Also, they had mayors and stuff, a VERY clear class division and were technically under the rule of Gondor after the Northern Kingdom fell but Gondor didn't really have the resources or urge to do any ruling over there. Once Aragorn was in they were essentially an autonomous zone under military protection in exchange for maintaining the local roads and bridges.
This tickled something in my brain, and I finally figured out what: Последний кольценосец
The Last Ringbearer is a 1999 fantasy fan-fiction book by the Russian paleontologist Kirill Yeskov. It is an alternative account of, and an informal sequel to, the events of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. […]
Critics have stated that the book is well-known to Tolkien fans in Russia, and that it provides an alternate take on the story. Scholars have variously called it a parody and a paraquel. They have interpreted it as a critique of totalitarianism, or of Tolkien's anti-modern racial and environmental vision coupled with a destruction of technology which could itself be called totalitarian. The book contains sections of Russian history, and while it says little directly on real-world politics, it can be read as an ironic riposte to American exceptionalism. In 2001 the book earned the Strannik Literary Award in the "Sword in the Stone" (Fantasy) nomination.
I've really gotta read that. I'm a giant Tolkien nerd and interact with some of well known Tolkien academics online and have added 'Do normal spiders exist in middle earth or are they all descendants of Ungoliant?' To the discussion with a degree of pot stirring. I'm also generally a pretty sympathetic to the orcs and have some criticism regarding elves.
It's a page-turner, but what no one ever says about it in the summaries is that it's like a geo-political spy thriller set in middle earth after the books. It's so good and not at all what I thought it'd be going in.
while it says little directly on real-world politics
fucking baby-brained summary I expect nothing less from natopedia
‘Do normal spiders exist in middle earth or are they all descendants of Ungoliant?’
I also once wondered about it so guess this isn't such weird question if we came to it independently. Both the existence of Shelob and spiders in Hobbit seems to support it as clear hierararchy of decline of spiderkind, like other species in Tolkien universe also decline in time and generations. Maybe Tolkien just hated spiders, i do know that fragment in Hobbit is the hardest part to read for me out of entirety of his works.
I was positive that regular spiders do exist and were servants of Vairë the Weaver, but I guess I was extrapolating from a line that refers to her weavings as "webs".
i've heard of it and it does sound interesting, but i've always been somewhat wary of the LOTR extended universe since being burned by the silmarillion (its so long and my dyslexic ass has a job 😭) - how knowledgeable about middle earth do you have to be to enjoy it? i loved the original books but i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to fingolfin/feanor/etc
Tom Bombadil is the grillpilled wife guy and is therefore unaffected by the the threat of Sauron, the temptation of the ring, or the plight of the Fellowship.
They ALWAYS fucking erase Bombadil. Not in even a single screen adaption. The movies even inserted a bunch of junk about Radagast, and Aaragorn's love affair, negating the common notion that it was "because they were already too long". SMH.
Thing is, the Shire was a hereditary monarchy, they just didn't call their ruler a king - it was Thane. Pippin was in line for and did eventually inherit the title.
There's also Buckland, the small offshoot of the Shire ruled by the Master of Buckland, and of course this title was inherited by Merry.
I'm a little more sympathetic to the Hobbits. Here you had a stable kin-based society in a part of the world that nobody cared about until some Fed from a far off Western Superpower (that destroyed an entire continent and sunk another island nation under the sea, mind you) is meddling around.
The timeline says they were "allowed" to move there by original settler-colony of Arnor, which suggests displacement since Tolkien is a known Western sympathizer.
Gondor had kings, they just hadn't had one in a long time because they thought the line died out. That's why Denethor sits next to the throne and not on it, he was just the Steward. As Isildur's heir, Aragorn had the "rightful claim" to the throne. It's actually encouraging that he waited until after the evil threat was destroyed to take power.
A King can't coup a Steward, that's like saying your regular teacher "got the sub fired", when all they did was come back from vacation. And besides, Denethor has only Denethor to blame for his fate, the dude was a prick and a psychopath who killed himself while trying to kill his own son.
Bilbo and Frodo were literal kulaks, Merry and Pippin were kulak failsons, Sam was class traitor. Shire did had central authority and law enforcement. If they were able to enjoy their rural kulak lifestyles it was because dunedains protected them, for which they recieved scorn from the hobbits (huh this one does look very like western leftist). They were easily subjugated by powerless former wizard and his puny band of washout cronies (this one is very anarchist thing to do). Finally they bended the knee to Aragorn and without any talks otherwise recieved their own land as fief and part of Reunited Kingdom.
Your right. Anti-anarchism is wrecker shit, and the anarchists on this site do more irl praxis in a week than my shut-in ass is likely to do my whole life.
Hmm. IMO it's kind of weird to assume all hobbits were ideologically identical. They clearly didn't establish a completely anarchist society for themselves, but there was also a lot of resistance to and outright ignoring of authority among them. They didn't really give a shit if they were technically under the rule of some empire, and at least some of them didn't seem to give a shit about what the Mayor had to say. I don't think we got much of an insight into their economic relations.
It's true the ones who went adventuring were—or turned into—some pretty gross bootlickers, though.