The Battle of Unnumbered Tears | Of the Battle for Beleriand : Silmarillion Explained - Part 3 of 3

this is the beginning of the end it is the First Ages greatest disaster and it will fundamentally alter the trajectory of everything that's still to come so this isn't going to be like a Happy video if you won't leave you're feeling all warm inside but when it comes to the Epic tales of the cinema really on this is the turning point this is the gateway to the Final Act this is the moment where the bad guys win [Music] Maya Govan and melanin and welcome to the final video in this Trilogy explaining and untangling the fifth battle for balerion the neo-niath are in noidiad one of the ultimate tragedies in all of tolkien's writings and in the last video I talked about how this battle began and how for a moment there it looked like the good guys were going to win it but of course they do not our heroes are split into two armies one in the East one in the west and the plan was for these two alliances to unite in the middle and to crush morgot's Army as between Anvil and Hammer but that is not how this goes outside the Dark Lord's fortress the Western host led by High King of the noldor finagon was reinforced by 10 000 Warriors of gondolin who rode to his Aid unsummoned and unlooked for under the command of his brother turgon the hidden king of gondolin and on the morning of the sixth day of the fighting the Eastern Alliance led by Maya dross that's the eldest son of feyeno also shows up and victory is in Our Hero's grasp but it's not meant to be just as the good guys are about to unite morgoth unleashes the last of his strength and his Fortress of angaband is emptied Orcs and wolves and balrogs and Dragons issue forth and separate the three hosts of our alliance turgon and the Mortal men under the command of hulin thalion are pushed South to the fan of sarek Maya Ross and his brothers and the dwarves of belagost and the Mortal easterlings who swore loyalty to the sons of feyenoord are pushed back into the east by dragons and High King finagon is slain however what I find so interesting here is that we are explicitly told by Tolkien that this battle isn't lost because morgoth has a greater strength of evil things it isn't lost because the good guys don't have the military might it is lost because as was prophesied by Mandos towards the beginning of the cinema really on the noldor are betrayed treason of kin unto kin is the reason morgoth takes the victory but although the treachery of some people causes our Reliance of good guys to lose spectacularly this is not the end of the story morgoth's victory in the neonayath is not quite absolute and that is due to the loyalty and the honor and the sacrifice of some other people so let's talk about that the treason that cost Our Heroes their win and the Loyalty that saves them from utter ruin and I'll begin by looking to the east to the alliance of Maya the Ross and the Betrayal that tears the whole thing apart but very quickly I'll just give a brief recap of who's fighting alongside Maya Ross because in the East we see all three major races represented obviously first we have the seven sons of feyenoord or potentially six depending on whether or not you include the death of the youngest during feyeno's burning of the ships and these guys are the only named elves to fight in the East mythros is the leader of like the whole Alliance and where he goes goes also his brother maglor the mighty singer who is generally an all-round delightful guy however the next two suns are despicable kellogorm and could've been due to the heinous actions of these two in the tale of Baron and lithien many other elves of balerian want nothing to do with the sons of theenor which is fair enough really keligorman could have been are the worst but they are also hardly mentioned in this battle so apart from the fact that they fight in it and get wounded there's not really much more to say about them right now the same is also true for amrod and amarass they are present but they're not very important however there is one more sun to talk about and that is karanthia the dark now karanthia is important in this battle and the main reason why is because of the Mortal men that he brings to it before the battle began an easterling Chieftain called ulfang along with his sons and ulwath swore loyalty to karanthia whereas a different easterling Chieftain called Bohr swore loyalty to mayadros and he brought with him his three sons bolak bolad and borthand so although there are no edine of the three main houses fighting in the East we do see two separate groups of easterlings and of course the third race that's represented in the East are the dwarves of belagost the broad beams and the firebeards who marched to war in the service of their King azagal now I will talk about these elves and dwarves and Men very very soon but I also want to point out that when moragoff unleashed the entirety of his army the balrogs under the command of gothmog went West where they eventually killed hiking finagon in a disgustingly disgraceful display of Dishonor but the dragons went East and the dragons of moragoth are led by the father of all dragons the first the great worm gloudem the golden and glaudung is an important part of this video but in the next series that I go through the great tale of the children of hurin glaurung is perhaps the sensual villain and he's an absolutely fascinating character despite the fact that he may look more like an animal than a person glaurung is 100 a thinking feeling being he has a personality he has a magical mind-bending powers and in many ways I kind of consider him the halfway point between the other two top lieutenants of morgoths gothmog and Sauron as I said in the last video gothmog is the ultimate Battlefield badass you know he's not a particularly psychological villain but killing Heroes is what he does best Sauron on the other hand is kind of the opposite when it comes to fighting he loses a lot but he's probably the most psychologically compelling villain in the entire legendary him he is a master of deception and manipulation and sorcery and glaurung is right in the middle as a killer he's not quite on par with gothmog and as a sorcerer he's not quite on par with Sauron but he is a fire-breathing dragon with massive Battlefield potential and he is also a mind-destroying master of deception so definitely do not underestimate glaurung Tolkien describes him as the most fell of all the creatures of the enemy anyway it is time to talk about betrayal treason of kin unto kin so after my throttle's Eastern Army is swept aside by the unleashing of morgoth's last strength The Elves and dwarves and easterlings are swept away from their other allies they are assailed by Orcs and wolves and Orcs riding wolves and Dragons led by galaogung but Tolkien reminds us that neither by wolf nor by balrog nor by Dragon would morgoth have achieved his end but not for the treachery of men for it is in this moment that the traitors are revealed morgoth's secret servants hiding among the ranks of our heroes and they are the three treacherous sons of ulfang we are told that the sons of ulfang went over suddenly to morgoth and drove in upon the rear of the sons of feyenoor and in the confusion that they wrought they came near to the standard of Maya dros imagine that imagine being on the battlefield staring down Orcs and wolves and dragons and then suddenly some of the men that you're supposed to be fighting alongside just join the enemy and turn against you then and there suddenly morgoth's servants are among your ranks bearing down on Maya dros the leader of this whole Enterprise it's insane but before continuing the story I do want to take a look at the motives behind this treachery we are told that many of the Unfaithful easterlings turned and fled their hearts being filled with lies and fear and I think this is very important They don't serve morgoth because like they support him or because they're loyal to him they turn against our heroes a out of fear and B more importantly I think because they are deceived by lies in the philosophical essay that Tolkien called afterabeth finward or underest he tells us that way back in the beginning of Manish history when the first fathers of men awoke in hiladorian morgoth came among them and he manipulated them using fear and lies in fact he was so successful that the earliest ancestors of all men are centered and took melakore to be a Lord and God and these men who once worshiped melkor are the ancestors of every man ever from Aragorn and faramir all the way down to like guima Worm tongue every single mortal man is distantly descended from a guy who was once deceived by the lies and fear of the dark lord which is perhaps why the race of men kind of has a bit of a darker potential than the races of elves and dwarves and I think it's why men have this relative susceptibility for getting corrupted but not all men we are told that as two of ulifang's sons Drew near to the standard of maidros the sons of that other easterling Chieftain bore the faithful stood against them and his three sons killed the treacherous men ulfast and ulwath thus saving the lives of mayadros and maglo and potentially all the other sons of feyenoor however they gave their lives to achieve this all of Boris Sons were slain by the treason of their kinsfolk and although the eventual fate of boar himself isn't given in the published silmarillion in earlier writings found in the Lost road we are told that the chieftain board died with his sons in battle defending the Elven Lords that he swore loyalty to and thus we are told that Bohr and his sons cheated the hope of morgoth which demonstrates something else about the race of men which makes them again very different from the other races and that's that they seem to have a greater degree of Free Will than anyone else in Middle Earth now I guess the question of like whether free will can really coexist with fate is much more of a philosophical one than a Tolkien law one and I don't want to get it too bogged down in that right now but we are specifically told in the very first chapter of the Quinta Cinema really on that men have a virtue to shape their life amid the powers and chances of the world beyond the music of the iron which is a Fate To All Things else so even though all men are descended from melanchol worshipers no men are entirely defined by it and so we see here a great example of something that we'll see a lot more clearly a little later in this video and that's that although the good guys lose this battle due to the treachery of men morgoth's hope at achieving total Victory is cheated due to the Loyalty of men anyway there is one last mortal to talk about here and that is ulfang's worst son UL adore The accursed Who Tolkien tells us was the leader in treason ulador kept a secret strength hidden in the Eastern Hills and when the time was just right he summoned these men into battle and so the host of Maya the Ross is now assaulted on three sides they face dragons in the west Orcs And wolves in the North and the traitorous Warriors of ulador in the East Maya Ross's Alliance broke and was scattered and we are told that every single one of the sons of feyenoor were wounded in this battle but amazingly non were slain for they drew together and gathered a remnant of the noldor and the now green about them now green means dwarfs by the way and they hewed away out of the battle and escaped far away towards mount All Med which if we look at the map we'll see is a really long way away even after the disaster of the last battle maidross kept his island of resistance amid a sea of foes but now even the hill of himring can no longer be defended all the sons of feyenoir flee far into the South and after this battle they wandered As Leaves before the wind their arms were scattered and their league broken and they took to a wild and Woodland life mingling with the green elves of Assyrian bereft of their power and Glory of old now this is absolutely not the end of the sons of feignal story we'll see them again but when we do they will be quite different characters well not Kelly Gorman could have been they've always been awful and also current there has never been particularly pleasant but Maya thros a guy I absolutely love and would spend every day of the week does undergo a real downward moral trajectory after this battle the next time we see him he will be a darker character definitely not a villain but also not really a hero anymore the neo-niath arenoidyard really changes my other offs and I think there are two separate but very much connected reasons for this one is the death of his beloved cousin finagon finagon was a really positive influence on ammaith Ross and the bond that they shared was incredibly profound but that's over now and although I would never make this argument I can imagine how Maya Ross may very well blame himself for all that's gone wrong you know this battle was his brainchild the union of Mythos was summoned by him and in the end it was lost because he made alliance with these newcomen and gay his friendship to the greatest of their Chieftains bore and ulfang anyway before I leave the sons of feenor for a good while actually there is one last thing to say because just before they fled South and hewed their way out of the battle one of them moglor of all people the singer the poet the nice one he turned and he slew UL adore the accursed the battle was lost but at least to some extent the army of the East was Avenged by moglor however despite the fact that the noldor are now gone and the easterlings are now either traitors or dead this is not the end of the battle and in the East we still have glaurung to contend with and we still have those dwarves of belagost under the command of King azagal Tolkien writes that last of all the Eastern Force to stand firm were the dwarves and thus they won Renown we are told that due to these great metal War masks that the dwarves wear in battle they actually have a much higher resistance to fire than either elves or men which gives them a great Edge while defending against the fire breathing dragons in fact just before galau roong and his brood are able to wither the last fleeing remnants of the noldor these heroic dwarves in their fireproof masks which are described as hideous to look upon they make a circle around the dragons and basically they ensure that the elves of the East are not entirely wiped out once again we see loyalty and sacrifice throwing a spanner in morgoth's plans and these dwarves are absolute badasses we are told that even glaurung's mighty armor was not full of proof against the blows of their great axes and the more these dwarves hacked away at glaurung the angrier he became eventually in his rage glaurung turned and struck down as a girl and crawled over him but with his last stroke with the last shred of his life force as a girl drew a knife and drove it into glaurung's belly the wound that the dragon suffered was so severe that he fled the field immediately and the beasts of angaband in dismay followed after him so although azegal did succumb to his wounds and he became the second king to die in the neo-niath arenoidiad with his final Act he basically ended the battle in the east and the very cool but kind of weird detail here which really illuminates another one of the many many reasons why Dwarven culture is so fascinating you see after the death of their King the dwarves of belagost raised up his body on the battlefield and they just sort of bore him away with slow steps they walked behind singing a dirge in deep voices as it were a funeral pomp in their country and gave no heed more to their foes and none dared to stay them imagine being one of those Orcs you know you're fighting for more goth against these dwarves but then all of a sudden their King is killed and the dwarves you're fighting all kind of just stop and they give up on the battle and they slowly bear their King's body away while singing a funeral lament in their deep voices and yet as wild as that is every one of these Orcs knows better than to try and stop them now walking slowly away while singing may not be the most conventionally badass way to leave a battlefield but the fact that they were so physically vulnerable to attack in this moment and yet non- dared to stay them speaks volumes I think to just how dreaded Dwarven culture is among their enemies anyway there's really only one more thing to say about these dwarfs for now and that is that after this battle many dwarves of belagost leave Valerian entirely their Great Mansion isn't abandoned or anything and we will see dwarves of bellagost again but during this period we are told that many migrated East and they eventually came to seek Sanctuary into the greatest of all the Dwarven Mansions kazard Doom I guess maybe that is a bit of a silver lining of this battle it's an absolute disaster but about 700 miles away in Central Middle Earth it does result in a strengthening of kazad Doom which may partially explain why kazard Doom is so mighty at the beginning of the second age anyway that's it that is the end of the battle in the East but it is not the end of the neonayath arenoidiad there is one group of Heroes left and so I will turn now back to the west and focus specifically here on the then of sarek where the last part of our alliance is fighting for their lives view a call at the same time that the armies of finagon and Maya Ross were swept apart in the emptying of angaband turgon and his Warriors of gondolin were forced South and among the gondolin dreams stood firm the remnant of the House of hador the Mortal men of dolomin who followed their Chieftain hulene and his younger brother who Now by this point in the battle Tolkien tells us that the field was lost turgon and the men of dolomin are not fighting to like turn things around and try and win they know it's over they are fighting in the hope that some of them might make it out alive to fight another day but to do that they must first escape the North and from where they are the only route into Central balerian is this one the pass of syrion however there are walks and wolves and balogs behind them and if the whole host of elves and men are just flee South all at once the Orcs will follow them and Central balerian will fall too also one of the only advantages that the good guys have left by this point is that the mighty city of gondolin is still utterly secret and thus for now safe from morgoth but if the retreating gondolin dream were to lead the enemy to gondoline or even reveal its General whereabouts all would be lost and honestly it probably would be better if they just stayed and died on the battlefield at least that way gondolin would endure but then again if the Knights of the gondolin dream did stay and die upon the battlefield to keep their City secret there would be no Fighters left to resist the dark lord gondolin would be without a king and an army and all would be lost so you can see the Dilemma either they stay and fight and everyone dies or they Retreat and give up their secret City and everyone dies or our heroes create a third option someone is gonna have to make an incredible sacrifice which brings us back to houdin and who and the house of hador so we are told that because the house of huddle stood firm with turgon of gondolin the hosts of morgoth could not yet win the pass of syrion but realistically it is only a matter of time before they do fingon is dead you know the sons of feyeno are beaten all of morgoth's strength can now focus on Conquering the past and killing these Defenders the last ones left so Chieftain hulin says to King turgon go now Lord while time is for in you lives The Last Hope of the Eldar and while gondolin stands morgoth shall know fear in his heart now don't forget this isn't just some Battlefield Commander telling another Commander you know I'll cover your retreat who wean and who wore spent a year of their youth being fostered by turgon in gondolin and we are told that turgon loved them dearly it's only been 13 years since they were children in his care which I imagine is the blink of an eye when you're an ageless Immortal and yet now they are telling him to leave them behind to let them die for the greater good I can't imagine how heartbreaking that must be for turgon especially as earlier in this very same day he also lost his brother but then it is who wins brother who was turn to address the king and he delivers what is probably the most foreshadowy line of dialogue in the entire Cinema really on these three sentences are the reason why who all matters so he says to turgon yet out of your house shall come the hope of elves and Men this I say to you Lord with the eyes of death though we part here forever and I shall not look on your white walls again from you and from me a new star shall arise farewell and this new star that shall arise from the coming together of Hua and turgon's Bloodlines is basically what the entire Quinta silimarilion is all about it is the point of the entire story I cannot overstate the significance of this anyway eventually turgon does accept the Council of hulin and who all and he summons All That Remains of the host of gondolin as well as the survivors from among finagon's people and he Retreat through the pass of syrion and Away into Central Valerian and fun fact we are told that as turgon's host Retreats their right and left flanks are defended by two of turgon's greatest captains ekphelion and glorfindel this is glorfindel's first appearance in the silimarilion he and the unbelievably epic fellion of the fountain guard the flanks of the retreating gondolin dream so that none of the enemies should pass them by or gain any knowledge of where exactly they are retreating to which means of all those many many many names that were recruited into the union of midros back in the beginning there is now only one faction left fighting the men of the House of Hudl exactly as hurin and who were desired they hold the rear guard and prevent any Orcs from following the host of gondolin through the pass of syrion but there's more to this sacrifice than just defending their friends the men of the House of huddle are men of dolomin and adorlo mean is in the north it is their home it was part of the kingdom of finagon and they will not abandon it to the ravishment of the enemy Tolkien tells us if they could not win back to their homes there they would stand to the end thus was the treachery of ulador redressed and of all the Deeds of war that the fathers of men wrought in behalf of the Elder The Last Stand of the men of dolomin is the most renowned there is no moment ever again in Manish history that is quite like the final battle of the house of hador hulene and who all draw all their men about them and foot by foot they withdrew until they came behind the fan of sarak and had the stream of reveal before them there they stood and gave way no more so this is the place where the house of hador makes its final stand we are told that all the hosts of angerban swarmed against them but they would retreat no further now we don't know exactly how long the house of huddle held out here but as the sun began to set on the sixth day of the battle who or brother of hulin was slain pierced by a venomed arrow in his eye which is an incredibly specific way to die but what's very interesting is that who War isn't the only character in The legendarium to die in exactly this way 6492 years after the neoniath arenoidiad arathorn father of Aragorn will also be slain by a venomed orc arrow through his eye and I don't really know what to make of this apart from the fact that in real life the last Anglo-Saxon King of England was also supposedly killed by an arrow through his eye so I don't know maybe it's a reference to that but I think it is more than just a coincidence there are major major parallels between huawe and artathorn most significant of which is that there are major parallels between their sons I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here but if you know how this story goes then you do not need me to tell you what it is that makes Aragorn and two or so similar but among the thematically huge similarities there is also the relatively small similarity that both their dads were killed by a poisoned arrow through the eye anyway tragically who all is not the only man to die here in fact we are told that all the Valiant men were slain about him in a heap and the Orcs hewed their heads and piled them as a mound of gold in the sunset which is just such a Sinister mental image a mound of golden head heads shining in the sunset after they've been hacked from their bodies and piled up by Orcs terrible but in the end every single man of hado's house who fought in this battle was killed except for who we last of all he fought on standing alone he cast aside his shield and he wielded his ax in both hands he killed orc after orc after orc until eventually gothmog Lord of all balrogs joined the battle gothmog brought with him a troll guard which on the one hand might not seem a particularly fascinating detail but this is the very first chronological mention of trolls anywhere in Middle Earth history and I don't want to go too far down a speculation Rabbit Hole here but I do think there's something very interesting to ponder on in The Lord of the Rings Treebeard says to Mary and Pippin maybe you have heard of trolls they are Mighty strong but trolls are only counterfeits made in a mockery of ants as Orcs were of elves and a little bit later in the two towers when the other heroes are on their way to eisengard to confront Saruman there came forward out of the trees three strange shapes as tall as trolls they were 12 feet or more in height now we later find out that these strange shapes aren't trolls they are in fact ants and the more we look at it the more similarities we find between ants and trolls I think in some ways what ants are to trees and wood trolls are to rock and stone furthermore tree beard also tells us that many many many Millennia before the Lord of the Rings he used to walk among the pine trees upon the Highland of dorthonion now we know that 17 years before the neonayath are annoyed dorthonion was captured by the dark lord and corrupted into tawa nufuin the forest under Nightshade so my hypothesis is this after the dog or bragolak morgoth's servants encountered some of treebeard's former ant friends in dorthonion and morgoth had them brought back to angaband as prisoners where they were tortured and twisted and turned into a mockery of their former selves and this I would speculate is the origin of the troll guard that we see who win fighting in this scene now as I say I don't want to imply that that's a fact talking did not state that explicitly it's just my speculation but it is drawn out of what Tolkien wrote and I think it adds just one more element of tragedy to this already devastating story anyway nothing in tolkien's works is ever entirely hopeless and just as it looks like the absolute end for Halloween he demonstrates what it is that makes him so inconceivably badass as the Orcs And The Troll guard of gothmog attacked hurine his ax smoked in their black blood until he'd killed so many that his ax was withered and each time that hulin slew an enemy he cried out loud they shall come again and Tolkien tells us that after all the other men of his house were dead hulin shouted these words 70 times seven zero the Orcs had been ordered to take him alive but as they grappled him who we hewed off their arms so that their seven hands still clung to him but as you will know there is pretty much no limit to the number of Orcs in morgot's armies and so at the end of the day it doesn't really matter how many who win kills ever their numbers were renewed and eventually when who wins ax was entirely corroded Away by their blood and he was buried underneath the pile of enemies that he had slain gothmog bound him and dragged him to angerband with mockery and with hulin finally beaten the neonayath arenoriyad finally ends there is no one left to fight it we're told that as the sun went down Beyond the Sea there came a great storm of wind out of the West and then it's over and because the storm of wind comes from the West I think we can say with a fair degree of certainty that this wind was sent by manue King of the Valar it's not a part of morgoth's Victory it's a sign that we're done now and even though morgoth has claimed this massive victory over belarian there are still powers in the world that he ought to fear you know it's over but it's not over over not yet and this epic sacrifice of the House of hador was not for nothing because of what they did turgon vanished into the mountains and was hidden from the eyes of morgoth which is a huge deal because we're told that after his victory the thought of more goth dwelt ever upon turgon and the thought troubled him and marred his victory you know turgon yet lives and From morgoth's perspective that is terrifying now I will return to this before I finish it's a very cool detail to end on but although the neo-niath arenoidiad is now over but Larry and is forever changed by it and the consequences of this battle are why I've spent three long videos talking about it Tolkien tells us that after this battle the realm of Finnegan was no more and to heathlam came back never one of Finnegan's host nor any of the men of hado's house nor any Tidings of the battle and the fate of their Lords Of The Elves that lived in heathlum but didn't go to war so you know women and the other non-combatants they were captured and enslaved and taken to the minds of the north and labored there as thralls now there were some small number of Grails of heathlam who eluded the dark lord servants had escaped into the mountains but although they kept their freedom they are now homeless Exiles living in the wild just like dorthonion and Eastern belarian before it heathlum has now fallen to the power of morgoth there are no eleven strongholds left in the North well almost none with the path of Sirion now open to the Servants of the enemy Orcs And wolves begin to roam freely into sensual Valerian and they even prowl as far south as non-totherin the land of Willows another absolutely beautiful sounding place where we are told ants once roamed and butterflies first came into the world but now it is just another formerly wonderful place that is ravaged by the dark lord servants Tolkien tells us that even in the summary south of belarian where green elves dwelt in peace none were safe in field or wild many of the green elves now left their homes and they had to seek sanctuary in the coastal Refuge of the phallus where Kia down the shipwright built two great Havens protected by high walls and also protected by the power of water which evil things have no Mastery over just like almost everywhere else the lands of the phallus were overrun by Orcs but in the cities of eglarest and debris thombar the coastal elves remained for a while untouched kiardan's Mariners passed up and down the coast and harassed the enemy with swift Landings which sounds a little bit to me like Elven Vikings but eventually even the power of Kier Dan the shipwright could not withstand the onslaught of morgoth in the year following the neoniatharinoidad the dark lord sent a great strength to a sail kiardan's Havens and these Orcs brought with them Smiths and Miners and masters of fire and they set up great Siege engines and valiantly though they were resisted they broke the walls at last the Havens of kierdan were laid to ruin the most part of kierdan's people were slain or enslaved and both eggler rest and breathombar were utterly destroyed now this isn't a total Annihilation there are a few elves who escaped the Havens by ship and among them are of course kierdan himself and his young Ward Gili Gallard who he is still very much taking care of this Last Remnant of kierdan's falafreem are forced to leave their burning Havens in Ruins and to sail South a really really long way South all the way here to the island of Bala and on the island of Bala they are at least relatively safe I mentioned a moment ago that water is the province of the good guys it is the domain of ulamo and at no point in Middle Earth's entire history do either morgoth or Sauron gain any kind of Maritime Supremacy even rivers are very much under the protection of the Dark Lord's enemy but this isn't a kingdom it's not a new realm it is an island of refugees Last Resort and so if we look at a map we will see that pretty much everything is now the Dark Lord's Dominion there are only three Elven kingdoms left in all of belarian nagothrond doriath gondolin that's what we're down to anyway as awful as things are for the elves of valerian things really aren't much better for the men just like the elves who went to war no men of the House of hador ever returned to their homes in heathlam so the only man left in dolomin are women and children and the elderly and perhaps maybe a few refugees of the House of Baal but that's it who lean is a prisoner of morgoths his son and Heir is only eight years old and so the Ragged people of dolo mean look to who ruin's wife mordoen eleven as their new chief but the word Chief doesn't really mean anything anymore dollar mean may still be home to a small scattering of men but it no longer belongs to them you see as a reward for their treachery and I say reward and air quotes there the surviving easterlings were given control of heathlam and an opportunity to plunder and harass the old and the women and the children of Huddle's people but this is not what they wanted the men who betrayed Maya Ross were themselves betrayed by morgoth shock they were denied the rich and fertile lands of belarian which they actually wanted and instead they were shut inside the cold Northern realm of heathlam which morgoth then forebade them to leave so although I really don't feel bad for the easterlings who fought for morgoth you know the magnitude of the consequences of their actions speaks for itself but they were deceived they were cheated all the sons of ulfang were slain ulfang himself is almost certainly dead too and the easterlings do not get a happy ending no one gets a happy ending there is no happy ending to the neo-niath orinoid anyway that is where I will leave the men of doro mean until the next series they are second-class citizens living under the boot heel of the usurping easterlings and they are powerless to do anything except Hope For Better Days however do not forget about Morrowind her husband hurine is presumed dead by everyone but she is the mother of his children and among these children of hulin is the next generation of first age heroes they are raised in unbelievable hardship yet because they exist Middle Earth will not be the same actually just before I move on there is one more man of dolo mean to talk about more specifically a woman and she is the cousin of morduwen the wife of who her name is riyan and before the neonite I know it yet she'd actually only been married to who all for two months so they did not have a long marriage however at some point during those two months Rihanna got pregnant and when her husband failed to return from war and no Tidings came concerning his fate wyan journeyed into the Wilds of heathlam where she encountered some of those gray elves that had fled into the mountains and riyan lived with these gray elves until her son was born they were the only Mortals in a community of elves now these gray elves aided Rihanna during her pregnancy and after her baby was born they took care of him they fostered him and they raised him in the Wilds but Rihanna did not stay with them after bringing her son into the world she gave him a name that her husband had chosen before the war came she begged the elves to keep him safe and to keep him secret and she said to them I forebode that great good for elves and Men shall come from him then she departed heathlum forever and went searching for the final resting place of her husband who wore now when the battle was finally over morgoth commanded his Orcs to gather all the bodies of the slain men and elves and together all their arms and armor and to pile them in a massive mound in the midst of anthouglith like a great Hill that could be seen from afar and the elves call this hill of corpses howl then nadengin the Hill of the slain though and falglith is a desert of Ash that morgoth made we are told that upon how then nadengin grew grass which turned the hill into the only green thing within sight of angerband and no creature of morgoth trod thereafter upon the Earth beneath which the swords of the Eldar and the edine crumbled to rust which is an incredibly sad but it is also incredibly Bittersweet no doubt morgoth intended this hill of the slain to be a warning you know it's a type of psychological warfare against his surviving enemies but he failed at that what he ended up creating was something almost beautiful something too beautiful for his servants to ever tread upon anyway it is to the how then nadengin that riyan eventually came and when she arrived there she laid herself down upon it and died now Rihanna is a very interesting character I think just like her husband who wore she is incredibly important from like a big picture perspective but she really only does do one thing of note in the entire story it seems that we are much more so than most other Mortals in the legendarium truly does have a destiny to fulfill she is a key part of illuvatard's design and despite the fact that she lost everything in the neo-night OR annoyediad she had to stay alive for another seven or eight months because she had to bring her son into the world and because she did indeed do that there is still hope which I think is very significant I suppose on the one hand we can look at riyan's death as a tragic sort of almost suicide but I don't actually think that's what this is there is absolutely no mention here of Despair she doesn't like kill herself she just finds her husband lays down with him and joins him I think from that big picture Ariel Louis Vuitton perspective this is actually kind of Beautiful Death is defined in the legendarium as a separation of fear from huawa Spirit from body and considering that eluvata is the creator of all they are and when a mortal dies Their Fear returns to him what we see here is a young couple in love both doing what they have to do for the sake of the future but then being reunited afterwards both physically in body and spiritually beyond the circles of the world yes it is very sad that Rian and who will both die but their deaths are Swift and their lives are far less painful than they could have been you know I don't want to sound overly morbid but if we compare the fates of who and Rian to the fate of hurine and morwen we'll see that there are far worse things than death speaking of let's turn at last back to hulin and morgoth as I mentioned morgoth is not quite as happy as you might expect him to be after this battle he knows that turgon yet lives he knows that the last son of finagolipine is still out there somewhere beyond his reach and of course morgoth hates the house of fine goldfin about as much as he fears it 17 years ago Fina goldfin gave his life to [ __ ] the Dark Lord with seven permanent wounds that will never heal his family have the Friendship of ulamo that is one of the Dark Lord's oldest enemies but most of all morgoth feared turgon through of old in valinor his eye had lighted upon him and whenever he drew near a shadow had fallen on his Spirit foreboding that in some time that yet lay hidden from turgon ruin should come to him and so morgoth becomes a little bit obsessed discovering the location of gondolin and wiping it off the map becomes priority number one and as it goes morgoth just so happens to have a prisoner who's been to gondolin a prisoner who spent a year of his youth there and with the right persuasion might even reveal its location to him so morgoth orders who win be brought before his throne and he interrogates him for any shred of information that might betray turgon's whereabouts but because hurine is among many other things an absolute badass he defied the dark lord and he mocked him which is awesome I mean mocking morgoth in his own Fortress has got to be among the coolest things that one could possibly do but it is also among the most self-destructive things because of this insult and mockery morgoth gets real creative in his cruelty and he decides to Pivot from interrogating who lean to straight up breaking him forcing him to the point where he will betray gondolin's location without even realizing it and so who lean suffers a fate that absolutely no one else ever even comes close to I really don't think any other character in Middle Earth's history suffers in quite the same way as how hurine suffers morgoth takes him to a high ledge of thank Godwin and there he sits who lean upon a chair made of stone and with the use of his evil magic morogoth binds who reign in place unable to move or to leave and this is where hulin spends the next 28 years of his miserable life but being magically bound to a chair is nowhere near the worst part of this fate morgoth stands behind hurine and he says to him thou has dared to mock me and to question the power of melkor Master of the fates of odor therefore with my eyes Thou shalt see and with my ears Thou shalt hear until all is fulfilled unto its Bitter End however there is one more thing that takes this from awful to unimaginable because with the eyes and ears of morgoth who Reen is forced to look upon the evil and despair that will befall those he loves the most the dark lord uses his I knewer powers to lay a curse not only upon haurine and mordwen but also on all of their children morgoth sets a doom of darkness and sorrow upon the children of hulin that will dictate every single facet of Their Lives who means bloodline is cursed by morgoth so that no matter what his children do no matter what they intend or how they live their lives in the end everything that they come upon will turn to Ash they are inexorably constrained by this curse and throughout the entirety of their stories urine is forced to watch and to listen and to know that his children are cursed with misery and the most intense Misfortune yet he is powerless to affect it and the tragedy of the children of hulin is what I will talk all about in my next silimarilian explained series it's one of the biggest and most epic stories in the entire legendarium it's the second of the three great tales of the first age and it's undoubtedly the most tragic however I am super excited to get into it it'll probably take me I don't know 10 videos to talk through possibly more it is the longest and most complete of all of tolkien's great tales and in some ways the story of the children of Julian is what the entire Cinema really on grew out of in tolkien's own words this story is the germ of the legendarium now I don't know exactly when I'll start that but it won't be too long I promise however just before I finish this video and this three-part series I want to very briefly look ahead at what's left of the first age because after this battle we really are entering the end game there's still an awful lot to talk about but we are entering the Final Act of valerian's History the final years of the war of the jewels after the end of the neonia thyroid noidiad there are only 118 years left of the first age which means everything that's still to come between this moment and the beginning of the second age all of it has to happen in the next 118 years about two mortal lifetimes is all that we have left so to make sure you don't miss the rest of the cinema really unexplained and also many Lord of the Rings videos and just general Middle Earth lore videos hit subscribe if you haven't already and click like and leave a comment if you want to I really hope you guys enjoyed this series I hope you enjoyed untangling the tale of the neon knife are annoyed yet but until next time as always my dear friends much love stay groovy and nevia melanine [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Tolkien Untangled

Views: 241,950

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Id: o2rtoUpju_Q

Length: 58min 23sec (3503 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022