To give back to all the fantastic writers on here, and specifically, those that follow me, I'm going to be sharing writing tips that have helped me on my journey. There will be some content from my blog shared in this book (but you should check out...
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Aragorn. Éomer. Éowyn. Faramir. Boromir.
These are some of the names that come to mind when we think of the race of Men in Middle Earth, and rightly so. They're awesome.
But what could writers get wrong about the race of Men (humans) when we are the same as them?
A lot, as it turns out.
We can thank the rich history that Tolkien provided for us for most of this, and we're going to delve into this a little bit today. By delve, I mean barely scratch the surface because there it so much history here I could take eight or nine blog posts going through it all.
History of Men
Firstly, the Atani (men in Quenya) are the second of the Children of Ilúvatar, the Creator God. They are given the Gift of Men, mortality, and can die, whereas the Elves are immortal. There are some beautifully tragic stories about the men in the Silmarillion, and I highly suggest you read them. Beren and Lúthien, and Children of Húrin being two of the most classic tales of men in the First Age, I would start there.
During the First Age, Men were divided into three Houses and settled in Beleriand, many fighting against Melkor (also called Morgoth) during that time. It would be safe to say that this was the time of valiant men and that men hereafter were but a shadow.
After the War of Wrath, in which the Valar had finally had enough of Melkor goofing off and killing everyone, they led an all-out assault on his stronghold of Thangorodrim. This led to everything west of the Blue Mountains sinking into the sea.
The men loyal to the Valar were given an island which came to be known as Númenór early in the Second Age. These men were granted extended life and they became a great seafaring people. If you have The Atlas of Middle Earth, you can see all of the places they sailed, and I kid you not, there were places that even I hadn't heard of before!
But as men are want to do after a time, they reached for power that was not theirs to have and one of their kings sailed against the Valar, breaking the ban that had been in place. This led to the sinking of Númenór, with some of those still faithful to Ilúvatar escaping and heading to Middle Earth.
Men of Middle Earth
"You've skipped over tons of important information! How could you do this? How are writers supposed to know that Elros was Elrond's dad and that *fades into incoherent screaming*"
I'll admit, I've left out a lot of backstory and this is because there is simply too much to cover in one blog post. My main goal is to talk about the Third Age and where writers go wrong while giving you a general idea of the backstory. If you want more detail, check out One Wiki To Rule Them All.
In the Third Age, there are several main groups of Men and many more subgroups, but I'm going to be talking about the main ones that people tend to use in their fanfictions. Here are the ones I'll be touching on:
