Morgoth and Sauron - What was the difference?

middle earth had two dark lords the first was melchor more commonly known as morgoth and the second was his right hand man sauron who would become a dark lord in his own right after morgoth's defeat but interestingly enough behind all the death and destruction morgoth and sauron were not the same their motivations the way they operated and their ultimate goals were fundamentally different so in this video let's explore how will morgoth and sauron different first a bit of background just so we're all on the same page morgoth was the og dark lord he was once the foremost of the valor alongside his brother manway and during the early days of arda he was by far the most powerful on the other hand sauron was a maya a tear below the varma and he was originally a servant of the vala called aolai in the early days of arda he was corrupted by morgoth and would go on to become one of his most important lieutenants and ultimately his successor morgoth would be the dark lord of the first age amongst his greatest crimes were the destruction of the two lamps the destruction of the two trees the theft of the silmarils the cursing of huron and his children and the near-total genocide of the peoples of valerian sauron would take over his master's mantle in the middle of the second age and wear it until the end of the third age amongst his greatest crimes were the distribution of the accursed rings of power the destruction of oregon the downfall of numenor the genocide of the end wives and the millennial long war he waged on the three peoples of middle earth together the two dark lords had a kill count that likely stood in the millions and were responsible for destruction that would reshape the world but despite all of this morgoth and sauron were not the same flavour of evil not that it really mattered to all the people they killed or enslaved in fact if sauron had just been a little less extreme it's possible that he would have been one of morgoth's greatest foes to understand this we need to know what motivated them morgoth is quite simple to understand his descent into evil comes from his desire to create true life something only louvitar was capable of during the creation of arthur morgoth attempts to subvert iluvatar because he wants to do things his own way when iluvitar lays the smackdown on him and tells him that everything he does is part of his plan anyway morgoth becomes a little bit upset his motivation becomes very basic if it isn't mine then i'll destroy it and that's exactly what he does becoming increasingly extreme over time in that sense morgoth is pure chaos all the death and destruction he causes is because he's having a giant temper tantrum yes morgoth is just a big baby sauron is a little more complex unlike morgoth saron actually had some good qualities in the beginning he was an incredible craftsman he loved ordering efficiency and hated the wastefulness of chaos unfortunately these qualities were also his downfall his love of order transformed into an obsession and he deluded himself into believing that things would be better off if he was in control even if it came at the expense of other living creatures this is what allowed him to be corrupted by morgoth with the vala there was plenty of red tape involved but under morgoth sauron had a lot more free agency to do things the way he wanted it seems morgoth recognized sauron's talent and usefulness hence why saron was appointed as the first commander of angband so even from their motivations alone we can see the massive differences between morkov and sauron morgoth was pure chaos sauron was tyrannical order we could see more examples of this in the way in which they operated morgoth behaved like an agent of chaos he hated elves he hated men he hated dwarves he hates everything his prime motivation was to deal death and destruction to his enemies which was almost everyone in existence meaning that his behavior and actions were often irrational and without reasonable cause for example instead of immediately fleeing valinor he risked capture by stealing the silver rules and murdering finway largely just because he hated feyenoor another perfect example of how spiteful morgoth was is his treatment of the easterlings despite faithfully serving him in battle he immediately goes back on his promise of giving them valerian and instead locks them in hiflem treating your allies like garbage seems crazy but to morgoth it made sense men were a creation of a louvitar and he hated that so even though they served him loyally he still hated them morgoth's spitefulness would sometimes have unexpected and unintended consequences the biggest one was his aforementioned murder of fenway and the theft of the silmarils which led to the noldor following him and engaging him in a 600 year long war morgoth was genuinely surprised by this which goes to show that he never even thought about the consequences of his actions and did it just because he knew it would cause people pain going back to the example of men even though they bowed down to him he still brutalized them leading to some of them rebelling and becoming the adine in these ways morgoth through his destructive but careless actions was the architect of his own downfall morgoth was very aggressive in his style of warfare preferring blitzkrieg like assaults on unsuspecting foes this led to him suffering several catastrophic defeats before he actually started to properly plan things out but even then his armies mostly just relied on overwhelming force and destructive power that's not to say it wasn't effective morgoth was never defeated conventionally and his defeats came as a result of the direct intervention from the vala except for his duel with fingolfin morgoth was almost never physically present at the war and conducted his wars from deep within angband for all his power he was still a coward sauron's behaviour was much easier to understand from the perspective of his enemies because he wanted to rule the world and everything in it destruction was not a necessity but an option to be used when required which was a lot a perfect example is the forging of the rings of power sauron wanted to use them to gain control of the elves and he only decided to destroy them after they became aware of his treachery and refused to treat with him sauron did not hate elves or men by default but if you resisted him then you would serve no purpose in his idea of a perfectly ordered world and he would go to great lengths to destroy you keeping in line with his somewhat saner motivations sauron was very calculating and his actions were very deliberate he was a skilled planner and never really acted irrationally as it went against his core beliefs whilst he was certainly also full of spite and hatred he did not operate solely from the depths of these emotions and had the good sense to hide it if he was in the process of carrying out a plan even his most heinous deeds were done with a greater plan in mind his destruction of the empty wives was to deny the last alliance a place to rest and resupply during their march to mordor sauron was extremely cautious in his approach to warfare and often took centuries to plan out his invasions even if it meant giving his foes ample time to prepare defenses his strategies often involved wars on multiple fronts and he would exploit every advantage to make his foes weaker this yielded mixed results although sauron would often win battles he would rarely win the actual war itself unlike morgoth sauron was not a coward and sometimes personally led his armies and would fight if required however sauron was not a fighter and his record ended up being 012 in physical combat that being said morgoth and sauron still had plenty of similarities in regards to their methods they both caused death and destruction on a massive scale they both industrialized their war machine with the liberal usage of slavery and they both took glee in corrupting or dominating their former enemies they were both extremely cunning and knew the best ways to exploit their enemies there's two perfect examples of this from the first age morgoth authoring the execution of gelmir in front of his brother guindore debate fingon's army into attacking prematurely during the battle of unnumbered tears and sauron tricking gaul in the unhappy into revealing the location of barohere and his outlaws with the promise of reuniting gorlim with his wife even though she was dead they also suffered the same flaws both had a certain level of delusion and both of them were highly ignorant of the nature of good leading them both to fundamentally misunderstand their enemies even becoming fearful of them and saddled by doubt both of them also poured much of their native power into physical objects morgoth poured his power into ardor itself and sauron poured his power into the one ring ironically this led to both of their destructions morgoth was pathetic and weak by the end and saron followed the one ring into oblivion interestingly enough sauron became more like morgoth as time progressed and although his motivations never became as twisted as morgoth's his fearfulness and ignorance certainly did keeping with the theme of death and destruction morgoth's ultimate goal for the world was destruction yes simply destruction tolkien outlines this in a passage called myths transformed in morgoth's ring he explains that morgoth became increasingly irrational and increasingly enraged at the mere existence of life other than himself thus tolkien concluded that after destroying all of his enemies morgoth would even begin to destroy his own creatures and servants once that was finished he would begin attempting to undo all of creation itself which leads to an amusing mental image where morgoth is just walking around screaming in rage as he desperately tries to break mountains with his hammer however tolkien points out that this was beyond morgoth's power although he could destroy physical bodies he could not destroy the spirits of his foes thus they would always exist in one form or another this is a throwback to the original reason why morgoth fell to evil while he could influence mata he could not truly create it or destroy it and in regards to ardor itself although morgoth could severely damage it he ultimately could not destroy it and it would always exist a world in potential even if all was ruined and mad in that sense moloff was not capable of true victory nor true satisfaction for him that ended up becoming the destruction of existence but that was beyond his capabilities in the same passage we also get to understand sauron's end game unlike morgoth the existence of creatures other than himself never offended sauron even as sauron became increasingly like morgoth as time progressed in fact saron was fine with the existence of others provided that they submitted to his will and became part of his dominion we see this through much of the second and third age where large sections of middle earth are under saron's control however those that resisted his will were only fit for destruction hence sauron waging war against the westlands of middle earth for thousands of years so unlike in a timeline where morgoth wins life and civilization would still exist under sauron but that's not to say that it would be great either we've seen what happens to societies that fall beneath sauron's influence people become cruel and greedy violence becomes normalized abhorrent practices such as slavery are allowed to occur and in one example numenor even human sacrifices carried out nature would be destroyed forests cut down to fuel the fires mountains hollowed out for metal animals driven to extinction to feed the armies and rivers polluted from the wastes of the furnaces and without divine intervention this dystopian nightmare would be eternal because as a demigod himself sauron has no natural expiry date a fitting quote for a world beneath sauron comes from george orwell's 1984. if you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever so as you can see morgoth and sauron were similar in many ways both were evil creatures of incredible power brutal in their methods expansive in the scale of their destruction and they delighted in the demise of their foes however they were also different in many ways they both operated in completely different styles they differed in the treatment of their friends and foes and they had completely different thought processes and most importantly whereas morgoth was chaos sauron was order whereas mogov desired destruction sauron desired dominion and in the end they both ended up in the same place thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed it or at least found it interesting i've been wanting to do this video for a long time but it's a surprisingly difficult topic to talk about especially if i want to keep the video to a reasonable length in reality an entire video essay could be done on the differences between morgoth and sauron but i wanted to keep it brief cheers thanks again and remember don't let people define you just because you're evil you're your own person and you deserve to be treated that way

Channel: Darth Gandalf

Views: 3,471,266

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Id: D31Mw0-9DdU

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022

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[u/Fisrueos]

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