stranger''': Mysterious old man who crash-landed in Harfoot territory, and was befriended by Nori. He can't speak the common tongue and appears to be very proficient in magic, while also not understanding basic concepts like death. Most figure he's Gandalf or maybe Radagast, but other theories abound (everything from his being Sauron to being a Blue Wizard, [[Wat|to being a Balrog]]). He's confirmed in the Season 1 finale to be an Istari, with ''HEAVY'' implications that he's Gandalf, but he likely will only be referred to by one of his lesser-known names like Olorin. So ultimately, [[Superman|he's a human-looking being of great power who crash-lands from another world and is taken in by kind-hearted rural people. Sound familiar?]]
*'''<s>Feminem</s> <s>Slim Lady</s> The Priestess Trio''': Trio of white-clad ladies, led by a buzzcut woman who gives the most dramatic stink-eye. Names are The Dweller, the Nomad, and the Ascetic. Lots of people thought she was Sauron from the trailer until they realized the character had boobs (and Amazon outright said it wasn't Sauron). Honestly we know basically nothing about her and her two pals since their first appearance in the show is only slightly longer than the trailer, but apparently they're tracking Meteor Man and seem to be part of a leftover Morgoth cult. Despite having magic on par with a wizard and shapeshifting abilities, and also being incredibly pale, they're ultimately revealed to be Easterlings from Rhun, with a strong implication that they will either become Nazgul or are some precursor to it (although it does also seem that the Stranger blows them up at the end, so they might just be dead). The leader has a crown in the spirit world, which brings to mind the Witch-King of Angmar. Bear in mind, the Rings of Power are what turn humans into Nazgul, and they don't get created until the very end of the season, so they probably ''aren't'' Nazgul. Barrow-Wights maybe?

The Lord of the Rings

2023-05-17T00:22:00Z

2601:243:C500:E260:9183:D8B3:E478:4661: /* The Story */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. <s>Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it,</s>(That was an invention of the films. In the Book Isildur never even went to Mount Doom with the Ring) the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
* Children of Hurin - published after Tolkein’s death, it is also the only complete novel covering one of the First Age stories in the Silmarillion. This covers the tragic story of Turin Tarambar, Tolkein’s version of Kullervo, and how Morgoth cursed him and his family to a fate worse than death. Still an epic adventure that fits well into the Legendarium.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien had left-wing anarchist viewpoint be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

The series took some time to find his audience. As mentioned it was cut up into three volumes mostly to save money on type setting and because cutting up it up into smaller bits made it more digestible. The early reviews were mixed and a fair number of critics just did not get what seemed to them to be an overblown children's story. The books did not flop on release, but neither were they a runaway success on day one. It took a few years of word-of-mouth to spread, gradually gaining readers and fans. It had a hard time crossing the Pond due to some nonsense involving Houghton Mifflin not printing enough copies stateside, trying to import british copies to keep up with demand and import rules leading to a bunch of unofficial bootlegs. Never the less, demand was there.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero (as encapsulated in the "Frodo Lives" movement), despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://limyaael.livejournal.com/181634.html/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in most of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

'''ABANDON ALL HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE'''
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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. The Second Age, while at least being somewhat familiar as the backstory to LOTR and given five minutes of depiction in the film's prologue, only takes up two chapters in the Silmarillion. That excitement quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. This began at the first major warning sign; the firing of Amazon's resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work, who even met and worked with Tolkien himself at the same university) and subsequent replacement by someone far less qualified, far less experienced and heavily invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Combined with this happening shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate protective of his father's work - it was clear there was an agenda. More bad news came out soon after; Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''. They had spent several hundred million dollars only buying rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices, and are unable to reference anything else.

Worse, it was revealed the showrunners had no screenwriting or directing credits to their name, only being hired after J.J. Abrams vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was seen as bizarre for Amazon to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Several of the main actors themselves were either inexperienced or complete newcomers, most noticeable with the actress playing Galadriel. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual (early in production people spotted a job posting for an intimacy coordinator, and there's only one reason why you'd hire such a person), in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst. Another popular theory is that Amazon simply bought the rights so that no one else can have them, and then spend the minimum effort required to fulfill their contractual obligations to the Tolkien Estate.

The final nail in the coffin were Amazon's announcements that they wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day. This proved that the ''Rings of Power'' was a prestige product for some studio suits and amateur writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and even [[What|multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' launched in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote, especially in terms of visual design, dialogue, and shots. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-received films.
*Lots of the show actually end up being shockingly boring. There are large swaths of the plot where just nothing of any significance happens. One moment aside (the time Disa sings to the rock in a religious ceremony, which is admittedly a really cool scene and the only time the show manages to grasp an inkling of Tolkiens magic), a lot of time is spent on following up on the mystery boxes, intercut with action setpieces that at best have minimal stakes and at worst are completely nonsensical. Given how much of the dyanmics that are supposed to be established here end up going nowhere and/or are outright ignored/contradicted by the time of the finale, one has to wonder why the showrunners even spent time on these plotlines.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty, rude warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. She also never gives a mention or thought to her conspicuously absent husband Celeborn when starting to yield to "Halbrand's" charm. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
** Speaking of Galadriel, there was also a problem that complicated a lot of the cinematography; Galadriel is in the books one of the tallest people in middle-earth, whereas Morfydd Clark, Show-Galadriels actress is only 5 foot 3. The direction tries its best to make her seem much taller than she actually is, but it makes many scenes look and feel cumbersome and the more you watch it, you can see how often shots involving Galadriel only depict her.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** The Downfall of Numenor is supposed to be one of the major stories of the Second Age and the archetypical mythic tragedy; the show drastically rewrites this story, in part because of the time compression, but also they manage to inject some modern politics into it as well and strip out much of the nuances that it had, as well as making the Kings Men’s motivations and actions more confusing. What’s supposed to happen is that the Kings of Numenor slowly get corrupted over the course of centuries by greed and pride and turn into warmongering Imperialists, and they are jealous of the elves’ immortality; this would lead them to becoming tyrants and eventually falling for Sauron’s deceptions. Instead, we have an isolationist kingdom with no army, who hate elves because they TURK OUR JERBS and a made-up prophecy about an elf causing the downfall of their kingdom (instead of the literal human sacrifice and enslavement). They only started returning to middle earth because Galadriel told them to go save an inconsequential human village that maybe had Sauron there. And there’s no explanation as to why they turned out this way since none of the original motivations are present.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs. Also the humans that end up siding with Adar really don't like elves and even use slurs like "knife-ear." Real subtle.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
**While we weren't expecting the most tightly written story given how light the source material is, its clear that the showrunners didn't grasp the most important aspect in Tolkein's writing; the use of theme and how every detail builds up huge core ideas in the narrative. Instead, everything that happens happens because the plot demands it, even at the expense of previous characterization. One easy example is the Harfoots, who we're told all support one another, but because we have to create drama for the harfoot plotline, are constantly leaving people on their own to die anytime they run into trouble. It's ironic that they were included solely because the showrunners thought that the were the heart and soul of Middle Earth, when audiences have largely rejected the Harfoots as bunch of [[Kender|filthy little psychopaths]].
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see (although many of the show's lore references are likely to confuse newbies as they're hardly explained well, and those who do know the are likely to rage due to the immense retconning). After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time. That being said, by the time of the finale, the ratings had dropped to catastrophic levels and even many media outlets who gave the show a chance had to admit that it was a flop. So much so that rumors abound of Amazon discreetly sidelining Payne & McKay for more competent showrunners, while desperately trying to convince audiences that season 2 will be better we promise.

Update: Some of the negative backlash seemed to have reached Amazon HQ, who responded by putting out a statement that the show would go into season 2 with an all-female directors team (direction wasn't the issue, the writing was) and Adars actor (i.e. the only guy to gave a decent performance) dropping out of the show for good. So it seems that Amazon seems to prefer to pander to progressive audiences instead of actually fixing the story, which bodes ill for the show going forward.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy and has fixed resource areas and build zones, while the second game has more flexible building-harvesting system based on map area control. The latter also deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| Sauron showing off
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

The Lord of the Rings

2023-05-17T00:21:14Z

2601:243:C500:E260:9183:D8B3:E478:4661: /* The Story */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. <s>Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it,(That was an invention of the films. In the Book Isildur never even went to Mount Doom with the Ring) the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
* Children of Hurin - published after Tolkein’s death, it is also the only complete novel covering one of the First Age stories in the Silmarillion. This covers the tragic story of Turin Tarambar, Tolkein’s version of Kullervo, and how Morgoth cursed him and his family to a fate worse than death. Still an epic adventure that fits well into the Legendarium.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien had left-wing anarchist viewpoint be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

The series took some time to find his audience. As mentioned it was cut up into three volumes mostly to save money on type setting and because cutting up it up into smaller bits made it more digestible. The early reviews were mixed and a fair number of critics just did not get what seemed to them to be an overblown children's story. The books did not flop on release, but neither were they a runaway success on day one. It took a few years of word-of-mouth to spread, gradually gaining readers and fans. It had a hard time crossing the Pond due to some nonsense involving Houghton Mifflin not printing enough copies stateside, trying to import british copies to keep up with demand and import rules leading to a bunch of unofficial bootlegs. Never the less, demand was there.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero (as encapsulated in the "Frodo Lives" movement), despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://limyaael.livejournal.com/181634.html/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in most of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

'''ABANDON ALL HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE'''
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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. The Second Age, while at least being somewhat familiar as the backstory to LOTR and given five minutes of depiction in the film's prologue, only takes up two chapters in the Silmarillion. That excitement quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. This began at the first major warning sign; the firing of Amazon's resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work, who even met and worked with Tolkien himself at the same university) and subsequent replacement by someone far less qualified, far less experienced and heavily invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Combined with this happening shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate protective of his father's work - it was clear there was an agenda. More bad news came out soon after; Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''. They had spent several hundred million dollars only buying rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices, and are unable to reference anything else.

Worse, it was revealed the showrunners had no screenwriting or directing credits to their name, only being hired after J.J. Abrams vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was seen as bizarre for Amazon to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Several of the main actors themselves were either inexperienced or complete newcomers, most noticeable with the actress playing Galadriel. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual (early in production people spotted a job posting for an intimacy coordinator, and there's only one reason why you'd hire such a person), in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst. Another popular theory is that Amazon simply bought the rights so that no one else can have them, and then spend the minimum effort required to fulfill their contractual obligations to the Tolkien Estate.

The final nail in the coffin were Amazon's announcements that they wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day. This proved that the ''Rings of Power'' was a prestige product for some studio suits and amateur writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and even [[What|multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' launched in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote, especially in terms of visual design, dialogue, and shots. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-received films.
*Lots of the show actually end up being shockingly boring. There are large swaths of the plot where just nothing of any significance happens. One moment aside (the time Disa sings to the rock in a religious ceremony, which is admittedly a really cool scene and the only time the show manages to grasp an inkling of Tolkiens magic), a lot of time is spent on following up on the mystery boxes, intercut with action setpieces that at best have minimal stakes and at worst are completely nonsensical. Given how much of the dyanmics that are supposed to be established here end up going nowhere and/or are outright ignored/contradicted by the time of the finale, one has to wonder why the showrunners even spent time on these plotlines.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty, rude warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. She also never gives a mention or thought to her conspicuously absent husband Celeborn when starting to yield to "Halbrand's" charm. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
** Speaking of Galadriel, there was also a problem that complicated a lot of the cinematography; Galadriel is in the books one of the tallest people in middle-earth, whereas Morfydd Clark, Show-Galadriels actress is only 5 foot 3. The direction tries its best to make her seem much taller than she actually is, but it makes many scenes look and feel cumbersome and the more you watch it, you can see how often shots involving Galadriel only depict her.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** The Downfall of Numenor is supposed to be one of the major stories of the Second Age and the archetypical mythic tragedy; the show drastically rewrites this story, in part because of the time compression, but also they manage to inject some modern politics into it as well and strip out much of the nuances that it had, as well as making the Kings Men’s motivations and actions more confusing. What’s supposed to happen is that the Kings of Numenor slowly get corrupted over the course of centuries by greed and pride and turn into warmongering Imperialists, and they are jealous of the elves’ immortality; this would lead them to becoming tyrants and eventually falling for Sauron’s deceptions. Instead, we have an isolationist kingdom with no army, who hate elves because they TURK OUR JERBS and a made-up prophecy about an elf causing the downfall of their kingdom (instead of the literal human sacrifice and enslavement). They only started returning to middle earth because Galadriel told them to go save an inconsequential human village that maybe had Sauron there. And there’s no explanation as to why they turned out this way since none of the original motivations are present.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs. Also the humans that end up siding with Adar really don't like elves and even use slurs like "knife-ear." Real subtle.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
**While we weren't expecting the most tightly written story given how light the source material is, its clear that the showrunners didn't grasp the most important aspect in Tolkein's writing; the use of theme and how every detail builds up huge core ideas in the narrative. Instead, everything that happens happens because the plot demands it, even at the expense of previous characterization. One easy example is the Harfoots, who we're told all support one another, but because we have to create drama for the harfoot plotline, are constantly leaving people on their own to die anytime they run into trouble. It's ironic that they were included solely because the showrunners thought that the were the heart and soul of Middle Earth, when audiences have largely rejected the Harfoots as bunch of [[Kender|filthy little psychopaths]].
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see (although many of the show's lore references are likely to confuse newbies as they're hardly explained well, and those who do know the are likely to rage due to the immense retconning). After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time. That being said, by the time of the finale, the ratings had dropped to catastrophic levels and even many media outlets who gave the show a chance had to admit that it was a flop. So much so that rumors abound of Amazon discreetly sidelining Payne & McKay for more competent showrunners, while desperately trying to convince audiences that season 2 will be better we promise.

Update: Some of the negative backlash seemed to have reached Amazon HQ, who responded by putting out a statement that the show would go into season 2 with an all-female directors team (direction wasn't the issue, the writing was) and Adars actor (i.e. the only guy to gave a decent performance) dropping out of the show for good. So it seems that Amazon seems to prefer to pander to progressive audiences instead of actually fixing the story, which bodes ill for the show going forward.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy and has fixed resource areas and build zones, while the second game has more flexible building-harvesting system based on map area control. The latter also deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| Sauron showing off
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

The Lord of the Rings

2023-05-17T00:20:17Z

2601:243:C500:E260:9183:D8B3:E478:4661: /* The Story */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure.</s> Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it, <s>(That was an invention of the films. In the Book Isildur never even went to Mount Doom with the Ring) the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
* Children of Hurin - published after Tolkein’s death, it is also the only complete novel covering one of the First Age stories in the Silmarillion. This covers the tragic story of Turin Tarambar, Tolkein’s version of Kullervo, and how Morgoth cursed him and his family to a fate worse than death. Still an epic adventure that fits well into the Legendarium.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien had left-wing anarchist viewpoint be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

The series took some time to find his audience. As mentioned it was cut up into three volumes mostly to save money on type setting and because cutting up it up into smaller bits made it more digestible. The early reviews were mixed and a fair number of critics just did not get what seemed to them to be an overblown children's story. The books did not flop on release, but neither were they a runaway success on day one. It took a few years of word-of-mouth to spread, gradually gaining readers and fans. It had a hard time crossing the Pond due to some nonsense involving Houghton Mifflin not printing enough copies stateside, trying to import british copies to keep up with demand and import rules leading to a bunch of unofficial bootlegs. Never the less, demand was there.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero (as encapsulated in the "Frodo Lives" movement), despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://limyaael.livejournal.com/181634.html/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in most of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

'''ABANDON ALL HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE'''
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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. The Second Age, while at least being somewhat familiar as the backstory to LOTR and given five minutes of depiction in the film's prologue, only takes up two chapters in the Silmarillion. That excitement quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. This began at the first major warning sign; the firing of Amazon's resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work, who even met and worked with Tolkien himself at the same university) and subsequent replacement by someone far less qualified, far less experienced and heavily invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Combined with this happening shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate protective of his father's work - it was clear there was an agenda. More bad news came out soon after; Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''. They had spent several hundred million dollars only buying rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices, and are unable to reference anything else.

Worse, it was revealed the showrunners had no screenwriting or directing credits to their name, only being hired after J.J. Abrams vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was seen as bizarre for Amazon to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Several of the main actors themselves were either inexperienced or complete newcomers, most noticeable with the actress playing Galadriel. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual (early in production people spotted a job posting for an intimacy coordinator, and there's only one reason why you'd hire such a person), in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst. Another popular theory is that Amazon simply bought the rights so that no one else can have them, and then spend the minimum effort required to fulfill their contractual obligations to the Tolkien Estate.

The final nail in the coffin were Amazon's announcements that they wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day. This proved that the ''Rings of Power'' was a prestige product for some studio suits and amateur writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and even [[What|multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' launched in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote, especially in terms of visual design, dialogue, and shots. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-received films.
*Lots of the show actually end up being shockingly boring. There are large swaths of the plot where just nothing of any significance happens. One moment aside (the time Disa sings to the rock in a religious ceremony, which is admittedly a really cool scene and the only time the show manages to grasp an inkling of Tolkiens magic), a lot of time is spent on following up on the mystery boxes, intercut with action setpieces that at best have minimal stakes and at worst are completely nonsensical. Given how much of the dyanmics that are supposed to be established here end up going nowhere and/or are outright ignored/contradicted by the time of the finale, one has to wonder why the showrunners even spent time on these plotlines.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty, rude warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. She also never gives a mention or thought to her conspicuously absent husband Celeborn when starting to yield to "Halbrand's" charm. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
** Speaking of Galadriel, there was also a problem that complicated a lot of the cinematography; Galadriel is in the books one of the tallest people in middle-earth, whereas Morfydd Clark, Show-Galadriels actress is only 5 foot 3. The direction tries its best to make her seem much taller than she actually is, but it makes many scenes look and feel cumbersome and the more you watch it, you can see how often shots involving Galadriel only depict her.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** The Downfall of Numenor is supposed to be one of the major stories of the Second Age and the archetypical mythic tragedy; the show drastically rewrites this story, in part because of the time compression, but also they manage to inject some modern politics into it as well and strip out much of the nuances that it had, as well as making the Kings Men’s motivations and actions more confusing. What’s supposed to happen is that the Kings of Numenor slowly get corrupted over the course of centuries by greed and pride and turn into warmongering Imperialists, and they are jealous of the elves’ immortality; this would lead them to becoming tyrants and eventually falling for Sauron’s deceptions. Instead, we have an isolationist kingdom with no army, who hate elves because they TURK OUR JERBS and a made-up prophecy about an elf causing the downfall of their kingdom (instead of the literal human sacrifice and enslavement). They only started returning to middle earth because Galadriel told them to go save an inconsequential human village that maybe had Sauron there. And there’s no explanation as to why they turned out this way since none of the original motivations are present.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs. Also the humans that end up siding with Adar really don't like elves and even use slurs like "knife-ear." Real subtle.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
**While we weren't expecting the most tightly written story given how light the source material is, its clear that the showrunners didn't grasp the most important aspect in Tolkein's writing; the use of theme and how every detail builds up huge core ideas in the narrative. Instead, everything that happens happens because the plot demands it, even at the expense of previous characterization. One easy example is the Harfoots, who we're told all support one another, but because we have to create drama for the harfoot plotline, are constantly leaving people on their own to die anytime they run into trouble. It's ironic that they were included solely because the showrunners thought that the were the heart and soul of Middle Earth, when audiences have largely rejected the Harfoots as bunch of [[Kender|filthy little psychopaths]].
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see (although many of the show's lore references are likely to confuse newbies as they're hardly explained well, and those who do know the are likely to rage due to the immense retconning). After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time. That being said, by the time of the finale, the ratings had dropped to catastrophic levels and even many media outlets who gave the show a chance had to admit that it was a flop. So much so that rumors abound of Amazon discreetly sidelining Payne & McKay for more competent showrunners, while desperately trying to convince audiences that season 2 will be better we promise.

Update: Some of the negative backlash seemed to have reached Amazon HQ, who responded by putting out a statement that the show would go into season 2 with an all-female directors team (direction wasn't the issue, the writing was) and Adars actor (i.e. the only guy to gave a decent performance) dropping out of the show for good. So it seems that Amazon seems to prefer to pander to progressive audiences instead of actually fixing the story, which bodes ill for the show going forward.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy and has fixed resource areas and build zones, while the second game has more flexible building-harvesting system based on map area control. The latter also deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| Sauron showing off
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

The Lord of the Rings

2023-05-17T00:19:17Z

2601:243:C500:E260:9183:D8B3:E478:4661: /* The Story */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. </s>Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it,</s> (That was an invention of the films. In the Book Isildur never even went to Mount Doom with the Ring) the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
* Children of Hurin - published after Tolkein’s death, it is also the only complete novel covering one of the First Age stories in the Silmarillion. This covers the tragic story of Turin Tarambar, Tolkein’s version of Kullervo, and how Morgoth cursed him and his family to a fate worse than death. Still an epic adventure that fits well into the Legendarium.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien had left-wing anarchist viewpoint be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

The series took some time to find his audience. As mentioned it was cut up into three volumes mostly to save money on type setting and because cutting up it up into smaller bits made it more digestible. The early reviews were mixed and a fair number of critics just did not get what seemed to them to be an overblown children's story. The books did not flop on release, but neither were they a runaway success on day one. It took a few years of word-of-mouth to spread, gradually gaining readers and fans. It had a hard time crossing the Pond due to some nonsense involving Houghton Mifflin not printing enough copies stateside, trying to import british copies to keep up with demand and import rules leading to a bunch of unofficial bootlegs. Never the less, demand was there.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero (as encapsulated in the "Frodo Lives" movement), despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://limyaael.livejournal.com/181634.html/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in most of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

'''ABANDON ALL HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE'''
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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. The Second Age, while at least being somewhat familiar as the backstory to LOTR and given five minutes of depiction in the film's prologue, only takes up two chapters in the Silmarillion. That excitement quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. This began at the first major warning sign; the firing of Amazon's resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work, who even met and worked with Tolkien himself at the same university) and subsequent replacement by someone far less qualified, far less experienced and heavily invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Combined with this happening shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate protective of his father's work - it was clear there was an agenda. More bad news came out soon after; Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''. They had spent several hundred million dollars only buying rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices, and are unable to reference anything else.

Worse, it was revealed the showrunners had no screenwriting or directing credits to their name, only being hired after J.J. Abrams vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was seen as bizarre for Amazon to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Several of the main actors themselves were either inexperienced or complete newcomers, most noticeable with the actress playing Galadriel. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual (early in production people spotted a job posting for an intimacy coordinator, and there's only one reason why you'd hire such a person), in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst. Another popular theory is that Amazon simply bought the rights so that no one else can have them, and then spend the minimum effort required to fulfill their contractual obligations to the Tolkien Estate.

The final nail in the coffin were Amazon's announcements that they wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day. This proved that the ''Rings of Power'' was a prestige product for some studio suits and amateur writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and even [[What|multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' launched in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote, especially in terms of visual design, dialogue, and shots. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-received films.
*Lots of the show actually end up being shockingly boring. There are large swaths of the plot where just nothing of any significance happens. One moment aside (the time Disa sings to the rock in a religious ceremony, which is admittedly a really cool scene and the only time the show manages to grasp an inkling of Tolkiens magic), a lot of time is spent on following up on the mystery boxes, intercut with action setpieces that at best have minimal stakes and at worst are completely nonsensical. Given how much of the dyanmics that are supposed to be established here end up going nowhere and/or are outright ignored/contradicted by the time of the finale, one has to wonder why the showrunners even spent time on these plotlines.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty, rude warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. She also never gives a mention or thought to her conspicuously absent husband Celeborn when starting to yield to "Halbrand's" charm. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
** Speaking of Galadriel, there was also a problem that complicated a lot of the cinematography; Galadriel is in the books one of the tallest people in middle-earth, whereas Morfydd Clark, Show-Galadriels actress is only 5 foot 3. The direction tries its best to make her seem much taller than she actually is, but it makes many scenes look and feel cumbersome and the more you watch it, you can see how often shots involving Galadriel only depict her.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** The Downfall of Numenor is supposed to be one of the major stories of the Second Age and the archetypical mythic tragedy; the show drastically rewrites this story, in part because of the time compression, but also they manage to inject some modern politics into it as well and strip out much of the nuances that it had, as well as making the Kings Men’s motivations and actions more confusing. What’s supposed to happen is that the Kings of Numenor slowly get corrupted over the course of centuries by greed and pride and turn into warmongering Imperialists, and they are jealous of the elves’ immortality; this would lead them to becoming tyrants and eventually falling for Sauron’s deceptions. Instead, we have an isolationist kingdom with no army, who hate elves because they TURK OUR JERBS and a made-up prophecy about an elf causing the downfall of their kingdom (instead of the literal human sacrifice and enslavement). They only started returning to middle earth because Galadriel told them to go save an inconsequential human village that maybe had Sauron there. And there’s no explanation as to why they turned out this way since none of the original motivations are present.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs. Also the humans that end up siding with Adar really don't like elves and even use slurs like "knife-ear." Real subtle.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
**While we weren't expecting the most tightly written story given how light the source material is, its clear that the showrunners didn't grasp the most important aspect in Tolkein's writing; the use of theme and how every detail builds up huge core ideas in the narrative. Instead, everything that happens happens because the plot demands it, even at the expense of previous characterization. One easy example is the Harfoots, who we're told all support one another, but because we have to create drama for the harfoot plotline, are constantly leaving people on their own to die anytime they run into trouble. It's ironic that they were included solely because the showrunners thought that the were the heart and soul of Middle Earth, when audiences have largely rejected the Harfoots as bunch of [[Kender|filthy little psychopaths]].
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see (although many of the show's lore references are likely to confuse newbies as they're hardly explained well, and those who do know the are likely to rage due to the immense retconning). After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time. That being said, by the time of the finale, the ratings had dropped to catastrophic levels and even many media outlets who gave the show a chance had to admit that it was a flop. So much so that rumors abound of Amazon discreetly sidelining Payne & McKay for more competent showrunners, while desperately trying to convince audiences that season 2 will be better we promise.

Update: Some of the negative backlash seemed to have reached Amazon HQ, who responded by putting out a statement that the show would go into season 2 with an all-female directors team (direction wasn't the issue, the writing was) and Adars actor (i.e. the only guy to gave a decent performance) dropping out of the show for good. So it seems that Amazon seems to prefer to pander to progressive audiences instead of actually fixing the story, which bodes ill for the show going forward.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy and has fixed resource areas and build zones, while the second game has more flexible building-harvesting system based on map area control. The latter also deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| Sauron showing off
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]