#return of the king

[muppetkirby]

What’s crazy is that for all the decades that LOTR has been out, and for all the years it’s been so famous and relevant, it wasn’t common knowledge how it ends? Idk like I knew Frodo and Sam make it back to the Shire. I thought that was it. I thought they got their simple happy ever after. But I DIDN’T know that Frodo leaves for the Grey Havens!!!! LIKE I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THAT ! HOW WAS I NOT AWARE OF THAT!!!!! Maybe it was just me but like I’m glad I didn’t know because my reading experience was so fun and I would never want to miss out on that heartbreak of the real bittersweet ending.

[cantsayidont]

I am generally fond of the Peter Jackson LORD OF THE RINGS movies (much more so than THE HOBBIT trilogy, which is an unmitigated disaster from start to finish), but I still feel that it was a tremendous error to remove "The Scouring of the Shire" from the ending of RETURN OF THE KING. I think I understand the rationale for omitting it — it further complicates what's already a protracted finale, and it is kind of a downer — but I suspect it's one of the changes to which Tolkien himself would have most objected.

First, it's an essential element in the arc of Frodo. Frodo has already been wounded in a way that even Elrond and Gandalf can't entirely fix, even after they remove the notch of the Morgul-knife. After enduring an impossible ordeal, he returns to the Shire to find that the war has come home in a way that, at least for him, can't be fully set right even after Saruman is dead and much of the immediate damage repaired. Frodo's original conflicts have been seemingly resolved: At the beginning of the book, he's seen in Hobbiton as an irresponsible youth of dubious background who grows into another suspicious eccentric like Bilbo, but by the end, they want to make him the mayor (to which Frodo only very reluctantly and temporarily agrees), and even his feud with the Sackville-Bagginses is ended. Even so, Frodo is left far more alienated than he ever was to start with, which is why he finally chooses to go over Sea rather than live out his life in the Shire.

Second, while it is superficially rather grim, I think Tolkien might have argued that it's actually his most hopeful chapter. Tolkien says in the introduction to the second edition that "The Scouring of the Shire" had its roots in his own childhood:

The country in which I lived in childhood [in Warwickshire] was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important.

Thus, it seems significant that the shabby destruction of the Shire at the hands of Saruman and his men is actually set right remarkably quickly. As soon as Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return, they're able to rouse the other hobbits to action and drive out the ruffians within a matter of days, and Sam is even able to use Galadriel's gift to replace most of the trees that have been carelessly destroyed, with a magnificent mallorn-tree in place of the beloved Party Tree. The Shire hasn't wholly escaped the scars of industrialization, but the hobbits have come to their senses and turned back before it was too late.

That is really the most optimistic element of the story's finale. Aragorn's coronation means a restoration of order to the West, but magic and wonder are fading away or departing over Sea. Arwen has made the choice of Luthien and is doomed to eventually fade and leave the world; in the Appendices, after Aragorn's death, she returns to Lórien, now deserted, and essentially lies down and dies. Tolkien did not feel the Ents would ever find the Ent-wives, so they too will probably never flourish again. However, the Shire endures, in a way that the country where Tolkien grew up did not — not by remaining completely aloof from the world, but by rejecting the new mill and the smokestacks, and by "thousands of willing hands of all ages" deliberately tearing down everything built by Saruman and using the bricks "to repair many an old hole, to make it snugger and drier."

[imsupposedtobestudying-whoops]

🗡That will depend on the manner of your return 🏹

[optional]

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

[mithrandirl]

Then suddenly he beheld his sister Éowyn as she lay, and he knew her. He stood a moment as a man who is pierced in the midst of a cry by an arrow through the heart; and then his face went deathly white, and a cold fury rose in him, so that all speech failed him for a while. A fey mood took him.

[brigwife]

The Lord of the Rings (Extended-extended edition): Shots that didn't make the final cut

[emilybeemartin]

On today's episode of LotR AU: Boromir Lives, it's after the battle of Pelennor Fields! There are so many great possibilities to explore when Boromir finally, finally returns to Minas Tirith--- making the agonizing decision to follow Aragorn through the Paths of the Dead instead of going straight to the city with Theoden, fighting like a demon outside the gates, learning about his father's death, and then choosing to leave again to accompany Aragorn to the Black Gate, but right now it's WHUMP TIME.

Obviously, first up is Faramir. If Boromir is with Aragorn, he won't enter the city until after the battle, and so he wouldn't know anything about Faramir's flight from Osgiliath or the pyre in the tombs.

In the few days between the battle and leaving for the Black Gate, I envision Boromir operating on undiluted adrenaline as the wounded and dead are tended. Who needs food? Who needs sleep? Not Boromir. He's returned to his city at its lowest possible moment and he's going to DO EVERYTHING TO FIX EVERYONE ALL AT ONCE.

The scene where Pippin finds Merry wounded and dazed and wandering the streets, has always been a favorite of mine and was one of the first LotR illustrations I ever did ~20 years ago. In the book, Gandalf is the one who comes to carry Merry up to the Houses of Healing. In this AU, you know it's Boromir.

Anyway, eventually Legolas and Gimli probably have to force some rudimentary self-care.

Boromir Lives AU: Aragorn's Coronation

Boromir Lives AU: Faramir and Eowyn's Wedding

[influencerpippin]

kisses u on the forehead in an unmistakably samfrodo 2003 way

[lulii999]

The way I would actually die for Faramir and Eowyn.

[lotrcolors]

[lithiumseven]

The elves of middle earth having the same “call your dad when you don’t know how to fix a problem” instinct but because they live forever it’s like

Some elf starts experiencing the elven equivalent of car trouble (idk, horse won’t go?) and calls his dad, and then his dad can’t figure it out so he calls HIS dad and so on and so forth until you’ve got this guys entire lineage all huddled together in elven cargo shorts trying to solve a dented horseshoe

[hellsitegenetics]

Long before time had a name, Ninjago was created by the First Spinjitzu Master, using the Four Weapons of Spinjitzu. The Scythe of Quakes, the Nunchucks of Lightning, the Shurikens of Ice and the Sword of Fire. Weapons so powerful, no one can handle all of their power at once! When he passed away, his two sons swore to protect them, but the oldest was consumed by darkness and wanted to possess them. A battle between brothers broke out, and the oldest was struck down and banished to the Underworld. Peace returned, and the younger brother hid the weapons, but knowing his older brother's relentless ambition for power, he placed a guardian to protect them. And for fear of his own demise, a map for an honest man to hide. That honest man was your father. The older brother is Lord Garmadon, and I... need to find those weapons before he does.

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Closest match: Neoneuromus ignobilis isolate Gutianshan chromosome 5 Common name: Dobsonfly

[illustratus]

Watchful Peace, The Return of the King by John Howe

[bioluminesced]

sunset over minas tirith

[optional]

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

[inthiskingdomwewillendure]

The Return of the King in 4k