"Luthien, however, refuses to acknowledge she is in a tragic love story, and so, essentially asks to see the manager of the universe, somehow brokering a deal with Manwe in which Beren would live again, if luthien herself became mortal." This is my favorite oversimplification ever.
I think that what helps people think that the Silmarillion is to complect and not an easy read, is the fact that there are to many characters in this "anthology" and the have similar "non memorable" names. When you have like 4 main elves that star with F and are all strange names you almost forget or mix them up. I feel like the reader has to make notes while reading lol. I LOVE the Silmarillion but we all have to admit that it can get overwhelming especially in the beginning when all the characters are introduced.
Exactly, even with something as fun and simple as The Hobbit it took me a while to know who each of the dwaves were lol. The Silmarillion is terrifying, but I'm gonna tackle it one day... one day.
completely. the stories themselves arent that complex. heck, most of them are pretty direct and frank. Its really just the NAMES and NUMBER of the characters. If you take each sub story like a tv episode in an anthology, they are pretty rememberable. its just the names and number of names.
The part of Thingol and Melian not mentioned is that Thingol was Elwé, the Teleri leader who went to investigate Valinor. Elwé's brother Olwé took lead of the Teleri who eventualy crossed to Valinor. Royal cross-marriages meant Finarfin married Olwé's daughter, and Galadriel was one of their children. This explains both why Galadriel was accepted in Doriath, and why Thingol had a grudge against the Feanorions.
Im always imagining that when the rest of the Valar are singing nicely in the choir lead by the conductor ilúvatar. Melkor is in the next room playing loudly rock music.
Seriously so, so helpful. I just finished the Silmarillion a few days ago, and I know I missed SO much. It’s a truly overwhelming amount of information. This made the book far more accessible, and I greatly appreciate it! Now on to the Unfinished Tales…
@@tobiasyoder Yep! That’s what I plan to do now having just finished the Silmarillion. Should be way more digestible the second time through. Might start unfinished tales first though to get even more detail, that way I will feel even less overwhelmed in re-reading the Silmarillion. Such a fantastic book!
I don't really want to tell you not to read Unfinished Tales, but ... the Silmarillion is the result of editors going through some (in some cases very) rough drafts and putting together a mostly-consistent story out of the pieces. Unfinished Tales is the pieces they didn't use, so in a lot of places it's basically "you remember that story in the Silmarillion about X? Here's another way it could have gone." If you're going into it with the attitude "I want to know every half baked idea JRRT ever had about elves" then godspeed, otherwise maybe give it a pass.
I'm not a brave person, i can't handle the Silmarillion. Thanks for this video!! It was so great! Edit: I'm 2/3 of the way through the book, using videos and the Tolkien companion to help and its SO GOOD!!
I would recommend one searching up a free silmarillion audiobook online, it’s only like 10 hours and the format really lends itself well to oration (it’s also easier to understand as it’s not reading so many unfamilliar words and names)
Aragorn and Arwen were cousins both 63 and 69 times removed, since Isildur's line, which ruled Arnor, and his brother Anarion's line, which ruled Gondor, rejoined when Arvedui (23 generations from Isildur) and Firiel (29 generations from Anarion) married and bore Aragorn's ancestor Aranarth.
@@adriandenton6637 "this video will give you a crash course on all the obscure references made throughout the Lord of the Rings" LOTR collected works is thick as hell.
small correction 3:20: the sindar elves cross the misty mountains (and the blue mountains) and settle in beleriand. the elves bilbo and the dwarfes meet in greenwood are essentially silven elves, the tribe that never crossed the misty mountains with a little bit sildar mixed into them (cause thranduil, their kind, came from the west in the second age) :)
One thing that wasn't mentioned was that Elwë, one of the Elves who got the all-expenses paid trip to Valinor, IS Thingol, the Elf who fell in love with Melian and fathered Lúthien (the most beautiful woman, Elf, Human, Hobbit or Dwarf,* to ever live). So he decided to hang out in Doriath with her, and became King of a bunch of his Elf-buddies who had waited for him after he disappeared for awhile (being enchanted by Melian's otherworldly charms for an unknown amount of time, intimated by Tolkien as many months at least) on the journey to the West (those who didn't wait - the Noldor and Vanyar - kept on travelling). Thingol was the lone Calaquendi (Elf who had seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor**) among his people. Edit: The Prophecy of the North (or the Doom of the Noldor), handed down by Mandos himself in the wake of the First Kinslaying and the beginning of the flight of the Noldor, should've been part of this synopsis. It's riveting stuff, so I reproduce it here in full: _Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. _*_To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass._*_ The Dispossessed shall they be for ever._ _Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death's shadow. For though Eru appointed to you to die not in Eä, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you. And those that endure in Middle-earth and come not to Mandos shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret before the younger race that cometh after. The Valar have spoken._ In bold is the most important line - Mandos prophesied that the Noldor (and any Elves, Dwarves or Men who allied themselves with the Noldor) could never prosper for long in Middle-Earth. Everything that they did turned to crap in the end. Also, note that last part: "[Those] that endure in Middle-Earth [...]." Mandos knew even then that the Noldor, the most OP of the Elves (both by nature and because they had lived in Valinor, seen the Trees before they were destroyed, and had their knowledge increased exponentially by studying with gods, Aulë in particular), would experience this precipitous decline should they remain in Middle-Earth...a decline that is approaching its inevitable terminus in Lord of the Rings. The power of the Silmarils, and the bitter oath to reclaim them are both gone by this point, and yet the prophecy still holds true (Mandos did say that they would be dispossessed for ever, which is a long time, I'm told). It's also worth remembering that the creator of the three Elven rings of power is none other than Celebrimbor, Fëanor's grandson. Being a part of the House of Fëanor, *at which the wrath of the Valar was directed most severely,* Celebrimbor's creation of the Three (which looked like a blessing for the Elves, a way to keep their power alive) ultimately made things worse in the end (indeed, Elrond plainly states that it would have been better if they had never been made). Once the One was destroyed, the Elves could either become a shadow of their former selves, or do as Galadriel herself did and seek the pardon of the Valar, following the straight path to the undying lands. Edit 2: Oh, and Tuor and Idril couldn't have survived the Fall of Gondolin without the help of an Elf called Glorfindel, who slew a Balrog barring their escape route. He saved the refugees, but died in the process. HOWEVER, in an interesting parallel to what happened in Gandalf's fight with a Balrog, Glorfindel didn't stay dead (zombie Elf?). He was sent by the Valar BACK to Middle-Earth...and eventually helps our boy Frodo (and Sam, Pippin, Merry and Aragorn) out on their road to Rivendell, when they are facing the Nazgûl. This ties him to both the salvation of the peoples of the First AND Third Ages. *Or orc, I suppose (shudders). Now that I think about it though, Peter Jackson implied that orcs were hatched from slimy, amniotic fluid-containing egg-like structures, and not birthed. And Tolkien didn't really deign to favour us with the details of #orcsex, so I'm wondering if there even WERE female orcs. The questions that keep a geek up at night... **This is important because the Calaquendi were the most powerful of the Elves. Somehow they got power, wisdom and even beauty from merely glancing at the Two Trees.
I could be wrong, but if you go by things mentioned in the Hobbit and te appendices of LOTR, orcs have to reproduce like all other beings in Middleearth: Azog was chief of the Orcs in the Battle of Azanulbizar where he got slain, and his *son* Bolg lead an orc army in the battle of the five armies. Also the slimy egg like structures in the movies was just how Saruman created his Uruk-Hai. So one could say "the Wizard did his own cloning experiments..."
Honestly a pretty good summation of so much time/events, so seriously props on that. Others have noted some fairly important points that were missed, so I won't re-hash those, but one thing no one else has mentioned that you don't address is @3:25 with why the Teleri split and one half fails to immigrate to Valinor -- namely that Thingol **is** Elwë (also known as Elu and Singollo at various times -- dude's got a lot of names). So it's not just "an elf" that Melian enchants and weds, it's the lord and high king of the Teleri, and the ambassador of the Valar to his people. Indeed, arguably the main reason the Teleri split into two groups with one remaining behind (the rest being led to Valinor by Thingol's brother, Olwë, who in turn becomes the replacement lord) is that the group that remains in Middle Earth refuse to leave without their king, who incidentally was not just "enchanted" but then also went missing for some 200 years. So to say "they got distracted" is a simplification at best. Also, maybe consider listening to the audiobook of the Silmarillion in order to get pronunciation of various things in elvish/Sindarin? I'm not really a stickler for such things, but I'm guessing you do care, and in fairness Tolkien was first and foremost a scholar/linguist, so he certainly cared (you don't invent your own languages if you don't care...). This is a good enough video that it deserves more or less correct phonetics, and I'm sure your future content on the matter would/will benefit from that kind of attention to detail!
Elves of Mirkwood are not Sindar, they are Sylvan Elves, the ones that never went to Valinor and simply dwelt in Middle Earth. Their rulers Thranduil and Legolas are Sindar though. Most other elves in Middle Earth are also Sindar - including elves of Lorien, Rivendell and Grey Havens.
The main difference is that Sylvan are not high elves and never seen the light of Valinor. The Sindar of are a mix of High elves of the Nolder and the noble lineage of Doriath. In the Third Age the Grey Havens and Rivendell are purely Noldor. While Galadriels realm and Kirkwood is where the Sindar rule over the Sylvan elves.
Rivendell are Noldor, one of the last places where the noldor still live. The Elves of the Grey Havens are smth different. They are a mix of noldor and Sindar, since they are the decendants of the survivors of Doriath, Nargothrond and the Elves of the Isle of Balar.
Thank you for raising this. When I saw it in the video I immediately thought it wasn't right (or at least confusing in its brevity). I read the Silmarillion last month and have gone straight onto the Hobbit. I'm at the point where Thorin has been imprisoned by the king of the Elves of Mirkwood. When the video said these were the Sindar, I thought, "surely this wasn't king Thingol who is in Doriath, isn't it king Thranduil?" I'm glad to discover I have been paying attention. I didn't realise though that Thranduil was Sindar and the Sylvans took him and some others as their king/rulers. Very interesting.
@@trevhib Right. Thranduil's father Oropher was possibly a lord under Thingol, living in Menegroth, and escaped the Second Kinslaying (I don't think this info has ever been actually canon though). As for the Sylvan, I'm fairly sure they're part of the Moriquendi, the group of elves that never even started the journey West in the first place.
Thanks for this! Helped to understand a very high level of what's been going on, especially that vague reference to when "Morgoth looked upon the Silmarils" that Celebrimbor made in Rings of Power. But also nice to have some plot spoilers, as it appears Rings of Power takes place during Akallabeth.
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 Celebrimbor. I totally butchered the quote because I didn't go back and rewatch before posting, but I just did to be sure I didn't make it all up 😂
@@wesplybon9510 Just looked it up: Feanor made the Silmarils, Celebrimbor (his grandson) made the rings of power. And I see where our confusion lies: You mean Celebrimbor made the quote, I was thinking about making the Silmarils. English is not my native tongue, hence the confusion on my side. Peace and sweet water to you sir
if you are watching that show i highly recommend to forget about the lore. You will get miserable and angry trying to conceal both show and lore which is impossible. The amazon production is not canon, it can go wherever they want.
@@theuselessdrunk This, I spent so much time reading the Silmarillion and trying to remember who's who and who did what in wich order, that I can't watch the show. It just makes me angry when I see incoherence, and confuses me when I'm not sure about the original lore
I have trouble concentrating on reading books, but have listened to the silmarillion multiple times as a "book on tape". Might be worth trying. It's still a lot to take in, but the second time around was much easier to follow along with.
I think what is most impressive about the Silmarillion is that it's fiction- it came from the imagination of one man. It's so convoluted, irregular and non-linear, it's almost as though he "received" it rather than invented it. Most authors when sitting down to write a story have an agenda, a point to make, a message to get across, they're trying to create a story with exposition, climax and denouement. With Tolkien it's like he's just reporting history as it happened, like it wasn't up to him. It adds a kind of faux authenticity that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
16:52 Also up to that point the Earth (Arda) was flat and then it became round, while a good chunk of it (Valinor) was removed to basically float in space as a kind of practical paradise.
And he never finished writing it really. He was writing and rewriting it until his death 😔 what we have as The Silmarillion is thanks to his son Christopher, or we would never have know about all this.
@@redy55No, Homer is the godfather of all fantasy more than 1000 years ago, George Macdonald was alive 70 years before Tolkien that’s one of the first books actually credited with being a fantasy novel. Also, Tolkien talked a lot about his influences one being a lot of myths- almost every part of his books is a re-writing of older books. It’s Homer and Shakespeare’s stories with the PTSD of WW1 mixed in..
3:35 i thought most of the mirkwood elves would be Nandor rather than sindar as the Nandor elves were the ones who left the journey east of the misty mountains specifically
I thought the mirkwood elves were Silvan, one of the branches of the Avari. One other being the Moriquendi, or dark elves, who were captured by Melkor and twisted, explaining why the orcs were so sensitive to light.
@@radagast7200 the silvan and nandor are two branches of the same group, which split off from the Teleri. There isn't really any information about any of the Avari.
Great job. It is truely one of the greatest works ever written. It would be great if they would do a series or film adaptation of around 100 seasons and maybe 1000 episodes to elaborate a bit further on the seemingly endless side plots. Tolkien was nothing short of genious in his own way.
Didn't Eru Ilúvatar destroy Numenor because they went off to invade the undying lands? After that they got trapped in the caves of the forgotten by Eru Ilúvatar and he made the world round as to make invading an impossibility. He actually made a way for the elves to go the the undying lands by creating a path that curves of the angle of the earth. Then he destroyed Numenor. I also remember they called it a variation of Atlantis after that. I know it's a summary, but you missed so much info there i had to comment.
Yup, even if it’s a summary, the part where “God got so angry he made the world round and hid Valinor in what’s basically another dimension“ it’s a petty big thing to overlook lmao. But good video, tho.
@@ignacioaguirre9689 I'm 40 and read all this plus the "unpublished Tolkien notes" (didn't they end up just putting that in one big book with The Silmarillion?) when I was like 15......I remember NONE of these details LOLOL.......or I got into WH40k and that completely supplanted all the previous knowledge idk.
@@exspiravit6920 Warhammer 40k deserves a condensed history video of it's own. I can't even keep up with it, so I basically just resorted to the history of the faction I picked, The Tau (which is perhaps the easiest to follow because they're relatively new on the grand scale of things).
@@taqresu5865 Luckily I got into it when I was around 15-16 in the late 90s and the whole."Horus Heresy" thing wasn't a thing yet. I got to slowly and comfortably read EVERYTHING that already existed, then everything else as it was published. Right time right place, I guess. There are definitely several distinctive factions of 40k fans: The really old school table-top gamer fans, the semi-serious table toppers who loved the fiction and background lore (that's Me!!), and those who came "later" LOL.....I call them "Fluff-heads" but I realize they aren't all that simple to judge. They like to go to wikis and lexicanum and read all the fluff (spoiling it for themselves, WHY??) so they can appear smart about it, but come off really......exasperating.
First I was not sure if you could do a complex, wide-ranging topic like the Silmarillion in more than 3 minutes. To be honest my doubts were enormous. But then you did it. You just did it. And I am still puzzled :)
Thank you so much for making this video 🙂 For DECADES, I've tried to tell people about the Silmarillion. This concisely, albeit gives spoilers, explains WHY it is a 'must read' for setting the tone of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings...
Fëanor did not attempt to make himself king. He was the king. His father had died and he was the eldest son. He had been exiled along with his father from Tirion because he threatened Fingolfin first (even though Fingolfin also was ready to fight Fëanor). So in the meantime Fingolfin had ruled the remaining noldor. It is only after Fëanor's death that his son Maedhros feels sorry for the other noldor and lets the kingship pass to Fingolfin.
That's the best summary of the Silmarillion I've seen. It has to be the most complicated book I've read since it took me 5 years to do it. On and off because I will get fed up with checking in the family trees who's who. Since that use the different names each character had in the different Elf dialects.
It should be noted that Turins story is heavily influenced by the story of Kullervo. Kullervo also unwittingly sleeps with his sister and when they discover that they are siblings she kills herself and he ends up killing himself after talking with his sword. ;)
It’s funny to me that the Silmarillion is so tough and yet it was my first major novel to read as a kid. And it remains one of my ultimate favorites to this day. As long as Amazon doesn’t get the movie rights to the silmarillion it will make a fantastic movie/tv series one day!
@@aderi31415 No they are not. They are not allowed to touch the Silmarilion unless the information is in the one Appendices that they gained the rights for. The one they bought the rights for is near the end of the Return of the King.
bro, what is with the elves killing eachother like, 30 days after their awakening and being aware that morgoth was corrupting the earth? Like, that seems like iluvitar left some ingredients out his cake
This was AMAZING. I'm currently listening to The Silmarillion audiobook and I'm so confused. I didn't know they were broken up into different books, which would explain the total shift and confusion I experienced. Watching this before listening or reading The Silmarillion is a REALLY good idea.
Are you listening to the one narrated by Martin Shaw? I bought it on audio a couple years ago and have listened to it about 10 times since then to fall asleep.
My advice is to listen through the whole thing more than once. It's a lot to take in and the 2nd time listening was a lot easier to make sense of than the first.
I'm listening to it on audio as well. It isn't the story that is confusing to me, it is the fact that 80% of the names are so much alike. Makes it difficult to care about exactly *_who_* did a thing. And not knowing the difference between names, what they did to *_someone_* else tends not to matter. Would have been so much easier to understand if Tolkien had used last names for the characters instead of relating everyone by how the name sounds. I know this seems petty as you could just cut the names into two halves and get a last name, but as it is, it's confusing.
Love it! Thank you much for taking the time. This really helps me understand a few things better & in the end i feel enlightened😎 perhaps you can do the unfinished tales next...however your non commitment leads you😉
@@JPKloess i would argue up to the 10th its brilliant. The last 5 is still good but some storylines could have been skipped - imo. Still good to watch though😉 well maybe cause im a hard core fangirl😇
OH THANK GOD I TRIED TO READ THIS BOOK AND DIDN'T GET FURTHER THAN A QUARTER IN BECAUSE I HAD NO PATIENCE FOR A DAMN HISTORY TEXT ABOUT A FICTIONAL WORLD!! *_Regains composure._* Thank you, you wonderful person.
The Silmarillion is an investment. After my first read-through of the book, my net enjoyment was very much negative - I only made it to the end by stubbornness. Years later, I read it again, and my net enjoyment was, still negative, but only a fraction of what it was. The third time, quite positive. After that... wonderful. It's not a book to read once. At least, not for me.
@@hughobyrne2588 Fair enough, I was reading a lot of texts for work when I tried Silmarillion because I had just finished Return of the King. Mostly I just want to understand it because my friends are all huge LOTR geeks and I want to be able to talk to them about it.
"Having a musical battle" More like, all the Ainur *are* musical instruments, "singing" creation into existence. It's Melkor's ambition - essential to the "movement and breath" of life that added his essence into creation; he later became "evil" when he was rejected and banished from the choir - and all his essence was likewise corrupted by his pain and hatred
Thingol: Smithy this silmarill onto this necklace Dwarves: let's see some $$$$ first Fast forward Thingol: thanks for making me this sweet piece of ice for my neck Dwarves: yehhhh, we keeping this chit Thingol: Do you know who I am you stumpy shits! Dwarves: the fuck!? *kills Thingol And that's why dwarves and elves REALLY hate each other.
I first read Sillmarilion when I was 12 (two years after i finished Lord of the Rings, which I started reading from The Two Towers because i found it under a cupboard and got invested). Somehow I didn't feel lost in the amount of names and geographical places while reading or after. I can't explain it. I always get supprised when people say that the book is overwhelming.
Thanks for the refresher on the Silmarillion. I've heard that people either love the Silmarillion and hate 'Lord of the Rings' .. or vice versa. Considering you felt it was like climbing Mt. Everest, I'm guessing we're on opposite side, so I really appreciate your taking on this overwhelming 'expedition.' & the humorous cartoons & captions. (Glad I could pause & rewind as well as slow the video down thanks to TH-cam so I could follow it & catch everything!) So I actually LIKED the Silmarillion (but only made it through about the first five chapters of 'The Two Towers' (which a friend of mine, aptly for me, 'reviewed' the movie version of by calling it 'The Three HOURS,' before abandoning my own expedition; it felt to me like Tolkien was more interested in describing every leaf, blade of gras, rock, & snowflake of his made-up continent than in describing any of the characters (other than Aragorn when they first meet him), and everyone speaks in the exact same interchangeable 'voice' except for Samwise, while he never describes the really INTERESTING characters of an unfamiliar race like he did with Bilbo in 'The Hobbit' (a VERY easy read compared to the others since it was intended as more of a children's book, which is more my speed😉 despite my being so old that I still use a LANDLINE to chat with my fellow old people; in fact, I actually REMEMBER hearing the news that Tolkien had died and later the excitement with which 'The Silmarillion' was greeted by LOTR book fans after all those decades without any other Middle Earth stories being published!) specifically, _his_ idea of 'ELVES,' who clearly _weren't_ the kind I was familiar with who help out shoemakers in fairytales or live in a hollow tree baking Keebler cookies--which is why I got a tip from a LOTR fan who hated the Silmarillion but told me THAT's the book you need to read if you want to know about them ... & the whole backstory/definition of the 'Third Age.' I did see the three films, each of which was a higher, steeper Mt. Everest for me than the previous one until, somehow, the one I'd waited two years to find out all the successive endings of (after being surprised & a bit angry at the end of the FIRST movie to find out after 3 hours that that wasn't the whole movie ... nor would the NEXT one be!) and spent the last 2.5 hours of alternately waiting for the Christopher Lee scenes that never came & sighing as I looked at my watch every ... OMG, it's only been FIVE MINUTES since I last checked??? was the one that actually stole all the OSCARS from everything I thought DESERVED to win that year! Although a different friend from another state whom I've only 'met' online & by telephone, who's read the books & has all three movies on DVD that include all the stuff that was edited out for the theatrical release [except, of course, all the Christopher Lee scenes that even HE didn't expect to have edited out & was surprised & (IMO) justifiably angry about (good thing HE didn't get a commemorative tattoo after filming them like the 'Fellowship' actors all did!) ... presumably because if it had been any longer, they'd have had to give us an intermission (like 'Gone With the Wind,' which was ALSO 3.5 hours, did when my mother took me to see a RE-release of on the big screen; even SHE wasn't old enough to have seen it in a theatre the first time around)], recently explained to me, now that she's seen the edited theatrical version on Prime & noticed all the missing material after having bought and re-re-re-re-re- ... RE-watched & memorized the DVDs, including in marathon form with a few of her friend, as well as all 3 Hobbit movies, _AND_ read the books, that the reason they made no sense to me after only seeing them ONCE on the big screen & feeling like that was one time too many--and 2x too many trips to the movie theatre 3 years in a row naively hoping the next one would be better!--was because they cut out so many vital scenes! For example, the ones showing why I never had any idea [Spoiler] & [Spoiler], who _also_ get together, were even a couple, or even why the couple they DID show had the ending they got since I was too overwhelmed looking at all the CGI and/or scenery to have time to read any of the subtitles in the Tolkien-language scenes! All of which apparently was cut in order to (1) sell books and 'director's cut' DVDs to people who _wanted_ to figure it out, (2) impress fans of the books who already knew the story with all the CGI, although if I'd read the books I'd've been even ANGRIER they'd changed the story by cutting Christopher Lee's character ENTIRELY out of the 3rd movie, & (3) make room for the FULL HALF HOUR battle scene consisting of nothing but giant elephants stepping on people & throwing bolders at some castle on a mountain--and she didn't even argue with me about the unnecessary length & repetitive tedium of that part of LOTR3. I don't even remember if that was the same battle where [spoiler] kills [spoiler], but I predicted the climax a full ten minutes before EXACTLY what I predicted incredibly predictably HAPPENED! I mean, what [spoiler] blurted out in hubris made it so OBVIOUS ... & wasted yet ANOTHER ten minutes that should've been replaced with the cut material AND Christopher Lee! Plus I'm a compulsive credit watcher, & they even manage to ruin THAT by making them TWENTY MINUTES LONG! So how LOTR3 didn't win some kind of 'WORST Editing EVER' award is a mystery to me that I can only guess is due to the usual Oscars/Hollywood politics. So, okay, now that I've clearly demonstrated why I'm a _Silmarillion_ fan🤐 ... I have an actual *QUESTION* for you: You said that the Silmarillion had FIVE books? Were they actually printed as separate books? You make it sound & look that way here, & if it was YOUR Mt. -Doom- Everest, I can understand why it felt that way. But my copy is a one-volume standard-sized paperback--including the 4 reference appendices with the family trees, index of names (without which I'd have been lost!), the elements of Quenya/Sindarin names, & map of Beleriand that comprise almost 100 pages of the entire 445-page book. So does that mean I have an ABRIDGED version & need to buy the full five-book edition? Or do I already have The One Version you're summarizing here that only SEEMED like five long, tedious individual full-length books to you? Because everything you've said here sounds familiar. And, strangely enough (since I think we Silmarillion fans are in the minority AND having ADHD makes me an INCREDIBLY slow reader), it's not often that I enjoy a work of fiction enough to FINISH it, let alone in less than six months if I do, yet I finished that one, appendices & all! Oh! Also, THANK YOU for keeping the giant spider part short; I had to cover my eyes & squint between my fingers till it was gone! (Where's that emoji when you NEED it, TH-cam?!) So if it's true that people like either one or the other but not BOTH, it seems to me that: - If you're into elves, characters, & backstories/context, The Silmarillion is 'your' book! - If you're into detailed descriptions of fictional landscapes that, except for the Shire, will never be visited again--& a long, unrelated detour about Tom Bombadil & Goldberry--but don't care about character descriptions--in fact, I seem to recall that Tolkien barely described Rivendell, which Peter Jackson & the art/set-designers for the most part had to invent for the film adaptation (which was my favorite part of the movies & DID deserve an Oscar, while in attempting to read the book[s], I was DESPERATELY searching for illustrations, but even Tolkien's OWN illustrations are all landscapes!)--then LOTR is for you.
I've heard the Lord of The Rings described as "good books that you hate to read" and I think that's very apt. I've read them three times, and I always appreciate the scale and passion AFTERWARDS and think "that was really good" but during the reading itself it can seem to drag on. I enjoy it, and they are some of my favorite books, but they can be painful to read, it's just a fact. The Silmarillion scratches a different itch for me, my itch to actually know things about characters and the world on a grand scale: The recounting of the first and second ages, with moments where we "zoom in" to look at things like Beren and Luthien. I enjoy reading it more than LoTR, but it doesn’t leave as lasting an impression on me either. Again, I dearly love both books, and have read them multiple times. But we're allowed to like things in different ways
Fantastic job! I have learned a lot ( even though i have red the book , there were so many confusing things for me ) This video really explains the “big picture “ 👏🏻
4:10 😂😂😂 - they should have listened to Tulcas, but there is no evil in Manwe, and he understands it not, he understand Melkor to be as he himself is and doesn't take note of what he did in the past. Manwe's niceness cost Turin a lot of misfortune much later on, I feel so bad for the guy.
I've tried to read the Silmarillion about six times, and always give up about 1/5 of the way in because I can't handle how much of a phone book it is. So many names! My memory can't cope. Thank you for this video, which at least gives me the gist of what is going on.
I found it pretty difficult at first as well but what I found that really helped is to read it the first time with audiobook. Not just listen to the audiobook but follow along in the book as well. I found that it helps to comprehend the events that are being told and makes it easier to read it by yourself later.
I think it's important to note that while the dwarves were the first race created and given life, Eru wasn't too happy about the upsetting of his musical plan and put the dwarves to sleep deep underground until his planned elves were created and given free reign for a bit.
But he also gave them "a soul and will". As he told Aule, that his creation was like puppets and only did what Aule made them doing, and that was not what either of them intended.
The Elves of Mirkwood aren't Sindar, they're Nandor. The Sindar crossed the Misty Mountains and the Blue Mountains into Beleriand. The Nandor stopped at the Misty Mountains.
Love this explanation made me laugh especially when the elf lost her ears when she became mortal..!!🤣Will now read the book as I've had it for some time but not had said time to indulge..!! 😎
I was waiting for the werewolf to bite the hand with the Simaril. That might be the best part of the book. But I guess not needed for the condensed version of what's on the book.
There is a small detail on how mortality is defined in Tolkiens world. It is not just literally dying to decay, but more on a sense of continuity, ceasing to exist. Elves dont cease to exist after death, they with their memories go under the care of one of the valars and althou i dont remember this later part very well, i think they do can reincarnate, while men are born, they grow, they die, and thats it, they cease to exist, and their memories are gone with them. So to say, elves are weirded, and equally scared, by the concept of forgottement, of knowledge and of the self, not of dying of old age. Valars and maiars are subjected to the same principle although with unn instead. This is also why for eowyn and for luthien to sacrifice their inmortality is a "great" sacrifice, because they are giving up far more than just not aging (because as seen by this video, elves die a lot regardless of age, so call me mad, but i dont think just being able to die that way is a notable thing) P.D: They technically do still return to unn thou, because they are partly maiar/valar, but they dont keep their memories as far as i remember
The events of the silmarillian won't help to prepare you for the show unfortunately it has nothing to do with most of what happened In the book. I read it to build excitement for the show and ended up loving the book but it made me really hate the show for how far they drifted from the source material
It’s the proudest I’ve ever been after reading a book. Yes it took me over a year, and I only got like half of it, but I read it dammit; and no one can take that away.
the one thing i never understood is why the other elves refused to give up the silmaril in their possession, when they knew the noldori had made an oath to recover it. it's just asking for a fight
Good video, but watch out on some of the pronunciations. "ai" such as in "Ainulindalë" is *always* pronounced as in the word "eye". Also "dh" such as in "Maedhros" is a soft "th" such as "thistle". Also on the topic of Maedhros, the "ae" should be pronounced either as separate vowels or as in the "ai" case earlier. There may be more but they're the ones that stuck out to me. But yeah, otherwise a very good attempt at condensing a book that had far too much going on for its own good :)
I tried harder to make the pronunciation better in this one because I got ripped apart for pronunciation in the first version of this video from 2013, but some stuff still fell through the cracks. Thanks for watching.
I remember 2 things from reading this book many years ago: Of Beren and Luthien, and having to look up every f**king name in the index & family trees of the book to remember who is who again
I am now committed to reading the Silmarillion, which I have on my shelf. I just know I'm going to be writing out genealogies and maps on a whiteboard the whole time. I'm too OCD about wanting to really get it to not....
You lost me at "Mythology &", but in a gamgee-esc effort I reached the end. I'll soon repeat it a couple of times to "forge" the names into my brain. 😊
"Luthien, however, refuses to acknowledge she is in a tragic love story, and so, essentially asks to see the manager of the universe, somehow brokering a deal with Manwe in which Beren would live again, if luthien herself became mortal."
This is my favorite oversimplification ever.
It's good, but I think the best oversimplification was "and then the good guys sort of killed Sauron for a while"
Luthien is a Karen god damn.
Luthien, the Karen elf?
So, Luthien is... a Karen?
@@nicodemous52
Luthien became a Karen for her love… I’d like to find a lady with that much devotion 😖
I think that what helps people think that the Silmarillion is to complect and not an easy read, is the fact that there are to many characters in this "anthology" and the have similar "non memorable" names. When you have like 4 main elves that star with F and are all strange names you almost forget or mix them up. I feel like the reader has to make notes while reading lol. I LOVE the Silmarillion but we all have to admit that it can get overwhelming especially in the beginning when all the characters are introduced.
Exactly, even with something as fun and simple as The Hobbit it took me a while to know who each of the dwaves were lol. The Silmarillion is terrifying, but I'm gonna tackle it one day... one day.
You forgot to mention: Many of the characters have multiple names on top :D
the amount of times i would have to flick back to the family trees to double who i was reading about
Plus they all get about three different names and you have to keep cross referencing the family trees
completely. the stories themselves arent that complex. heck, most of them are pretty direct and frank. Its really just the NAMES and NUMBER of the characters.
If you take each sub story like a tv episode in an anthology, they are pretty rememberable. its just the names and number of names.
The Summaryllion
The part of Thingol and Melian not mentioned is that Thingol was Elwé, the Teleri leader who went to investigate Valinor. Elwé's brother Olwé took lead of the Teleri who eventualy crossed to Valinor. Royal cross-marriages meant Finarfin married Olwé's daughter, and Galadriel was one of their children. This explains both why Galadriel was accepted in Doriath, and why Thingol had a grudge against the Feanorions.
Easier to understand if you read his full name Elu Thingol, which is the Sindarin version of Elwë Singollo.
Im always imagining that when the rest of the Valar are singing nicely in the choir lead by the conductor ilúvatar. Melkor is in the next room playing loudly rock music.
he is the emo kid with how rebel and annoying he act lol
Seriously so, so helpful. I just finished the Silmarillion a few days ago, and I know I missed SO much. It’s a truly overwhelming amount of information. This made the book far more accessible, and I greatly appreciate it! Now on to the Unfinished Tales…
Songs like it’s time for second reading of Silmarillion to catch all the gorey detail now that you got a good foundation
@@tobiasyoder Yep! That’s what I plan to do now having just finished the Silmarillion. Should be way more digestible the second time through. Might start unfinished tales first though to get even more detail, that way I will feel even less overwhelmed in re-reading the Silmarillion. Such a fantastic book!
I don't really want to tell you not to read Unfinished Tales, but ... the Silmarillion is the result of editors going through some (in some cases very) rough drafts and putting together a mostly-consistent story out of the pieces. Unfinished Tales is the pieces they didn't use, so in a lot of places it's basically "you remember that story in the Silmarillion about X? Here's another way it could have gone." If you're going into it with the attitude "I want to know every half baked idea JRRT ever had about elves" then godspeed, otherwise maybe give it a pass.
Yea I totally spaced on creating the ents in retaliation of dwarves
I'm not a brave person, i can't handle the Silmarillion. Thanks for this video!! It was so great!
Edit: I'm 2/3 of the way through the book, using videos and the Tolkien companion to help and its SO GOOD!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I would recommend one searching up a free silmarillion audiobook online, it’s only like 10 hours and the format really lends itself well to oration (it’s also easier to understand as it’s not reading so many unfamilliar words and names)
Aragorn and Arwen were cousins both 63 and 69 times removed, since Isildur's line, which ruled Arnor, and his brother Anarion's line, which ruled Gondor, rejoined when Arvedui (23 generations from Isildur) and Firiel (29 generations from Anarion) married and bore Aragorn's ancestor Aranarth.
Most people you meet on the street is likely to be closer relatives then that to you.
imagine putting all these nuanced plot points together, having to pick things apart from seriously hardcore, thick-ass books.
ty for the relay!
The books not that thick. The Fellowship is bigger I think.
@@adriandenton6637 "this video will give you a crash course on all the obscure references made throughout the Lord of the Rings"
LOTR collected works is thick as hell.
small correction 3:20: the sindar elves cross the misty mountains (and the blue mountains) and settle in beleriand. the elves bilbo and the dwarfes meet in greenwood are essentially silven elves, the tribe that never crossed the misty mountains with a little bit sildar mixed into them (cause thranduil, their kind, came from the west in the second age) :)
yes! finally the extended edition we have all been waiting for! its amazing!
One thing that wasn't mentioned was that Elwë, one of the Elves who got the all-expenses paid trip to Valinor, IS Thingol, the Elf who fell in love with Melian and fathered Lúthien (the most beautiful woman, Elf, Human, Hobbit or Dwarf,* to ever live). So he decided to hang out in Doriath with her, and became King of a bunch of his Elf-buddies who had waited for him after he disappeared for awhile (being enchanted by Melian's otherworldly charms for an unknown amount of time, intimated by Tolkien as many months at least) on the journey to the West (those who didn't wait - the Noldor and Vanyar - kept on travelling). Thingol was the lone Calaquendi (Elf who had seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor**) among his people.
Edit: The Prophecy of the North (or the Doom of the Noldor), handed down by Mandos himself in the wake of the First Kinslaying and the beginning of the flight of the Noldor, should've been part of this synopsis. It's riveting stuff, so I reproduce it here in full:
_Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. _*_To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass._*_ The Dispossessed shall they be for ever._
_Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death's shadow. For though Eru appointed to you to die not in Eä, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you. And those that endure in Middle-earth and come not to Mandos shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret before the younger race that cometh after. The Valar have spoken._
In bold is the most important line - Mandos prophesied that the Noldor (and any Elves, Dwarves or Men who allied themselves with the Noldor) could never prosper for long in Middle-Earth. Everything that they did turned to crap in the end. Also, note that last part: "[Those] that endure in Middle-Earth [...]." Mandos knew even then that the Noldor, the most OP of the Elves (both by nature and because they had lived in Valinor, seen the Trees before they were destroyed, and had their knowledge increased exponentially by studying with gods, Aulë in particular), would experience this precipitous decline should they remain in Middle-Earth...a decline that is approaching its inevitable terminus in Lord of the Rings. The power of the Silmarils, and the bitter oath to reclaim them are both gone by this point, and yet the prophecy still holds true (Mandos did say that they would be dispossessed for ever, which is a long time, I'm told). It's also worth remembering that the creator of the three Elven rings of power is none other than Celebrimbor, Fëanor's grandson. Being a part of the House of Fëanor, *at which the wrath of the Valar was directed most severely,* Celebrimbor's creation of the Three (which looked like a blessing for the Elves, a way to keep their power alive) ultimately made things worse in the end (indeed, Elrond plainly states that it would have been better if they had never been made). Once the One was destroyed, the Elves could either become a shadow of their former selves, or do as Galadriel herself did and seek the pardon of the Valar, following the straight path to the undying lands.
Edit 2: Oh, and Tuor and Idril couldn't have survived the Fall of Gondolin without the help of an Elf called Glorfindel, who slew a Balrog barring their escape route. He saved the refugees, but died in the process. HOWEVER, in an interesting parallel to what happened in Gandalf's fight with a Balrog, Glorfindel didn't stay dead (zombie Elf?). He was sent by the Valar BACK to Middle-Earth...and eventually helps our boy Frodo (and Sam, Pippin, Merry and Aragorn) out on their road to Rivendell, when they are facing the Nazgûl. This ties him to both the salvation of the peoples of the First AND Third Ages.
*Or orc, I suppose (shudders). Now that I think about it though, Peter Jackson implied that orcs were hatched from slimy, amniotic fluid-containing egg-like structures, and not birthed. And Tolkien didn't really deign to favour us with the details of #orcsex, so I'm wondering if there even WERE female orcs. The questions that keep a geek up at night...
**This is important because the Calaquendi were the most powerful of the Elves. Somehow they got power, wisdom and even beauty from merely glancing at the Two Trees.
wow i learned more here of LOTR lore from your reply and the video itself than I have anywhere else in a short time. thanks
I could be wrong, but if you go by things mentioned in the Hobbit and te appendices of LOTR, orcs have to reproduce like all other beings in Middleearth:
Azog was chief of the Orcs in the Battle of Azanulbizar where he got slain, and his *son* Bolg lead an orc army in the battle of the five armies.
Also the slimy egg like structures in the movies was just how Saruman created his Uruk-Hai. So one could say "the Wizard did his own cloning experiments..."
Many people die before they complete the journey
The journey is so hard the author died before completing it
Honestly a pretty good summation of so much time/events, so seriously props on that. Others have noted some fairly important points that were missed, so I won't re-hash those, but one thing no one else has mentioned that you don't address is @3:25 with why the Teleri split and one half fails to immigrate to Valinor -- namely that Thingol **is** Elwë (also known as Elu and Singollo at various times -- dude's got a lot of names). So it's not just "an elf" that Melian enchants and weds, it's the lord and high king of the Teleri, and the ambassador of the Valar to his people. Indeed, arguably the main reason the Teleri split into two groups with one remaining behind (the rest being led to Valinor by Thingol's brother, Olwë, who in turn becomes the replacement lord) is that the group that remains in Middle Earth refuse to leave without their king, who incidentally was not just "enchanted" but then also went missing for some 200 years. So to say "they got distracted" is a simplification at best.
Also, maybe consider listening to the audiobook of the Silmarillion in order to get pronunciation of various things in elvish/Sindarin? I'm not really a stickler for such things, but I'm guessing you do care, and in fairness Tolkien was first and foremost a scholar/linguist, so he certainly cared (you don't invent your own languages if you don't care...). This is a good enough video that it deserves more or less correct phonetics, and I'm sure your future content on the matter would/will benefit from that kind of attention to detail!
Elves of Mirkwood are not Sindar, they are Sylvan Elves, the ones that never went to Valinor and simply dwelt in Middle Earth. Their rulers Thranduil and Legolas are Sindar though.
Most other elves in Middle Earth are also Sindar - including elves of Lorien, Rivendell and Grey Havens.
The main difference is that Sylvan are not high elves and never seen the light of Valinor. The Sindar of are a mix of High elves of the Nolder and the noble lineage of Doriath. In the Third Age the Grey Havens and Rivendell are purely Noldor. While Galadriels realm and Kirkwood is where the Sindar rule over the Sylvan elves.
@@alejandromaldonado6159 Impressive. Almost everything you said is wrong.
Rivendell are Noldor, one of the last places where the noldor still live. The Elves of the Grey Havens are smth different. They are a mix of noldor and Sindar, since they are the decendants of the survivors of Doriath, Nargothrond and the Elves of the Isle of Balar.
Thank you for raising this. When I saw it in the video I immediately thought it wasn't right (or at least confusing in its brevity). I read the Silmarillion last month and have gone straight onto the Hobbit. I'm at the point where Thorin has been imprisoned by the king of the Elves of Mirkwood. When the video said these were the Sindar, I thought, "surely this wasn't king Thingol who is in Doriath, isn't it king Thranduil?" I'm glad to discover I have been paying attention. I didn't realise though that Thranduil was Sindar and the Sylvans took him and some others as their king/rulers. Very interesting.
@@trevhib Right. Thranduil's father Oropher was possibly a lord under Thingol, living in Menegroth, and escaped the Second Kinslaying (I don't think this info has ever been actually canon though). As for the Sylvan, I'm fairly sure they're part of the Moriquendi, the group of elves that never even started the journey West in the first place.
Thanks for this! Helped to understand a very high level of what's been going on, especially that vague reference to when "Morgoth looked upon the Silmarils" that Celebrimbor made in Rings of Power. But also nice to have some plot spoilers, as it appears Rings of Power takes place during Akallabeth.
Celebrimbor? I thought it was Feanor?
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 Celebrimbor. I totally butchered the quote because I didn't go back and rewatch before posting, but I just did to be sure I didn't make it all up 😂
@@wesplybon9510 Just looked it up: Feanor made the Silmarils, Celebrimbor (his grandson) made the rings of power.
And I see where our confusion lies: You mean Celebrimbor made the quote, I was thinking about making the Silmarils.
English is not my native tongue, hence the confusion on my side. Peace and sweet water to you sir
if you are watching that show i highly recommend to forget about the lore. You will get miserable and angry trying to conceal both show and lore which is impossible. The amazon production is not canon, it can go wherever they want.
@@theuselessdrunk This, I spent so much time reading the Silmarillion and trying to remember who's who and who did what in wich order, that I can't watch the show. It just makes me angry when I see incoherence, and confuses me when I'm not sure about the original lore
amazing work my friend. I have started the Silmarillion several times, but never got past the first chapter. Way to go!
Thanks for watching!
I have trouble concentrating on reading books, but have listened to the silmarillion multiple times as a "book on tape". Might be worth trying. It's still a lot to take in, but the second time around was much easier to follow along with.
I think what is most impressive about the Silmarillion is that it's fiction- it came from the imagination of one man. It's so convoluted, irregular and non-linear, it's almost as though he "received" it rather than invented it. Most authors when sitting down to write a story have an agenda, a point to make, a message to get across, they're trying to create a story with exposition, climax and denouement. With Tolkien it's like he's just reporting history as it happened, like it wasn't up to him. It adds a kind of faux authenticity that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Is it really non linear??? I thought it told the story of the first age from A to Z (I haven't read any books)
Tolkien was a follower of Jesus. It's obvious he got it from God.
@@cjpark1461Does this mean reading Lord of the Rings is tantamount to studying the bible?
@@war.v27 no...God sends dreams, visions, words of knowledge, discernment. The Bible is supernatural.
@@cjpark1461 idk man, dragons and wizards seem pretty supernatural. i think LotR might be the next coming of Christ.
16:52 Also up to that point the Earth (Arda) was flat and then it became round, while a good chunk of it (Valinor) was removed to basically float in space as a kind of practical paradise.
And too think one guy made ALL of this lore. Just a truely brillante writer
This guy made all fantasy
And he never finished writing it really. He was writing and rewriting it until his death 😔 what we have as The Silmarillion is thanks to his son Christopher, or we would never have know about all this.
@@redy55No, Homer is the godfather of all fantasy more than 1000 years ago, George Macdonald was alive 70 years before Tolkien that’s one of the first books actually credited with being a fantasy novel. Also, Tolkien talked a lot about his influences one being a lot of myths- almost every part of his books is a re-writing of older books.
It’s Homer and Shakespeare’s stories with the PTSD of WW1 mixed in..
I understood more in this video than reading the whole book. THANK YOUUUU
3:35 i thought most of the mirkwood elves would be Nandor rather than sindar as the Nandor elves were the ones who left the journey east of the misty mountains specifically
I thought the mirkwood elves were Silvan, one of the branches of the Avari. One other being the Moriquendi, or dark elves, who were captured by Melkor and twisted, explaining why the orcs were so sensitive to light.
@@radagast7200 the silvan and nandor are two branches of the same group, which split off from the Teleri. There isn't really any information about any of the Avari.
"an alarming of people die before they complete the journey." is a perfect summary of the Silmarillion
Hey man this was an incredible video, if you had a catalogue of videos like this you sre basically guaranteed to hit higher subs!
The problem is they take forever to make. I'm thinking I will make one about Ancient Rome next, and go in a nonfiction direction.
@@JPKloess this is absolutely stunning incredible!!
I've read The Silmarillion three times (once physical, twice audio), and still never understood it, until now. Thanks.
Great job. It is truely one of the greatest works ever written. It would be great if they would do a series or film adaptation of around 100 seasons and maybe 1000 episodes to elaborate a bit further on the seemingly endless side plots. Tolkien was nothing short of genious in his own way.
The coloquialisms you sprinkle in crack me up every time. Never expected and so deadpan!
Thanks!
I'm glad you agree that musical battles are so cool.
Didn't Eru Ilúvatar destroy Numenor because they went off to invade the undying lands? After that they got trapped in the caves of the forgotten by Eru Ilúvatar and he made the world round as to make invading an impossibility. He actually made a way for the elves to go the the undying lands by creating a path that curves of the angle of the earth. Then he destroyed Numenor. I also remember they called it a variation of Atlantis after that. I know it's a summary, but you missed so much info there i had to comment.
Yes, that is right, even up to the variant of Atlantis as an after-name that means something like "the fallen".
Yup, even if it’s a summary, the part where “God got so angry he made the world round and hid Valinor in what’s basically another dimension“ it’s a petty big thing to overlook lmao. But good video, tho.
@@ignacioaguirre9689 I'm 40 and read all this plus the "unpublished Tolkien notes" (didn't they end up just putting that in one big book with The Silmarillion?) when I was like 15......I remember NONE of these details LOLOL.......or I got into WH40k and that completely supplanted all the previous knowledge idk.
@@exspiravit6920 Warhammer 40k deserves a condensed history video of it's own. I can't even keep up with it, so I basically just resorted to the history of the faction I picked, The Tau (which is perhaps the easiest to follow because they're relatively new on the grand scale of things).
@@taqresu5865 Luckily I got into it when I was around 15-16 in the late 90s and the whole."Horus Heresy" thing wasn't a thing yet. I got to slowly and comfortably read EVERYTHING that already existed, then everything else as it was published. Right time right place, I guess. There are definitely several distinctive factions of 40k fans: The really old school table-top gamer fans, the semi-serious table toppers who loved the fiction and background lore (that's Me!!), and those who came "later" LOL.....I call them "Fluff-heads" but I realize they aren't all that simple to judge. They like to go to wikis and lexicanum and read all the fluff (spoiling it for themselves, WHY??) so they can appear smart about it, but come off really......exasperating.
Valars: promise you be good?
Melkor: I'll be good
Ulmar: that's sus
First I was not sure if you could do a complex, wide-ranging topic like the Silmarillion in more than 3 minutes.
To be honest my doubts were enormous.
But then you did it.
You just did it.
And I am still puzzled :)
I have been waiting for this ever since I saw the original.
I loved this. Illustrations were great. Content excellent. Side bar comments superb. Had me laugh out loud a number of times. Great work by all.
Thanks
Thank you so much for making this video 🙂 For DECADES, I've tried to tell people about the Silmarillion. This concisely, albeit gives spoilers, explains WHY it is a 'must read' for setting the tone of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings...
Fëanor did not attempt to make himself king. He was the king. His father had died and he was the eldest son. He had been exiled along with his father from Tirion because he threatened Fingolfin first (even though Fingolfin also was ready to fight Fëanor). So in the meantime Fingolfin had ruled the remaining noldor.
It is only after Fëanor's death that his son Maedhros feels sorry for the other noldor and lets the kingship pass to Fingolfin.
I've read the Silmarillion thrice and still found this video helpful. Thanks!
Ha! This is the most condensed, yet precise overview of the Silmarillion that I have ever seen. Good job! Makes me want to read it again. Thanks.
What a great video and synopsis! Loved it!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hey Thank you for this brilliant breakdown. Your work does not go unappreciated! Cheers!
Awesome summary. Thank you.
Had the original in my recommended! Excited!
That's the best summary of the Silmarillion I've seen. It has to be the most complicated book I've read since it took me 5 years to do it.
On and off because I will get fed up with checking in the family trees who's who. Since that use the different names each character had in the different Elf dialects.
Yeah, it's tough to keep all families strait.
It should be noted that Turins story is heavily influenced by the story of Kullervo.
Kullervo also unwittingly sleeps with his sister and when they discover that they are siblings she kills herself and he ends up killing himself after talking with his sword. ;)
It’s funny to me that the Silmarillion is so tough and yet it was my first major novel to read as a kid. And it remains one of my ultimate favorites to this day. As long as Amazon doesn’t get the movie rights to the silmarillion it will make a fantastic movie/tv series one day!
Was that sarcasm? It's hard to tell. The Rings of Power are based on the last two books.
@@aderi31415 No they are not. They are not allowed to touch the Silmarilion unless the information is in the one Appendices that they gained the rights for. The one they bought the rights for is near the end of the Return of the King.
bro, what is with the elves killing eachother like, 30 days after their awakening and being aware that morgoth was corrupting the earth? Like, that seems like iluvitar left some ingredients out his cake
This was AMAZING. I'm currently listening to The Silmarillion audiobook and I'm so confused. I didn't know they were broken up into different books, which would explain the total shift and confusion I experienced. Watching this before listening or reading The Silmarillion is a REALLY good idea.
Glad I could help!
Are you listening to the one narrated by Martin Shaw? I bought it on audio a couple years ago and have listened to it about 10 times since then to fall asleep.
My advice is to listen through the whole thing more than once. It's a lot to take in and the 2nd time listening was a lot easier to make sense of than the first.
I'm listening to it on audio as well. It isn't the story that is confusing to me, it is the fact that 80% of the names are so much alike. Makes it difficult to care about exactly *_who_* did a thing. And not knowing the difference between names, what they did to *_someone_* else tends not to matter. Would have been so much easier to understand if Tolkien had used last names for the characters instead of relating everyone by how the name sounds. I know this seems petty as you could just cut the names into two halves and get a last name, but as it is, it's confusing.
Truly, I was entertained within less than 20 minutes of this video than watching Amazon's more than 2 hours of bastardized version
Thought it could have been mentioned that "Elwe" and "Thingol" are the same character!
Love it! Thank you much for taking the time. This really helps me understand a few things better & in the end i feel enlightened😎 perhaps you can do the unfinished tales next...however your non commitment leads you😉
I think I might need to switch to some non-Tolkien for a change of pace. Maybe Lewis' Space Trilogy or something.
@@JPKloess lol try supernatural...theres 15 seasons to inspire you 😉😉
@@Franki3W yeah, but I hear only the first five are good
@@JPKloess i would argue up to the 10th its brilliant. The last 5 is still good but some storylines could have been skipped - imo. Still good to watch though😉 well maybe cause im a hard core fangirl😇
I appreciate the wry tone, so needed now that fanbois are treating this text like a holy bible when it's really a partially edited cutting room floor
I thought Huan was just a really big dog, not a wolf.
OH THANK GOD I TRIED TO READ THIS BOOK AND DIDN'T GET FURTHER THAN A QUARTER IN BECAUSE I HAD NO PATIENCE FOR A DAMN HISTORY TEXT ABOUT A FICTIONAL WORLD!!
*_Regains composure._*
Thank you, you wonderful person.
The Silmarillion is an investment. After my first read-through of the book, my net enjoyment was very much negative - I only made it to the end by stubbornness. Years later, I read it again, and my net enjoyment was, still negative, but only a fraction of what it was. The third time, quite positive. After that... wonderful.
It's not a book to read once. At least, not for me.
@@hughobyrne2588 Fair enough, I was reading a lot of texts for work when I tried Silmarillion because I had just finished Return of the King. Mostly I just want to understand it because my friends are all huge LOTR geeks and I want to be able to talk to them about it.
SpongeBob narrative: 8 years later* Lol love the video
brilliant addition of the skyrim quest sound
thanks
Tolkien saw himself as Beren and his wife Edith as Lúthien. Those names are even on their shared gravestone.
"Having a musical battle"
More like, all the Ainur *are* musical instruments, "singing" creation into existence. It's Melkor's ambition - essential to the "movement and breath" of life that added his essence into creation; he later became "evil" when he was rejected and banished from the choir - and all his essence was likewise corrupted by his pain and hatred
Thingol: Smithy this silmarill onto this necklace
Dwarves: let's see some $$$$ first
Fast forward
Thingol: thanks for making me this sweet piece of ice for my neck
Dwarves: yehhhh, we keeping this chit
Thingol: Do you know who I am you stumpy shits!
Dwarves: the fuck!? *kills Thingol
And that's why dwarves and elves REALLY hate each other.
I first read Sillmarilion when I was 12 (two years after i finished Lord of the Rings, which I started reading from The Two Towers because i found it under a cupboard and got invested).
Somehow I didn't feel lost in the amount of names and geographical places while reading or after. I can't explain it. I always get supprised when people say that the book is overwhelming.
Thanks for the refresher on the Silmarillion. I've heard that people either love the Silmarillion and hate 'Lord of the Rings' .. or vice versa. Considering you felt it was like climbing Mt. Everest, I'm guessing we're on opposite side, so I really appreciate your taking on this overwhelming 'expedition.' & the humorous cartoons & captions. (Glad I could pause & rewind as well as slow the video down thanks to TH-cam so I could follow it & catch everything!) So I actually LIKED the Silmarillion (but only made it through about the first five chapters of 'The Two Towers' (which a friend of mine, aptly for me, 'reviewed' the movie version of by calling it 'The Three HOURS,' before abandoning my own expedition; it felt to me like Tolkien was more interested in describing every leaf, blade of gras, rock, & snowflake of his made-up continent than in describing any of the characters (other than Aragorn when they first meet him), and everyone speaks in the exact same interchangeable 'voice' except for Samwise, while he never describes the really INTERESTING characters of an unfamiliar race like he did with Bilbo in 'The Hobbit' (a VERY easy read compared to the others since it was intended as more of a children's book, which is more my speed😉 despite my being so old that I still use a LANDLINE to chat with my fellow old people; in fact, I actually REMEMBER hearing the news that Tolkien had died and later the excitement with which 'The Silmarillion' was greeted by LOTR book fans after all those decades without any other Middle Earth stories being published!) specifically, _his_ idea of 'ELVES,' who clearly _weren't_ the kind I was familiar with who help out shoemakers in fairytales or live in a hollow tree baking Keebler cookies--which is why I got a tip from a LOTR fan who hated the Silmarillion but told me THAT's the book you need to read if you want to know about them ... & the whole backstory/definition of the 'Third Age.'
I did see the three films, each of which was a higher, steeper Mt. Everest for me than the previous one until, somehow, the one I'd waited two years to find out all the successive endings of (after being surprised & a bit angry at the end of the FIRST movie to find out after 3 hours that that wasn't the whole movie ... nor would the NEXT one be!) and spent the last 2.5 hours of alternately waiting for the Christopher Lee scenes that never came & sighing as I looked at my watch every ... OMG, it's only been FIVE MINUTES since I last checked??? was the one that actually stole all the OSCARS from everything I thought DESERVED to win that year! Although a different friend from another state whom I've only 'met' online & by telephone, who's read the books & has all three movies on DVD that include all the stuff that was edited out for the theatrical release [except, of course, all the Christopher Lee scenes that even HE didn't expect to have edited out & was surprised & (IMO) justifiably angry about (good thing HE didn't get a commemorative tattoo after filming them like the 'Fellowship' actors all did!) ... presumably because if it had been any longer, they'd have had to give us an intermission (like 'Gone With the Wind,' which was ALSO 3.5 hours, did when my mother took me to see a RE-release of on the big screen; even SHE wasn't old enough to have seen it in a theatre the first time around)], recently explained to me, now that she's seen the edited theatrical version on Prime & noticed all the missing material after having bought and re-re-re-re-re- ... RE-watched & memorized the DVDs, including in marathon form with a few of her friend, as well as all 3 Hobbit movies, _AND_ read the books, that the reason they made no sense to me after only seeing them ONCE on the big screen & feeling like that was one time too many--and 2x too many trips to the movie theatre 3 years in a row naively hoping the next one would be better!--was because they cut out so many vital scenes! For example, the ones showing why I never had any idea [Spoiler] & [Spoiler], who _also_ get together, were even a couple, or even why the couple they DID show had the ending they got since I was too overwhelmed looking at all the CGI and/or scenery to have time to read any of the subtitles in the Tolkien-language scenes! All of which apparently was cut in order to (1) sell books and 'director's cut' DVDs to people who _wanted_ to figure it out, (2) impress fans of the books who already knew the story with all the CGI, although if I'd read the books I'd've been even ANGRIER they'd changed the story by cutting Christopher Lee's character ENTIRELY out of the 3rd movie, & (3) make room for the FULL HALF HOUR battle scene consisting of nothing but giant elephants stepping on people & throwing bolders at some castle on a mountain--and she didn't even argue with me about the unnecessary length & repetitive tedium of that part of LOTR3. I don't even remember if that was the same battle where [spoiler] kills [spoiler], but I predicted the climax a full ten minutes before EXACTLY what I predicted incredibly predictably HAPPENED! I mean, what [spoiler] blurted out in hubris made it so OBVIOUS ... & wasted yet ANOTHER ten minutes that should've been replaced with the cut material AND Christopher Lee! Plus I'm a compulsive credit watcher, & they even manage to ruin THAT by making them TWENTY MINUTES LONG! So how LOTR3 didn't win some kind of 'WORST Editing EVER' award is a mystery to me that I can only guess is due to the usual Oscars/Hollywood politics.
So, okay, now that I've clearly demonstrated why I'm a _Silmarillion_ fan🤐 ... I have an actual *QUESTION* for you: You said that the Silmarillion had FIVE books? Were they actually printed as separate books? You make it sound & look that way here, & if it was YOUR Mt. -Doom- Everest, I can understand why it felt that way. But my copy is a one-volume standard-sized paperback--including the 4 reference appendices with the family trees, index of names (without which I'd have been lost!), the elements of Quenya/Sindarin names, & map of Beleriand that comprise almost 100 pages of the entire 445-page book. So does that mean I have an ABRIDGED version & need to buy the full five-book edition? Or do I already have The One Version you're summarizing here that only SEEMED like five long, tedious individual full-length books to you? Because everything you've said here sounds familiar. And, strangely enough (since I think we Silmarillion fans are in the minority AND having ADHD makes me an INCREDIBLY slow reader), it's not often that I enjoy a work of fiction enough to FINISH it, let alone in less than six months if I do, yet I finished that one, appendices & all!
Oh! Also, THANK YOU for keeping the giant spider part short; I had to cover my eyes & squint between my fingers till it was gone! (Where's that emoji when you NEED it, TH-cam?!)
So if it's true that people like either one or the other but not BOTH, it seems to me that:
- If you're into elves, characters, & backstories/context, The Silmarillion is 'your' book!
- If you're into detailed descriptions of fictional landscapes that, except for the Shire, will never be visited again--& a long, unrelated detour about Tom Bombadil & Goldberry--but don't care about character descriptions--in fact, I seem to recall that Tolkien barely described Rivendell, which Peter Jackson & the art/set-designers for the most part had to invent for the film adaptation (which was my favorite part of the movies & DID deserve an Oscar, while in attempting to read the book[s], I was DESPERATELY searching for illustrations, but even Tolkien's OWN illustrations are all landscapes!)--then LOTR is for you.
I've heard the Lord of The Rings described as "good books that you hate to read" and I think that's very apt. I've read them three times, and I always appreciate the scale and passion AFTERWARDS and think "that was really good" but during the reading itself it can seem to drag on. I enjoy it, and they are some of my favorite books, but they can be painful to read, it's just a fact.
The Silmarillion scratches a different itch for me, my itch to actually know things about characters and the world on a grand scale: The recounting of the first and second ages, with moments where we "zoom in" to look at things like Beren and Luthien. I enjoy reading it more than LoTR, but it doesn’t leave as lasting an impression on me either.
Again, I dearly love both books, and have read them multiple times. But we're allowed to like things in different ways
Fantastic job! I have learned a lot ( even though i have red the book , there were so many confusing things for me ) This video really explains the “big picture “ 👏🏻
don´t know if it´s been mentioned before my post but Huan was a Dog, not a wolf....
This 20min video is much better than the entire Rings of Power series from amazon.
9:24 I feel bad for the man who thought 'I'm at the back, I don't need a sword' and then found himself face to face with Morgoth xD
4:10 😂😂😂 - they should have listened to Tulcas, but there is no evil in Manwe, and he understands it not, he understand Melkor to be as he himself is and doesn't take note of what he did in the past. Manwe's niceness cost Turin a lot of misfortune much later on, I feel so bad for the guy.
I've tried to read the Silmarillion about six times, and always give up about 1/5 of the way in because I can't handle how much of a phone book it is. So many names! My memory can't cope. Thank you for this video, which at least gives me the gist of what is going on.
I found it pretty difficult at first as well but what I found that really helped is to read it the first time with audiobook. Not just listen to the audiobook but follow along in the book as well. I found that it helps to comprehend the events that are being told and makes it easier to read it by yourself later.
I think it's important to note that while the dwarves were the first race created and given life, Eru wasn't too happy about the upsetting of his musical plan and put the dwarves to sleep deep underground until his planned elves were created and given free reign for a bit.
But he also gave them "a soul and will". As he told Aule, that his creation was like puppets and only did what Aule made them doing, and that was not what either of them intended.
Thank you and Love your Illustration.
The Elves of Mirkwood aren't Sindar, they're Nandor. The Sindar crossed the Misty Mountains and the Blue Mountains into Beleriand. The Nandor stopped at the Misty Mountains.
I love stuff like this. Thanks so much, and there were bits that were quite funny. Well done.
Thanks!
the clip art comment about the wolf killed me
The Sindar are the Teleri that stayed by beleriand, the ones that stayed by the misty mountains are the Nandor (or sylvan elves).
The Silmarillion, in which the battle for bling knows no bounds
An Unfinished Tales in over 3 minutes would be awesome!
Love this explanation made me laugh especially when the elf lost her ears when she became mortal..!!🤣Will now read the book as I've had it for some time but not had said time to indulge..!! 😎
Glad you enjoyed it!
I was waiting for the werewolf to bite the hand with the Simaril. That might be the best part of the book. But I guess not needed for the condensed version of what's on the book.
10:30 lmao the skyrim quest text
Dang, that was enlightening. Thank you for that!
Brilliant synopsis
The quenta Silmarillion is fucking wild
There is a small detail on how mortality is defined in Tolkiens world. It is not just literally dying to decay, but more on a sense of continuity, ceasing to exist. Elves dont cease to exist after death, they with their memories go under the care of one of the valars and althou i dont remember this later part very well, i think they do can reincarnate, while men are born, they grow, they die, and thats it, they cease to exist, and their memories are gone with them.
So to say, elves are weirded, and equally scared, by the concept of forgottement, of knowledge and of the self, not of dying of old age. Valars and maiars are subjected to the same principle although with unn instead.
This is also why for eowyn and for luthien to sacrifice their inmortality is a "great" sacrifice, because they are giving up far more than just not aging (because as seen by this video, elves die a lot regardless of age, so call me mad, but i dont think just being able to die that way is a notable thing)
P.D: They technically do still return to unn thou, because they are partly maiar/valar, but they dont keep their memories as far as i remember
Thank you! Now I might recognize some of the names while I watch the Rings of Power
Only issue is that the names is all the Rings of Power have in common with Silmarillion as the story is what Amazon's writers made up.
Thanks, saved weeks of reading to prepare for the Rings of Power series on prime.
The events of the silmarillian won't help to prepare you for the show unfortunately it has nothing to do with most of what happened In the book. I read it to build excitement for the show and ended up loving the book but it made me really hate the show for how far they drifted from the source material
It’s the proudest I’ve ever been after reading a book. Yes it took me over a year, and I only got like half of it, but I read it dammit; and no one can take that away.
Should this be a movie?
No. It should be a 800 part series at least.
@@yYSilverFoxYy probably 😂
Bravo - I was one who died trying to climb Mt Everest. Your video has convinced me to give up mountain climbing 🙂
"Please make my lover live again!"
"What will you give up in return?"
"I'll take the gift of Men as well."
"...Okay."
This was outstanding
the one thing i never understood is why the other elves refused to give up the silmaril in their possession, when they knew the noldori had made an oath to recover it. it's just asking for a fight
Good video, but watch out on some of the pronunciations. "ai" such as in "Ainulindalë" is *always* pronounced as in the word "eye". Also "dh" such as in "Maedhros" is a soft "th" such as "thistle". Also on the topic of Maedhros, the "ae" should be pronounced either as separate vowels or as in the "ai" case earlier. There may be more but they're the ones that stuck out to me. But yeah, otherwise a very good attempt at condensing a book that had far too much going on for its own good :)
I tried harder to make the pronunciation better in this one because I got ripped apart for pronunciation in the first version of this video from 2013, but some stuff still fell through the cracks. Thanks for watching.
Fire, fine work old boy.
Super entertaining man! Very well done
Glad you enjoyed!
Getting elden rings vibes from this extended breakdown. It'd be pretty great to see a FromSoft version of these events.
Hahahaha, the intro is on repeat, I loved it hahaha
Very good, but i miss the line "Don't smite them, beards are cool".
I remember 2 things from reading this book many years ago: Of Beren and Luthien, and having to look up every f**king name in the index & family trees of the book to remember who is who again
I am now committed to reading the Silmarillion, which I have on my shelf. I just know I'm going to be writing out genealogies and maps on a whiteboard the whole time. I'm too OCD about wanting to really get it to not....
Good luck!
You lost me at "Mythology &", but in a gamgee-esc effort I reached the end. I'll soon repeat it a couple of times to "forge" the names into my brain. 😊
Thank you for this. I needed a recap
The only way to improve this video would be to have the characters placed in the correct locations of Tolkien's world maps
Family Heirloom had me broken hahaha