Fear Me

... for I have completed The Silmarilion. In doing so, I have certainly crossed a geek line somewhere as I now know more about the history of Middle Earth and the Elves and Númenóreans than is probably healthy for a 35-year-old woman to want to know. And now it's time to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings again with that background knowledge in hand.

Of course, even in fiction there are lessons to be learned, if only we'd not be so thick and try to learn them. I did a mental double-take when reading this passage:

Nonetheless for long is seemed to the Númenóreans that they prospered, and if they were not increased in happiness, yet they grew more strong, and their rich men ever richer. For with the aid and counsel of Sauron they multiplied their possessions, and they devised engines, and they built ever greater ships. And they sailed now with power and armoury to Middle-earth, and they came no longer as bringers of gifts, nor even as rulers, but as fierce men of war. And they hunted the men of Middle-earth and took their goods and enslaved them, and many they slew cruelly upon their altars. For they built in their fortresses temples and great tombs in those days; and men feared them, and the memory of the kindly kings of the ancient days faded from the world and was darkened by many a tale of dread.

Sound familiar?