CastFromHitpoints

I just recently ended a rewatch of the series and I’ve been wondering about what would come next for Westeros and its kingdoms after the summit in the Dragonpit and Jon Snow’s self-exile.

My conclusion: everything will go back to what it was before the conquest. Hopefully with less bloodshed this time.

First, a little background.

The different realms/polities of Westeros had lasted for thousands of years before Aegon’s Conquest. Each region grew to be lorded over by ancient, powerful houses whose histories, legends and traditions spanned back even ten millennia into the past. The coming of the Andals and later of the Rhoynar changed the ethnical and cultural background of Westeros but t

One of Tolkien’s many concerns in the post-LOTR development of the Elder Days legends, as read in Morgoth’s Ring, was to fix the chronology of the “dark days” of Men between their awakening at Hildorien and the arrival of the Edain to Beleriand. As a philologist, he realized that those few centuries between the first arising of the Sun and the days of Beor the Old would not be enough to explain the divergences and variety among the tongues of the Atani: between the speech of the Edain and the Easterlings, between the Haladin and the other houses, and between the Beorians and the Hadorians who had originally been one people (plus some other issues, like the relative length of the Edain’s jo

Then what should we call his first lightsaber (the one that was destroyed at Geonosis). And what about Vader’s lightsaber?

I was re-reading FoTR yesterday and when I got to the talk in Ch.2, at the part where they were discussing the similarities of Bilbo and Gollum’s lies, how one had “won it” and the other had it given to him as a “birthday present”, Gandalf told to Frodo that it was clear to him that they were each defending their claim to the Ring. And then suddenly it dawned to me:

What hand save Sauron’s ever held this thing, ere it was lost? The hand of Isildur alone.

I was aware of Isildur’s remark on the Ring as being “precious to him”, like the other Ring-bearers, but I had never realized that his claiming of it “as weregild” was also similar to the others’. Isildur, too, wanted to put his

Whatever this season was for the Bucs and for him, it seems Tom Brady still has some gas left in the tank.

What do you consider was the most decisive of Morgoth’s victories in Beleriand, the Dagor Bragollach or the Nirnaeth Arnoediad? Both were terrible defeats for the Noldor and their allies in every way, but which one was overall the biggest turning point for the war in favour of Angband?

The Periannath and the Drúedain were the two “small” races of the Atani, thus their ancestry ultimately leads to the Awakening of Men in Hildórien, far off the East of Middle-earth. Furthermore, their relationships with other Mannish peoples and the Elves and Dwarves implies (especially in the case of the Drúedain) that their ancestors must have been among those who repented after the first Fall of Men, and fled from the Shadow.

Being that the case, were Hobbits and Woses already different from the other Men since their awakening, or did their appearance and stature start to differ during their respective journeys westward? Speaking of which, why do you think the ancestors of Hobbits were

Who did he thought was kneeling before him at Umbar? Was he aware that his defeated enemy-turned hostage-turned high priest and chief counselor, was the same guy his ancestor Tar-Minastir had sent an army against, about 15 centuries before? Did he ever know that this Zigûr fella at the Temple, and the Annatar that had deceived the Elves of Eregion long ago, were the same guy, and that both of them were also Gorthaur, the servant of the Morgoth from the stories and legends of the previous Age?

According to Laws and Customs Among the Eldar, the phenomenon of fading renders Elven bodies invisible and intangible, at least for us the younger children. Those of the Elves who remained in Middle-earth had their bodily forms become ethereal, “a mere memory held by the fëa”, and because of the impossibility of physical interaction, they were rendered “indeed deathless and may not be destroyed or changed”. This is clear to mean that Faded Elves cannot be slain by violence any longer, but violence was not the only thing that could kill Elves in the legendarium.

¿Could they still die from grief, or from weariness?

Re-reading various texts, I couldn’t help but notice a repeating motif about the migration, or rather flight of Men to the west in the First Age. Beginning with these words pronounced during the debate in Estolad (FA 369) concerning the unrest of some of the Edain there:

But now we learn that the Light is beyond the Sea. Thither we cannot come where the gods dwell in bliss. Save one. For the Lord of the Dark is here before us, and the Eldar, wise but fell, who make endless war upon him.

Around a century later (FA 469-470), Sador’s words to a young Túrin we’re quite similar concerning the flight of their ancestors.

It may be that we fled from the fear of the Dark, only to find it

“Never before had any man mounted him [Shadowfax], but I took him and I tamed him, and so speedily he bore me that I reached the Shire when Frodo was on the Barrow-downs, though I set out from Rohan only when he set out from Hobbiton.”

Shadowfax was the mightiest horse on Middle-earth in his time. From September 23 to 28 he rode with Gandalf from the lands around Edoras to Sarn Ford on the southern edges of the Shire, a great distance on such a short time. Gandalf of course was in a great hurry, to meet with Frodo in time and overtake the Black Riders that were riding ahead of him. What about the Riders?

According to Unfinished Tales, the Nazgûl, searching for Gandalf in Rohan afte

In the Text A of Section VI The Awakening of the Quendi in the preview, Tolkien briefly discusses how the chronology of the time between the awakening of Men and their entrance in Beleriand (year 310 after the Return of the Noldor) should be fixed according to the intended longer equivalence between Valían and Solar Years (1 VY = 144 SY). Ultimately, he comes to the figure of 64534 years between those events. And then, Tolkien mentions that, it being the year 1960 of the 7th Age, and that around 16000 years had happened since, thus the “scientifically insufficient” but “adequate for the purposes of the Silmarillion” estimate for the time of Men upon Arda was ~80000 years total. And this is