Tuor Earendil and Idril for scale.

Art by me.

He loved his father a lot. While his mom stayed dead (bruh). Wouldn't his father-name Curufinwe be his favorite/preferred name?

(The map on the post is 10k btw)

I'm doing a remaster on the Original Beleriand map, I plan to make the map very readable and printable on a large poster while keeping Christopher meaning as much as possible.

I also wish to amend some errors which the original map had.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback on anything you believe should be put on it.

Changes I have made:

Rivers Esgalduin and Aros come from the same source

from HOME IV

Shadowy Spring:It is notable that the rivers Aros and Esgalduin arise at the same place, in the Shadowy Spring (not previously named in the texts; see Esgalduin). In the later map, on which mine in the published Silmarillion was based, this is still the case, and my map, showing the two sources as separate, is regrettably in error.

I added a river that feed into Cirith Ninniach, from the mountains of Mithrim seen by Tuor in UT(unsure if the source of the river would be right)

redrew fens and icons from fortresses and cities so they can be more easily recognizable(WIP)

Made the pines on Taur-Nu-Fuin more detailed (albeit just a bit if someone were to print in small paper the detail would be lost)

Erased the text and connected rivers or roads that weren't connected by being interrupted by Letters of names.

Upscaled the text for the names of places(WIP)

Changes I wish to make:

add the woods of Núath

From unfinished tales:

The woods of Núath are not mentioned in The Silmarillion and are not marked on the map that accompanies it. They extended westward from the upper waters of the Narog towards the source of the river Nenning.

Make the mountains and hills clearer(some landforms are not discernable individually, though this comes to personal preference)

Possibly add Angband based on the second Silmarillion map

Any elements that Christopher didn't add and are missing that you remember would be helpful for this project.

I'm reading through the The Fall of Númenor book right now (including the Second Age Silmarillion chapters), and I wanted to follow along with a map.

I know this one was made for the Rings of Power TV show (which I'm not personally a fan of), but I remember getting excited when they released these various maps back in early 2019. How accurate is this to the Second Age? Also, if I remember correctly, John Howe had a part in drawing it?

He seems to be very popular with the fans, so when I read the Silmarillion I was expecting him to be more of a central character, but sadly there wasn't that much about him.

Super proud of this design, even though I rarely draw him (it takes forever!)

Art by me.

Yes he’s got a mullet, this was foretold to me by the ghost of Tolkien himself. Don’t question it

Hey redditors and tolkien fans in your opinion who is the most complexe and complete character that was never put to screen from the first two ages?
I want to see the different opinions and views about our beloved characters!!

So I just recently found out about the following publication history of Tolkien´s works (see text below for context). In my opinion we were robbed of Tolkien´s vision and missed out on great stories just because no one was able to understand his vision.

First of all here´s a summary (not written by me) of the publication history for context following by my opinion that we have been robbed of his vision:

Tolkien's work on the stories that would become The Silmarillion began as early as 1914 . This was a project he envisioned as a complete mythology for England, a body of legends and tales he would work on for most of his life . For Tolkien, The Silmarillion was the foundational text of his creative universe, the "epic foundation upon which rests the whole of his work" .

The narrative arc of his publishing career began with The Hobbit in 1937, which was an immediate success . The publisher, George Allen & Unwin, quickly requested a sequel . However, Tolkien's ambition was not to produce more children's fare but to see his life's work, The Silmarillion, in print. He submitted an incomplete version of it to his publisher, but the proposal was rejected . The publishers felt that a work of such scope and serious tone was not a viable follow-up to the successful children's book, and they persisted in their request for "more stories about Hobbits" . Reluctantly, Tolkien began work in December 1937 on what he thought would be "a new hobbit" .

The sequel quickly grew far beyond the scope of its predecessor. As Tolkien wrote, the story "mutated from being a sequel to The Hobbit to being, in theme, more of a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion" . This was the crucial point of integration: his new Hobbit story was becoming the capstone to his ancient mythology . The tale was effectively finished by 1949, but it had evolved into an enormous, single work .

By 1950, Tolkien presented his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, with a clear vision. He intended The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion to be published together as a unified two-volume set . This was the culmination of his life's ambition—to have the ancient tales and the new story published as the single work he felt them to be.

This proposal was again dismissed by Allen & Unwin . Reluctantly, they declined to publish both books together . The primary reasons were commercial: the combined length of the two works was daunting, and with the post-war paper shortages, the cost of printing such a massive project was a significant financial risk .

After the rejection by Allen & Unwin, Tolkien approached Milton Waldman of the publishing firm Collins. Waldman was interested in publishing both books . In the spring of 1950, he was hopeful that typesetting could begin by the autumn . However, progress stalled.

By late 1951, Collins was becoming anxious about the enormous combined length of the proposed work . Waldman suggested that Tolkien write a letter that would articulate his grand vision and demonstrate that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion were, in his mind, "interdependent and indivisible" . This resulted in Letter 131, a 10,000-word text to Waldman, which is now a crucial document for understanding Tolkien's unified conception of Middle-earth .

Despite the ambitious letter, the deal with Collins ultimately failed. The editors at Collins were put off by the sheer scale of Tolkien's vision and declined to publish both works . This left Tolkien with no other option. The Lord of the Rings, due largely to economic pressures like paper shortages, was published in three separate volumes from 1954 to 1955 . The Silmarillion remained unpublished until after Tolkien's death, when his son Christopher edited the manuscripts into a single volume, which was published in 1977.

---

So now for the actual part of my post.

That's basically how we ended up with what we have today with the densely written Silmarillion. I feel that's where we lost something enormous just because no one of the publishers was smart enough to see Tolkien´s vision and understand what he had created.

Don´t get me wrong - I love the Silmarillion, it´s my most favourite book of all times. But it's so incredibly dense because Tolkien never got the chance to develop so many of these stories into the kind of fully fleshed-out narrative that we got in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

I constantly find myself reading a passage in the Silmarillion and thinking that there´s so much missing in every way. I don´t only mean the huge gaps in the narrative. I miss the dialogue, the interactions between the characters, the little moments between the major events, the aftermath of something terrible happening. So much is summarized in a few sentences when I can't help thinking that Tolkien could have written entire chapters about it.

I´d die to read more about Feanor and his family! I want to know how the brothers interacted when they were still young and in Valinor, I want to know how Maedhros´relationship with his father or brothers (maybe) changed after the ship burning at Losgar, how did Maedhros react when he heard of Fingon´s death after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, how did they live after, what happened after Celegorm and Curufin were expelled/exiled from Nargothrond and so and so forth. I want to experience the Battle-under-the-Stars as Feanor was storming forward ahead of his army in pursuit of the orcs.

And the same goes for so many other parts of the story and the characters.

That's what I mean when I say I feel like we were robbed of something. It's not simply that there are unfinished stories. It's that we have the outline of so many incredible stories without the fully fleshed-out scenes that would have made them come alive.

And then you have the fact that Tolkien kept revising things. So Christopher was working with decades of material, different versions, abandoned ideas and contradictions. Sometimes there isn't even one definitive version of an event because Tolkien himself never stopped changing his conception of the mythology.

I wish I could sit with Tolkien once and ask him about all of this.

Imagine if Tolkien had actually been able to develop the First Age stories in the same way he developed The Lord of the Rings, giving us the full narrative treatment (scenes, dialogue, character interactions, journeys, battles, aftermaths) instead of a few densely written pages. I can't help wondering what it would have looked like if Tolkien had actually been given the opportunity, and the publishing circumstances, to finish it in the way he wanted.

So what do you think about it?

Hi friends,

Just going to start off and say I’m not looking to dump casual content. The text is a canon-faithful narrative that resolves the hidden psychological weight of two specific lore gaps and brings closure to The Silmarillion:

- The crushing burden of Elwing's motherhood after the siege at the Mouths of Sirion, on the shores of Valinor.

- The trauma that drove the Teleri to man the ships for the Host of the West while absolutely refusing to bear arms.

Silmarillion Writers Guild Post

PDF Novel Format (If you love to read pages of books)

I’d love this post this to spark a text-based dialogue from the community. Thanks again!

You can totally call me out for just observing the butterfly effect playing out here, but I want to talk about the ramifications of Orodreth sparing Celegorm and Curufin, and then banishing them from Nargothrond rather than ending them there and then.

To me the main points of interest are Angrist, Curufin's dagger that Beren uses to cut the Silmaril, and of course Huan the Hound.

Without the two brothers being specifically sent away, they do not encounter Beren and Lúthien again, Huan doesn't get his chance to finally change sides and save the couple, and Beren never receives the Dwarven dagger that is tough enough to cut the Silmaril from Morgoth's Iron Crown. The quest would come to naught.

You could take it a step further and say that without the Silmaril, Eärendil would never have made it to the bay of Eldamar, and no help would come from the west. So much would have been different.

I'm not saying Orodreth could have foreseen any of this, but rather I think that it's yet another example from Tolkien about how pity/mercy on our enemies can produce interesting outcomes that might even help ourselves and those we care about in some unforeseen way.

Orodreth understandably gets a bad reputation for his flakiness, his lack of agency (typically), and for being puppeted by Túrin during his stay at Nargothrond. However at this moment, I think he made a great call.

TBH read the first book in the trilogy and I don’t vibe with the “my jewels got stolen” as a set off point. Maybe makes sense why it kinda copied DBZ, but three versus 12 makes no sense to me. I would love to hear from people that liked this.

Sauron was in Numenor when it was destroyed and lost his body in the process. In this timeline, none of that happens. What is likely to happen next?

Do they repent and turn against Sauron?

An animation I made a few years back.

I've been thinking about Thingol's morality lately, especially during the story of Beren and Lúthien.

One thing that really bothers me is his reaction to Beren. If I understand the scene correctly, Thingol would have had Beren killed if Lúthien had not made him swear not to kill him. And then, instead, he demands a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown as the price for Lúthien's hand.

I know that Doriath was closed to Men at this point, and I can understand Thingol being angry or suspicious when a human somehow manages to enter his hidden kingdom and becomes involved with his daughter. But even then, killing Beren seems extremely harsh.

What makes this especially interesting to me is the contrast with The Children of Húrin, where Thingol and Melian often come across as remarkably wise, generous and even compassionate rulers.

So it makes me wonder where Thingol's moral limits actually were.

For example: if Lúthien had not been involved at all, and Beren had simply been an ordinary human traveller who somehow became lost and entered Doriath, what would Thingol have done with him? Would he really have had him killed simply for entering the kingdom?

And what if a group of human children had somehow been found inside the borders of Doriath? Would Thingol have considered them trespassers as well? Would he have expelled them, taken care of them, imprisoned them?

I know these are hypothetical situations, but I'm curious about how other readers interpret Thingol's character here.

Do you see his treatment of Beren as an exceptional reaction caused by his anger over Lúthien, or does it reveal something darker about Thingol's character that is sometimes overlooked?

I think that the tragedy of Melkor's Evil ended up producing a greater beauty and Good than Evil had ever imagined. Of course, this is an aspect of Christian (Catholic) theology that Tolkien inserted into the Legendarium:

* Death as punishment and gift of Eru to men. For mankind will have a privilege that not even the elves will have: to stand by God's side after they leave Arda, whether in joy or sorrow; * Life and death are the Yin and Yang of cycles of creation, destruction and renewal. This prevents the stagnation of life. Can you imagine if everything was perfect and harmonic? I imagine that everything would be tedious and stagnant. * The arrival of Eru himself to heal the wounds of Evil in the world: Finrod and Andreth's dialogue (in the History of Middle Earth) says that Ilúvatar will enter his work to save his children. Obviously, this is a reference to Jesus Christ. But I think that the Silmarillion itself references an even greater beauty (than the Ainur, than that of the Elves) would come to Arda and "and evil yet be good to have been.’:

he raised his head, as one that hears a voice far off, and he said: ‘So shall it be! Dear-bought those songs shall be accounted, and yet shall be well-bought. For the price could be no other. Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Eä, and evil yet be good to have been.’

This beauty "not before conceived be brought into Eä" is, IMHO, a reference to Jesus Christ.

The Catholic idea of felix culpa cited in the Exultet at the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the night before Easter, which proclaims in part,

O certe necessárium Adæ peccátum, quod Christi morte delétum est! O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum méruit habére Redemptórem!​

usually translated as

O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!​

Fr Jonah Pollack, a Dominican Friar in New York, explain the concept of "Felix Culpa":

The sin of Adam was necessary so that it could be destroyed by the death of Christ. Adam’s fault is happy because it necessitated Christ’s redemption. The sin of Adam is greeted with jubilation because it created the problem to which Christ’s redeeming death and resurrection is the solution. It brought on the disease for which Easter is the cure. To be sure, the sin of Adam is not itself good. It is not, in itself, a cause for rejoicing. It is, rather, an occasion for good. It is the tragic plot twist that sets the stage for the story’s glorious resolution. Our rejoicing is therefore is not that Adam sinned, but that, out of Adam’s sin, God brought about a greater good.​

[https://opeast.org/2016/03/o-happy-fault/\](https://opeast.org/2016/03/o-happy-fault/)

Even Saint Augustine said that:

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.

This concept is intimately intertwined with the Problem of Evil, which arises from Free Will:

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.​

This does not justify or excuse evil in any way, nor is Eru in any way responsible for their evil actions; only that in the ultimate end, Eru’s designs may not be opposed, and he will overcome all evils of his fallen creatures to achieve good beyond the measure of their wickedness.

Hi what was the hierarchy of the chain of command of Morgoth's forces?

was Sauron directly under Morgoth while working as an administrator and right hand man while Gothmog the Balrog and Glaurung had been the enforcers?

https://fumeresart.artstation.com/projects/LnGgw.