Cultural History Challenge: The War of the Jewels & LOTR:

Suppose that in the 1960s-1970s, after publication of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien ITTL actually publishes a trilogy in like fashion based on that era's version of The Silmarillion. What would have been the results of publishing the original and rather darker backstory to the LOTR universe? Would The War of the Jewels have been a more fantastic equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire in terms of bringing Grimdark and wars of evil against evil to fantasy? How would fantasy have been impacted by the two rather different views of one fantasy universe that this would have meant?

For that matter would the Alkallabeth have been published as a novel in its own right or only posthumously ITTL?
 

Thande

Donor
I'm not sure if it's doable given Tolkien's own thoughts on the matter, but it would certainly have a drastic effect on later fantasy.

I don't see why the Silmarillion 'brings war of evil against evil' to fantasy, though; besides anything, LOTR already did that with Isengard vs Mordor.
 
Well...we get a proper anti-hero in Feanor Curufinwe, no? Brilliant and driven but dark right through, way before there's be any Elric of Melinbone.

I think the effects really would be profound, though I am kind of dreading to see what the 70s would have produced based on that model.
 
I'm not sure if it's doable given Tolkien's own thoughts on the matter, but it would certainly have a drastic effect on later fantasy.

I don't see why the Silmarillion 'brings war of evil against evil' to fantasy, though; besides anything, LOTR already did that with Isengard vs Mordor.

It does in the sense that the "heroes" of the story, the Feanorians, are primarily different from Morgoth in that the story is told from their perspective. It's fairly straightforward that Sauron's bad and the Fellowship, Rohan, Gondor, and the like are good in LOTR. In a Silmarillion trilogy, it wouldn't exactly be clearcut whether or not the Noldor are really good or just lesser evils blindly going to war against a bigger one.
 

Thande

Donor
It does in the sense that the "heroes" of the story, the Feanorians, are primarily different from Morgoth in that the story is told from their perspective. It's fairly straightforward that Sauron's bad and the Fellowship, Rohan, Gondor, and the like are good in LOTR. In a Silmarillion trilogy, it wouldn't exactly be clearcut whether or not the Noldor are really good or just lesser evils blindly going to war against a bigger one.

I'm currently rereading LOTR and it's interesting how much the popular image is defined by people's perceptions rather than the reality: when you actually read it again, you see how mutually suspicious all the "good" peoples are of each other and how it's much more ambiguous than people like to claim. So based on that I have a feeling that perceptions would manage to whitewash the Noldor as unambiguous good guys despite the Kinslaying and so on: people just like claiming that the influential literature of yesteryear was black and white so they can pretend they're being innovative by "introducing" shades of grey.
 
Well...we get a proper anti-hero in Feanor Curufinwe, no? Brilliant and driven but dark right through, way before there's be any Elric of Melinbone.

I think the effects really would be profound, though I am kind of dreading to see what the 70s would have produced based on that model.

Well, Feanor actually dies rather early on. If there's any consistent long-lasting hero here it's either Thingol or arguably Galadriel (who might serve as at least one of the major POV characters). The Silmarillion essentially is a Kill 'Em All story, so it would have a somewhat different structure from LOTR.

I'm currently rereading LOTR and it's interesting how much the popular image is defined by people's perceptions rather than the reality: when you actually read it again, you see how mutually suspicious all the "good" peoples are of each other and how it's much more ambiguous than people like to claim. So based on that I have a feeling that perceptions would manage to whitewash the Noldor as unambiguous good guys despite the Kinslaying and so on: people just like claiming that the influential literature of yesteryear was black and white so they can pretend they're being innovative by "introducing" shades of grey.

As am I, but I happen to think even then that there really is a huge gap between those suspicions and the reality in LOTR and say, the three Kinslayings and the whole set of wars and clashes in the Silmarillion. There's suspicions in LOTR, in the Silmiarillion it's almost impossible to find anyone who comes out looking remotely heroic.
 

Thande

Donor
Well, Feanor actually dies rather early on. If there's any consistent long-lasting hero here it's either Thingol or arguably Galadriel (who might serve as at least one of the major POV characters). The Silmarillion essentially is a Kill 'Em All story, so it would have a somewhat different structure from LOTR.

Fëanor's death is an odd one, it's there from the earliest version of the Silmarillion (the Book of Lost Tales) but it's curiously abrupt. In that earliest version he just vanished, so I suppose Tolkien at one point might have planned to bring him back later on, I don't know. I think the abrupt-ness might have been deliberate, the sense that the Noldor have been whipped up into a frenzy by Fëanor's rhetoric into doing horrific things and suffering in the transit back to Middle-earth over the Silmarils, and then he ups and dies almost immediately and they calm down and realise just how screwed they are. (As people are annoyingly prone to seeing LOTR as an allegory for WW2, it's probable that a more mainstream narrative version of the Silmarillion as you suggest would lead to people seeing this as an allegory for Hitler or something).

I think this version would be very different to the Silmarillion we know even just in story terms, because the published Silmarillion is still largely based on the 1930s version--so people like Galadriel who were invented for LOTR get brief mentions but not much more. A story like you propose would probably give these characters bigger roles in the Elder Days stories to provide a link to LOTR.

The chief problem with the Silmarillion that Christopher Tolkien has pointed out is that there's no hobbit-like character to translate the alien majesty of the setting into more comfortable and recognisable means for the reader. Hence why Tolkien originally wanted the Silmarillion to be told via the medium of Eriol the mariner hearing the stories in Tol Eressea. I wonder if this problem could be satisfactorily resolved.
 
Fëanor's death is an odd one, it's there from the earliest version of the Silmarillion (the Book of Lost Tales) but it's curiously abrupt. In that earliest version he just vanished, so I suppose Tolkien at one point might have planned to bring him back later on, I don't know. I think the abrupt-ness might have been deliberate, the sense that the Noldor have been whipped up into a frenzy by Fëanor's rhetoric into doing horrific things and suffering in the transit back to Middle-earth over the Silmarils, and then he ups and dies almost immediately and they calm down and realise just how screwed they are. (As people are annoyingly prone to seeing LOTR as an allegory for WW2, it's probable that a more mainstream narrative version of the Silmarillion as you suggest would lead to people seeing this as an allegory for Hitler or something).

I think this version would be very different to the Silmarillion we know even just in story terms, because the published Silmarillion is still largely based on the 1930s version--so people like Galadriel who were invented for LOTR get brief mentions but not much more. A story like you propose would probably give these characters bigger roles in the Elder Days stories to provide a link to LOTR.

The chief problem with the Silmarillion that Christopher Tolkien has pointed out is that there's no hobbit-like character to translate the alien majesty of the setting into more comfortable and recognisable means for the reader. Hence why Tolkien originally wanted the Silmarillion to be told via the medium of Eriol the mariner hearing the stories in Tol Eressea. I wonder if this problem could be satisfactorily resolved.

Well, presumably Galadriel could actually fill that role in that we see her evolve into the majestic figure of LOTR and in the process of her evolution the sense of alien majesty in the War of the Jewels slowly grows and becomes the more majestic leading up to the War of Wrath. In a sense using this to show that the Noldor grow into the figures of wonder of later ages, with Galadriel hearing the tales in Doriath, and slowly learning from Melian how to become what she is in the LOTR. But that might presumably require Tolkien to find and stick with a backstory for Galadriel, admittedly.
 

Thande

Donor
Well, presumably Galadriel could actually fill that role in that we see her evolve into the majestic figure of LOTR and in the process of her evolution the sense of alien majesty in the War of the Jewels slowly grows and becomes the more majestic leading up to the War of Wrath. In a sense using this to show that the Noldor grow into the figures of wonder of later ages, with Galadriel hearing the tales in Doriath, and slowly learning from Melian how to become what she is in the LOTR. But that might presumably require Tolkien to find and stick with a backstory for Galadriel, admittedly.

Hmm, that's a very interesting idea, I like that. Although Galadriel wouldn't have to hear most of the tales that way because she was there in Valinor (at least according to most versions of what is, as you say, a rather muddled backstory due to Tolkien not being able to make up his mind). The version I'm thinking of had her born in Valinor and then supporting Fëanor in part due to an eagerness to see the vast wilds of Middle-earth she had heard stories about from the older Elves who had been around for the March (IIRC), so I suppose that fits well with the role you have in mind.
 
Hmm, that's a very interesting idea, I like that. Although Galadriel wouldn't have to hear most of the tales that way because she was there in Valinor (at least according to most versions of what is, as you say, a rather muddled backstory due to Tolkien not being able to make up his mind). The version I'm thinking of had her born in Valinor and then supporting Fëanor in part due to an eagerness to see the vast wilds of Middle-earth she had heard stories about from the older Elves who had been around for the March (IIRC), so I suppose that fits well with the role you have in mind.

With my version including the concept that she took a ship of her own, and that her not seeking out the Feanorians has to do with the First Kinslaying. And in this sense we'd also see the slow decline of the Noldor told through the only High aristocrat of the Noldor to make it all the way to the Third Age, providing a continuity that gives her role in LOTR and her lines to Frodo a more poignant sensibility than they would otherwise had.

And she less supports Feanor than they're both heading to Middle Earth for very different reasons, as I'd integrate in here the refusals to grant Feanor the locks of hair (in order to tie in with LOTR and Gimli's request). So in a sense as the War of the Jewels heads to its crescendo, in a parallel with the structure of LOTR, Galadriel increasingly becomes the Noldor Queen of LOTR and you get the sense that she knows at some level she may be the only one left by the Third Age. It would work in a sense as the inversion of the LOTR structure: the background reaches its fantastic peak toward the end, but the protagonist is already one of the great leaders of the Third Age, becoming what she would be, yet the more she rises, the more all of Middle Earth as a whole sinks and falls into the cataclysm of the Great Battle.
 

Thande

Donor
With my version including the concept that she took a ship of her own, and that her not seeking out the Feanorians has to do with the First Kinslaying. And in this sense we'd also see the slow decline of the Noldor told through the only High aristocrat of the Noldor to make it all the way to the Third Age, providing a continuity that gives her role in LOTR and her lines to Frodo a more poignant sensibility than they would otherwise had.

And she less supports Feanor than they're both heading to Middle Earth for very different reasons, as I'd integrate in here the refusals to grant Feanor the locks of hair (in order to tie in with LOTR and Gimli's request). So in a sense as the War of the Jewels heads to its crescendo, in a parallel with the structure of LOTR, Galadriel increasingly becomes the Noldor Queen of LOTR and you get the sense that she knows at some level she may be the only one left by the Third Age. It would work in a sense as the inversion of the LOTR structure: the background reaches its fantastic peak toward the end, but the protagonist is already one of the great leaders of the Third Age, becoming what she would be, yet the more she rises, the more all of Middle Earth as a whole sinks and falls into the cataclysm of the Great Battle.
In an ideal world this might continue to the end of the Second Age as well, incorporating the Downfall of Númenor and the War of the Last Alliance, so we would actually get to see Galadriel be the only member of the Noldorin aristocracy left after the death of Gil-galad.
 

Thande

Donor
I will say that the chief problem with this is that giving a prose account of the Silmarillion over so many years does not gel well with Tolkien's writing style, which is generally a coherent account of a person's journey with few time skips involved. If he was going to write it this way, he might choose to compress the history of the Silmarillion again (it extended from only a few years between the Flight of the Noldor to the War of the Wrath in the first version to over 500...) so it works better as a sequence of consecutive events. Of course you can argue that it might be rather different if Galadriel is the chief protagonist and one's writing from the more long-term perspective of the Elves, but then I'm not sure if Tolkien would even have wanted to do that, he seems to have preferred portraying Elves and so forth through the eyes of more relatable characters like hobbits and Men.
 
In an ideal world this might continue to the end of the Second Age as well, incorporating the Downfall of Númenor and the War of the Last Alliance, so we would actually get to see Galadriel be the only member of the Noldorin aristocracy left after the death of Gil-galad.

In my inversion of the LOTR concept this would parallel the lead-in to and the aftermath of the Scouring of the Shire. The War of the Elves and Sauron and Downfall of Numenor parallel the Scouring of the Shire, the Battle of the Last Alliance that of the Battle of Bywater, and the end would have Galadriel arrive in Lothlorien carrying Nenya and greeting Celeborn in an equivalent to Sam's greeting Rosie. These books in that sense would be as large as the LOTR, and would have to be in a sense.

And that would also create a kind of inversion of LOTR in another sense: Galadriel would be the Samwise Gamgee of the Elder Days: not considered in a sense due to being a woman the equals of everyone around her, she's the only one to survive relatively unscathed the horrors Sauron and Morgoth unleash.
 
I will say that the chief problem with this is that giving a prose account of the Silmarillion over so many years does not gel well with Tolkien's writing style, which is generally a coherent account of a person's journey with few time skips involved. If he was going to write it this way, he might choose to compress the history of the Silmarillion again (it extended from only a few years between the Flight of the Noldor to the War of the Wrath in the first version to over 500...) so it works better as a sequence of consecutive events. Of course you can argue that it might be rather different if Galadriel is the chief protagonist and one's writing from the more long-term perspective of the Elves, but then I'm not sure if Tolkien would even have wanted to do that, he seems to have preferred portraying Elves and so forth through the eyes of more relatable characters like hobbits and Men.

Well, to be fair Galadriel is mostly descended from non-Noldor ancestry though she's counted among them, so it'd kind of keep to a theme of never portraying the Noldor through an actual Noldorin viewpoint. I would put it in this sense as using a kind of inversion of LOTR to show the difference between the Wise and the Hobbits in that Galadriel survives to become a figure who must fade, and Sam survives to become the ultimate author of the Red Book of Westmarch.

Tolkien himself noted that the Silmarillion was intended to be from an Elven POV, so Galadriel makes an appropriate viewpoint character in that she'd be Elven, but not strictly speaking Noldor while being the only woman among a mostly male cast would give her the kind of distinguishing features that made the Hobbits distinct in a world including Witch-Kings and Atlanteans.
 

Thande

Donor
Perhaps. It would be hard though. I'm trying to think of prose writings where Tolkien got inside the head of an Elven protagonist and told it from their perspedctive rather than having mortals react to them. All I can think of is the Tale of Andreth (which is sort of a reversal as it's an Elf being curious about Men for the most part).
 
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