Okay, so, the #JamesAndTheSecondAge journey is finally getting into uncharted waters for me, and I’m having a fantastic time with it. I’ve owned the volume I’m working with in this post, Unfinished Tales of Middle-earth and Numenor, for probably two decades, if not more, but I’ve never read the whole thing. It’s a collection of Tolkien's fragments and partially completed ideas that his son Christopher compiled and published after he’d finished The Silmarillion, and over the years I’ve mostly just dipped in to look at a particular thing I was curious about (usually focused on the material from the Third Age that bears directly on the events of The Hobbit and/or The Lord of the Rings). So this was my first really immersive encounter with all the bits and pieces about The Second Age, and in many cases I just hadn’t looked at these pieces at all. It’s a lot harder to craft a coherent narrative here, so I won’t really try to do that. Instead I’ll focus on the piece I’ve been grappling with (and which maybe is of interest to the very small audience for these posts) – picking up on potentially interesting themes or elements I’m finding here that could work their way into a Second Age television series.
One of the things that’s so exciting about this new series investing a lot of time in the island of Numenor is that Tolkien really spent a lot of time thinking about how their civilization was distinctive. There’s a chunk in Unfinished Tales that’s just an infodump about Numenor, and it’s all fascinating to me. A series needs to make this place feel like nothing we’ve seen in Middle-earth – Numenor’s trees survive in very altered form in the Golden Wood of Lothlorien, but this account talks about how they were never as vibrant and colorful in Lorien as they were in Numenor. Given that Tolkien presents Lothlorien as just stunningly, bewitchingly, hauntingly beautiful in The Lord of the Rings, the forests of Numenor ought to feel otherworldly, really. Numenoreans basically just walk, ride horses, or take boats – they don’t bother with wagons or carriages and consequently don’t have much in the way of roads outside of city streets (so, imagine Mackinac Island….if Mackinac Island were a place ruled by a race of centuries-old sword-bearing elf-infused folks, and I guess to be honest I haven’t been there so maybe northern Michigan is just like that?). I think I’m most fascinated by how holy/reverent/religious a space Numenor is – again, we haven’t really seen a society like that in The Lord of the Rings, and it can be a tricky thing to convey in media. But the traditions surrounding the central mountain of Numenor, Meneltarma, Pillar of the Heavens, are so fascinating to me – its summit is a gathering place, but there are all these spiritual practices surrounding it. Nothing is built on Meneltarma – you can’t even stack a pile of stones there – and no tool or weapon may be borne on the mountain. All are silent on Meneltarma save the King or Queen, and the monarch speaks only thrice a year on highly ceremonial occasions when thousands of Numenoreans climb the mountain in silence to observe the festivals. Other times of year, people ascend, sometimes just one or two at a time, to look without speaking into the distant West. I know it’s hard for a show to delve that deep into religious mythology without fumbling it somehow, but if I were a showrunner, man, I would want to invest a huge amount of awe and significance in Meneltarma, and create a moment where viewers are there, too, looking from its height.
The biggest piece about the Second Age here is a tale called Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife, and I have to say, if you have access to this book, you should just read it. It’s a tragic but beautiful story about love and destiny that has a surprising level of nuance, given that it’s a piece Tolkien never fully fleshed out (I’ll admit, the story does stop before its natural ending, and Christopher has to walk us through where he thinks the story was headed based on scraps of notes his dad had made). So much of the story is about a struggle between who we know ourselves to be, and who we think duty calls us to be, whether we’re talking about the King, Meneldur, who wants to be a loving father to his son Aldarion but also feels the weight of preparing Aldarion to rule one day, or about the Heir, Aldarion, who feels the call of the sea and the crying of the gulls in his heart wrestling with his commitments back in Numenor to family and in particular the woman he loves, or about the Mariner’s Wife, Erendis, who is perhaps most shattered by the gap between the inner calm she experiences far inland away from the ships and quays and the vow she swore to love a man who will not (it seems, cannot) be parted from them. Their dialogue is so rich, and Erendis gets some of Tolkien’s best lines – when Aldarion talks about felling the forests she loves because he means to make a mighty fleet out of them, he tells her that the Valar gave them the gift of these woods to be used. And she replies, “Such gifts as come from the Valar, and through them from the One, are to be loved for themselves now, and in all nows. They are not given for barter, for more or for better. The Edain remain mortal men, Aldarion, great though they be: and we cannot dwell in the time that is to come, lest we lose our now for a phantom of our own design.” This is so shockingly un-Numenorean of her – she sees what her society struggles to understand, that every gift (even that of mortality) is to be embraced instead of treated as some kind of import/export problem to be shipped away.
Mostly, though, my heart just breaks for Erendis, whose lines are so often invested with that heartbreak – most painfully when Aldarion leaves her and their little girl Ancalime behind to go to sea again. Aldarion’s voyages famously last a VERY long time, often more than a decade each (since he’s a descendant of Elros and has a lifetime a few centuries long), but he swears to her that “I am not going to my death. I shall soon return.” And she says, “Soon? But the years are unrelenting, and you will not bring them back with you.” The years are unrelenting, and you will not bring them back with you. That one punched me right in the chest.
Anyway, I am sorry to report that I just don’t think the series we’ll get has any room in it for Aldarion and Erendis – their story needs its own space and even if Amazon had the rights to it, I don’t see how they could integrate it. But it’s such a shame, because I think the balancing act the story tells really matters to the Second Age – I mean, why is Numenor able to send out a fleet of ships powerful enough to oppose Sauron when he reveals himself and makes war on Eregion? It’s because of the ships Aldarion built, and the relationship he forged with Gil-galad, the High Elven King of Lindon. But the only way he built those ships, and had the years to forge those deep connections with Gil-galad, was by breaking his family – grieving his father, abandoning his wife, neglecting his daughter. Who was right – Aldarion or Erendis? Tolkien seems to say, “Neither. And both.” That’s the tragedy of the Second Age – opposing evil is a work left to mortals to complete themselves. We screw it up repeatedly. Ultimately the frailty of Men shatters the world, drowns a civilization, and ensures that evil will endure and emerge to plague the world again. If we need an explanation for Elrond’s fear and suspicion, as portrayed by Hugo Weaving in the LOTR films, well, he was there. Anyway, Aldarion and Erendis, between them, explore this human frailty in a way that, sad as it is in outcome, is also really lovely to read. Erendis is one of Tolkien’s most vividly three-dimensional characters, to me – profoundly grounded but also internally torn, loyal and patient up to the breaking point but beyond that boundary an avenging fury – and I find myself both on her side and really frustrated with her. If you haven’t met her yet, you should. And if the Amazon folks have the ability to do so, I want to see a touch of her in the women of Numenor – in some of them, at least. Furthermore, the big thematic tension I’m describing here I think would add the right kind of distinctively tragic Second Age arc for some Numenorean characters – the feeling that they’re caught being love/loyalty to those closest to them and the obligation to oppose the rise of evil. We need to see some folks caught in that kind of ethical conundrum, it seems to me.
As Christopher himself notes, the most complicated Second Age arc is that of Galadriel (and her husband Celeborn) – and since the marketing for The Rings of Power makes it clear that she’s going to be a centrally important character, it’s good for us to dwell a little on that complication. Hers is the least “finished” of the Second Age tales in this compilation, and Christopher Tolkien’s at some difficulty in even untangling the threads of her life, since his father rewrote that life too many times over the course of all his work. So, at various times, the deal with Galadriel and Celeborn in the Second Age is…
a) Celeborn’s not of the Eldar at all (meaning, he’s from a group of Elves that never crossed the sea in the first place) but Galadriel of course is, and after crossing the ocean and meeting him, she keeps heading east over the mountains before settling down with Celeborn in Lorien where she is one of the few remaining elves forbidden to sail west, due to her offenses against the Valar, leaving her stuck in Middle-earth at the start of the Second Age, OR
b) Celeborn is a Teleri Elf who DID get basically all the way to Valinor, fell in love with Galadriel there, and in fact they build their own boat and leave for Middle-earth totally separately from the violent departure of the band of Elves under Feanor…so separately, in fact, that they take no part in the battles of the First Age because they think it’s impossible to beat Morgoth without the Valar, and instead head east to help build support for the good side of this endless struggle, making allies with Elves and Men who had no idea Valinor even existed, etc., which is where they find themselves at the start of the Second Age, OR
c) Celeborn is a Teleri Elf who DIDN’T get all that close to Valinor – Galadriel doesn’t meet him until she crosses the ocean (probably with Feanor’s bunch) and finds him in Doriath during the First Age. This version is fuzzy about what happened to them after that for a bit (since Doriath is destroyed in the Second Kinslaying but clearly the two of them aren’t killed), but they have a couple of kids and settle down as King and Queen in Eriador, probably (the narrator tells us) because Galadriel had a good rapport with Dwarves and wanted to settle near Moria. This version leaves Celebrimbor as NOT in charge in Eriador, unlike the impression Tolkien had given in the Appendices, but instead treats him as a high ranking prince in their kingdom, essentially, and the leader of the smiths, OR
d) a fragmentary story suggests that Galadriel is not Celebrimbor’s queen, but instead an old friend who approaches him pleading for something that will bring light and joy to Middle-earth, and in this version Celebrimbor’s kind of an old flame who still carries a torch for Galadriel even though he knows she’s with Celeborn now, so he makes her the Elfstone (or the “Elessar”), a brooch that movie-watchers may remember being worn by Arwen, Galadriel’s granddaughter, and given by her to Aragorn (this is the gift about which he says “you cannot give me this” in Fellowship, you remember). Here’s a really lovely piece of art showing Galadriel wearing the Elfstone, which canonically was a green gem (as you can see here) though the movies go a different way with it: https://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/5/58/Tatyafinwe_-_Galadriel_wearing_the_Elessar.jpg This story doesn’t seem to make sense with any of the above, to me, but maybe Tolkien saw it as fitting into one of them?
Anyway, as you can tell, Tolkien’s really unsure what he wants to do with Galadriel. Woven into all these narratives are different versions of the war in Eregion, since of course it makes a big difference whether Galadriel and her husband are over on the coast and far from Eregion, or whether they’re east of the mountains in Lorien and on Sauron’s pathway to Eregion, or whether they’re actually the rulers of Eregion. Since we’re nearly certain to see this war on screen in the series, the showrunners will have to decide what to do about this – and honestly, if I were picking, I’d choose the narrative that puts Celeborn and Galadriel in Eregion as King and Queen. It simplifies the action and reduces the number of settings to film, and it creates more interactions between her and the other central characters. It creates a problem, of course, since when Annatar comes to persuade Celebrimbor and the smiths to work with him, why doesn’t Galadriel know/realize what’s going on? Something to ponder, and for a series to try to resolve – is Celebrimbor doing all this Annatar stuff on the downlow? Or does Galadriel unknowingly trust Annatar? Hmmm. Maybe they SHOULDN’T put Galadriel and Celeborn in Eregion – but figuring out where to place them other than that isn’t particularly easy.
What’s clear is that the versions of that war that Tolkien’s playing with as he tries to expand on the backstory for Galadriel are much more intense than anything he’d described about it thus far – Sauron drives Elrond and the force he commands back until he’s surprised by an attack from behind, led by some Lorien elves and the Dwarves of Moria. This allows Elrond to escape to Imladris (Rivendell) and basically fortify himself, but while he does that, Sauron’s massive army drives back the Lorien elves and the Dwarves of Moria, the latter group only surviving by shutting the doors of Moria (so, the action that in the Appendices looks like the Dwarves abandoning the Elves is interpreted here as part of them saving the Elves’ lives). Sauron takes Celebrimbor prisoner, and tortures him until he reveals the locations of the Seven Rings Sauron will use to ensnare “the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone”, though Celebrimbor is strong enough to resist revealing where the Three Elven Rings have gone (one to Galadriel, the other two to Gil-galad, who in this version has handed one off to Elrond already). Celebrimbor is then shot full of orc arrows, and his ruined body is lifted onto a pole and borne in front of Sauron’s monstrous army as it assaults Lindon – what a horrifying image, right? Hard to imagine putting it on screen. Luckily for Gil-galad, Numenor has just sent out its expeditionary force via a massive naval transport action, and Numenor combined with Lindon is enough to drive Sauron back – in fact, the text notes that one key element was a flanking assault by Numenoreans launched from that harbor in Middle-earth that Aldarion had spent so many years expanding and fortifying, all those times he abandoned his father and wife and child. More of that tragic complexity. I’d love to get hints of this in the series, even if they’re unable to delve too far into these stories.
All this, though, leaves the character of Galadriel a bit mysterious – did she come to Middle-earth in a boat built for two as a brave young woman in love, or did she join a massive revenge mission led by the angriest Elf in history, in open defiance of the Valar’s order? Is she still in Middle-earth in the Second Age because it’s the Valar who haven’t forgiven HER yet, or is it that SHE still won’t humble herself enough to accept the forgiveness of the Valar? The various narratives focus on every angle she might have – proud queen, loyal wife, devoted mother, but I think the one that’s most interesting to me is her as the last surviving child of Finarfin. That’s how she describes herself to Celebrimbor when she begs him to create a light she can carry with her, and he makes the Elessar pendant.
Because what happened to the children of Finarfin? Her brothers Angrod and Aegnor died in the Dagor Bregollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame, when Glaurung, the first dragon, and an army of Balrogs conducted a blitz raid directly on an elven army opposing Morgoth. Her one surviving brother at that point, Finrod, was leading a stealth reconnaissance behind Morgoth’s lines when he was captured by Sauron’s forces, and imprisoned by Sauron in the Isle of Werewolves. Literally, Finrod dies fighting a werewolf, when he realizes the monster’s about to kill his friend Beren, and he literally bursts through his chains like an Elvish Hulk and beats the creature to death with his bare hands. Finrod takes such damage while doing so that he dies, but Beren’s life is saved for long enough to be saved by his love, Luthien. As far as I know from the various Elvish genealogies, the only surviving family member for Galadriel who isn’t her husband or kids is her grandnephew, Gil-galad. The woman’s been through trauma. Combine that with whatever the circumstances of her departure from Valinor and her maybe ban from returning, and I think she’d be someone working her way through some things – and maybe desperate to do something to avenge her family’s many losses. Morgoth’s shut into the Outer Void and Glarung was slain by Turin Turambar, but Sauron’s still out there somewhere. So to me, the fact that the glimpses we’ve had so far of Galadriel in the various trailers are glimpses of a woman carrying weapons of war and anxious to hunt down evil (and, in one scene, Sauron by name) are really a spot on way to interpret this character. There are other approaches, of course, but this one rings true for me and I’m keen to see how they want to resolve all this. One HUGE omission so far is that I haven’t seen any casting choice for Celeborn, so I don’t know if she’s abandoned her husband on this vengeance quest and we won’t see him for a season or more, or whether they’ve decided to really mess with the chronology and not have her meet him yet (though that’ll be weird, since Elrond marries her daughter and so she needs to have that kid sooner rather than later). I am committed to not complain about most tinkering they’ll do with the mythology here, but if they write Celeborn totally out of her life to this point, I’ll admit, it’ll irritate me just a little.
Lots of interesting bits and pieces here, then – glimpses of characters or settings or themes that, if they have permission, would be interesting to introduce. I’m not bothering to point out all the ways these things contradict the Appendices, but I should just say, there’s a LOT here that doesn’t seem consistent with the Appendices – Christopher in the footnotes has to constantly chime in by noting areas where he thinks we can maybe resolve an apparent contradiction, or else just throws up his hands and acknowledges that it can’t be both X and Y. My next step forward here will be a giant leap backwards – to the fifth volume of the History of Middle Earth series, entitled The Lost Road and Other Writings. I’ll explain in that post, but all I’ll say right now is that around 1940, Tolkien decided to write a novel about time travel. And where did J.R.R. want to time travel to? Numenor, of course! Except he can’t figure out how to write the darn thing and abandons it unfinished. So this will be us delving into a partial manuscript that tells us something about his conceptions of Numenor in a time period right as he’s also trying to get his Hobbit sequel off the ground, since that’s what his publisher ACTUALLY wants, and of course that sequel will become his greatest literary achievement, The Lord of the Rings, but he doesn’t know that yet. At the time he’s composing a Hobbit sequel to appease his editor and hoping that The Lost Road will be his big hit. I’ve never touched it before, so this will be all new to me: exciting to go into new territory! Cheers to you all.