0397 » Introducing Tolkien’s Tragedy: My New Book on Númenor & the Second Age

Hey there, fellow travelers! I’ve got some exciting news: my new book Tolkien’s Tragedy: Concerning Númenor, The Rings of Power, and the Second Age is finally here.
This has been years in the making. In fact, when I first started outlining it, Amazon’s Rings of Power series hadn’t even been announced. Now we’re two seasons in, and I think this book offers insights that are more timely than ever.
The full text is almost finished, but I’m still deciding on the best way to publish it. For now, I’m sharing it chapter by chapter over on my new Substack — that’s TolkienRoad.Substack.com. You can read the introduction and first chapter for free, and if you’d like to go deeper, you can get the rest with a Patreon or Substack membership.
What you’re about to hear is the introduction to Tolkien’s Tragedy. I can’t wait to share it with you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
So, head over to TolkienRoad.Substack.com to follow along — and now, let’s dive in!


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-tolkien-road--5222755/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, fellow travelers. I've got some exciting news. My
new book, Tolkien's Tragedy concerning numanor the Rings of Power
in the Second Age, is finally here. This has been
years in the making. In fact, when I first started
outlining it, Amazon's Rings of Power series hadn't even been announced.
Now we're two seasons in and I think this book
offers insights that are more timely than ever. The full

(00:20):
text is almost finished, but I'm still deciding on the
best way to publish it. For now, I'm sharing it
chapter by chapter over on my new substack that's tolkien
Road dot substack dot com. You can read the introduction
in first chapter for free, and if you'd like to
go deeper, you can get the rest with a Patreon
or substack membership. What you're about to hear is the
introduction to Tolkien's Tragedy. I can't wait to share it

(00:41):
with you, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. So
head on over to tolkienrooad dot substack dot com to
follow along. And now let's dive in introduction. Numenor in
the mind of Tolkien, at the center of the Middle
Earth Legendarium stands Numanor, Neumanor raised out of the Great Sea,
halfway between the undying lands of Ama and the mortal
shores of the Gray Havens, Numenor, whose history forms the

(01:04):
heart of the Second Age, Numanor, the last great pillar
of the legendarium to be conceived by Tolkien, and an
irreplaceable connection between the otherwise disparate First and Third Ages.
To understand Numenor is to unlock the great mysteries of
Tolkien's subcreation. And yet, for all of its importance and centrality,
we know so little about Numenor, and have so little

(01:24):
to go on in terms of Tolkien's writings about it.
In the fall of twenty twenty two, most of Tolkien's
writings on the topic were collected by Brian Sibley in
a single volume titled The Fall of Numenor. As wonderful
as this collection is, and as invaluable as Sibley's efforts
are in unifying the disparate text concerning Numenor in the
Second Age, there yet remains an inherently fragmented and seemingly

(01:44):
incomplete picture of this vast and important era in the
history of Middle Earth. Of course, this is due entirely
to the fact that Tolkien himself wrote so much about it,
but neither completed nor published most of it during his lifetime.
The largest portions that we have on the subject of
Numenor come from two key works, a Kalabath and of
the Rings of Power in the Third Age, both of
which were originally published as part of the Silmarillion in

(02:05):
nineteen seventy seven. However, even these works are merely historical overviews,
and while they give us much to consider, they roughly
equate to about one page per two hundred years of history. Indeed,
though the tragedy I have in mind with the title
of this book is the very history of Numenor in
its downfall, the greater tragedy is perhaps that we will
never have a story about Numenor on the scale of
the Lord of the Rings from Tolkien's own words, or

(02:27):
even on the scale of Baron and Luthian, one of
the great tales of the First Age. Nevertheless, the writings
Tolkien did leave us concerning Numenor in the Second Age
tell us a great deal about it, explicitly, and thanks
in large part to Tolkien's style, lush with the fruits
of a truly poetic mind, those writings hint it much
much more. Indeed, even with texts as sparse as the
line of Elros or the Tale of Years, I believe

(02:49):
much can be inferred through a process of textual interrogation.
While I, as a self proclaimed tolkienhite, whence at the
glorious possibilities that we all have missed out on, it
occurs to me that we have only just us begun
to understand what Tolkien did tell us about Numenor, and
there is much to explore about it, both in terms
of the legendarium and canon of Tolkien's direct composition, as
well as in its textual history and development in relation

(03:11):
to the Lord of the Rings in the Silmarillion. Therefore,
the purpose of this book is to more deeply explore
the Numenorian legend as we have received it from Tolkien himself,
and to unpack and extrapolate from this as much as
we can concerning his intent for the legend. After all,
why would he have concocted a detailed outline for a
history of almost thirty five hundred years and not expect
us to wonder at all of the matters that lay

(03:31):
between the lines. Indeed, why allude to curiosities for no reason.
As we explore these works, we traversed the vast landscape
of Tolkien's mind and imagination, which gave us the Lord
of the Rings itself. And it was this very mind
that seemed to compose in this interrogatory fashion. As an example,
Tolkien once quipped that he was surprised to discover Strider
at the Prancing Pony, and that the ends were an

(03:53):
altogether unexpected discovery. Tolkien regarded himself as this sort of writer,
discovering new reality, as he wrote, almost as if they
already and really existed. That is one of the very
joys that draws many readers into his works, this notion
of a vast reality that goes beyond the facts and
events traced by the narrative itself. It's as if Tolkien

(04:14):
is as astonished as we are to find this vast
and wonderful world unfolding before us. To be sure, Tolkien
might have left us much more had his life span
been that of the early Noumenorian kings and queens. Unfortunately
it was not, and so we are left as fans
to ponder what has been handed down to us. The
Amazon TV show another important factor that has driven me

(04:34):
to write this book is Amazon's TV show The Rings
of Power, which depicts some parts of the Second Age.
For many Tolkien fans, including myself, this show has left
much to be desired, especially concerning its vision of Numenor
and its compression of the Second Age timeline found in
The Lord of the Rings. For others, it is a
welcome addition to the catalog of Middle Earth screen adaptations.
While I do not spend the major portion of this

(04:56):
book on any sort of critical analysis of the Rings
of Power, the show's status is the most expensive production
in TV history and is a close relative to one
of the most successful franchises in cinematic history. Nevertheless, puts
Numenor in the stories of the Second Age higher in
the consciousness of popular culture. Given this, I believe it
raises the key question of Tolkien's intent for Numenor. What

(05:16):
did Tolkien really intend Numenor to be like? Furthermore, what
were the key themes that undergirded the Second Age of
Middle Earth in which the greater story of Numenor is situated.
These questions are of great importance for understanding the allure
and power of the Lord of the Rings. As a
work of literature. Why does it have such a deep
impact on so many Why do I and others consider
it to be a life changing work, even the greatest

(05:37):
novel of the twentieth century. These questions should matter to
anyone hoping to adapt it to another medium, for they
get to the heart of Tolkien's genius, and the answers
inform how such adaptations are executed and achieved, and even
whether they will find success on the artistic level. Does
it really matter what Tolkien thought? Still, some have asked,
does it really matter what Tolkien thought? And even if

(06:00):
it does, how can we actually know? One of the
trickiest questions when it comes to understanding Tolkien's works is
the question of authorial intent. What did he mean by
his works when he leaves large gaps in the story
or gives curious details regarding a Neumonorian ruler whom we
know little else about. Does he intend for us to
be able to infer from that some larger point? The
problem is that Tolkien was prone to being rather elf

(06:22):
like in such matters, in the way that Frodo teases
the elf gildor go not to the elves for counsel,
for they will say both no one yes. I don't
fault Tolkien for this. In fact, I think it's better
when an author of fiction doesn't write with some great
point or hidden agenda. In mind, Tolkien wrote primarily for
the story itself. He wasn't the type to write moralistically
or allegorically, and he was clear about his disdain for

(06:43):
certain forms of storytelling that do so. When pressed by
one fan as to whether Orcs were communists, Tolkien responded
to ask if Orcs are communists is to me as
sensible as asking if communists or Orc's. The point seems
to be that Tolkien intends to abjure all notions of
hard symbolism from his storytelling. But the paradox of his
perspective is nowhere better glimpse than in his well known

(07:04):
comment to the Jesuit priest father Robert Murray. Having been
asked by Murray about the role of his Catholic faith
in writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien responded, the
Lord of the Rings is, of course a fundamentally religious
and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in
the revision. In other words, Tolkien did not set out
to write a Catholic fantasy novel or something like that. However,

(07:25):
he's not actually saying both no and yes here. As
he was writing, his own concerns and philosophical background worked
their way into the novel in organic fashion, so that
as he revised the draft, he was able to see
the traces and hints that his deep religious faith played
in composing the work. Of course, this shouldn't surprise us
one bit. It's exactly what authors do. The sum of
who they are, their life experiences in philosophical outlook are

(07:48):
bound to manifest in various ways within the stories they tell.
It's only natural. In fact, if they somehow tried to
avoid speaking of certain things, it would likely make the
work seem inauthentic, even fraudulent or fragmented. I would say
that Tolkien wrote primarily for the sake of the story itself,
not to impress some underlying symbolism on the reader, but
to tell a story that would enchant the reader into

(08:08):
feeling as though they were glimpsing another reality. In fact,
this was what he claimed all good fairy stories do
in his Literary Manifesto on Fairy Stories, written just before
he began to compose the New Hobbit which would later
become the Lord of the Rings. However, in dealing with
the fictional characters and situations of his story, any author
is bound to put in their own perspective in philosophical outlook.

(08:29):
Even if they are writing about some other philosophical outlook
which they do not hold to, they still write with
their own perspective, and in the story of Numonor we
have a particularly interesting situation. For the Legend of Numenor
began as something totally separate from the Hobbit's nascent sequel,
Tolkien's unrealized time travel tale, The Lost Road. It was
only after its initial creation in the context of that

(08:50):
story that Tolkien began to fold the Legend of Numenor
into the Lord of the Rings. The Legend of Numenor
in the Second Age of Middle Earth developed in parallel
with the Lord of the Rings until they became different
aspects of the same thing, and the fictional histories of
both continued to develop even after the publication of Tolkien's masterpiece.
Tolkien was this kind of writer. For him, Middle Earth
was a very real thing, and he seems to have

(09:11):
felt almost duty bound to explore it and articulate various
realities about it. From this we get most of the
writings about Numenora that were published after his death. Tolkien,
in a way would go back and consciously draw out
the things he had unconsciously hidden in the text. In
some I am proposing that we Tolkien's readers had the
opportunity to discern greater truths and insights within the skeletal

(09:31):
structure of Numenor's history and the other events of the
Second Age, just as Tolkien did as he reflected on
the first draft of The Lord of the Rings and
found it to be unintentionally religious and Catholic. The structure
of this book, I believe the best way to grasp
and dive into the story of Numenora is chronologically, and
so that's how this book shall proceed. However, it is

(09:53):
important to grasp several key concepts at the outset. Therefore,
the first two chapters will explore and expound Tolkien's explicit
thoughts on this Second Age, as well as the salient
ideas and themes that I find in the various texts
and tales of Numenor in the Second Age. From there,
the next three chapters will examine the three millennia of
Numenor's existence, using major events, most especially the reigns of

(10:14):
its various kings and queens, as markers upon the journey.
In conclusion, we will consider the climax of Numenor's history,
the tragedy of its downfall, on the birth of the
exilic realms Arnoor and Gondor, and their continued struggle against Salron. Finally,
I have reserved for the appendices several matters which I
believe will be of great interest to the reader. In
Appendix A, I will provide a complete list of writings

(10:36):
directly pertaining to the Second Age of Middle Earth, as
well as their sources, and a few brief thoughts on each.
In Appendix B, I will provide an outline for how
I believe the story of the Second Age could have
been successfully adapted as a TV show. In Appendix C,
I will consider future possibilities for storytelling in the legendarium
of Middle Earth. Finally, in Appendix D, we will consider
the White Tree of Numenor, its symbolism, and the role

(10:58):
of its progeny in the history of Or. As part
of the process of sifting through the annals of Numenor,
I will explore the names of each of its rulers
with Tolkien, and perhaps in keeping with the way things
were done by most ancient peoples, words and especially names
mattered greatly. So it behooves us to pay close attention
to what various characters are named, because therein we will
perhaps discover key insights and connections. And now, without further ado,

(11:22):
let us step foot into Middle Earth Second Age. Thanks
so much for listening to the introduction of Tolkien's tragedy.
If this glimpse into numenor the Rings of Power and
the Second Age has sparked your interest, I'd love for
you to read more. You can find the rest of
the book, released chapter by chapter over at Tolkienroad dot
substack dot com. The introduction and first chapter are free,

(11:42):
and the rest is available through a Patreon or Substact membership.
I can't wait to share the full journey with you,
and I look forward to hearing your thoughts along the way.
Thanks for listening, and until next time, the road goes
ever on.