Note on the landing of the Five Wizards and their functions and operations

[ArcusCalion]

FW-SL-16: I think you are right and these changes might help to alleviate the erroneous implications of the chapter placing. I shall have to revise my Third Age draft for these things, but I suppose that will not be a problem. Perhaps this chapter may as well go here.

FW-SL-00.7: Christoper Tolkien points out that if Yavanna sent Radagast explicitly because he was a lover of birds and beasts, then how could he fail his mission by becoming enamored of them? I suppose you could argue that his secondary goals supplanted his primary goals and that was what made him fail, but due to the fact that Christopher Tolkien himself expressed doubts about the logic here, as well as Tolkien's apparent change of heart about the Blue WIzards, throws this into doubt for me. Liek you said however, the Blue Wizards may have turned to evil eventually, but it must have been very late, if even at the end of the Third Age the armies of Sauron were smaller due to their work. Personally, I think from a timeline perspective their turning evil is extremely unlikely.

[Findegil]

Turning top evil does not mean going over to Sauron! If they did build their own realm of power in competition to Sauron as did Saruman, or probably even more open, since Saruman played a double game with bith sides, that would have still be helpfull in distracting forces that Sauron could have used against the west, but would have been a failure in the Istari quest.

And for Radagast that is exactly how I see his failure: Even so Yavanna wished to have one emessairy that had a special care for here beasts and birds, the main mission was to raise opposition to Sauron, and I don't see Radagast doing that in his actions around Rosgobel.

Resspectfully
Findegil

[ArcusCalion]

Ah you are correct, I had not thought of that. I suppose since there is no explicit contradiction here then we must leave it as is, as sad as that is.

[ArcusCalion]

Actually, I had a new thought reading the beginning of this work. The narrative starts off somewhat abruptly, but I have an idea. If we take the last line of the poem: 'Sauron he saw as a slow menace.' And place it as prose right before the 'Therefore' it would be a better opening. So, like so:

FW-SL-00.8 <The Istari Sauron {he}Manwë saw {_} as a slow menace. FW-SL-01<The Istari {Most of the remaining writings about the Istari (as a group) are unhappily no more than very rapid jottings, often illegible. Of major interest, however, is a brief and very hasty sketch of a narrative, telling of}Therefore /he summoned/ a council of the Valar, {summoned it seems by Manwë,} and maybe he called upon Eru for counsel, ...

I think this flows more smoothly, and is a more dynamic opening.

[Findegil]

I think we reach a similar effect with simply add a full stop after 'menace' and remove the '....'.

Respectfully
Findegil