Did Aragorn kill all the baby orcs?

what happened to all the orcs after the lord of the rings did aragorn kill them all even the little orc babies in their cribs as georgia martin suggested let's take a look hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover lord of the rings a song of ice and fire and other great fantasy books and tv shows if you're interested in that please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen in a previous video i looked at one of george rr martin's critiques of the lord of the rings namely that tolkien just assumed that the land would prosper with aragorn as king because aragorn was a good man and would therefore be a wise king without ever asking what was aragorn's tax policy we answered that one but the other half of his critique was perhaps even more troubling this is what he said what about all these orcs by the end of the war sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone they're in the mountains did aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them even the little baby orcs in their little orc cradles like last time this sounds like a fair critique so let's see what did happen to all those orcs after sauron's fall and let's start by heading forward a couple of hundred years to tolkien's unfinished sequel to the lord of the rings well unfinished is probably a bit of an overstatement he got about 13 pages in before abandoning it i did a video on it if you're interested anyway in that the new shadow it's very clear that in gondor at least and the parts close to mordor orcs are no more they are figures of ancient history most people alive have never experienced the threat of orcs to the extent that doing orcs work is a sort of folk phrase for doing evil so what happened to the orcs of mordor this is a quote from just after the fall of sauron as when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die so the creatures of sauron orc or troll or beast spell enslaved ran hither and thither mindless and some slew themselves or cast themselves in pits or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope so such was sauron's control over the orcs that when he fell they wandered withless and purposeless and then feebly died or as he describes actually happened at the black gate of mordor they ran hither and thither mindless some killed themselves and others ran off to hide in dark places in other words amid the cataclysmic events that immediately followed the ring's destruction mount doom exploding the ring wraiths destroyed sauron's power broken thousands of orcs killed themselves or were killed by other orcs or the army of the west or just went and hid never to be seen again and when we read of the aftermath of the battle one of the noticeable things is that there are actually very few real mentions of orcs we read that some of the army of the west labored and fought much with the remnants of the easterlings and southrons until all were subdued the easterlings and the southruns were humans not orcs we also read that the army destroyed the fortresses in the north of mordor seemingly without any significant opposition and that the human slaves around mordor were given the lands around lake nirnan in other words south mordor but there's not even a passing reference to any orcs needing to be cleared out first so the orcs around mordor seem to have been destroyed or disappeared as a direct result of sauron's downfall or in its immediate aftermath not by later purges by aragorn we do read that aragorn and ayam air and their armies set off on a few military expeditions in the years or decades that followed to the south and east but those were against humans who had previously fallen under the influence of sauron not orcs this dramatic immediate and almost complete end to the orcs around mordor when sauron dies shouldn't be a complete surprise to us remember how tolkien referred to them as being like worker ants suddenly robbed of their queen that's what they were like so bound to sauron's will that when saron was gone they couldn't carry on as a very brief history of orcs they were first formed by melkor sauron's old master not ex-nihilo created incidentally in tolkien's world evil cannot create something from nothing and they fought with him in the great battles of the first age but when he was defeated they became scattered and almost extinct sauron rebuilt their numbers for his wars in the second and third age but when he was gone as before they seemed to have been scattered aimless fighting amongst themselves and almost extinct but hang on you may be saying the orcs around mordor were not the only orcs what happened to the others well there were orcs in murkwood based in dolguldur it happened largely off page but the elves of lothlorien under kellerborn and north merkwood under thranduil destroyed them we're told that they cleanse the wood in its entirety so no more orcs in murkwood the orcs or goblins under the misty mountains are a slightly different case because they were for a long time not under the direct control of sauron indeed by the time of the war of the ring they seem to have been under the influence of saruman they were the ones who hurried to the fellowship in moria and as we know sarah mann created some uruk-hai of his own gathering a large force at isengard that went into the battle of the hornberg they were we're told destroyed by some huons who arrived sealing off the exits to the valley which leaves the remainder in moria and the misty mountains during the seventh of the longbeards and his dwarven army retook moria a little way into the fourth age so they were gone too and as for other orcs in smaller enclaves or the remnants of the orcs we have just been looking at that escaped we read no more in one of his later letters tolkien did clarify that orcs needed some sort of controlling influence or be kept at war with an outside enemy or else they would simply fight each other so what does all of this add up to the orcs of mordor appear to have been largely destroyed in the aftermath of sauron's downfall those in merkwood rooted out by the elves and those in moria by the dwarves and the other groups who survived went underground seeking out dark lightless places far from hope and probably turned on one another in time they faded and became legend so by the time of the new shadow orcs are but a distant memory the dominion of man has arrived and orcs like elves and dragons and ants and dwarves have no place there and in all this one thing is glaringly absent any hint of a program of orc extermination by aragorn absence of evidence that it happened doesn't mean it didn't of course but any argument from silence is inherently flawed i have huge respect for george rr martin but to ask the question whether aragorn pursued a policy of orc genocide would be similar for a song of ice and fire fans asking out of nowhere whether ned stark personally killed all of his companions at the tower of joy it would have been completely out of character and there's no evidence that he did and for the record i definitely don't think he did but hey there's not much evidence that he didn't either a rather extreme example perhaps but you get my point there's no reason to think that aragorn tried to kill all the orcs in middle earth because firstly there is no evidence secondly it seems out of character and thirdly well there was simply no point the orcs were dead or dying anyway there is of course a deeper moral question here about whether tolkien's orcs are inherently evil incapable of being redeemed in any way and so whether killing an orc is as morally reprehensible as george rramartin suggests but let's leave that for another video for now let's just be happy with the conclusion that no aragorn didn't try to systematically wipe out another race it's a low bar but as far as this is concerned his reputation as a good king remains intact if you'd like to see more lord of the rings videos please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce exclusively for my patrons please click on the link on the right of your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching and i'll see you again soon you

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, lotr, the lord of the rings, tolkien, aragorn, all the little orc babies, did aragorn kill all the orcs, orcs, what happened to the orcs after lotr, what happened to the orcs after sauron died, what happened to the orcs after the ring was destroyed, what happened to the orcs, what happened to the orcs after

Id: 9hRs8-1N9j4

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020