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Originally Posted by Form
X-posted with Huinesoron, it took me so long to get here--and he pre-agrees with me that Númenor should have been saved!
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I was thinking on this, and it made me realise that
Tolkien saves Numenor for later, too! Both of his Numenor tales -
The Lost Road and
Notion Club Papers - are presented as journeys
towards Westernesse. The land itself only appears very late.
And... he kind of does that with LotR, too. The high Numenorean culture is hinted at by Faramir in book 4, but only actually encountered in book 5. Doesn't book 3 literally end with Pippin
not reaching Minas Tirith yet, to stretch out the reveal a little longer?
In thinking about that, I realised that LotR is, in terms of its "good locations", also a walk back in time. We start in the 19th/20th century England of the Shire; step back to a slightly rougher time in Bree; visit a stately home/lord of the manor in Rivendell; go on to an Arthurian Middle Ages setting in Lorien (the gift-giving lady is straight out of
Gawain and the Green Knight, which Tolkien wrote on!); hit up the Anglo-Saxons in Rohan; drift through "William Morris' Huns and Romans" on the edges of Mordor; and then come out the far side of the dark ages into bright Numenorean civilisation.
It's only one way of describing it, of course, but it has me wondering if you could do the same with
Rings of Power. Can we construct a storyline that runs through the locations in that kind of 'temporal reversal' way?
We open in Eregion, in a very modern-seeming elvish society. Our protagonist is once again Galadriel: not as a warrior but as that combination of commander-politician-sorceress that befits a member of House Finwe. Her family are here, because we need Celebrian later. Artanis is hanging out with Celebrimbor, who has this idea about making something - but he needs dwarven help.
Drift into the Industrial Revolution (a regression, Tolkien would agree!) by contact with Khazad-dum. Celeborn fills the RoP Elrond role with Durin and co. We also have the Annatar plot - keep the viewers guessing by having multiple possible-Annatars around in Eregion, then drop Actual Annatar out of the blue at the end. ^_^ Forge the Rings, and discover, oh no! Annatar is a baddie!
As the War of the ELves and Sauron kicks in, Galadriel runs the retreat. She ends up holed up in Rivendell - filling a Tudor manor role, with Elrond as its lord. We first meet him as an intimidating figure - Finwean, heir of Gondolin, son of the Evening Star - but soon realise he is 'as kind as summer'. Elrond/Celebrian romance under siege.
The siege is (temporarily?) lifted by Lindon, and Galadriel and co are able to make it to Lindon. This is the last of High Elven culture, a relic of Beleriand - think Age of Chivalry, King Arthur as commonly viewed. The war is still ongoing! There's probably a whole season of The War, seen mostly from around its edges.
Send Galadriel out on a secret mission (to uncharted space!). She crosses the Misty Mountains by the High Pass and lands in a pastoral, Anglo-Saxon-esque world. Honestly this is probably proto-Hobbits (& stuff the timeline), but it could be woodsmen too.
On into the woods and make contact with the Greenwood elves. They're a combination of Roman (I understand Amon Lanc has a Legate
) and pre-Romanesque - ie, native archers hiding in the underbrush. No doubt they refuse to help out, setting up their reversal later on. We can even go on to the Entwives as a prehistoric-type society (maybe this is where the proto-Hobbits come in). Galadriel is essentially putting together a Fellowship to try and do
something to end the War.
I'm not sure how the plot works out, but ultimately Team Galadriel don't save the world - Numenor does, coming completely out of nowhere in their black ships to just
crush Sauron. This is my moment of timeline compression - the Numenoreans are led by Ar-Pharazon the Golden, and they drive Sauron all the way back to Mordor and take him captive. The story moves, at last, to Numenor, and the grand culture we find there.
From that point on we follow both the fall of Numenor, and the Elves dealing with what was left behind. Some malaise is afflicting the dwarves, which the audience may realise is the Rings. The Nazgul are rising, one at a time - perhaps some of them are characters we know. The Numenorean settlements in Middle-earth aren't as nice and helpful as they seem, and they're getting worse...
Then the Cataclysm, the founding of Gondor & Arnor (some politics here, as they're basically founding it on the backs of Pharazon's slaves), and finally the Last Alliance, when the Greenwood elves redeem themselves and everything comes together. Huzzah!
Honestly, I like this much better than my last suggestion (for all the similarities) - the structure feels more Tolkien, and the realisation that you can have everything at once just by merging the two "Numenor defeats Sauron" battles (which don't really have anything between them anyway) works really nicely. The downside, of course, is the same as last time - you're holding off a lot of the big-name elements (Hobbits, Elrond, Gil-Galad, Numenor) until several seasons later. Eh, that's one for the Marketing Department.
hS