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Is That an Orc in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy to Be Evil? - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

Arnor succumbs to the struggle but Gondor manages to hang on until the end of the Third Age. In some ways Arnor seems a lot like the ancient Elven realms of Beleriand. The Elves, unlike Men, don't aspire to rule empires. The closest the Elven civilizations came to establishing empires were their high kingships, which are poorly defined. Elu Thingol ruled all of Beleriand for a long time, and Cirdan and Denethor were his vassals or sub-ordinates. The land area Thingol controlled was immense. But with the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth Thingol gave up some of his authority, and the Noldor established their own High Kingship. The High Kings of the Noldor really seem to have lacked authority over the other Noldorin kings. Could Fingolfin have commanded Turgon, Finrod, and Maedhros to join him in an assault upon Angband? Or did the various kings merely act in unison, according to their mutual needs? When the Numenoreans became strong they began conquering large portions of Middle-earth, levying tribute from other Men. The Noldor did not conquer other Elven nations. At best (or worst) they merely raided their fellow Elves (as at Alqualonde) or strove to utterly destroy their fellow Elves (as at Doriath and Arvernien). The question of Elvish populations always raises some interesting speculations about numbers and reproduction rates, but seldom, if ever, do the speculations concern how many Elves actually die. If the Feanorians really wiped out most of Doriath's population, how many Sindar were living in Doriath? Of course, the Feanorians benefitted from the fact that many of the Sindar had died in the war with the Dwarves. We know that the account in The Silmarillion, "Of the ruin of Doriath", really doesn't reflect the story as J.R.R. Tolkien would have told it. He felt that Thingol had to be induced to leave Doriath before the Dwarves could kill him. Perhaps he would have followed a group of Dwarves who fled with the Nauglamir and the Silmaril, and somewhere in East Beleriand could have fought a pitched battle. The prospect of an Elf-Dwarf conflict can be enlarged well beyond the canvas of Tolkien's brief outline and notes. The Dwarves of Nogrod, for example, could have appealed to the Dwarves of Belegost on a very emotional principle: that the Sindar were going to do to them what they did to the Petty-Dwarves. It is almost certain that the Petty-Dwarves, never very numerous, had to be doomed to extinction because of their conflicts with the Sindar.

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