BlueSky Is Much Better than Twitter: Ring Lore Edition

I think many more people should come over to BlueSky. I, at least, am having much more fun...

I think many more people should come over to BlueSky. I, at least, am having much more fun...

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‪Charlie Jane Anders: My latest newsletter <https://buttondown.com/charliejane/archive/why-are-toxic-superfans-such-a-nightmare-for/> is about the toxic so-called "superfans" who torment Hollywood. Why are they such a problem? Because they have the power to hurt movies and TV shows, but they have zero power to make anything successful. <https://bsky.app/profile/charliejane.bsky.social/post/3l5wsbwqdzd2s>

Brad DeLong: My take on toxic superfans is this:

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Red Book of Westmarch is at all accurate about the Second Age.

Written in Rivendell under the thumb of Elrond, in the Shire where history scrolls were simply not available, and then edited in Gondor under the watchful eyes of the royal court, it is extremely unlikely that anything even slightly critical of the queen's father (Elrond) and grandmother (Galadriel) would have ever made it into the book.

Thus The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is likely to have at least as accurate a take on what actually went down in the Second Age of Middle Earth as do the toxic superfans who take The Red Book of Westmarch to be inerrant gospel.

‪Charlie Jane Anders: I love this take so much! Also I've been very grateful to mostly escape the haters when it comes to Rings of Power. I've been enjoying it just as a fun fantasy show, on its own merits.

‪Annalee Newitz‬: Honestly tired of elf-funded disinformation being reported as news.

‪Tom Doyle‬: The layers of BS had gotten so thick that Gandalf had to play research librarian and find the original documents to figure out for certain which ring was Frodo's.

Brad DeLong: You win! I mean, wearing one of the nine has pretty clear… effects on your physical and metaphysical form; the three are accounted for; of the seven... how certain is Gandalf that Sauron has three and that four were consumed by dragons?... pretty certain. And there were only twenty Great Rings to start with:

‘How long have you known all this?’ asked Frodo again.

‘Known?’ said Gandalf. ‘I have known much that only the Wise know, Frodo. But if you mean “known about this ring”, well, I still do not know, one might say. There is a last test to make. But I no longer doubt my guess.

‘When did I first begin to guess?’ he mused, searching back in memory. ‘Let me see—it was in the year that the White Council drove the Dark Power from Mirkwood, just before the Battle of Five Armies, that Bilbo found his ring. A shadow fell on my heart then, though I did not know yet what I feared.

I wondered often how Gollum came by a Great Ring, as plainly it was—that at least was clear from the first. Then I heard Bilbo’s strange story of how he had “won” it, and I could not believe it. When I at last got the truth out of him, I saw at once that he had been trying to put his claim to the ring beyond doubt. Much like Gollum with his “birthday-present”. The lies were too much alike for my comfort.

Clearly the ring had an unwholesome power that set to work on its keeper at once. That was the first real warning I had that all was not well. I told Bilbo often that such rings were better left unused; but he resented it, and soon got angry. There was little else that I could do. I could not take it from him without doing greater harm; and I had no right to do so anyway. I could only watch and wait.

I might perhaps have consulted Saruman the White, but something always held me back.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Frodo. ‘I have never heard of him before.’

‘Maybe not,’ answered Gandalf. ‘Hobbits are, or were, no concern of his. Yet he is great among the Wise. He is the chief of my order and the head of the Council. His knowledge is deep, but his pride has grown with it, and he takes ill any meddling. The lore of the Elven-rings, great and small, is his province. He has long studied it, seeking the lost secrets of their making; but when the Rings were debated in the Council, all that he would reveal to us of his ring-lore told against my fears. So my doubt slept—but uneasily. Still I watched and I waited. ‘And all seemed well with Bilbo. And the years passed. Yes, they passed, and they seemed not to touch him. He showed no signs of age…

Tom Doyle: Yeah, is the implication that Celebrimbor or Sauron might've dashed out a few other Great Rings in the chaos that were unaccounted for in the ring poem and Gandalf's math? The TV series shows the appropriate chaos and destruction of records. And Occam's razor is a few thousand years in the future.

Brad DeLong: But it is very clear in the Lore—at least the official RBoW Lore—that there were only 20 great rings. There were other rings of lesser power. Instead of Círdan's ring Narya—the Ring of Flame—you might have the ring Úvanima Ursu—the Ring of Uncomfortable Warmth. Or instead of Galadriel's ring Nenya—the Ring of Water—you might have Linya Nimpa—The Ring of Slight Dampness.

‪Tom Doyle‬: Ha, I agree—doesn't seem to be an easy way to retcon Gandalf's delay in coming to the most likely conclusion. Unless this is part of how the One Ring protected itself—deflecting minds from seeing it for what it is when it didn't want to be seen. Then Gandalf's perception becomes extraordinary…

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UPDATE: My Brother Points Out a Number of Anomalies in The Fellowship of the Ring:

A number of episodes, choices, and decisions made in the events narrated of the doings of the Fellowship of the Ring that make much more sense if the way that things really went down in the Second Age were greatly to the discredit of the reputation of the Golden-Haired Daughter of the House of Finarfin, and that thus have been concealed from us in the Findegil-edited Red Book of Westmarch.

Consider Gandalf's deeds in the Year of the Hobbit in which he assembled Thorin’s commando:

• Battle of the Five Armies greatly attriting the war-strength of the orcs of the Misty Mountains.

• Bard the Bowman’s killing of the dragon Smaug.

• The restoration of Thorin at Erebor as King Under the Mountain.

• The establishment of a dwarf- and elf-friendly human kingdom of Dale centered around Laketown.

• A restoration of trust between the dwarves and the elves of Thranduil’s Woodland Realm

• Attrition of orc strength in the Misty Mountains allowing Balin’s reöccupation of Moria.

• The White Council’s driving of Sauron out of his fortress of Dol Guldur and compelling his retreat to Barad-Dur, where he can exert less unwholesome influence on the formerly Mirkwood, which we are told meant that, in Gandalf’s words “the Forest will grow somewhat more wholesome. The North will be freed from that horror [of Sauron’s influence] for many long years, I hope.”

With the transformation of elven-dwarven relations from outright war to tetchy alliance, “friendship between elves and dwarves and men”, the linked kingdoms from Dain in the Iron Hills to Thorin in Erebor to Brand in Dail to Thranduil in the Woodland Realm to Balin in Moria to Galadriel in Lothlorien—that is a very powerful set of allied kingdoms, with no Necromancer in their midst.

So why, then, when the Fellowship of the Ring leaves Rivendell, does Gandalf decide not to cross the Misty Mountains through the High Pass that Thorin’s commando had used (and then go through the recovering Greenwood under Thranduil’s protection and then down the Anduin under Galadriel’s) and not to cross underground through Moria under Balin’s protection (for nobody has any idea that Balin’s kingdom has fallen), but instead over “Cruel Caradhras”, dangerously close to the influence and lair of the fallen Saruman?

Consider also that there is no mention of Galadriel before the Gandalf-less Fellowship comes within the grasp of her power, save for an aside about how Merry Brandybuck’s editing of the Red Book of Westmarch may have been assisted by Celeborn, who may have “dwelt [in Rivendell] after the departure of Galadriel” for the Uttermost West.

Indeed, there are only three mentions of Lothlórien before the Gandalf-less Fellowship arrives at its doorstep: the narrator tells us that “Arwen… had been in the land of her mother’s kin, in Lórien…”; Gandalf says that “messages came to me out of Lórien that Aragorn had passed that way”; and Galdor says that the elves’ remaining power “lies with us, here in Imladris, or with Círdan at the Havens, or in Lórien...”

Why this very deliberate attempt to hide from the other members of the Fellowship the very existence of Lorien as an important piece on the gameboard? The four hobbits, Boromir, and Gimli are deliberately kept in the dark with respect to the very existence of mightiest of Elf Lords.

Indeed, in all of the Hobbit there is no mention of Lórien or of the Golden-Haired Daughter of the House of Finarfin. The closest we get in the Hobbit is Bilbo’s “overhear[ing] the words of the wizard [Gandalf] to Elrond…. Gandalf had been to a great council of the white wizards, masters of lore and good magic; and that they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood…”

Wizards. Not wizards and an elven-queen.

I am just asking questions here. That is all I am doing.

Are we sure that the Golden-Haired Daughter of the House of Finarfin was in on the assault on Dol Guldur?

Or were Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast too fearful of the state of her mind-ravaged (or is it mind-ravished?) psyche to allow her to come within reach of Sauron’s long arm?

Do a close reading at even the post-scrubbed version of The Red Book of Westmarch itself, and there is very powerful internal evidence that The Rings of Power’s story is a better fit with the path taken by the Fellowship of the Ring at the very end of the Third Age than is the version we have been spoon-fed.

Is it not overwhelmingly probable that at the end of the Third Age Gandalf believes that Galadriel is still more than half-in-love with her mind-ravager (-ravisher?) Halbrand? She nearly succumbed when he was a castaway dressed in rags. And remember that Sauron used the craft he had learned from Celebrimbor to pour all of his native Maia strength, malice, deceit, and will into the One Ring. What were the chances she could resist it once it got within arm’s length of her.

And, of course, we have her enormous surprise that she does not Fall when put to the test—even though the result is that she becomes “shrunken”:

Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh.

‘Wise the Lady Galadriel may be,’ she said, ‘yet here she has met her match in courtesy. Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye.

‘I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. The evil that was devised long ago works on in many ways, whether Sauron himself stands or falls. Would not that have been a noble deed to set to the credit of his Ring, if I had taken it by force or fear from my guest?

‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. ‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.’

They stood for a long while in silence.

At length the Lady spoke again. ‘Let us return!’ she said. ‘In the morning you must depart, for now we have chosen, and the tides of fate are flowing’…

What is she thinking as she speaks those last words, the words that close the arc that began when Halbrand pulled her onto that raft with those same words so long ago, the words that have so much extra impact because she is an elf, for whom memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream?

And how much does she remember of what life was like underneath the Maia gaze? Melian was not a cruel or demanding mistress, after all. But she saw Elwë Thingol, thought "I want that one", and:

Straightway a spell was laid on him, so that they stood thus while long years were measured by the wheeling stars above them; and the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark before they spoke any word. Thus Elwë’s folk who sought him found him not, and Olwë took the kingship of the Teleri and departed…

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References:

• Amazon Studios. 2022-?. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. <https://www.amazon.com/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Rings-of-Power/dp/B09QHBK41R>.

• Anders, Charlie Jane. 2024. "Why Are Toxic Superfans Such a Nightmare?" Happy Dancing. October 7. <https://buttondown.com/charliejane/archive/why-are-toxic-superfans-such-a-nightmare-for/>.

• Anders, Charlie Jane. 2024. “My latest newsletter is about...” Bluesky. <https://bsky.app/profile/charliejane.bsky.social/post/3l5wsbwqdzd2s>.

• Tolkien, J.R.R. 1977. The Silmarillion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion>.

• Tolkien, J.R.R. 1954-1955. The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings>.

• Baggins, Bilbo, Frodo Baggins, & Samwise Gamgee; Findegil of Gondor, ed. FA 54. The Red Book of Westmarch. Minas Tirith: Royal Scribery. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_of_Westmarch>.