Pendell reads the Silmarillion

[Mechalich]

The kings of the Noldor are probably only important when there's a major social dispute going on in their realm anyway. The whole point of being a king is to build a system that can run without constant input, even to the point that the specific duties of a king can be deferred to subordinates. Given the generally unsettled nature of the lands sending messengers back and forth is time consuming and risky, so a king going out to visit friends or family abroad might be out of contact for a long time.*

Unless two lords get into a tiff over something or other, and refuse to accept the arbitration of the seneschal, or grand vizier or whatever title the regent has, there's ideally not much need for a king.

Kings also settle succession issues, including redistributing land and titles. This could be quite frequent in pre-industrial human population with high death rates, but the Elves are immortal and also don't seem to suffer from disease or even many common forms of accidental death, so this need is drastically reduced. Elven kingdoms are literally inhumanly stable.

[pendell]

Good thoughts from everyone, but I don't think it works that way. I assume the Elven kings followed the same kind of monarchy pattern as seen in later Gondor under Aragorn, or even the semi-monarchy seen in the Shire under the Thain, himself a vassal of the now-vanished King of Arnor. Which is to say, these kingdoms are intensely personal. There is very little if any delegation. Which means that if there is a decision that needs to be made by a ruler, that means they have to get in actual contact with the monarch. During peacetime that's not a problem -- you might not even know reading the books that the Shire HAD a Thain, if you missed the reference in 'Scouring of the Shire' or didn't read the preface or appendices -- but during war time , it's absolutely critical.

Times when, say , you suspect an orc attack is about to occur, which is exactly what Finrod thought when he decided to investigate these campfires.

Yes, he's a mighty warrior. But he's only one warrior even so. For all my jokes, this isn't D&D; there is no damage reduction. This is a world where even the mightiest hero can be killed with a single nonmagical arrow. And even if these new people aren't orcs there's no guarantee they're going to be friendly either. Finrod took a significant risk which would have thrown his kingdom into disorganization if it was a military situation in which they would need their king.

Yes, the green-elves sent him a message, because their scouts could see both the campfires and, presumably, the elf-king in the middle of the encampment. The Noldor don't really seem to understand the concept of 'camouflage', though their green-elf cousins certainly do. I don't see any indication he ever told anyone else where he was, though presumably he did at some point.

However, I'm willing to grant that there could be good reasons for separating humans from elves, although truthfully I prefer an Ankh-Morporkh sort of world in which a big part of the story is many formerly hostile peoples learning to rub against each other in the confines of a city.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Fyraltari]

And .. and this is exactly the same first contact encounter Orome had with the elves, beat for beat.

No? Only the beginning (hunter overhears strange singing) is the same. Oromë came to the Elves when they were wide awake and many fled, mistaking him for a servant of Morgoth. Felagund came to the Men while they were sleeping and sung (nowhere I rememeber is it said Oromë sung) and none fled, in fact they mistook him for one of the Valar.

The humans (for so they are) awaken and listen to his son. While they cannot fully understand the words, wisdom is in the song, and those who hearken gain +1 to that stat. In token of this they name Finrod Nom, the Wise , and his people Nomin ("The people of wisdom").

Err. I think that's "wisdom" as in knowledge. Because even though they don't speak his language, they understand perfectly what he's singing about. His singing literally conjures up visions of what he's describing, that's not a metaphor, in LotR Aragorn says the first time he met arwen he twas singing about Luthien and briefly thought he'd somehow managed to conjure her image.

A shadow lies on them just as on the Noldor, though it is of different kind.

Doesn't take a genius to guess what Tolkien is alluding to here.



Morgoth, meanwhile, has been busy. For the only time since the re-founding of Angband, he himself departs his stronghold to see the newly arisen race of beings, leaving Sauron in command in his absence. He formulates a plan to subvert them and bring them from the east as his ally against the elves, but this plan initially fails. The elvish forces press the siege to tightly, forcing him to abort his plans , which are only partly successful at this stage, and return to Angband, leaving behind some relatively useless servants to continue the work. They don't.

All the elves extend invitation to the humans to join their armies and receive lands in return, with one notable exception. Thingol will have nothing to do with them, insisting, on the basis of disquieting dreams, that no human will ever set foot in Doriath while he is king there. Melian considers this, but notes that this is a flawed plan -- eventually a human will come, guided by fate, and it will be beyond any power, even hers, to keep him out. And when this happens it will cause all the kingdoms of the elves to tremble. Foreshadowing!

Then, a third group. This is a powerful army in well-ordered military formation. The green-elves take one look at these forbidding humans, and leave them alone. As Macchiavelli would say "amongst the other evils being unarmed causes, it makes you despised." These are the people of Marach, golden-haired and blue-eyed, the most powerful of the three houses.

At this point Morgoth over-plays his hand, sending a phantom in the guise of Amlach son of Imlach to persuade them to do this very thing, and fill them with fear. However, the spy is found out when Amlach returns among them and denies ever having said any of these things. Odd that Morgoth was so careless as to not silence the real Amlach before attempting this gambit. "Servants of less might and cunning", indeed!

Since Amlach was expected as the council but didn't show up in time, it's likely he was delayed by Morgoth's forces who either captured or tried to kill him. Either way, Morgoth had more to gain by doing nothing.

Morgoth, meanwhile, seeing that his attempts to ally with the humans or scare them out have failed, decides on an orc-raid to kill as many as possible. With the minimal warning that is Morgoth's trademark, the orcs sweep down on Estolad on the poorly defended and widely scattered settlements.

The next section is lifted straight from a Spaghetti Western; a brave man named Haldad gathers together all the brave humans at hand and makes a fighting retreat to the angle of land between Ascar and Gelion. They build a stockade in which they place all the women and children that can be saved, then defend it against the vicious assault of the orcs. For at least seven days they hold out, grimly determined, until as the orcs are in the final assault Caranthir's army arrives and hits them from behind, thus saving much of the human race in Beleriand. The cavalry has arrived! I guess I have to think a little bit better of Feanor's sons; they do have the occasional good point.

Caranthir is impressed by the gallantry of the humans , who are now led by Haleth, Haldad's daughter, since Haldad himself was killed in the siege. They are proud, independent, and have no use for lords and therefore live apart. They are called thereafter the Haladim.

That's backwards, they were called the Haladins, and after haleth's heroic leadership, they became known as the People of Haleth.

Haleth has a brother, Haldor, who becomes in time the father of Hador the golden-haired.

What? No. hador is the son of Hathol, son of Magor, son of Malach, son of Marach. Thay have nothing to do with Haleth and her people (expect later, by marriage). Haleth's brother was called Haldar.

Which means that if there is a decision that needs to be made by a ruler, that means they have to get in actual contact with the monarch.

Unless the Monarch has left a regent in place while they are away, like the Kings of gondor will do with the Stewards and like Felagund himself will later do in this very book. This is a pretty basic precautionand this is a hoistory, it's glossing over a loooooot of details, so maybe let's not assume the protagonists are completely incompetent because we're not explicitly told they've done the obvious thing to do.

Times when, say , you suspect an orc attack is about to occur, which is exactly what Finrod thought when he decided to investigate these campfires.

Yes, he's a mighty warrior. But he's only one warrior even so. For all my jokes, this isn't D&D; there is no damage reduction. This is a world where even the mightiest hero can be killed with a single nonmagical arrow. And even if these new people aren't orcs there's no guarantee they're going to be friendly either. Finrod took a significant risk which would have thrown his kingdom into disorganization if it was a military situation in which they would need their king.

And if the text ssaid he'd planned on attacking, you would be right. But all the text said is that he'd spotted campfires, decided to have a look, thought it might be Orcs and realized it wasn't. He wasn't taking a huge risk he was gathering information. Even if they were Orcs and he had to go warn his allies, it would have been better to know if thses were 30 Orcs or 30, 000.

Yes, the green-elves sent him a message, because their scouts could see both the campfires and, presumably, the elf-king in the middle of the encampment. The Noldor don't really seem to understand the concept of 'camouflage', though their green-elf cousins certainly do. I don't see any indication he ever told anyone else where he was, though presumably he did at some point.

First, yes the Noldor understand camouflage pretty well. They've got two hidden cities, one of which was founded by Felagund himself, and his people will prove to be very apt at guerilla tactics. Second, it only says the green-elves "learned" an Elf-Lord was among the humans, notheing about scouts. You're assuming they spotted him when he coud have sent messages to all the kingdoms he'd found those Atani they were all expecting to show up at some point. Remember in LotR how Gildor managed to send messages to people about Frodo coming their way even though he was going in the opposite direction? Elves have magic powers like that, and this very chapter notes that Felagund can read minds!

[Sapphire Guard]

One thing Tolkien understands that perhaps isn't well appreciated as it could be is how difficult travel is. The idea that you need the king for every decision isn't true at all, in our world, kings would regularly do things like go on campaign or crusade for years at a time, and leave running the kingdom to a deputy.

The king is alone because he's hunting, and going to get a bodyguard will take weeks or months, by which point the fires might be gone. A bodyguard would also impede his diplomatic mission, and sneaking into someone's camp to start singing is a pretty excellent way of communicating 'I am not hostile' when you don't share a language.

This is completely normal, everyone understands that you can't expect to get hold of the king quickly or easily, so local issues are sorted locally. The idea that you need the king for every decision is something that only happens with modern communications. That's why kings have chancellors. and courts of chancery.

However, I'm willing to grant that there could be good reasons for separating humans from elves, although truthfully I prefer an Ankh-Morporkh sort of world in which a big part of the story is many formerly hostile peoples learning to rub against each other in the confines of a city.

This only happens if the formerly hostile peoples were previously living separately. You can't have that story if the story is about first contact between different peoples, in which they were never hostile to begin with. Ankh Morpork only happens because Uberwald happened first, and Uberwald is still largely populated by different peoples living separately and frequent interspecies hostility.

[Grim Portent]

Kings also settle succession issues, including redistributing land and titles. This could be quite frequent in pre-industrial human population with high death rates, but the Elves are immortal and also don't seem to suffer from disease or even many common forms of accidental death, so this need is drastically reduced. Elven kingdoms are literally inhumanly stable.

I would say that is only necessary when the matter of inheritance is in dispute, and could be arbitrated by a suitable stand in should all parties be agreeable. The Noldor are high strung and rather greedy mind you, so they might be prone to squabbling over their inheritence like a Sacksville-Baggins.

Good thoughts from everyone, but I don't think it works that way. I assume the Elven kings followed the same kind of monarchy pattern as seen in later Gondor under Aragorn, or even the semi-monarchy seen in the Shire under the Thain, himself a vassal of the now-vanished King of Arnor. Which is to say, these kingdoms are intensely personal. There is very little if any delegation. Which means that if there is a decision that needs to be made by a ruler, that means they have to get in actual contact with the monarch. During peacetime that's not a problem -- you might not even know reading the books that the Shire HAD a Thain, if you missed the reference in 'Scouring of the Shire' or didn't read the preface or appendices -- but during war time , it's absolutely critical.

I would say the fact that the monarchs spend long periods of time not reigning indicates that their realms are administered in large part by courtiers and vassals. Gondor certainly was largely ruled by various vassal princes, with the King/Steward serving to mediate and rule on disputes between them and rule directly over areas around the capital.


I would think the idea of a regent ruling when Finrod is off schmoozing the humans to be the most obvious assumption. He was planning to be gone for quite some time, he's not going to just leave his people rudderless during his absence. The exact duties and powers bestowed to such a regent/steward/chancellor might be unknown, but we can make an educated guess that during Finrod's absence they would have most of the authority he has.

Problems for a regent only really arise if someone powerful refuses to accept the regent as an authority. If Morgoth attacks a regent is perfectly capable of conferring with the warrior lords of the kingdom to make a plan to fight him, they don't need to chase down their king to ask him to rubberstamp things.

[Mechalich]

This only happens if the formerly hostile peoples were previously living separately. You can't have that story if the story is about first contact between different peoples, in which they were never hostile to begin with. Ankh Morpork only happens because Uberwald happened first, and Uberwald is still largely populated by different peoples living separately and frequent interspecies hostility.

Ankh-Morpork also cheats the world-building, like, a lot. The city only avoids collapsing into rampant interspecies violence due to the presence of a super-intelligent dictator (Vetinari) who possesses a principle aide who is both hyper-competent and completely without personal ambition (Drumknott) is supported by an utterly incorruptible chief of police (Vimes) and whose most important civic institutions of the Arcane (Ridcully) and the Church (the other Ridcully) are controlled by men utterly uninterested in challenging secular authority for personal reasons and whose personalities are sufficiently dominant to cow rivals. Beyond these personalities the city also cheats the built environment, rarely mentioning how difficult it is for humans to operate in a dwarf-scale built environment or trolls to operate in a human-scale one and when it does mention this - such as the tendency of trolls to simply walk through stone walls - it plays off this massive source of disruption for laughs. Even given all these boosts, Ankh-Morpork continually teeters on the edge of a massive outbreak of racial violence that is successfully forestalled only through continual effective crisis management and the presence of massive - and also never properly explained - economic prosperity.

Now, that's all fine, Discworld is a satire. It not only can but should throw reasonability in world-building out the window, but it is not, by any means, a guide to how things would actually unfold in any sort of serious treatment of multi-species civilizations in fantasy.

[pendell]

I would say the fact that the monarchs spend long periods of time not reigning indicates that their realms are administered in large part by courtiers and vassals. Gondor certainly was largely ruled by various vassal princes, with the King/Steward serving to mediate and rule on disputes between them and rule directly over areas around the capital.


I would think the idea of a regent ruling when Finrod is off schmoozing the humans to be the most obvious assumption. He was planning to be gone for quite some time, he's not going to just leave his people rudderless during his absence. The exact duties and powers bestowed to such a regent/steward/chancellor might be unknown, but we can make an educated guess that during Finrod's absence they would have most of the authority he has.

Problems for a regent only really arise if someone powerful refuses to accept the regent as an authority. If Morgoth attacks a regent is perfectly capable of conferring with the warrior lords of the kingdom to make a plan to fight him, they don't need to chase down their king to ask him to rubberstamp things.

True. Be nice to mention the regent -- as Tolkien thoughtfully pointed out that Sauron ran Angband in Morgoth's absence. But , again, these are a collation of notes, not a finished story. Or perhaps it simply wasn't important for the sake of the story being told.

A key point , I think , is that the Elvish kingdoms are the opposite of Morgoth's kingdom, described in-text as "hell". Which is to say, it's everything Tolkien hated about the modern world: Industrialized, polluted, totalitarian. To live in Angband is to live in a concentration camp. If you're in Morgoth's favor you can be a camp trusty who wears a uniform and carries a weapon, but you're still a prisoner nonetheless. I don't think we can even describe Morgoth, who spends his days in the same dark vault , as "free". Everyone in Angband is some combination of inmate or guard, but there's no place for something like hobbits taking their ease on their front porch amusing themselves by blowing smoke rings from their pipes. No one does that, not even Morgoth.

Come to think of it, concentration camp is probably a good analogy; the kind of people who get selected to be trusties tend to be the strongest, most bullying of the inmates. In exchange for helping keep order they get uniforms, extra rations, privileges. That's probably where Morgoth gets his fighting orcs. Those orcs who are too weak, too passive, or too moral (if there are any) probably spend their entire lives at slave labor. And those who aren't even fit for slave labor go into the pot.

So if that is the world of Morgoth, what is the world of the Free Peoples?

Well, the most remarkable thing is there is almost no constraint or compulsion in it. The Valar won't stop the Noldor from leaving Valinor, and they leave Middle Earth alone. They aren't interested in organizing or militarizing it in the way Morgoth is. The elves have kings but they don't seem to have ministries or much in the way of bureaucracy. For pity's sake, we don't even have records of them building roads. From this we can conclude that the Elvish kingdoms are closer analogs to the real world in the middle ages, while Morgoth's kingdom is akin to a modern industrial power. Possibly this is why, as Mechalich suggests, he is able to generate large armies far more efficiently than the elves can; he's using anachronistically modern organizations and logistics which, while cruel and dehumanizing, is nonetheless extremely efficient at deploying massed armed formations. And then the elves wonder why they're always on the back foot against his seemingly bottomless pool of minions.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grim Portent]

The elves also breed very slowly. We don't get a whole lot of them to look at, but over several thousand years they tend to have just 1-4 children, about the same as humans and dwarves. They spend millennia of theoretically fertile life not having kids. Why exactly isn't clear, they may just have an extremely low fertility rate, a cultural proclivity towards chastity, or there may be a predetermined number of elves that will be born in Eru's design that nothing the elves do can change.

Orcs by contrast breed in an unspecified fashion, but do so at a rate more comparable to humans because from a certain perspective they are humans, just inherently bad ones. Fourty years of orc reproduction creates more orcs than the elves can fathom birthing in a thousand years.

Do note that while the population of orcs is rarely made clear they can suffer from depopulation issues. The Hobbit says that following the Battle of Five Armies the Misty Mountains were safer to travel for many long years because so many goblins died at Erebor. I would presume that when The Hobbit was written the idea was that orcs mated the traditional way for mammals, with orc-women just not being mentioned specifically in the same manner that female giant spiders or wargs weren't.

For the Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings I would assume the idea is that orcs are manufactured rather than born, with Morgoth being able to create relatively vast quantities of them from the earth that is tainted by his power. Taking this idea backwards to The Hobbit we could assume that without the influence of a Dark Lord the orcs reproduce slowly, their growth presumably needing dark sorcery or organised manpower to accelerate.

[pendell]

The elves also breed very slowly. We don't get a whole lot of them to look at, but over several thousand years they tend to have just 1-4 children, about the same as humans and dwarves. They spend millennia of theoretically fertile life not having kids. Why exactly isn't clear, they may just have an extremely low fertility rate, a cultural proclivity towards chastity, or there may be a predetermined number of elves that will be born in Eru's design that nothing the elves do can change.

Orcs by contrast breed in an unspecified fashion, but do so at a rate more comparable to humans because from a certain perspective they are humans, just inherently bad ones. Fourty years of orc reproduction creates more orcs than the elves can fathom birthing in a thousand years.

Do note that while the population of orcs is rarely made clear they can suffer from depopulation issues. The Hobbit says that following the Battle of Five Armies the Misty Mountains were safer to travel for many long years because so many goblins died at Erebor. I would presume that when The Hobbit was written the idea was that orcs mated the traditional way for mammals, with orc-women just not being mentioned specifically in the same manner that female giant spiders or wargs weren't.

For the Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings I would assume the idea is that orcs are manufactured rather than born, with Morgoth being able to create relatively vast quantities of them from the earth that is tainted by his power. Taking this idea backwards to The Hobbit we could assume that without the influence of a Dark Lord the orcs reproduce slowly, their growth presumably needing dark sorcery or organised manpower to accelerate.

They tell us that orcs reproduce 'after the manner of the children of Iluvatar' which means, left to themselves, they reproduce the same way humans and elves do. They breed a lot faster than the basic elf, which implies Morgoth has been deliberately breeding his orcs for traits the way humans breed livestock. One of those traits he seems to be breeding for is greater fertility.

Along those lines -- just because orcs reproduce naturally the same way other mammals do doesn't mean Morgoth doesn't have some mechanism of hastening the process. I suggest a being capable of producing a dragon is capable of some pretty significant genetic engineering. Maybe this is an earlier version of Lucas' prequels -- creatures deliberately engineered for aggression, skill in combat, rapid maturation, and fertility. Possibly he has some variant on the cloning tank to churn out orc legions at a far more rapid pace than would ever be possible if they were allowed to do things the old-fashioned way.

ETA: Also, I think it unlikely Morgoth cares about the institution of marriage for orcs. Like the Spartans, their sole purpose is fighting. So they don't need happy families to help them grow up psychologically well-adjusted, nor does he need families to support babies; possibly the babies will be inducted into fraternities or military units practically from birth and raised in creches. So he would encourage the orcs to indulge as frequently as possible, to keep the females pregnant as often as possible (which may be why we never see them) , the better to have more armies faster. If the orcs have no happy memories of mother or father or any authority figure besides Morgoth, so much the better.

Begun the clone war has.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mechalich]

The elves also breed very slowly. We don't get a whole lot of them to look at, but over several thousand years they tend to have just 1-4 children, about the same as humans and dwarves. They spend millennia of theoretically fertile life not having kids. Why exactly isn't clear, they may just have an extremely low fertility rate, a cultural proclivity towards chastity, or there may be a predetermined number of elves that will be born in Eru's design that nothing the elves do can change.

Well, the elves are immortal and know it. The Noldor, in particular, spent thousands of years living in Aman where there was exactly one death among their entire population, but even more vulnerable groups like the Green Elves have extremely low death rates. Not only do they not die of old age, but their superhuman capabilities drastically lower the level of accidental death. Outside of a very small number of extreme events - like spending years crossing polar ice - the elves basically only die in battle.

This makes elven population planning weird, since there's no natural turnover rate. That means every new child significantly adds to total population levels because they will probably eventually have a child, who will then have a child, and on and on, and all the while no member of the previous generation will ever die. It's perfectly reasonable for some elf in a long-standing kingdom like Doriath to have some young elf spend time with their Great-Great-Grandparents born 4000 years earlier.

I suspect that the elves simply have a very high level of natural control over their own fertility and choose not to have many children, a cultural predilection so strong that attempting to breed their way out of tragedy never really occurs to them. They can have children in a comparative hurry when they want, as seen in the Human/Elf pairings that result in offspring on a human timescale.

They tell us that orcs reproduce 'after the manner of the children of Iluvatar' which means, left to themselves, they reproduce the same way humans and elves do. They breed a lot faster than the basic elf, which implies Morgoth has been deliberately breeding his orcs for traits the way humans breed livestock. One of those traits he seems to be breeding for is greater fertility.

Along those lines -- just because orcs reproduce naturally the same way other mammals do doesn't mean Morgoth doesn't have some mechanism of hastening the process. I suggest a being capable of producing a dragon is capable of some pretty significant genetic engineering. Maybe this is an earlier version of Lucas' prequels -- creatures deliberately engineered for aggression, skill in combat, rapid maturation, and fertility. Possibly he has some variant on the cloning tank to churn out orc legions at a far more rapid pace than would ever be possible if they were allowed to do things the old-fashioned way.

Within Angband Morgoth has total control over the orc population, meaning he can mandate things like constant pregnancy, group rearing practices, culling of the elderly, and all sorts of other factory-farming style practices designed to maximize both orc reproductive rate and the proportion of the population made up of fighting age males for his armies. Sauron, later, presumably does much the same, and there's evidence of distinct differences in sub-populations of orcs as a result. Those who are able to form their own independent civilizations in the wilderness operate very differently than those controlled directly by the dark lords.

[Fyraltari]

I suspect that the elves simply have a very high level of natural control over their own fertility and choose not to have many children, a cultural predilection so strong that attempting to breed their way out of tragedy never really occurs to them. They can have children in a comparative hurry when they want, as seen in the Human/Elf pairings that result in offspring on a human timescale.

Don't quote me on this, but I think HoME at some point claims that Elves are in complete control of their sex drive and only become aroused when they decide they want to partake. They also see having sex with someone as basically marrying them. And it's implies that they usually only ever fall in love once (with Finwë being an extremely rare exception). All this combined means there's very little casual sex happening in Elven territory.

Maybe that's why Men and Elves aren't suited to live together?


And now, I'm thinking of "elf-like" being an euphemism for demisexual people.

[Mechalich]

Don't quote me on this, but I think HoME at some point claims that Elves are in complete control of their sex drive and only become aroused when they decide they want to partake. They also see having sex with someone as basically marrying them. And it's implies that they usually only ever fall in love once (with Finwë being an extremely rare exception). All this combined means there's very little casual sex happening in Elven territory.

Maybe that's why Men and Elves aren't suited to live together?

It's certainly a difference. Elven society appears to be basically without marriage pressure. Elrond, who is an extremely eligible bachelor, meets Celebrian, who is equally so in the bachelorette class, in the middle of the Second Age. Sparks fly, albeit from a distance, but then nothing happens for 1800 years until they finally get married.

This means that the countless cultural and ritual practices designed to enforce formal coupling and the rapid production of offspring in pre-industrial human societies, especially monogamous ones as Tolkien's almost universally are, just doesn't exist among the elves.

Another thing along these lines is that Elven society isn't going to possess generational task distribution in the way a human society will. Elves don't lose anything physically as they age (if anything they grow in mystic might). Their society has people who are chronologically old, but doesn't have any elderly people.

[pendell]

That does raise an interesting question as to how things would have gone between the Children of Iluvatar if Morgoth wasn't around. Humans are not good at controlling their reproduction. If humans and elves live in Beleriand together --- with the elves having a zero-to-linear population curve while the humans have an exponential one -- then the elves will soon become foreigners in their own lands, a minority in their own kingdoms. That means an Elvish kingdom couldn't be a democracy, in which all sapients were equal. If the elves wanted to remain in charge; they would be an aristocratic nobility while humans would be second-class citizens. This would breed resentment and eventually war.

This would mean that eventually all of Beleriand and , indeed, middle earth would fall under the Dominion of Men. Which would force the elves to migrate to Valinor where humans can't come.

Come to think of it; this might also be a good reason to keep humans out of Valinor. Because once they settled and started populating there, it would soon enough be a human society as well. The humans could learn to be content with Middle-Earth and not demand the little sliver of an island claimed by the elves.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mechalich]

That does raise an interesting question as to how things would have gone between the Children of Iluvatar if Morgoth wasn't around. Humans are not good at controlling their reproduction. If humans and elves live in Beleriand together --- with the elves having a zero-to-linear population curve while the humans have an exponential one -- then the elves will soon become foreigners in their own lands, a minority in their own kingdoms. That means an Elvish kingdom couldn't be a democracy, in which all sapients were equal. If the elves wanted to remain in charge; they would be an aristocratic nobility while humans would be second-class citizens. This would breed resentment and eventually war.

This would mean that eventually all of Beleriand and , indeed, middle earth would fall under the Dominion of Men. Which would force the elves to migrate to Valinor where humans can't come.

Come to think of it; this might also be a good reason to keep humans out of Valinor. Because once they settled and started populating there, it would soon enough be a human society as well. The humans could learn to be content with Middle-Earth and not demand the little sliver of an island claimed by the elves.

Pre-industrial human population growth (meaning prior to the year 1700 CE) averaged 0.04%. That was extremely slow. The linear growth rate of the Elves, absent all the casualties fighting Morgoth, might well have been faster. Certainly it wouldn't have fallen behind by that much, globally, and Beleriand, being a cool temperate environment is not a region where the human population would grow quickly. Eventually, yes, the human population would have begun to take off, but it might have taken many thousands of years.

IMO, the real risk of a population explosion would be among half-elves who chose to live as men. Numenoreans appeared to inherit a great deal of the physiological durability that elves possessed (though the plague in Gondor indicates that they remained vulnerable to disease). If that drastically reduced deaths in childbirth and infant mortality, as it seems like it ought, then such a population would grow very rapidly, doubly so if they were able to apply the same advances they used in architecture to agriculture. Of course, its highly questionable if, without Morgoth's intervention, such a cross would have ever happened.

[Fyraltari]

an Elvish kingdom couldn't be a democracy

I mean, yeah?

[Grim Portent]

I mean, yeah?

To be fair, monarchy and democracy aren't strictly at odds. A lot of historical monarchies were also limited* democracies of various flavours. I don't think we can go into specifics because of the forum rules, but all current monarchies in Europe are also democracies and several have been both for a very long time.


*Limited as in enfranchisement was not total, with votes being restricted to the nobility and high ranking clergy, or only landowners and so on.


A mixed elf/human kingdom could theoretically exist and even be somewhat democratic, the Morgoth is in the details of how the democratic elements are set up in the broad scheme of thing. A parliament could well include elected humans and elven nobles who all serve to check the powers of the king for example.

[pendell]

To be fair, monarchy and democracy aren't strictly at odds. A lot of historical monarchies were also limited* democracies of various flavours. I don't think we can go into specifics because of the forum rules, but all current monarchies in Europe are also democracies and several have been both for a very long time.


*Limited as in enfranchisement was not total, with votes being restricted to the nobility and high ranking clergy, or only landowners and so on.


A mixed elf/human kingdom could theoretically exist and even be somewhat democratic, the Morgoth is in the details of how the democratic elements are set up in the broad scheme of thing. A parliament could well include elected humans and elven nobles who all serve to check the powers of the king for example.

You have a point; although the Shire is part of a monarchy, Hobbiton has an elected mayor. It also depends greatly on just how a human/elf government impacts ordinary people living ordinary lives. If you live in Hobbiton in the books, having the right to vote in Hobbiton means you get to vote for who gets to preside at banquets. You could see why your average hobbit doesn't care; regardless of the form of government (TECHNICALLY a monarchy under the Thain) , government has so little power no one cares what that form is. It's not like the Thain is King Joffrey from Game of Thrones, chopping off body parts from jesters on a whim.

Part of the reason I think no one resents elvish monarchs is that those monarchs follow the same pattern of leaving ordinary citizens alone; consider Eol. He paid his rent to the king as a one time fee by giving him a sword, and after that he's left to himself. He could have gone his whole immortality without caring who was his king if he hadn't murdered the king's sister in front of him, which royalty is sure to take offense to.

By contrast, Morgoth is not an easy going ruler who can disappear from his kingdom for a year at a time without notice. Everyone in Angband is his slave, and he doesn't allow free will, which means he has to constantly be making decisions that impact everyone in the mountain. You can't have that many people living in a confined space without strict regulations, strict rationing, strict control. So if Angband were ever to be free of Morgoth we should expect the inhabitants to be very interested and concerned with every aspect of how they would govern themselves, because those decisions could be life or death of everyone in the city. By contrast -- the surface ground is mostly wilderness. King irritating you? Just move out of his domain, never see or hear from him again. There's a lot more freedom in the elvish domains because the population is sparse , travel is primitive, and it's not easy for a central government to assert its will even if it wants to, which as a rule they don't. It would get in the way of hunting parties and meeting strange new peoples in the wilderness .

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Fyraltari]

Part of the reason I think no one resents elvish monarchs is that those monarchs follow the same pattern of leaving ordinary citizens alone; consider Eol. He paid his rent to the king as a one time fee by giving him a sword, and after that he's left to himself. He could have gone his whole immortality without caring who was his king if he hadn't murdered the king's sister in front of him, which royalty is sure to take offense to.

Eöl is a lord in his own right, though, with his own domain and servants, living very far away from Thingol. We don't know how much the elven kings wield their power because these novels never bother with the details of rulership (insert G.R.R. Martin joking about Aragorn's tax policy here) and almost never show the commoners' point of view.

Also, regarding the notion of kingdoms with democratic elements, sure that's a thing, but all the monarchies in these books are your usual feudal system. The only exception is the Shire which is so damn idyllic, they basically don't have a government (but still have class divisions).

[Grim Portent]

I would actually say they're more absolute monarchies than the typical Feudal system, at least the bits we're shown. Once a kingdom is established it seems like even the nobles are subject to the absolute authority of their kings and queens, rather than having a list of rights the violation of which justifies overthrowing the monarch. Other than the Steward of Gondor we never hear about a permanent advisor position or council of lords or a parliament.

You could argue that Tolkien just never put thought into the idea that his kingdoms would have mechanisms for overthrowing and replacing a terrible monarch, or for the rules of what the monarch could and could not make vassals do, but it wasn't unusual for a king in the real world to be violently ejected and replaced by a sibling or cousin because they violated the written or unwritten rules about how to treat vassals and I would have thought Tolkien would be familiar with the idea, but I can't recall a single instance of it being mentioned in his work. Even Ar-Pharazon didn't have to face a rebellion from below.

[Fyraltari]

I would actually say they're more absolute monarchies than the typical Feudal system, at least the bits we're shown. Once a kingdom is established it seems like even the nobles are subject to the absolute authority of their kings and queens, rather than having a list of rights the violation of which justifies overthrowing the monarch. Other than the Steward of Gondor we never hear about a permanent advisor position or council of lords or a parliament.

You could argue that Tolkien just never put thought into the idea that his kingdoms would have mechanisms for overthrowing and replacing a terrible monarch, or for the rules of what the monarch could and could not make vassals do, but it wasn't unusual for a king in the real world to be violently ejected and replaced by a sibling or cousin because they violated the written or unwritten rules about how to treat vassals and I would have thought Tolkien would be familiar with the idea, but I can't recall a single instance of it being mentioned in his work. Even Ar-Pharazon didn't have to face a rebellion from below.

Yes, !i should have thrown in a "idealized" in there somewhere.

There's the Kinstrife of Gondor, but that revolt only happened because a bunch of nobles didn't like the king being half-foreigner, not because he violated the law.

[pendell]

Yeah, the elves have idealized monarchies because once they get a good king, that king stays in charge forever. They don't get old, they don't suffer from decline in mental facilities. On the contrary, they benefit from their experiences.

So long as elvish societies don't change -- and they hardly ever do -- there's no reason the person who founded it can't stay in charge of it for, well, forever.

It would be interesting to see how well that society held up in the face of the kind of rapid changes we see in the modern world. To the elves, the technology and culture at the present point in the story are unchanged from what they had at the time their kingdoms were founded. Compare and contrast that to the ferment of the modern world -- in 20 years we went from no aircraft at all to transatlantic flights. Forty years after that, humans walked on the moon. Half a century after that, we have internet and mobile phones and a society quite different in many ways, all made possible by faster, more reliable communication and better shipping.

How would someone like Finrod, say, cope with ruling a society undergoing such rapid change and adaptation? Thousands of years of experience ruling an agricultural society would not be as helpful , might even be actively harmful if he tries to hold back the tide of social, technological, and cultural evolution his subjects were experiencing.

My conclusion is that the elvish kingdoms are well-adapted to the situation in which they exist in the First Age: Agricultural, low numbers of people, vast wilderness. They would find any other circumstance challenging, to say the least. They would have to adapt or find themselves a small minority in a human polity.

Eöl is a lord in his own right, though, with his own domain and servants, living very far away from Thingol. We don't know how much the elven kings wield their power because these novels never bother with the details of rulership (insert G.R.R. Martin joking about Aragorn's tax policy here) and almost never show the commoners' point of view.

I would describe Eol as a freeman rather than a lord. He "rules" his domain because no one else wants to live there. He has servants -- but everyone pre-1900 in our world had servants if they lived above the poverty level. It's an artifact of a time when labor-saving devices did not exist but human labor was relatively cheap. He has a smithy. He has no castle, no soldiers, no obligation to raise a certain number of retainers in the event of war. So he's a free person living by himself alone in the woods, not a lord.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[J-H]

As the age of man grows, the elves must diminish, and pass into the West.

[Mechalich]

I would actually say they're more absolute monarchies than the typical Feudal system, at least the bits we're shown. Once a kingdom is established it seems like even the nobles are subject to the absolute authority of their kings and queens, rather than having a list of rights the violation of which justifies overthrowing the monarch. Other than the Steward of Gondor we never hear about a permanent advisor position or council of lords or a parliament.

You could argue that Tolkien just never put thought into the idea that his kingdoms would have mechanisms for overthrowing and replacing a terrible monarch, or for the rules of what the monarch could and could not make vassals do, but it wasn't unusual for a king in the real world to be violently ejected and replaced by a sibling or cousin because they violated the written or unwritten rules about how to treat vassals and I would have thought Tolkien would be familiar with the idea, but I can't recall a single instance of it being mentioned in his work. Even Ar-Pharazon didn't have to face a rebellion from below.

Well, Ar-Pharazon was a usurper who did in fact violently eject the rightful ruler, Miriel, because the nobility of Numenor hated her father's policies and did not want to see them continued. There's also the whole 'Kin-strife of Gondor' in which much the nobility of Gondor rebelled against the ascension of Eldacar, who was not full blood of Numenor, and supported his second cousin Castamir instead. That conflict actually split Gondor permanently, as Castamir's defeated faction retreated to Umbar and kept it independent thereafter.

And there are some other references. The original version of The Fall of Gondolin describes the twelve noble houses of that city in some detail (of whom Maeglin, just referenced, rose to rule one), and Turgon takes their council when the city is attacked.

Tolkien never, to my knowledge, presented such long lists of nobility thereafter, for what I imagine are literary reasons. Long lists of nobles/vassals are a major feature of historical sagas in many traditions and go back at least as far as the Iliad, but actually reading them is a slog and the information is rarely retained by the reader. The Silmarillion therefore preserves only vestiges of the nobility of the elven kingdoms, such as Glorfindel's title as Lord of the Golden Flowers, and several elves named as 'captains' in the service of Thingol.

Given this, I believe a traditional feudal structure is implied for all the various kingdoms, even if not detailed. However, I do agree that among the elves the power of the kings is extremely strong. This makes sense though, a feudal system relies on personal bonds, and the elves measure their bonds in centuries and millennia. This produces a level of loyalty and dedication impossible among humans.

[pendell]

This produces a level of loyalty and dedication impossible among humans.

It also ensures their vendettas and feuds don't die over the generations either. Oath of Feanor as the most obvious example.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grim Portent]

It also ensures their vendettas and feuds don't die over the generations either. Oath of Feanor as the most obvious example.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Those vendettas tend to be between kingdoms rather than between a king and their vassals though, so they don't generally destabilise any particular realm, just the broad alliance of elves, dwarves and men.

Among the Noldor at least, there seems to be a trend of the great lords running off to make their own lunar lander, with blackjack and hookers, when they have real issues with one another rather than staying and undermining the king.

[tyckspoon]

I would describe Eol as a freeman rather than a lord. He "rules" his domain because no one else wants to live there. He has servants -- but everyone pre-1900 in our world had servants if they lived above the poverty level. It's an artifact of a time when labor-saving devices did not exist but human labor was relatively cheap. He has a smithy. He has no castle, no soldiers, no obligation to raise a certain number of retainers in the event of war. So he's a free person living by himself alone in the woods, not a lord.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

What's the functional difference? If there is no existing ruler either willing or capable of exerting a claim to that land and Eol is recognized by the people to have the the right to make decisions regarding the area, then he is the lord of the region regardless of whether he wishes to title himself as such or not. I suppose there is some precision in terms by which 'lord' may be assumed to specify 'a landholder in a vassalage arrangement by which they have specific rights and privileges in regards to a higher figure', but he's clearly the one in charge of whatever parcel of land he desires to claim responsibility for.

[factotum]

Oath of Feanor as the most obvious example.

It's not a particularly good example because of the nature of the Oath, though--being sworn upon Iluvatar's name and all that, it would probably follow even a mortal being beyond the world.

[Divayth Fyr]

It's not a particularly good example because of the nature of the Oath, though--being sworn upon Iluvatar's name and all that, it would probably follow even a mortal being beyond the world.

And the Oath died with the generation that swore it, didn't pass on.

[pendell]

What's the functional difference? If there is no existing ruler either willing or capable of exerting a claim to that land and Eol is recognized by the people to have the the right to make decisions regarding the area, then he is the lord of the region regardless of whether he wishes to title himself as such or not. I suppose there is some precision in terms by which 'lord' may be assumed to specify 'a landholder in a vassalage arrangement by which they have specific rights and privileges in regards to a higher figure', but he's clearly the one in charge of whatever parcel of land he desires to claim responsibility for.

A 'lord' doesn't just mean a landholder. It means an aristocrat, bound to the royal family by blood, by marriage, and by solemn vow. Eol is none of those things, which is why Caranthir is so dismissive of him when they encounter him in Caranthir's lands.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Sapphire Guard]

For what little we get, the elven kingdoms seem to operate under a 'who do you want to follow' policy. When the Noldor split, there's no real hint of anyone following someone they don't wish to, and if someone thinks otherwise then they move away.

Technology is not unchanged, it's regressing. The Two Trees can be made once, the Rings of Power can be made once, Gondor does not reach the heights of Numenor. Boromir's sword is less effective than the ones made in Gondolin.

This kind of deconstruction is heavily reliant on 'if it's not specifically mentioned, it doesn't exist', which isn't really a great way of analysing these things. There are plenty of societies we don't have complete records of, doesn't mean they didn't function. Similarly, Tolkien not including something in his work does not in itself mean he wasn't familiar with it.

It might be interesting to think about the elves in an industrial society, but that story is not the Silmarillion.