Watching your videos is like walking in to a nice home heated by a fireplace after it's been raining outside. Your vocal delivery is so very pleasant and personal. Please never succumb to using AI voice like so many other channels. Between your narrative delivery, and your usage of photos from the films and also various Tolkien illustrations from books and calendars over the years, makes for a beautifully comprehensive overview of whichever subject you are tackling. You are simply the best Tolkien channel on UA-cam. Keep up the good work. The road goes ever on.
Nothing in Tolkien's writings ever feels "unfinished", just "unexplored". It doesn't feel like he simply never invented the whole history of Rhûn and it's peoples and its kings, but that he did and simply never told us about it.
I get much more the vibe that not even Tolkien knows everything about Middle Earth because he hasn’t been there either! It feels unexplored because he never explored it. He is not the creator of Mjddle Earth, for that title would go to Iluvatar
I think being vague about the Eastern parts of Middle Earth was a creative decision by Tolkien that reflects his being a scholar of medieval literature. Both Greco-Roman and Medieval civilization knew that there were civilizations in India and China but had only uncertain knowledge of their geography and history.
Well it's sort of like 1500 years ago people had no idea what was in or that the Americas even existed. From the common person's perspective, it was a mysterious place. He's giving the reader that perspective rather then describing everything as if it's known.
@@novellanightmares exactly. And I love that choice. Not everything is meant to be known or explained to the reader, this way we feel the same uncertainty that the Middle Earth's peoples had. The Tolkien reader is no omniscient, he just knows what the characters know.
In his later writings, Tolkien change the story of the Blue Wizards, having them arrive in the 2nd Age and actually having a lot of success in disrupting Sauron's doings, so much so that without their efforts, Sauron would have conquered the Free Peoples well before the time of The War of the Ring. But Tolkien didn't tell us their ultimate fate.
My guess is that they played a pivitol role in disrupting Sauron's attempts to vassalize eastern and southern rulers. This would be much the same way Gandalf broke Saurmon's hold over Theoden. Since Saurmon went east, he likely copied Sauron's own techniques.
'Two of them there were, old men, wearing blue robes. They had long walking sticks, and big pointed hats. Strange sorts, one would talk and then the other would complete his sentence, I don't think they realised they were doing it. They headed off together, traveling into the East. Now that you come to mention it, after they have left, none of us could seem to recall quite what they looked like, or even what their names were.' - Extract from Shadow of Mordor
@@dromankass8655"We were all terribly out of sorts after that party. The stuff they had back then was astounding. It's quite possible those Blues Brothers wandered off and couldn't remember their OWN names, let alone the way back."
Robert seems to interpret the later writings of Tolkien, specifically letters regarding the blue wizards as additions while myself and many others consider them rewrites. Reading them in such a way paints a different picture as this is the second time he has tied them to this future 'cult' story. I believe the rewrite interpretation is more accurate and the blue wizards merely completed their mission. Sidenote: 'fell to darkness' doesn't necessarily mean they joined the enemy.
@@Sifeus So many UA-cam videos have AI voices, or are even completely made by AI now. Probably by people who barely speak English and work for a content farm.
This makes sense. It's not 'East Asia' based on modern or even imperial European era terms, but rather how it was seen by Europe in the middle ages. Maybe some Marco Polo type folks took some journeys to Rhun, but otherwise it was like trying to travel to Mars.
I agree. Europeans who had never been to or even heard of Asia wouldn't imagine Samurai, Siamese Palaces, or Tibetan Monasteries... they wouldn't know what to imagine because they didn't know it was there!
I see it in an Abrahamic way from a judeo-christianic viewpoint; the east isn't beyond redemption but they need guiding to the 'right way'. The blue wizards are missionaries in a sense. The East is where the elves woke (Judaism/Christianity in palestine) but they've followed a wayward path (Islam); to be redeemed by a righteous prophet (Aragorn and his descendants) in time. To be clear I have no religious inclination or bias, I'm an atheist with a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, have mercy on me 😅
I think there are also hints of the Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Huns, and how they would have been seen in classical and medieval times. Mysterious, distant empires from over the edge of the known world that would occasionally rise up on the borders of European civilization as great threats.
@@jtevanz Hmm, I don't think that's the way Tolkien saw it. As others have said, it's more that they lie beyond the knowledge of the people who are telling us these myths (i.e Silmarillion and LoTR), which are supposed to be a foundational mythos for England.
I Love that Faramir actually empathises with the Easterlings.he understands they to have families, wives children and friends. After the battle with the Haradrim, Faramir says “The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.”
Being further away from the Valar influence due to the world being flat up until fall of Numenor is probably one reason they fell earlier to Morgoth and were forced to build black temples to venerate the foe of the world, over millenia they probably followed the dark one because that is all they know and made sense not witnessing the heroic fight against him.
This I think really speaks to his attitudes of war. It certainly seems to be the goal of a tyrant to make his army hate the enemy, but we maintain our humanity in recognising that the opposing forces are made up of people who share many of the qualities and ideals we have... homes, families, friends, pastimes.
Tolkien decided, in the end, to have the Blue Wizards succeed in their mission by having them working behind the scenes to ensure that the destruction of the ring was possible.
I would be very skeptical about using anything in Chapter 13 as evidence. It is clearly Tolkien doing what Tolkien liked doing which was musing about Middle Earth. But it should hardly taken seriously and it would have taken revising published material, something he was loathe to do b
Thank you Robert, your Tolkien content is second to none. The time and effort you put into your work is plainly obvious. You are doing a really great job, friend.
I've always had a lot of curiosity about Rhûn. The only mention we get of it is when Aragorn mentions that he's been to "Rhûn and far Harad where the stars are strange." It's a vaguely constructed sentence, but it sounds like some of Rhûn might be south of the equator. If so, that might tap into an unexplored part of Tolkien's own life experience. After all, he was born in the Orange Free State, where the stars are definitely strange (at least to us in the northern hemisphere).
It's kind of exasperating to think that, for all the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding the War of the Ring, it was ultimately a regional affair. People in Rhûn and further east would've experienced little if any effects no matter how that war turned out.
Not quite. Its possible that the people would have been subjugated after the fall of the west. Saron never won long enough to take ove the east. Also he was a king/god to the people in the east prior to the war so i think it would have been easy to force them into submission.
@@takumi2023 He didn't "take over the east"? As you say yourself he was a godking-figure over there, armies of men flocking to aid his invasion of the west. They WERE subjugated, at least enough of them to militarily far outnumber the men of Gondor and Rohan (maybe it's when combined with the Haradrim, but still). Even after Sauron's death, it took a bunch of battles and negotiating until Aragorn managed to make peace with the Easterlings. As far as I understand it Sauron wouldn't rule the men in a way that eventually killed them, he just wanted to be in control of everything and worshipped. The East wasn't enough. So I do believe the people in Rhûn wouldn't have experienced that much of a change after Sauron's victory either. The war itself would've always been won easily by Sauron, even the miraculous victory at Pelennor Fields still left the men of the west so outnumbered only the hope of destroying the One Ring remained. That's the only thing that made the war so pivotal, otherwise losing was only a matter of time.
I don't know where you get the idea Sauron would have stopped with the west, his ambitions was to bring his vision of order to everyone and everything.
It is good, and the best we have, but it is not without its flaws. For example, it shows Angband far too close to the Beleriand, and the location of the dwarf cities in the Blue Mountains is wrong. But it is hard to keep up with all the details, since Tolkien kept changing things, and Christopher kept finding new, often conflicting, storylines. If you can find it, also get Journeys of Frodo, an earlier atlas (not by Fonstad) which is sadly out of print.
@@minibro73 JoF feels more somehow more personal, more initimate, fan-like (in a good sense), while Fonstad has the more detached, academic, neutral, angle.
Idk this is a hot take but I feel instead of telling new stories in the west of middle earth and like..retelling some stories, the east is an open field of creating history and explore things. Elves who never left, men who would possibly somewhat justifiably would view the dark lords as bringer of civilization, heroes of wars never heard of west of mordor. I get theres probsbly easier to get crowds with people we know, but feels like waste to not use idk
I've been a fan of your LotR essays for the last year and love how often you explore topics I've never considered to be curious about, such as Rhun, or the range of Sting's "orc radar". LOL! Great stuff. One topic I'm hoping you cover in the future is an essay focused entirely on Saruman. His relationship with Gandalf and the other wizards, how he became the head of the wizard order, if he was always, secretively corrupt and evil, or if he was once "good".
@@martavdz4972 I'm gonna scream. This unlocked a middle school memory of mine. Asked my history teacher (who was quite old I will add) what "hic sunt dracones" meant on the edges of old maps and her answer was "it's just something old maps have", Which like sure... Is correct I guess but omg "here be dragons" really contextualizes WHY it's on a bunch of old maps. Jeez didn't think I'd get this answer let alone even recall this experience.
Living in Australia when I was a kid we studied the European mapping and charting of the continent, beginning with the early Dutch explorers like Torres and van Diemen in the late 1600s, and how only sporadic sections of the northwest coast and the eastern coast were mapped at first - by James Cook, William Dampier and others, and finally Matthew Flinders who circumnavigated the entire continent, finally completing the map. I always wished I lived in the Age of Explorers, to sail unexplored and mysterious seas, drawing lines on a map and never knowing what we might discover. If I lived in Tolkien's world, I would have been that guy who built a ship and resolved to circumnavigate the continent Middle-Earth is part of!
At 3:34, you say: "The Silmarillion was written mostly by the Western elves." Please make a video explaining more about this concept. I've always wanted someone to explain who it is that actually wrote the Silmarillion. I know that the in-world explanation tends to be that it is based upon Bilbo's three volume "translations from the elvish", but I want to know more. If LOTR was theoretically "translated" by JRR Tolkien from the Red Book, then how did we end up with the published Silmarillion? Where, exactly, did the text come from that Tolkien "translated" into English? Who wrote the texts that Bilbo first translated? Please tell us more about this subject.
Much of it would have been written by Feanor and his sons, especially the events that took place in Valinor, the Kinslaying at Alqualonde and the crossing of the Helcaraxe. Once they were in Beleriand, it would have also included the writings of other chroniclers such as Thingol of Doriath, Turgon of Gondolin, and Cirdan the Shipwright.
I like thinking about Rhun. I like to think that, among the Easterlings, there were secret strongholds, remnents of light that withstood the darkness of Sauron. I suspect that the residents there would have been more divided and more oppressed. You would see more evil dwarves and elves, even ones explicitly in Saurons service. I imagine that the worship of Sauron would have created state sponsered cults practicing unspeakable rites. Heroes in Rhun would be outlaws in the wild, or running underground resistance movements in the great cities.
Oddly enough, we never see any eastern dwarves or elves fighting in Sauron or Morgoths's armies. My thinkin is the elves being immortal would literally have those among them who remember the Valar and their servants from the beginning......or at least enough of them to KNOW Sauron was a bit of an imposter of sorts. At least enough of them wouldn't be to far removed from first hand information about such things and so there wouldn't be too many of them serving Sauron. The dwarves could also be fairly long lived and they kept in contact with their brothers in the west. The rings and the dwarves natural ability to resist charms and be under the domination of others would also work in their favour. So we don't see many if any of these races helping Sauron. Of course they may also be extinct or enslaved lol. Who knows.
Dude this quality of video and the newest video by Vile Eye on Gollum really just enhances the world that Tolkien created. This shit is brilliant and ingenious.
Good stories only speak on the things important to the story. Tolkien’s style is as if someone is telling us and gets just a tad distracted on some details but there is never just a huge explanation of broad details all at once. I love it
Imagine an open-world video game set in Middle Earth and you could actually venture beyond the edges of the classic map. Go south to far Harad, east to Rhûn... One can only dream of such things 😔
As much as i like answers, I prefer to have a mistery. It's so intriguing as to what is there, and the maps just showing blank space only a few geography like woods and the sea because that's all they know about it, helps this too.
I love your content. It makes his work feel less of this otherworldly fantasy I grew up feeling and makes it more grounded in reality. I mean that in the best way not an insult. I was always like how did he come up with all these things but the more of you I watch the more it makes him feel a lot like most other creators in terms of story writing / world building tricks. He just did it better
Just found your channel and i really am enjoying your content, its great to hear another voice in the void talking about LotR and beyond having read the complete and that his son did picking up after dear ol'dad it seems. But yes madhing the like button and subscribed. Thank you!
That's one thing that's great about the books, he left some mysteries in it by not developing it further, something today's movie writers should do as well, this prequel and sequel crazy that we have today is destroying many sagas.
@@martavdz4972 if i could be generous to the author himself i would say that the people from rhun and harad are only ever seen while under sauron's influence, so they're probably just normal people like those in the west before and after sauron's return to middle earth, but the choice to almost never show them in peacetime (that is, as humans) is very questionable.
I like to think of Rhun and the Easterlings as something like the Roman Empire and Constantinople. Might be just the whole riding of chariots thing making me think that
Middle Earth & LOTR was in many ways a simile for the events of post WW1 and through WW2. We have the enemy in the east, but not really east, the saviours and the fighters in the west, and those in the east that aren't part of the story of the battles of the west, though they have some minor secondary impact on it.
If I was Tolkien writing a sequel to LOTR I would write about trouble caused by the blue wizards in Rhun. Sort of a wicked witch of the East and West dynamic, but instead it would be blue wizards in both the north and south of Rhun who were causing trouble for Gondor in some way.
I much prefer Tokien's later vision of the Blue Wizards where they played a mostly helpful role, but with some mixed results. There's lots of room for a Second Age or Third Age story where these Wizards struggled to break Sauron cults, and free eastern rulers from shadowy vizior-type characters.
Very comprehensive! I really enjoyed your insight on this one...though i confess I was half awake when I saw the alert and went: Wait, why is Robert talking about the Middle East? >__> Whoops
About the peoples of the east - Rhûn, Khand and Variags. Tolkien said he was inspired by Asia (China, Japan, etc): "When asked in an interview what lay east of Rhûn, Tolkien replied "Rhûn is the Elvish word for 'east'. Asia, China, Japan, and all things which people in the west regard as far away." In an early versions of "The Hobbit", Bilbo's speech about facing the "dragon peoples of the east" had an reference of China and the Hindu Kush: "In the earliest drafts of The Hobbit, Bilbo offered to walk from the Shire 'to [cancelled: Hindu Kush] the Great Desert of Gobi and fight the Wild Wire worm(s) of the Chinese. In a slightly later version J.R.R. Tolkien altered this to say 'to the last desert in the East and fight the Wild Wireworms of the Chinese' and in the final version it was altered once more to say 'to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert'." History of Middle Earth - The First Phase, "The Pryftan Fragment", p. 9 I always saw the barbarian invasions (Wainriders, Balchots, peoples of Rhûn) from the far east against the northwest of Middle-earth as a reference to European historiography with the onslaughts of (semi) nomadic Asian peoples (the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, etc.).
@@lomiification It is a similar situation, in that the invading people are demonized and made out to be a lot more "barbaric" than they really are. This is true for real history, and probably for Middle-Earth.
The "western Easterlings" Gondor encounters probably reflect the romans experiences with the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians, Alanes, Parthians... But interesting Tolkien does mention China and Japan! I wonder what middle-earth analogies to China and Japan would have been like...
This is what I thought they should make a Tolkien series about, if you want to be realistically diverse. It could be set in a crossroads town used by travelers and traders to avoid Mordor. You could explore different peoples and cultures.Or you could slap some shit together and shoehorn in an illogically diverse cast and call it a day.
100% his best forces. Thankfully something happened in the east and south to prevent Sauron from musterig the full weight of these vast areas against Gondor. Had he done so, GOndor would have no chance.
Like 17 years ago I, the other main guy, and a couple of friendly posters less pious on the subject, went back and forth reiterating how little we knew about Rhun in a thread on a tolkein forum that took itself very seriously. The thread was basically a chatroom and we, the two main culprits, were banned for farming the site's equivalent of karma, cause a bunch of forum features were karma locked, and we said pretty much nothing of value over a span of months, despite having tons of thread views. Truly one of the times in which one could technically be considered alive.
If the Blue Wizards were in their own ways corrupted like Saruman this could kind of explain why the Hardiram seemed to have some kind of Magical Abilities over things like Beast Mastery and what not.
The inland sea of Helcar, Almaren, the Mountain ringil, the sea of Ormal or Illuin, the Orocarni, the Wind Mountains,,the Yellow mountains, Easterlings, Variags, Wainriders, Balchoth, the home of Khamul, Cuivienen,,the wild woods, Hildorien, the Murmenalda, melkors first temple, four more clans of Dwarves with their dwellings, Avari Elves, two blue wizards and their cults and magic traditions,,the last desert with its wereworms... that is quite a lot we get!
Question for a future video? How powerful was Frodo for the short time he claimed The One Ring in Mt Doom before Gollum bit his finger off? Was he anywhere near as powerful as Sauron, or any of the other Maiar?
Your stuff is absolutely excellent brother, but I do have a gentle correction. The Wainriders did not end the line of the kings of Gondor. That was the witch king in Minas Morgule.
If I was charged with creating a tv series in Tolkien’s legendarium - my thinking to avoid messing with canon is to explore an undeveloped part of it, and my pitch would be what was happening in Rhun during the War of the Ring. Easterling heroes rebelling against their Dark Numinoran aristocracy who are sending their people as slave soldiers to fight for Mordor.
Mr. Tolkien was very clear that the purpose of these books was to create ancient mythology for Europe, so there was no need for him to develop content outside of the Middle Earth region, especially because that content already exists in the form of already existing mythology.
Elves always had a longing for the sea. Partly because of the calling from Valinor, but also for itself. And in the prime of Numenor, as an island nation they would have developed great sailing skills as a necessity for trade and commerce. So I find it implausible that neither culture ever discovered what lands lie to the East of Middle Earth. In the many thousands of years of high culture they would have had time to sail to the remaining 3 compass directions of the world. Maybe they even sailed to Valinor coming to it from the West side of the blessed realm!
Man for what I’d give for a “Journey to the west” style retelling of the events of middle earth from the perspective of an Asian blue wizard who follows an allegorical Buddha
I really wish they did a modern spin on LOTR, like Sauron comes back, but stuff has to be settled more diplomatically. Like Sauron cluld stir up regional proxy wars in the east. Like a war for South Easterlings separates from the North and Gondor sends a expedition force to suppress.
Can you cover more about The New Shadow? this is the first time I'm hearing about it. Or is there just not enough to talk about? Great video this time though!!
Before the video when someone asked me 'what's east of middle earth,' I had to say 'I dunno'. Now I can say 'I dunno' but in a more nuanced way.
“I don’t know, we’re not meant to know and that’s okay.”
What's the name of the most populated nation out there? Ídûnnō.
I dunno in a more nuanced way is simply "I do not know."
Basically this whole channel now that he's covered everything
That's largely how it feels doing research and answering questions about it. I might know some things maybe they're bogus and here are visuals~~~
The Middle East
Yes. Given the scale of the lands of the west, going all the way to China seems a bit far.
badum tsss
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heh
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Watching your videos is like walking in to a nice home heated by a fireplace after it's been raining outside. Your vocal delivery is so very pleasant and personal. Please never succumb to using AI voice like so many other channels. Between your narrative delivery, and your usage of photos from the films and also various Tolkien illustrations from books and calendars over the years, makes for a beautifully comprehensive overview of whichever subject you are tackling. You are simply the best Tolkien channel on UA-cam. Keep up the good work. The road goes ever on.
So very true. Robert is a gem.
This. 100%
He should do audiobooks. His voice has a wonderful clarity and cadence. He sounds like he's talking about a true thing somehow
Robert is a treasure
True words
Nothing in Tolkien's writings ever feels "unfinished", just "unexplored". It doesn't feel like he simply never invented the whole history of Rhûn and it's peoples and its kings, but that he did and simply never told us about it.
My thoughts as well.
Well said
Rhun fanfic would be cool lol
Remember, Tolkien never wrote anything. He translated the Westron documents he found. 😉
I get much more the vibe that not even Tolkien knows everything about Middle Earth because he hasn’t been there either! It feels unexplored because he never explored it. He is not the creator of Mjddle Earth, for that title would go to Iluvatar
I think being vague about the Eastern parts of Middle Earth was a creative decision by Tolkien that reflects his being a scholar of medieval literature. Both Greco-Roman and Medieval civilization knew that there were civilizations in India and China but had only uncertain knowledge of their geography and history.
Well it's sort of like 1500 years ago people had no idea what was in or that the Americas even existed. From the common person's perspective, it was a mysterious place. He's giving the reader that perspective rather then describing everything as if it's known.
@@novellanightmares exactly. And I love that choice. Not everything is meant to be known or explained to the reader, this way we feel the same uncertainty that the Middle Earth's peoples had. The Tolkien reader is no omniscient, he just knows what the characters know.
In his later writings, Tolkien change the story of the Blue Wizards, having them arrive in the 2nd Age and actually having a lot of success in disrupting Sauron's doings, so much so that without their efforts, Sauron would have conquered the Free Peoples well before the time of The War of the Ring. But Tolkien didn't tell us their ultimate fate.
My guess is that they played a pivitol role in disrupting Sauron's attempts to vassalize eastern and southern rulers. This would be much the same way Gandalf broke Saurmon's hold over Theoden. Since Saurmon went east, he likely copied Sauron's own techniques.
'Two of them there were, old men, wearing blue robes. They had long walking sticks, and big pointed hats. Strange sorts, one would talk and then the other would complete his sentence, I don't think they realised they were doing it. They headed off together, traveling into the East. Now that you come to mention it, after they have left, none of us could seem to recall quite what they looked like, or even what their names were.'
- Extract from Shadow of Mordor
One was Sun Tzu, the other was Confucius.
@@dromankass8655"We were all terribly out of sorts after that party. The stuff they had back then was astounding. It's quite possible those Blues Brothers wandered off and couldn't remember their OWN names, let alone the way back."
Robert seems to interpret the later writings of Tolkien, specifically letters regarding the blue wizards as additions while myself and many others consider them rewrites. Reading them in such a way paints a different picture as this is the second time he has tied them to this future 'cult' story. I believe the rewrite interpretation is more accurate and the blue wizards merely completed their mission. Sidenote: 'fell to darkness' doesn't necessarily mean they joined the enemy.
So many channels like this, fiction or non, have voiceovers that just don't work.
Yours is spot-on.
A lot of them are using AI voices now and it's so distracting
@@Sifeus So many UA-cam videos have AI voices, or are even completely made by AI now. Probably by people who barely speak English and work for a content farm.
Gotta be careful with easterlings! Otherwise they could Rhun your day!
This was appreciated 😁
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😂
@@awesomehpt8938 fantastic
I hate it but you get the Like.
This makes sense. It's not 'East Asia' based on modern or even imperial European era terms, but rather how it was seen by Europe in the middle ages. Maybe some Marco Polo type folks took some journeys to Rhun, but otherwise it was like trying to travel to Mars.
I agree. Europeans who had never been to or even heard of Asia wouldn't imagine Samurai, Siamese Palaces, or Tibetan Monasteries... they wouldn't know what to imagine because they didn't know it was there!
I see it in an Abrahamic way from a judeo-christianic viewpoint; the east isn't beyond redemption but they need guiding to the 'right way'. The blue wizards are missionaries in a sense. The East is where the elves woke (Judaism/Christianity in palestine) but they've followed a wayward path (Islam); to be redeemed by a righteous prophet (Aragorn and his descendants) in time. To be clear I have no religious inclination or bias, I'm an atheist with a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, have mercy on me 😅
I think there are also hints of the Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Huns, and how they would have been seen in classical and medieval times. Mysterious, distant empires from over the edge of the known world that would occasionally rise up on the borders of European civilization as great threats.
@@jtevanz Hmm, I don't think that's the way Tolkien saw it. As others have said, it's more that they lie beyond the knowledge of the people who are telling us these myths (i.e Silmarillion and LoTR), which are supposed to be a foundational mythos for England.
It seems to me that when one creates an imaginary world, having some parts of it be mysterious makes it all the better.
💯 George R.R. Martin struck gold with the Lands of Always Winter. Have been obsessed with the location ever since I read the prologue.
Best Tolkien UA-camr around!
The only one I listen to.
I Love that Faramir actually empathises with the Easterlings.he understands they to have families, wives children and friends.
After the battle with the Haradrim, Faramir says “The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.”
Being further away from the Valar influence due to the world being flat up until fall of Numenor is probably one reason they fell earlier to Morgoth and were forced to build black temples to venerate the foe of the world, over millenia they probably followed the dark one because that is all they know and made sense not witnessing the heroic fight against him.
No..sam thinks somthins similar..faramir never say that in the books
@@maxcecco7910 I was about to say that. Wasn't it Sam?
You can ear Tolkien experience of WW1 so hard in this quote.
This I think really speaks to his attitudes of war. It certainly seems to be the goal of a tyrant to make his army hate the enemy, but we maintain our humanity in recognising that the opposing forces are made up of people who share many of the qualities and ideals we have... homes, families, friends, pastimes.
Tolkien decided, in the end, to have the Blue Wizards succeed in their mission by having them working behind the scenes to ensure that the destruction of the ring was possible.
You have a letter from him saying that or just speculating out of thin air?
@@sslaytor The People of Middle Earth, chapter 13 "The Last Writings"
@@BananaBlack2077bro brought receipts
I would be very skeptical about using anything in Chapter 13 as evidence. It is clearly Tolkien doing what Tolkien liked doing which was musing about Middle Earth. But it should hardly taken seriously and it would have taken revising published material, something he was loathe to do b
@@markrutledge5855 Cope.
I've been a JRR Tolkien fan for 45+ years and I can't believe the things I'm learning on this channel.
Thank you Robert, your Tolkien content is second to none. The time and effort you put into your work is plainly obvious. You are doing a really great job, friend.
What is Gandalfs favorite insect?
Fly you Fools!!
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😂
Your love of the halflings' leaf has clearly slowed your mind.
Daaaaad, stooooop! My friends are here... >:/
Oh God.
It would be awesome if someone unearthed a lost Tolkien map in some dusty archive with new places on it. That's my dream.
I've always had a lot of curiosity about Rhûn. The only mention we get of it is when Aragorn mentions that he's been to "Rhûn and far Harad where the stars are strange." It's a vaguely constructed sentence, but it sounds like some of Rhûn might be south of the equator. If so, that might tap into an unexplored part of Tolkien's own life experience. After all, he was born in the Orange Free State, where the stars are definitely strange (at least to us in the northern hemisphere).
That could have been intended as "to Rhûn, and far Harad where the stars are strange", because Harad is south of the equator.
Middle earth has a longitudinal equator drrr
At that time Middle Earth is still flat. There is no southern hemisphere until later.
@@mapolinski middle earth was flat ever since the numenorians fucked everything up for everyone, well before aragorn was born.
@@pymandres middle earth was always flat since creation. It was made into a sphere later.
Last time i was this early the Ainur were singing the 1st theme
😂
It's kind of exasperating to think that, for all the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding the War of the Ring, it was ultimately a regional affair. People in Rhûn and further east would've experienced little if any effects no matter how that war turned out.
Not quite. Its possible that the people would have been subjugated after the fall of the west. Saron never won long enough to take ove the east. Also he was a king/god to the people in the east prior to the war so i think it would have been easy to force them into submission.
@@takumi2023 He didn't "take over the east"? As you say yourself he was a godking-figure over there, armies of men flocking to aid his invasion of the west. They WERE subjugated, at least enough of them to militarily far outnumber the men of Gondor and Rohan (maybe it's when combined with the Haradrim, but still). Even after Sauron's death, it took a bunch of battles and negotiating until Aragorn managed to make peace with the Easterlings. As far as I understand it Sauron wouldn't rule the men in a way that eventually killed them, he just wanted to be in control of everything and worshipped. The East wasn't enough. So I do believe the people in Rhûn wouldn't have experienced that much of a change after Sauron's victory either.
The war itself would've always been won easily by Sauron, even the miraculous victory at Pelennor Fields still left the men of the west so outnumbered only the hope of destroying the One Ring remained. That's the only thing that made the war so pivotal, otherwise losing was only a matter of time.
I don't know where you get the idea Sauron would have stopped with the west, his ambitions was to bring his vision of order to everyone and everything.
That's like saying because ww2 didn't really involve most of south America they would have been unaffected if Europe was lost to the nazis
@@timm3735 Yeah, Hitler had plans to move all Czechs (some 10 million people) to Tierra del Fuego, an island in Argentina.
Fonstad's Atlas is simply brilliant.
I have her Pern atlas but I want her Middle Earth one SO badly
It is good, and the best we have, but it is not without its flaws. For example, it shows Angband far too close to the Beleriand, and the location of the dwarf cities in the Blue Mountains is wrong. But it is hard to keep up with all the details, since Tolkien kept changing things, and Christopher kept finding new, often conflicting, storylines.
If you can find it, also get Journeys of Frodo, an earlier atlas (not by Fonstad) which is sadly out of print.
@@JarkkoHietaniemi I Love the Journey of Frodo for some strange reason and read it to the point it is falling apart...
@@minibro73 JoF feels more somehow more personal, more initimate, fan-like (in a good sense), while Fonstad has the more detached, academic, neutral, angle.
Idk this is a hot take but I feel instead of telling new stories in the west of middle earth and like..retelling some stories, the east is an open field of creating history and explore things. Elves who never left, men who would possibly somewhat justifiably would view the dark lords as bringer of civilization, heroes of wars never heard of west of mordor. I get theres probsbly easier to get crowds with people we know, but feels like waste to not use idk
Exactly. Sadly its kind of content we might not see
Don't know if you care for the rings of power but it seems like in the next season they may be exploring the east a bit.
That's why you're not a writer
They will ruin it. Like starwars or game of thrones.
@@burningoceanfloor1560
Because he has actual creativity?
Whoa, these drawings and or paintings are amazing
On second thought, let's not go to Rhun, tis but a silly place.
It's only a model.
They rhun and spoon and moon a lot!
I fart in your general direction!
1:02 Totally did not expect that signature
Thats H. Not B.
@@craz2580Hitler Mussolini, then.
I've been a fan of your LotR essays for the last year and love how often you explore topics I've never considered to be curious about, such as Rhun, or the range of Sting's "orc radar". LOL! Great stuff. One topic I'm hoping you cover in the future is an essay focused entirely on Saruman. His relationship with Gandalf and the other wizards, how he became the head of the wizard order, if he was always, secretively corrupt and evil, or if he was once "good".
I like to imagine those elves who the western elves call Refusers (Avari), call their counterparts Deserters in turn.
“… and that’s okay”
Thank you for saying that.
Really glad to see Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps being used, they’re amazing
Be careful about mentioning trinomials on UA-cam, someone might think you're a bot. 😉
I love this channel and whenever a new LOTR video drops it’s like opening a present on your birthday or Christmas
Rhun is envisaged in a similar way as old maps with unknown areas shown as 'There be Dragons'.
It was "Hic sunt leones" - There are lions here.
Old maps have ""Tartaria"" to represent central and east asia
@@martavdz4972
I'm gonna scream.
This unlocked a middle school memory of mine. Asked my history teacher (who was quite old I will add) what "hic sunt dracones" meant on the edges of old maps and her answer was "it's just something old maps have",
Which like sure... Is correct I guess but omg "here be dragons" really contextualizes WHY it's on a bunch of old maps. Jeez didn't think I'd get this answer let alone even recall this experience.
Living in Australia when I was a kid we studied the European mapping and charting of the continent, beginning with the early Dutch explorers like Torres and van Diemen in the late 1600s, and how only sporadic sections of the northwest coast and the eastern coast were mapped at first - by James Cook, William Dampier and others, and finally Matthew Flinders who circumnavigated the entire continent, finally completing the map.
I always wished I lived in the Age of Explorers, to sail unexplored and mysterious seas, drawing lines on a map and never knowing what we might discover. If I lived in Tolkien's world, I would have been that guy who built a ship and resolved to circumnavigate the continent Middle-Earth is part of!
At 3:34, you say: "The Silmarillion was written mostly by the Western elves." Please make a video explaining more about this concept. I've always wanted someone to explain who it is that actually wrote the Silmarillion. I know that the in-world explanation tends to be that it is based upon Bilbo's three volume "translations from the elvish", but I want to know more. If LOTR was theoretically "translated" by JRR Tolkien from the Red Book, then how did we end up with the published Silmarillion? Where, exactly, did the text come from that Tolkien "translated" into English? Who wrote the texts that Bilbo first translated? Please tell us more about this subject.
+1 for this
bump +1
Much of it would have been written by Feanor and his sons, especially the events that took place in Valinor, the Kinslaying at Alqualonde and the crossing of the Helcaraxe. Once they were in Beleriand, it would have also included the writings of other chroniclers such as Thingol of Doriath, Turgon of Gondolin, and Cirdan the Shipwright.
I like thinking about Rhun. I like to think that, among the Easterlings, there were secret strongholds, remnents of light that withstood the darkness of Sauron.
I suspect that the residents there would have been more divided and more oppressed. You would see more evil dwarves and elves, even ones explicitly in Saurons service. I imagine that the worship of Sauron would have created state sponsered cults practicing unspeakable rites. Heroes in Rhun would be outlaws in the wild, or running underground resistance movements in the great cities.
Oddly enough, we never see any eastern dwarves or elves fighting in Sauron or Morgoths's armies. My thinkin is the elves being immortal would literally have those among them who remember the Valar and their servants from the beginning......or at least enough of them to KNOW Sauron was a bit of an imposter of sorts. At least enough of them wouldn't be to far removed from first hand information about such things and so there wouldn't be too many of them serving Sauron. The dwarves could also be fairly long lived and they kept in contact with their brothers in the west. The rings and the dwarves natural ability to resist charms and be under the domination of others would also work in their favour. So we don't see many if any of these races helping Sauron. Of course they may also be extinct or enslaved lol. Who knows.
I kind of like the idea that the dwarves actually know a lot about Rhún, because they keep in touch with their brethren, just no one asks them 😂
Dude this quality of video and the newest video by Vile Eye on Gollum really just enhances the world that Tolkien created. This shit is brilliant and ingenious.
The last time I was this early the Elves had only just been awakened
I have always wondered this! Thank you for your reviewing and research.
I love this video. It just grasps the ethereal nature of much of what Tolkien created and intended to be deciphered or not. Beautiful video.
So early I almost caught a glimpse of the two trees of Valinor
Good stories only speak on the things important to the story.
Tolkien’s style is as if someone is telling us and gets just a tad distracted on some details but there is never just a huge explanation of broad details all at once. I love it
There lies Rhun two, the Eastern Boogaloo.
Imagine an open-world video game set in Middle Earth and you could actually venture beyond the edges of the classic map. Go south to far Harad, east to Rhûn...
One can only dream of such things 😔
Lotro?
This literally exists 😂 Lord of the Rings Online.
@@ambrosius Seriously, I thought the same thing.
Thank Robert. I’m always apprehensive to follow new “fandom” UA-camrs but you’ve really gained my respect and I like your videos a lot.
As much as i like answers, I prefer to have a mistery. It's so intriguing as to what is there, and the maps just showing blank space only a few geography like woods and the sea because that's all they know about it, helps this too.
I love your content. It makes his work feel less of this otherworldly fantasy I grew up feeling and makes it more grounded in reality. I mean that in the best way not an insult. I was always like how did he come up with all these things but the more of you I watch the more it makes him feel a lot like most other creators in terms of story writing / world building tricks. He just did it better
Rhun, I think, is the stereotype of oriental despotism, a popular idea in previous centuries used to justify colonization.
Looool, whatever you say weirdo
There is so much to explore. I will go there, and bring news back for production.
Great piece!! Well-done as always, Robert!
A video about the history of Belseriand would be amazing to watch
Am I crazy or is there some writing that suggests that the Blue Wizards stirred up enough dissention to delay Sauron's invasion?
Just found your channel and i really am enjoying your content, its great to hear another voice in the void talking about LotR and beyond having read the complete and that his son did picking up after dear ol'dad it seems. But yes madhing the like button and subscribed. Thank you!
That's one thing that's great about the books, he left some mysteries in it by not developing it further, something today's movie writers should do as well, this prequel and sequel crazy that we have today is destroying many sagas.
Love that blue wizards thumbnail!
rhun is one of those things in the lord of the rings that the author has generously left us to imagine for ourselves
I don't see it as generous calling them "wild" and that's it. Same with the Haradrim, they're always mentioned as "cruel". Seems pretty limited to me.
@@martavdz4972 if i could be generous to the author himself i would say that the people from rhun and harad are only ever seen while under sauron's influence, so they're probably just normal people like those in the west before and after sauron's return to middle earth, but the choice to almost never show them in peacetime (that is, as humans) is very questionable.
I like to think of Rhun and the Easterlings as something like the Roman Empire and Constantinople. Might be just the whole riding of chariots thing making me think that
8:00 "Easterlings in Disarray"
Hey Sam. I'm from Turkey I love your videos, because of you I learned a lot about Hebrew history. What are your thoughts on Tolkien and his work?
Middle Earth & LOTR was in many ways a simile for the events of post WW1 and through WW2. We have the enemy in the east, but not really east, the saviours and the fighters in the west, and those in the east that aren't part of the story of the battles of the west, though they have some minor secondary impact on it.
Sauron just wanted to stimulate the economy.
I loved the design of the soldiers of that region from the movie. They look amazing.
I still find it crazy that so many of the wise wizards sent failed on the main mission. Time can be an ally but also your greatest enemy.
If I was Tolkien writing a sequel to LOTR I would write about trouble caused by the blue wizards in Rhun. Sort of a wicked witch of the East and West dynamic, but instead it would be blue wizards in both the north and south of Rhun who were causing trouble for Gondor in some way.
Except, in later writings, Tolkien said they did the exact opposite of that.
I much prefer Tokien's later vision of the Blue Wizards where they played a mostly helpful role, but with some mixed results. There's lots of room for a Second Age or Third Age story where these Wizards struggled to break Sauron cults, and free eastern rulers from shadowy vizior-type characters.
This video shook my nerd confidence. I have long viewed myself as above average in terms of Tolkien lore, but WOW I didn’t know enough about Rhun
Very comprehensive! I really enjoyed your insight on this one...though i confess I was half awake when I saw the alert and went: Wait, why is Robert talking about the Middle East? >__> Whoops
How about a video about the climatology of middle earth?
I would absolutely love to see more videos about the far-away geography of Arda! Perhaps Forodwaith?
About the peoples of the east - Rhûn, Khand and Variags. Tolkien said he was inspired by Asia (China, Japan, etc):
"When asked in an interview what lay east of Rhûn, Tolkien replied "Rhûn is the Elvish word for 'east'. Asia, China, Japan, and all things which people in the west regard as far away."
In an early versions of "The Hobbit", Bilbo's speech about facing the "dragon peoples of the east" had an reference of China and the Hindu Kush:
"In the earliest drafts of The Hobbit, Bilbo offered to walk from the Shire 'to [cancelled: Hindu Kush] the Great Desert of Gobi and fight the Wild Wire worm(s) of the Chinese. In a slightly later version J.R.R. Tolkien altered this to say 'to the last desert in the East and fight the Wild Wireworms of the Chinese' and in the final version it was altered once more to say 'to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert'."
History of Middle Earth - The First Phase, "The Pryftan Fragment", p. 9
I always saw the barbarian invasions (Wainriders, Balchots, peoples of Rhûn) from the far east against the northwest of Middle-earth as a reference to European historiography with the onslaughts of (semi) nomadic Asian peoples (the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, etc.).
Would they be barbarians? I don't think there's a Greek equivalent to say the non-greek speakers bleet like sheep "bar bar bar bar"
@@lomiification It is a similar situation, in that the invading people are demonized and made out to be a lot more "barbaric" than they really are. This is true for real history, and probably for Middle-Earth.
The "western Easterlings" Gondor encounters probably reflect the romans experiences with the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians, Alanes, Parthians...
But interesting Tolkien does mention China and Japan! I wonder what middle-earth analogies to China and Japan would have been like...
Wow, very very cool. Thanks!
Tolkien left it undescribed so our imaginations could Rhun away!
This is what I thought they should make a Tolkien series about, if you want to be realistically diverse. It could be set in a crossroads town used by travelers and traders to avoid Mordor. You could explore different peoples and cultures.Or you could slap some shit together and shoehorn in an illogically diverse cast and call it a day.
"To Cuivienen there is no returning..." -- The Silmarillion. I wonder what happened.
It's meant to stay a mystery, everyone loves a mystery !
Love the content and the art too!
I heard “Dark Elves” and immediately got Warhammer Fantasy flashbacks
Or Elder Scrolls 😜
Weren’t the Easterlings Saurons best troops? I think they were the last troops to be defeated during the battle of the pelenor fields.
100% his best forces. Thankfully something happened in the east and south to prevent Sauron from musterig the full weight of these vast areas against Gondor. Had he done so, GOndor would have no chance.
Like 17 years ago I, the other main guy, and a couple of friendly posters less pious on the subject, went back and forth reiterating how little we knew about Rhun in a thread on a tolkein forum that took itself very seriously. The thread was basically a chatroom and we, the two main culprits, were banned for farming the site's equivalent of karma, cause a bunch of forum features were karma locked, and we said pretty much nothing of value over a span of months, despite having tons of thread views. Truly one of the times in which one could technically be considered alive.
If the Blue Wizards were in their own ways corrupted like Saruman this could kind of explain why the Hardiram seemed to have some kind of Magical Abilities over things like Beast Mastery and what not.
The elves are quite snooty.
Really enjoyed this video - very informative!🤓
You might mention that The Orient (literally "east") served the same purpose in European culture; somewhere far off and mysterious.
The inland sea of Helcar, Almaren, the Mountain ringil, the sea of Ormal or Illuin, the Orocarni, the Wind Mountains,,the Yellow mountains, Easterlings, Variags, Wainriders, Balchoth, the home of Khamul, Cuivienen,,the wild woods, Hildorien, the Murmenalda, melkors first temple, four more clans of Dwarves with their dwellings, Avari Elves, two blue wizards and their cults and magic traditions,,the last desert with its wereworms... that is quite a lot we get!
Another wonderful video
Straya mate. Btw we lost one of our spiders, have you seen little Ungo over your way?
Question for a future video? How powerful was Frodo for the short time he claimed The One Ring in Mt Doom before Gollum bit his finger off? Was he anywhere near as powerful as Sauron, or any of the other Maiar?
A whole lot of creativity is in Rhun and the Blue Wizards
Well done! Very interesting.
I would love to have known more about that story of the blue wizards turning foul. Too bad we'll never know outside of Amazon or fan thoughts.
You can LITERALLY go there !
Your stuff is absolutely excellent brother, but I do have a gentle correction. The Wainriders did not end the line of the kings of Gondor. That was the witch king in Minas Morgule.
'The echo of darkness'
Great name for a death metal album
If I was charged with creating a tv series in Tolkien’s legendarium - my thinking to avoid messing with canon is to explore an undeveloped part of it, and my pitch would be what was happening in Rhun during the War of the Ring. Easterling heroes rebelling against their Dark Numinoran aristocracy who are sending their people as slave soldiers to fight for Mordor.
Nice to see Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps again
Love the non canonical Ruhn stuff in Merp.
Mr. Tolkien was very clear that the purpose of these books was to create ancient mythology for Europe, so there was no need for him to develop content outside of the Middle Earth region, especially because that content already exists in the form of already existing mythology.
I would love a video on the dark lands. I know there’s such little info on it but maybe you could find something.
The Blue Wizards came in the 3rd Age. I would not use unpublished material to overturn the Appendix outline found in the RoTK
It's going to be interesting to see how they represent this in RoP
Knowing the Wokery of Amazon, they will all be White and they will all be evil. Or, they will be Asian/Indian and they will be peaceful.
Yeah I'm excited to find out what they come up with, given how little we know. It's kind of a blank slate to do whatever wacky stuff they want.
Elves always had a longing for the sea. Partly because of the calling from Valinor, but also for itself. And in the prime of Numenor, as an island nation they would have developed great sailing skills as a necessity for trade and commerce. So I find it implausible that neither culture ever discovered what lands lie to the East of Middle Earth. In the many thousands of years of high culture they would have had time to sail to the remaining 3 compass directions of the world. Maybe they even sailed to Valinor coming to it from the West side of the blessed realm!
Man for what I’d give for a “Journey to the west” style retelling of the events of middle earth from the perspective of an Asian blue wizard who follows an allegorical Buddha
You’re cringe
I really wish they did a modern spin on LOTR, like Sauron comes back, but stuff has to be settled more diplomatically. Like Sauron cluld stir up regional proxy wars in the east. Like a war for South Easterlings separates from the North and Gondor sends a expedition force to suppress.
Can you cover more about The New Shadow? this is the first time I'm hearing about it. Or is there just not enough to talk about? Great video this time though!!
The inspiration of British on the foreign Anglo man Tolkien is crazy. Rhun clearly based on Cymraeg