Links between characters. Why is tolkien different?

[doug*platypus]

I wasn't very clear on the original post, either, but littlmanpoet seems to have cleared it up a little. I think that you'd first have to ask whether there were any singular victims in Arda, and if so who they were. I'm not sure how Arthur Conan Doyle defined his villains, but if it is by their deliberate harm of other humans, then it is in a different way to Tolkien. The villains of Middle-Earth are portrayed as despicable because of their attitudes and their actions, in general more than as directed at a single entity.

As an example, Saruman didn't particularly want to kill Théoden - the desire to do this was just a byproduct of his lust for power and control. He was not himself a murderer, but more of a commander.

is it more a balanced ecosystem of a story

I've never heard literature compared to ecology before. That's... interesting?!