The Lord of the Rings Appendices: A Primer

With the film and TV rights to the Silmarillion still officially off-limits (at least as far as we know), Amazon studios and Warner Bros. have two choices for developing a new Middle-earth story: first, they could create original stories, or second, they can expand on material found in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King. I think the second option is by far the most likely, since mining the appendices for stories will simultaneously appeal to long-time Tolkien fans and save time and money compared to developing new stories from scratch. Die-hard fans of Lord of the Rings are no doubt familiar with the material in the Appendices, but newer fans (especially those that were introduced to the stories through the movies) might not be as familiar with the stories and histories JRR Tolkien included in at the end of the trilogy. Because of this, I thought it would be a good time to review the stories in the Appendices in a series of blog posts, and talk about how Amazon Studies might adapt the tales for their TV series. Jump past the break to read the first post in this series, which will review the history behind the Appendices and give a brief overview of their contents.

Long-time fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings likely know that those two famous stories were later additions to a mythological world that Tolkien had been since 1914^a. These early stories were in a continual state of revision and creation for the remainder of Tolkien's life, and were not collected and edited until 1977, when they were published posthumously as The Silmarillion, twenty-three years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

Both the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings contain numerous hints to a larger history and mythology that forms a deep, intricate background that Bilbo, Frodo, and the other characters move across. For example, Elrond tells Thorin and Gandalf that the swords they recovered from the Troll hoard

"They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars... This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore."

And in The Lord of the Rings, we have Gandalf referring to the ancient lineage of the White Tree of Gondor:

The Balrog, by Ted Naismith

"Verily this is a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair; and that was a seedling of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion of many names, Eldest of Trees."

And again from Gandalf, we have this famous line delivered by him to the Balrog in Khazad-Dûm:

"I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass."

 Gondolin and Galathilion? Secret Fire? Anor and Udûn? Tolkien drops all of these names almost casually, but for the confused reader prior to the publication of the Silmarillion, there was only one place to turn to for some explanation: the Appendices at the end of Return of the King.

Tolkien was well aware that many of the names and histories his characters allude to in the Lord of the Rings would leave readers wanting an explanation, and the Appendices were his efforts to provide brief windows into the larger mythology behind the main story of the One Ring. Indeed, publication of the Return of the King was actually delayed so that Tolkien could ensure the Appendices were ready for publication^b. The Appendices are arranged as follows:

Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers

Appendix B: The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands)

Appendix C: Family Trees

Appendix D: Shire Calendar

Appendix E: Writing and Spelling

Appendix F: The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age

 Appendix A contains the most material by far, and is split into three sections that detail the history of three different kingdoms. Section I covers the history of the Númenorean Exiles in Arnor and Gondor, lists the succession of their kings and the Stewards in Gondor, and finishes with "A Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Section II reviews the history of Rohan and her kings, and traces the succession of the three different ruling houses, ending with Eomer and his descendants (spoiler alert). Finally, Section III gives a brief history of Durin's Folk, the most prominent of the seven houses of the Dwarves. Side note: as a kid, I was obsessed with the dwarves, and would spend endless hours re-reading the last section of Appendix A. Of all the appendices, A contains the most material that could be used by Amazon for LOTR prequels or spin-off stories, so in subsequent posts I'll be focusing mainly on it.

Appendix B is essentially a long chronology beginning with the Second Age and ending with Legolas and Gimli's departure from Middle-earth. It skips rather quickly through the Second Age (the rise and fall of Númenor, the forging of the Rings of Power), slows down in the Third Age, and then becomes increasingly detailed through the events of the Hobbit and especially the Lord of the Rings. While Appendix B is not as obvious a source of new story material as Appendix A, it is nevertheless a treasure-trove of character and place names that could by mined by Amazon.

Appendix C establishes the family history of four prominent Hobbit families: the Baggins of Hobbit, the Tooks, Brandybucks, and Sam Gamgee's geneology. I'm struggling to see how this Appendix would be of much use to the writers of the new TV series . . . unless they wanted to do a Hobbit-focused spinoff (which could be totally awesome, if done right).

Appendices D, E, and F all contain "academic" information on the calendars, writing systems, and non-elvish languages of Middle-earth. Again, not much new story potential, but a wealth of information that I hope and pray the Amazon writers pay attention to as they take us back into the world of Lord of the Rings. Small details matter, as I'm sure any Tolkien fan will tell you ad nauseam.

Okay, thanks for sticking with me this far. My goal is to do a three more posts in this series: the first post will look at Appendix A in detail and speculate about what new stories could be drawn from that material. The second post will do the same for Appendix B, and the third post will cover Appendices C, D, E, and F and see what material (if any) might be pulled from those sections to flesh-out any new stories Amazon develops. I'll get these posts out ASAP, so keep checking back regularly.

Also, as always, if you have any questions regarding the Appendices or Middle-earth in general that you'd like me answer, drop them in the comments!

Later

a - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Humphrey Carpenter, 1981)
b - The Lord of the Rings Appendices (Tolkien Gateway)