Who is Melkor? - A LOTR Deep Dive

A look into the history and lore surrounding Melkor, the fallen vala, and first dark lord of Arda.

[@remibeauvais743]

I'm currently reading the silmarillion and your summary is really great ! It weeds out the details so everything makes more sense. Also the quality of your video/audio is perfect !

[@lordofthethings1]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Pigen_]

Good video, but the AI images ruin it for me.

[@lordofthethings1]

Oh, sorry about that. I didn't know it was a turn-off for some people. I try to include a mix of art from real-life artists and also AI art to possibly show new images that haven't been seen before. I'll try to maximize the amount of art from real-life artists from now on.

[@bigbangrafa8435]

Who's Melkor? An ungrateful, jealous, vain and childishly egocentric god that decided he was way too good to live in world made by others, and so decided to remake It in his own image despite lacking the power, knowledge and a stable mind to do It. He only looked scary or impressive when fighting mortal beings infinitelly bellow his power and status. Honestly, his rise and downfall could be standup material If we could ignore the sheer amount of death and destruction his tantrums provoked. He had no clue of what he was doing, acting mostly based on his selfish ambition and hate of the Elves, using his might as a Valar to compensate any tactical mistakes made on the way. If Sauron was so stupid and reckless the Second Age would have gone smoothly. Actually, without beings like Sauron to lead his forces, I doubt he would have get as far as he did to begin with. Most of his early success was more predicated on the Valar being naive and trusting his as a brother than in his machinations, basically attacking someone who's sleeping, or stabbing a friend in the back. In conclusion, Is my belief that Tolkien purposefully made Melkor this way to mock how genuinely bad people in real life are childish and stupid overall, and why despite that being so clear about them since the start they still are still able to stablish a cult following and SOMEHOW bring civilization to It's knees. Tolkien lived through the times of the Russian Revolution and watched the rise of the Third Reich, which are two real life examples of "Melkors" tantruming themselves into power.

[@lordofthethings1]

Wow! Did you have this prepared in advance? Quite the synopsis for a comment! It's a good look at him from a conceptual point of view. I think Tolkien's "pantheon" has many real-world similarities, like you pointed out.