Orcs , more important than we think?
 

While looking over TTT i realised how important the orcs actually are. For example my question here is What would have happened if
Sauron's orcs prevailed and they had taken Merry and Pippin back to Mordor?
The plan had been successful and Saruman got hold of them ?

As there were many arguments among the orcs themselves these could all have gone one way or the other with either of the three parties there taking hold.

Has anyone else ever wondered what would have happened in the different scenarios that could have occured?

Probably.

What would've happened if Morgoth altered the Elves into Orcs? [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

i think it was saruman who planned the expedition to begin with. if saruman hadn't planned it, the orcs of mordor wouldn't have been there (most likely). so, there you go.

If either Sauron's or Saruman's orcs had succeeded in getting Merry and Pippin to their respective masters, the two poor Hobbits, not having the Ring, would probably have been tortured for information and then killed.

And then, in all likelihood, the Huorns wouldn't have turned up at Helm's Deep, the Ents wouldn't have attacked Isengard, Aragorn wouldn't have been able to reveal himself using the Palantir of Orthanc, the Witch King wouldn't have been killed, Faramir would have died with his father ... and so on.

So, on the whole it was probably a pretty good thing that the orcs quarreled ampngst themselves and were then overrun by Eomer and his men.

Other than their existence as general bad guys, one of the most important abilities of orcs was their ability to quarrel in any given situation. This faciliated Merry and Pippin's escape and probably saved them from being unwittingly killed by Eomer and co. It also assisted Frodo and Sam in getting into Mordor through Cirith Ungol.

Perhaps if Sauron had made the orcs more agreeable chaps ... [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

And then wouldn't Gandalf have felt bad about calling Pippin names!

Of course, it is a rather moot point, because why would Tolkien have written it that way? In a book like LotR, with all the interweaving subplots, if you change one thing, the rest doesn't work out the same. That's a nice thing about his stories: everything matters.

Importance?

How do you mean?