Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Appendix B: The Tale of Years

Appendix B contained a long and detailed timeline clarifying dates and locations related to characters found in the dialogue portion of the book and Appendix A, explaining relationships between characters, and describing the fates of characters, especially members of the Fellowship. Like in the real-world, all characters died on Middle-earth or passed over the Sea — a metaphor for death — bringing closure to the story in a way rarely seen in modern fiction but common in religious texts, mythologies, and history books.

A Brief Timeline of Timelines

The concept of timelines began in antiquity, as previously discussed during “Overview of Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers”. In that post, I noted the potential influence of the Bible and Western history on Tolkien’s detailed Appendixes. Annals of kings appeared in the Old Testament, especially 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles, while additional historical records, Books of the Chronicles ‘Of the Kings of Judah’ and ‘Of the Kings of Israel’ have been lost. Similarly, genealogies are found in several books of the Bible: Genesis, Ruth, and Chronicles in the Old Testament, and Matthew and Luke in the New Testament. Outside of the Bible, the Sumerian King List (SKL) also known as Chronicle of the One Monarchy, detailed a fantastical list of kings from Ur, while the Cyrus Cylinder written in cuneiform was a similar stone for Persians.

Interest in chronology picked up in Western Europe around the mid-18th century and with it appeared the modern timeline. The Chronologie Universelle scroll, also called Machine Chronologique, was created by Jacques Barbeu-Duborg in 1753, but the enormous scrollable chart-in-a-box proved to be impractical, not to mention expensive for the everyday reader. A Chart of Biography by Joseph Priestley first published in 1765, was an infographic listing the names of famous people — or at least famous European men — during the time periods in the Bible through his present day and grouped by their area of focus, such as math or art. While not as in-depth as books on individual topics, the timelines allowed readers to grasp simultaneous events or lifetimes, understanding how a happening in one part of the world might influence another.

Motifs: Volcanoes & Sleep

The massive volcano Thangorodrim was created by Morgoth but destroyed by the Valinor at the end of the First Age (Return, 400). Later, Sauron tried to replicate the efforts of his vanquished master by creating Orodruin, also known as Mount Doom, where he forged the One Ring (Return, 401). As previously mentioned in “Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (i) Númenor”, volcanoes were somewhat rare in European mythologies with the exception of the workshop of Greek smith god Hephaestus or Hephaistos, called Vulcan in Latin, and a good number of volcano oral traditions in Iceland, where Nordic people seeking to colonize a new island found a land that alternated between dangerous lava and rich pastures.

A Christian-coded motif appeared in the opening paragraph on the Third Age, which stated that “Sauron slept” (Return, 403), a metaphor for impermanent death or suspended animation. This metaphor found frequent use in the Bible, especially in the Gospels, four books containing stories about the life of Jesus. In Matthew 9, Jesus raised the daughter of a synagogue leader, remarking that “The girl is not dead but asleep”. In Luke 8, the synagogue leader’s name is recorded as Jairus, and Jesus noted, “She is not dead but asleep”. In either case, Tolkien would have been familiar with these stories.

Comparative Histories

The rise of timelines gave rise to another trend and controversy in academics: comparative histories. Researchers believed that history repeated itself, and by comparing these repeats in history, they could determine what factors were influenced by individual cultures. Scholars like French sociologist Émile Durkheim, French medieval historian Marc Bloch, and German sociologist Max Weber described the comparison as a scientific method for history, creating a study where all variants but one were identical to test how the single difference in culture changed the outcome.

Since the late 19^th century when the methods were first introduced, the discipline divided into multiple methods. “Entangled” histories came from two groups who had ongoing interactions. For example, the Ñoldor Elves of Eregion had an entangled history with the Durin’s Folk Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, as “the friendship that grew up between the people of Durin and the Elven-smiths of Eregion was the closest that there has ever been between the two races” (Return, 401).

“Encompassing” histories, a term coined by American sociologist Charles Tilly involved two groups within a larger system. The Harfoot and Fallohide Hobbits frequently appeared together in the Third Age, as the two “breeds” settled the Shire in T.A. 1601, about thirty years before the arrival of Stoor Hobbits in c. T.A. 1630 (Return, 405). Since the Fallohides were noted as “leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors” (The Fellowship of the Ring, 4), they likely made up a ruling class while Harfoots became a servant class, although the former ruling class of Harfoots seemed to have maintained their status by marrying into Fallohide families. The first Thain of the Shire was Stoor, Bucca of the Marish, who took the position in T.A. 1979 even though Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blanco had “obtained permission from the high king” (Fellowship, 5) to settle the area in T.A. 2340. Perhaps Bucca’s mother was from a Fallohide family, much like Merry Brandybuck’s mother Esmeralda Took.

The third method of comparison was “reciprocal”, also known as “balanced”, a post-colonial approach where Eurocentric assumptions on how civilizations should work are questioned, and an opposite question to the norm is considered instead. In Middle-earth, Elf culture was considered the ideal standard, and cultures that did not reach the sophistication of these countries were deemed inferior. The Hobbits with their relaxed lifestyle and general disinterest in scholarly pursuits were looked down upon by other Races. Inversely, within Hobbit society, Bilbo and Frodo were ridiculed for their interests in other cultures, and Merry hid his interest in history and linguistics until returning from the quest. Using the reciprocal method of comparison, as emphasized by Tolkien himself, the tranquility of the Shire meant Hobbits were “little troubled by wars” (Fellowship, 5) throughout the Third Age until Saruman took over the country. Hobbits even developed their own way of recording histories through family trees and oral storytelling, since many were illiterate. Trading sophistication for peace of mind was a risk well worth taking.

Mayors & Decolonization

The timeline showed that the Shire underwent major political change in Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 1427. Sam Gardner, formerly called Sam Gamgee, was elected Mayor of Michel Delving for the first of seven times with his political career spanning a total of forty-nine years (Return, 417-418). Back during “Prologue, 3 On the Ordering of the Shire”, the original duty of the Mayor “was to preside at banquets” (Fellowship, 11) along with managing the postal service and the shirriffs. I compared this position to the Lord Mayor of London, who to this day holds a ceremonial position in the city.

However, other information in this section indicated that Sam shifted the role of Mayor to have significant power, more like the burgermeisters of post-feudalist Germanic countries who were elected by the people and controlled a highly effective urban system of public works and charitable organizations. The same year that Sam was first elected as Mayor, his friend Strider, known officially as Aragorn II, King Elessar Telcontar, “issue[d] an edict that Men are not to enter the Shire”, creating “a Free Land under the protection of the Northern Sceptre” (Return, 418). Aragorn apparently felt comfortable with releasing the Shire from his extensive kingdom since Sam had political leadership over the country. His decolonizing efforts were radically different to those occurring throughout the African continent at the time The Lord of the Rings was published in the real-world.

Just as the War of the Ring brought awareness to the existence of Hobbits as having a distinct culture in Middle-earth and a homeland which they could defend, so the First and Second World Wars caused powers in Europe to realize they had trained about a million soldiers in sub-Saharan Africa to defend themselves against any enemy, including their colonizers. The depiction of the Shire was a rose-colored glasses approach to the issue; or perhaps it was made to seem that way during the editing process once the Red Book of Westmarch arrived in Minas Tirith, Gondor. Hobbits were depicted as content and somewhat lazy with their idyllic country, not unlike stereotypical portrayals of Africans. Characters both “good” and “bad” refer to Hobbits as rabbits, bunnies, or rats — even Aragorn joked about hunting hobbits for their hides upon discovering Frodo’s mithril coat (Fellowship, 377) — and Africans have likewise been mocked as animals instead of humans. If the War of the Ring proved nothing else, it showed that Hobbits were people, too; the World Wars had the same effect for Africa.

An entire branch of economics is devoted to the legacy of European colonization on African markets. Even with the creation of the Pan-African Congress in 1900 and many highly educated African leaders leading the call for independence, these newly released countries could not immediately overcome hundreds of years of resource drain, enslavement, and ecological destruction. As recently as 2000, The Economist magazine declared Africa “the hopeless continent”, too far in debt and political turmoil to be of value to the Western world. Twenty-four years later, these nations have seen huge growths in literacy, education, nutrition, medical care, and personal wealth, even though many from older generations view these assets as taboo due to their association with former colonizers. Hobbits experienced better treatment in comparison, as the Shire had its own strong economy, barring the year it was controlled by Saruman, but its colonization was not without loss; they “forgot whatever languages they had used before” as they were obligated to use the Common Speech like all subjects of the empire (Fellowship, 5).

Coronation Gifts, Nepotism, & Knighthood

In S.R. 1432, Merry Brandybuck became the Master of Buckland upon the death of his father, Saradoc “Scattergold” Brandybuck. Upon his coronation, his friends King Éomer of Rohan and Lady Éowyn of Ithilien sent him “rich gifts” (Return, 418). Coronation gifts have long been an assessment of how much two monarchies liked each other. During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I in 16^th century England, diplomats arrived with animals, precious metals, jewelry, and painted portraits to show the loyalty between their own monarchs and the English crown.

More recently, during the crowning of Elizabeth II in 1953, just one year before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, gifts from former Axis countries during World War II had to be chosen wisely. France employed sculptor and medalist Henri Dropsy to create a gold coronation medal, which was then gifted by President Vincent Auriol, a socialist known for his resistance against the Nazi-backed Vichy government. Meanwhile, Hirohito of Japan, posthumously known as Emperor Shōwa, gifted a fancy box decorated with a white heron by lacquerer Shirayama Shōsai. As for a more modern gift, Spain gave King Charles III a pot of orange marmalade. The tradition began when the youngest granddaughter Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, also named Victoria, married King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906. Since Charles III is the great-great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria, he and the first receiver of royal Spanish orange marmalade were first cousins three times removed.

Back in the Shire in S.R. 1434, two years after the gift-giving, Paladin Took died, and his only son Pippin became “the Took and Thain”, making him the last of the four Hobbits of the Fellowship to gain political power. Pippin had previously married distant cousin Diamond Took of Long Cleeve in S.R. 1427, and their only child Faramir was born three years later in S.R. 1430. Lord Faramir of Ithilien, husband of Lady Éowyn and the namesake of Pippin’s son, apparently did not send any gifts to the Took family, while Merry’s family did not receive the same timeline treatment as Pippin’s did. Merry was later mentioned on the timeline as having at least one son, but neither the date of his marriage nor the birth of his son were listed. Put a pin in this for an essay to come in two weeks, when I comb through “Appendix C: Family Trees”.

Also in 1434, Aragorn added the positions of the Thain, the Master, and the Mayor to the “Counsellors of the North-kingdom”, a region once called Arnor, legally handing over much of his decision making to his three Hobbit friends. Nepotism was the norm in medieval Europe, and many rulers had their own king’s courts or curia regis in Latin. The court took on various colloquial names. In Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, which lasted from about 450 to 1055, the ruling body was called a witan, meaning “wise men”. The term placitum meant the same in Frankish kingdoms located in parts of what is now Germany and France, which began around 500 and transformed into the Carolingian Empire in 800.

In England, the curia regis lasted from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the end of the 13th century, with its form being solidified during the reign of Henry I from 1100 to 1035. Originally, the court was forced to travel with the king, but after the establishment of the Magna Carta in 1215, the court stayed in one place. Members of the court might give advice to the king, assist with the country’s finances, and act like judges of their own district. This forum of advisors still exists in modern democratic governments as a council to a president or prime minister and as a supreme court.

Returning once again to Middle-earth, in S.R. 1436, Aragorn visited the Brandywine Bridge on the edge of the Shire, as he had banned all Men from the country and obeyed his own rules. He gave Sam the Star of the Dúnedain (Return, 418), a silver star broach commonly worn by Rangers that had earned him the Gondorian nickname Thorongil or “Eagle of the Star”. I interpreted this as similar to knighting; since Merry had been knighted by Théoden to become a vassal of Rohan, and Pippin had been knighted by Denethor to become a vassal of the Stewards in Gondor, Aragorn likely believed Sam deserved his own title as the protector of the Shire and a vassal under the reunited kingdom. Prior to this, Sam had been the only member of the Fellowship without a connection to nobility, assuming one counted Gandalf’s creation by Eru Ilúvatar, the creator deity, as making him a child of the King of the Universe, something Tolkien likely would have agreed to as a Catholic.

Knighthood and its female equivalent, damehood, continue to this day in Great Britain, although the obligations of the role have changed. While knights once trained from childhood to defend their kings in battle, modern knights and dames make positive contributions to society. Honorary titles can even be conferred upon non-British citizens, with a shortlist of well-known American knights and dames including: military general and U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, movie director Steven Spielberg, composer John Williams, Microsoft founder and humanitarian Bill Gates, plus his former wife Melinda Gates, evangelist Billy Graham, and Holocaust survivor and humanitarian Elie Wiesel.

In the final tangent back to the Shire for this section, Elanor was “made a maid of honour to Queen Arwen” (Return, 419). As last discussed during “Appendix A, I The Numenorean Kings, (iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur”, this was the highest ranking position for an unmarried woman in a feudalist kingdom, below only the married ladies-in-waiting. The modern equivalent was an executive at a Fortune 500 company having his daughter intern for the CEO. Elanor was likely the only Hobbit among Women, but her father’s new title at least made her honorary nobility.

Dynasties

The easiest way to create a dynasty or multiple dynasties is to be rich and powerful, then have a lot of kids and strategically marry them off to other rich and powerful people. In the modern era, Queen Victorian won this game by having nine children in twenty-one years. The Victoria who married Alfonso XIII and started the marmalade tradition was the youngest of forty-two grandchildren. Descendants included royalty in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Romania, Greece, Prussia, and Germany. By the time of her death in 1901 her grandchildren ruled all of Europe and caused World War I once they could not get along.

This method to dynasty creation happened twice in The Lord of the Rings, but only among Hobbits. Elven leaders tended to have one child; Celeborn and Galadriel only had their daughter Celebrían, while Thranduil appeared to be unmarried with his son Legolas singing of "the woods that bore me” (Return, 252), as if the trees gave birth to him instead of an elf-lady. Dwarf-lords likewise had few children, if any, as Fíli and Kíli were the only nephews of Thorin II, who never married, and Gimli seemed to be the only child of Glóin and an unknown wife (Return, 398). When the kings of Men had multiple children, as was the case for many of Aragorn’s ancestors, their kingdoms divided and fell into civil war.

Not so for Hobbits, who prided themselves in having “large families” where “many generations of relatives live in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral and many-tunnelled mansion”, along with keeping intricate family-trees (Fellowship, 8). Old Took was renowned for fathering twelve children, and the leader of every important family in the Shire soon numbered among his descendants. That amount would not be surpassed until the family of Sam and Rose Gardner, who had thirteen children, three of which formed their own dynasties.

The oldest child, daughter Elanor Fairbairn, married Fastred of Greenholm on the Far Downs in 1451. The next year, 1452, Aragorn gifted Westmarch, “from the Far Downs to the Tower Hills (Emy Beraid)” (Return, 419) to the Shire. By 1455, Sam requested that Fastred be named Warden of Westmarch, cementing a family dynasty over the region. Frodo-lad was the oldest son and would inherit Bag End, likely following his father’s footsteps to become Mayor. In 1463, middle daughter Goldilocks married Faramir Took, guaranteeing that Gardner descendants would become the Took and the Thain. For a Hobbit-lad born in a primitive hole, declared a “half-wit”, and destined for a life of menial labor, Sam did well for himself and his family.

What Goes in the Hypothetical Animated Musical?

Plenty of material in this section would be ideal information to include in the musical. The timeline reviewed how Celebrimbor gave the three elven rings to “the three greatest of the Eldar” or western Elves (Return, 403): Gil-galad the last High King of the Ñoldor, Galadriel the Lady of Lothlórien, and Círdan the Master of the Grey Havens. Later, Gil-galad “gave” his to Elrond, while Círdan “surrendered” his to Gandalf. The difference in verbs seemed important: Gil-galad gifted his ring to his heir, while Círdan relinquished his ring to his superior. These scenes might appear in a series of mini-flashbacks towards the end of Book VI, Chapter IX, “The Grey Havens” when the three bearers of the rings were revealed to everyone. When asked by someone, likely a Hobbit, if he will depart with the ringbearers, Círdan can give his line “you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. But as for me, my heart is with the Sea, and I will dwell by the grey shores until the last ship sails” (Return, 403-404).

Also note that besides being considered among “the three greatest of the Eldar”, Galadriel was declared “greatest of Elven women” (Return, 401); in another part of the Legendarium, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth, she was declared “greatest of the Ñoldor”. Emphasis on Galadriel’s achievements should appear in the Lothlórien segment during Book II, Chapters VI-VIII.

Surrounding the creation of the rings was a brief story of Celebrimbor and the elves of Eregion befriending Durin VI and the Dwarves of Moria, a moment of happiness in an otherwise tragic story that ended in many deaths, the destruction of Eregion, and the locking of the Gates of Moria. This information would fit into the waiting period at the Gates in Book II, Chapter IV, “A Journey in the Dark” as Gandalf attempted to remember the password. In addition to his regular dialogue in the text, Frodo may mention that Bilbo had researched the history of the mines while translating The Silmarillion, which could lead into the sequence about how Moria was built around the same time the three rings for the Elven-kings were made.

After the One Ring and Sauron were destroyed, Celeborn led Lothlórien troops by boat over the Anduin river to Dol Guldur, a fortress once belonging to the Mirkwood Elves before its capture by Sauron. At last, readers received a taste of Galadriel’s full power, as she “threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed” (Return, 415). This blast of healing energy was the antithesis to the first pair of atomic bombs at the end of World War II, dropped on August 6 and 9 in 1945, just ten years before The Return of the King was released. Much like the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the attacks came in two parts, with the first caused by the melting of the ring in Orodruin. The bombs caused massive casualties, with almost 200,000 people immediately killed or injured and at least another 100,000 succumbing to illnesses caused by radiation exposure over the ensuing decades. The fallout of Galadriel’s attack caused renewed life instead of death for the land, but any people in the area, such as Orcs, Haradrim, and Easterlings, may have been wiped out in the process; the text does not provide details. Clearly this crucial battle must find its way into the musical, likely appearing during Book VI, Chapter IV, “The Fields of Cormallen”.

The final section of the timeline, detailing what happened to members of the Fellowship and their friends until the end of their time on Middle-earth, will be included in my framing device, to be described in a future post. A reference will be made that “after the passing of Galadriel in a few years Celeborn grew weary of his realm and went to Imladris to dwell with the sons of Elrond… there was no longer light or song in Caras Galadhon” (Return, 415), along with the eventual deaths of Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn, and the passing over the Sea by Sam, Gimli, and Legolas, which marked the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, and the end of this week’s essay.

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