The Lord of the Rings, what the Second Age will tell

The Lord of the Rings

From today, the first two episodes of The Rings of Power are available on Prime Video, the “prequel” TV series to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and set in the Second Age of Middle-earth.

To subscribe to the Amazon Prime Video streaming service, also taking advantage of the 30-day trial, you can use this link. The Second Era is the period in which Nùmenor was still a thriving island in which humans could proliferate and live in an agile way, until the intervention of the god Ilùvatar. The events that however lead to these deus ex machina deeds of the divinity cried out by the Valar are very complex and intense, deserving of a much broader presentation, to understand what happened before the Third Age, the one that served as the stage for the War. of the Ring.

The Story of Arda

J. R. R. Tolkien divided his narration into numerous eras and periods, starting from Ainulindale up to Dagor Darorath: the story of Arda, on the other hand , is much larger than what we have known through Peter Jackson's films and started many years before the discovery of the One Ring. Everything started precisely from Ainulindale, the first chapter of the Silmarillion, the work that forms the foundation of the entire universe created by Tolkien. The birth of the Ainur by the hand of Eru, the equivalent of the Jewish God, the one who created everything and who controls everything, but who would soon be betrayed by Melkor, one of the most powerful Ainur, who later became Morgoth once he fully embraced the bad.| ); }


The First Age, which follows the Years of the Valar, begins during the Years of the Trees, when the Elves awaken. The entire period focuses on what is the battle at Morgoth, leading precisely to the conclusion of the Era with the War of Wrath. All this serves to lay the foundations for the world to come, especially by presenting all the various races that Tolkien has scattered throughout Middle-earth and the surrounding territories. The Valar had been waiting for the arrival of the sons of Eru Ilùvatar for a long time, identified precisely by the elves, direct descendants of the god who created the whole world of Arda. The deity had prepared everything for them, but the war with Melkor had changed the conditions of the land of Arda, prompting the Valar to take refuge in the continent of Aman with the intention of not returning to Middle-earth, therefore left at the mercy of what he would become Sauron's teacher, holed up in the fortress of Utumno. Among the various Valar, Orome decided to stay in the terrain prepared for the elves, respecting the will of Eru Ilùvatar and tracking down, during his patrols, the very elves, originally arrived on the shores of Lake Cuivienen, to the east, with the name of "those speaking with voices ”.

The fall of Morgoth

After bowing to him in battle, Sauron managed to convince Ar-Pharazon to invade Aman to wrest immortality from the Valar and create a new War of Wrath: before the Numenorians could, however, arrive on dry land, the descendants of Eru Ilùvatar asked the intervention of their god to stop the advance of Nùmenor and avoid a new war. Thus it was that the fleet of Ar-Pharazon was destroyed and the island was plunged into the ocean, reshaping the entire world of Arda and transporting Aman out of the circles of the world, making it accessible only to the elves through the Straight Road, the one that Frodo and Bilbo Baggins cross at the end of The Lord of the Rings, a grant from the Valar as thanks for the destruction of the One Ring.

Second Age and The Rings of Power

It is in the Second Era that the famous Rings of Power are born. Sauron, even before arriving in Nùmenor and being able to obtain the power that everyone knows, was forced to a period of growth and deception in order to regain the strength that he had lost during the War of Wrath. Hiding under the name of Annatar, cloaked in beauty and light, Sauron managed to make friends with the blacksmith Elves of the Eregion, including Celebrimbor, the elf who forged all the Rings of Power (as well as the protagonist of the events told in the two video games de Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War). Without Sauron's help, the elf was able to create the three rings for the elves (Narya, Nenya and Vilya), but once he learned how to forge, Annatar was able to create his own ring, the One, in the Mount. Fate. With the latter he would have had the opportunity to dominate all the other jewels previously forged by Celebrimbor, but not those donated to the elves, made without the contribution of Sauron.





Discovered the deception and not being able to control the three, the evil lord decided to invade the Eregion completely devastating it and also killing Celebrimbor, the architect of the creation of all the Rings of Power and cause of the impossibility, to the eyes of Sauron, to dominate even those of the elves. All the others were however recovered and distributed by dwarves and humans, so that they could be controlled from a distance, then Sauron went to erect the Dark Tower of Barad-dur near Mount Doom, forming armies of armies with Orcs and Men who were not descendants of Numenor. From here, then, the above events concerning Nùmenor start.

Shortly before the destruction of the island of Nùmenor, nine ships, captained by Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anarion, managed to escape the wrath of Eru Ilùvatar and reach Middle-earth, together with the seeds of the White Tree and the palantiri, Arda artifacts created by the elves with the help of Melkor. Once on land, men allied themselves with Gil-galad, the last Supreme King of the Noldor, creating the Last Alliance between elves and men, the one who decided to wage war on Sauron. The latter, feared the threat of Elendil's heirs who arrived on Middle-earth, decided to make a preventive attack on Gondor, one of the two kingdoms created by the survivors of Nùmenor together with Arnor. The men and the elves then decided to respond by marching against Sauron's forces, defeating them at first in the battle of Gadorlad, breaching Morannon and entering the land of Mordo.

The end of Sauron.

The siege of Barad-lasted seven years and led to the death of Anarion, the second son of Elendil. It was when Sauron decided to take the field in person for the battle that the Last Alliance had the opportunity to put an end to the Second Era: Elendil and Gil-galad decided to join him as a representative of the two races that had been tormented by Sauron for years. and both perished in the fight against the One Ring. It was Isildur, the only remaining son of the king of men, who picked up his father's sword and cut off the hand on which the ring was slipped. When the bond was broken, Sauron was defeated and made spirit, dissolving and never being able to find his own form again, wandering through Middle-earth without stopping.





Isildur picked up the Ring, hearing its call of power, and instead of following the directions of Elrond, who had ordered to immediately destroy the jewel in Mount Doom, Isildur decided to keep it for himself: returning to Rivendell, however, he was attacked by Orcs and decided to put the ring on his finger to hide. It was a twist of fate that led the One to slip out of Isildur's hand and make it visible to an orc archer who immediately killed him. From that moment the Ring wandered around the Rainbow Fields, without the King's body ever being found. The Ring, on the other hand, was found by Smeagol in the year 2463 of the Third Era, starting the events that we were able to know in the film adaptation of Peter Jackson. The defeat of Sauron marked the end of the Second Era and also the dissolution of the Last Alliance between Men and Elves, also told in The Lord of the Rings.