Editing Blog/2026-02-21/LOTR Is The Denouement (section)

== The Tolkien Myth ==
[[File:LOTR with respect to World War 2.mp4|frameless|center|674px]]
The short form of the LOTR myth is that the books we know of as the Lord of the Rings are chronicling a denouement of the major events of that world. Originally, the creator [[wikipedia:Eru Ilúvatar|Eru Iluvatar]] created a bunch of spirit gods called the [[wikipedia:Ainur (Middle-earth)|Ainur]], through whose song a world called [[wikipedia:Arda (Middle-earth)|Arda]] (among other things) is made. Some of those spirits manifested themselves as either the [[wikipedia:Vala (Middle-earth)|Valar]] (archangels) or [[wikipedia:Maia (Middle-earth)|Maiar]] (angels). The former are far more powerful than the latter. The most powerful Vala, [[wikipedia:Morgoth|Melkor]], then decides to sing discord into this world and all the evil stems from him and so on. Everyone promptly renames him the deservedly evil sounding Morgoth. Morgoth fights a bunch of other Valar, loses in a way that blows up part of the world, and is banished from normal existence. He has a sidekick Maia, [[wikipedia:Sauron|Sauron]], who is the main antagonist of the Lord of the Rings. This chap is working with Morgoth's infrastructure and tooling, and punches above his weight by using the rings, but ultimately any of the guys who want him to lose are way more powerful than him.

=== The Denouement ===

So the biggest fight of all has already happened, the bad guy got demolished (specifically in a way that the good guy is upset at the consequences of), and in a parallel to the denouement of LOTR where the [[wikipedia:The Shire|Shire]] needs to be freed from the diminished [[wikipedia:Saruman|Saruman]], there is a fight between a small number of Maiar ([[wikipedia:Gandalf|Gandalf]], Saruman, the [[wikipedia:Eagle (Middle-earth)|eagles]], et al.) vs the others (Sauron, and then also Saruman). The trilogy we read with stories of courage and redemption and glory are all sort of a side story to the main one. We read the story of Sauron's return as a dramatic moment but in the grander scheme it's more like the [[wikipedia:Battle of Bautzen (1945)|Battle of Bautzen]] from World War 2 - a momentary successful offensive by a diminished opponent whose defeat is nonetheless inevitable.