I finished the first season of House of Dragon. I’d give it a six. I’d give Rings of Power a seven. Rings of Power is a less faithful adaptation of Tolkien’s world than House of Dragon is of Martin’s, but I just like Tolkien’s world better. In Westeros, you have betrayal, deceit, and skullduggery winning out over virtue. At the edges, you have betrayal, deceit, and skullduggery winning out over virtue with zombies and dragons. In House of Dragon, betrayal, deceit, and skullduggery win out over virtue in the past. Chances are, with the upcoming sequel series, betrayal, deceit, and skullduggery will win out over virtue in the future.

Tolkien has the opposite problem where evil is always punished and good rewarded, but that is more interesting in my view as good is fundamentally creative, as shown by how much larger Tolkien’s world is. Westeros has Essos. Middle Earth has Valinor, Numenor, and Beleriand, and all the parts of the map you don’t get to see. That’s to say nothing of the thousands of years of history Tolkien thought up to fill the back pages of the Lord of the Rings. The back pages.

And the future, well that’s pretty extensive too. You see, Tolkien set Middle Earth in our world, just thousands of years in the past. He didn’t imagine it happening on another planet. History is our history. The problem with that is: look at the map. If you read Karen Wynn Forstad’s Atlas of Middle Earth, you can see the full global view of Middle Earth, with Valinor in the West and some mystery continents to the East. We would interpret both as being the Americas. There’s even a continent that looks a lot like Africa directly to the south of Middle Earth. The far eastern half of Middle Earth looks like China and Siberia. The problem is Middle Earth itself, where most of the action of the books happen. Frankly, it looks nothing like Europe. Yeah, if you squint your eyes, Tol Fuin might look like England, though it’s really more like Iceland, and the peninsula over the bay of Forechal looks a little like Scandinavia. But no, Middle Earth doesn’t look like Europe at all.

So, how did Middle Earth become Europe? Tolkien doesn’t say directly, but based on past events, we can guess what happened. The continents have changed twice in Tolkien’s history of Middle Earth, once at the end of the First Age and then again with the Akallabeth. Both of these events involved supernatural forces intervening in the world. In the First Age, the Valar, upon hearing Earendil’s plea, intervened in Beleriand to destroy Angband and capture Melkor, inadvertently causing most of Beleriand to sink into the sea. In the Akallabeth, Ar-Pharazon invades Valinor after being seduced by Sauron and Eru intervenes, causing Numenor to sink into the ocean and removing Valinor from the circles of the world. If the continents are changing shapes, the Ainur or Eru Himself is intervening.

So, why would these otherworldly powers intervene to make Middle-Earth look like Europe? Once again looking at the two prior examples, there are two possible scenarios.

The first possibility is that Gondor, after retaking Arnor, Umbar, and the Eastlands, becomes as tyrannical as old Numenor. In this situation, Aragorn’s descendants dominate the entire continent, including the dwarves and the hobbits (the elves have sailed west at this point), and are enslaving people left and right. Worse than Sauron.

I don’t think this would do it. You see, the Valar didn’t call on Eru to change the face of the world because Numenor had become tyrannical. They did that because Ar-Pharazon invaded Valinor with his grand armada. Valinor has been removed from the circles of the Earth, so any evil Gondor wouldn’t be able to repeat this transgression. It’s not in the nature of the Valar to intervene just to save humans from themselves. They hesitated to invade Beleriand in the First Age until the elves were pushed to their limit by Morgoth. They only sent the Istari in the Third Age to fight Sauron, and even then they only sent a few, relatively low-powered Maia. The Valar don’t intervene in human affairs unless there is a problem humans can’t really deal with themselves, and any problem caused by humans can be solved by humans.

The second possibility is more likely: namely, that we live in an alternate world where Sauron won. It makes perfect sense. Just imagine that Sauron got the ring. Maybe Frodo and Sam get captured pretending to be orcs. Sauron gets the ring, retakes physical form, and then rolls over Gondor and Rohan. He has a little trouble taking Lothlorien, but soon he’s plowing through Rivendell and the Shire. Then he takes Lindon and game over.

The Men of the West, after initial resistance, bow down and worship Sauron. It’s not unusual for men to do that in Tolkien’s world. The dwarves, elves, and hobbits refuse, and Sauron wipes them all out. (This explains why there are no dwarves, elves, or hobbits in our world). The Valar look at this and decide, understandably, that their expeditionary force led by Saruman has failed. Rather than leave Middle Earth to its own devices, the Valar intervene like they did in the First Age. This destroys Sauron, but it reshapes Middle-Earth to look like modern-day Europe. It’s the only theory I can think of that makes sense.

It explains the shape of the continent. It explains the lack of dwarves and hobbits in our world (the elves were leaving for the West anyway). It explains a lot of human history. Seeing evil triumph like that at an early stage of development would leave quite an impression on us. Yep, we do live in a separate world from Middle Earth. We live in the world Sauron won in. Let that marinate for a while.